Read an Excerpt

Mentoring for Mission

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

Chapter One

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Remember What It Was Like?

The U-Haul truck that she followed contained her husband and everything
they owned as well as their two sons, ages six and three. They were
on their way to a place that her husband had never been and that she
had seen only once, during an ugly late-January thaw. The most vivid
memory she had of the place was seeing ice-fishing shacks bobbing up
and down in a lake of breaking ice. On this day in July, as they made
their way from the west coast to the Midwestern town where she would
be teaching, the woman and her husband took turns riding with their
two boys for sanity's sake. The boys were with him during this stretch,
and she was listening to a book on tape.

The story she heard was Isak Dinesen's Babette's Feast. One of its
major themes is the consequence of choice and commitment - of
roads taken and not taken. One of the characters in the story stands up
at the feast to make a speech.

Man my friends ... is frail and foolish. We have all of us been told
that grace is to be found in the universe. But in our human foolishness
and short-sightedness we imagine divine grace to be finite. For
this reason we tremble.... We tremble before making our choice in
life and after having made it again tremble in fear of having chosen
wrong. But the moment comes when our eyes are opened, and we
see and realize that grace is infinite. (40)

She blinked back tears of relief. These were the very words she needed to
hear, given the load of mixed emotions she carried as she made her way
to her new town and college and life. She was grateful to have been offered
a tenure-track job at what looked like a good college and was excited
at a new adventure. But she also had some major apprehensions:
Would her husband, who - bless him - was moving for her sake, be
able to find a position he wanted in the area? If he didn't find something
that was a good fit, would she be happy enough at this college to make
his sacrifice something more than pointless? Would the town be a good
place to raise her children? Would faculty duties at a liberal arts college
allow enough family time to sustain a marriage and help her children
thrive? Could she stand living without mountains? Could she survive
winters with ninety-six inches of snow? Maybe she was making a terrible
mistake.

She also had apprehensions about this college's religious connections.
The hiring process at the college had addressed these issues to a
certain extent, and she had also done some homework - she had, for
example, looked up the denomination with which the college was affiliated
in the Handbook of American Denominations. She wanted to understand
the religious identity of the college before she agreed to teach
there, because she knew enough about the landscape of higher education
to know that there were plenty of Christian colleges out there that
would not want her and where she would not want to teach. She considered
herself an orthodox Christian and was in quite a few ways theologically
conservative. But she knew that orthodoxy is in the eye of the beholder
and that by some people's lights she would not qualify. She did
not want to feel as if she would be under continuing scrutiny to see how
she measured up against an unfolding list of more and more specific
and idiosyncratic doctrines. On the other hand, she knew that she
would be uncomfortable teaching at a place that mouthed Christian
platitudes when it served its fundraising or recruiting purposes but had
no serious interest in Christianity as more than useful window dressing.

Though the college had sent her materials about its church connection
and the chair of the department and others had talked to her
about it during the interviewing and recruiting stages, she felt a long
way from knowing what she was getting into. She had read the college's
documents, but she knew that texts (especially when crafted within an
academic community) have unwritten subtexts. What did the theological
language in the college's mission statement mean? Did it mean reading
Genesis as a history and science textbook? Did it mean seeing process
theology as heresy? Did it mean just appearing Christian enough to
keep the donor-base happy? "Moral turpitude" was listed as a possible
condition of dismissal at the college. What is that here, she wondered.
At some Christian colleges, moral turpitude might include drinking alcohol,
dancing, or divorcing; at others it might include nothing short of
being convicted of a major felony. Other questions she had concerned
the relationship of her discipline to the Christian affiliation of the college.
She knew that some of the questions raised by her discipline might
strike some Christians as dangerous. Could she be true to her discipline
without getting bad student ratings or being viewed as subversive by the
administration?

So she trembled and thanked God and Isak Dinesen for reminding
her that grace was infinite. As she drove she wondered where she
would find a safe place to ask her questions. Would she just have to
throw herself on God's grace and hope for the best?

Resisting "Missional Amnesia"

One important motive for mentoring is compassion rooted in remembering
the apprehensions and confusions you yourself may have had in
taking on your first full-time teaching job. Empathy can move veteran
faculty to make time in their busy schedules to help junior faculty find
their way in a new environment.

Remembering has also become an important institutional issue
for church-related colleges and universities because of a growing awareness
that it is all too easy for the Christian mission of the founders to
become a fact about the school's past with little or no influence on its
present self-conception or daily life. Many church-related schools have
not dealt wisely with the growing number of faculty and administrators
who arrive with differing degrees of understanding and appreciation of
the values that undergird the founding mission of the institution. A decline
of original religious impetus can come about unintentionally; in
such situations, schools face the loss of their founding raison d'être.
Within the church-affiliated university or college community, the realization
has dawned that the continuation of a robust Christian context
cannot be taken for granted.

"Ownership" of the mission has only recently become an issue for
discussion in many religiously affiliated schools. Historically, this was
not seen as necessary. If a clearly identified religious group established a
school, and its members composed all the faculty and administrators,
why would they wonder about who was fully invested in the mission? In
Protestant schools, ordained members of the denomination formed not
just the Religion or Bible department, but were scattered throughout
the faculty and made up the majority of the administration and Board
of Trustees. Faculty members often were required to affirm a doctrinal
statement considered central to the identity of the founding denomination.
In Catholic schools the religious congregation of nuns, priests, or
brothers was a visible sign of the mission; the charism or unique character
of the founding community of men or women largely determined
the goals and mission of the school. The few lay faculty and administrators
who were employed at the college or university were frequently attracted
to the values and mission of the founding congregation and
usually shared the same church affiliation. At both Protestant and Catholic
institutions, chapel services and spiritual devotions were mandatory,
and the educational goals of the school were intimately connected
to these reminders of faith.

Changes occurring in the last century have substantially altered
this picture for many colleges and universities. When the predominant
influence at an institution is uniformly denominational, mission values
are embedded in the life of the institution. The rituals and beliefs of the
denomination are shared, expected, widely practiced, and clearly acknowledged.
As these uniform practices change and the influence of
secular values grows, universities and colleges are confronted with the
need to reflect upon their mission or risk losing it. Faculty and administrators
who once took the continuance of their religious culture and
values as a certainty now are asking who is responsible for the mission,
and whether the mission can thrive without more intentional efforts.

Recently, many authors who have reflected on the history and nature
of American higher education have noted the forces that push
church-related institutions toward secularization and loss of distinctive
identity (Burtchaell; Dockery and Gushee; Hughes and Adrian; Marsden,
Soul; Roberts and Turner; Sloan). These forces take many different
forms. Reaction to perceived threats to academic freedom
from those entrusted with denominational
oversight, the importation of a "scientific"
model of evidence for knowledge in the social
sciences and the humanities, and the
growing compartmentalization of the academic
disciplines have affected both
Protestant and Catholic schools (Roberts
and Turner, 14 and passim).

Academic culture at large, especially
the culture of most of the research
universities that train Ph.D.s,
does not offer help to colleges and universities
that are serious about resisting
missional amnesia. General academic
culture often operates on the
assumption that religious faith is intellectually
suspect and that religious attitudes
and assumptions have no legitimate
place in scholarship. People of faith who
pursue Ph.D.s are provided with numerous
subtle and not so subtle incentives to pursue
scholarship and teaching in ways that are indistinguishable
from their secular counterparts (Sloan, 204, 232). The assumption
that most academic subjects are and should remain religiously
neutral can make faculty at church-related colleges and
universities who are involved in searching for new faculty members feel
awkward, and even reticent, in inquiring into the religious commitment
of candidates. Even when people of faith are identified and recruited as
new faculty members, these people may be inexperienced and uncomfortable
with exploring the relevance of their faith to their scholarship
and teaching. Though they may be people of faith, they may also be unfamiliar
with the particular branch of the Christian tradition with
which their college or university is affiliated.

Because many forces in higher education pull faith and academic
excellence apart, it is crucial for church-related colleges to become
mentoring communities that pass on a distinctive vision of how and
why the founding religious tradition of the college or university should
be viewed as an educational asset. William Willimon and Thomas
Naylor have argued in their book, The Abandoned Generation, that universities
need to change in order to be more effective in helping students
become genuinely educated adults. They see the large, impersonal,
research-oriented university as ill equipped to help students
understand the relationship between education and character or to provide
the sense of community and purpose that students need to flourish.
"What is missing in most colleges and universities," according to
Willimon and Naylor, "is a well-defined sense of direction for administrators
and faculty alike that goes beyond vague platitudes about teaching,
research, and good citizenship. Why does the institution exist in the
first place? Who are its constituents? What is it trying to accomplish?"
(Willimon and Naylor, 58).

Many of Willimon and Naylor's recommendations for change are
in fact descriptions of features that are already true of many church-related
colleges and universities. They recommend a relatively small size
(around 2000 students), small dorms (300 or fewer residents), institutional
emphasis on teaching and on personal relationships among faculty
and students, a well-defined core curriculum, and a clearly stated
mission that guides administrative decisions and shapes faculty and
student culture. Many church-related colleges and universities do not
need to change in order to fit this description. What they may need to
do, though, is be vigilant about passing on the rationale for these features
to coming generations of administrators, faculty, staff, and students.
If in fact the rationale for these features is informed by the religious
context of the college or university, this link between religious
identity and excellence in education must be illuminated for each succeeding
generation of faculty and students.

Each church-related institution's particularities entail very specific
priorities; each has its distinctive history, ethos, and mission. No
newly recruited faculty member is likely to arrive with a full-orbed
grasp of these particularities. It should not be assumed that faculty will
just tumble to the significance of their college's distinctives without
help. In the absence of intentional conversations about mission, an uninformed
faculty culture may come to view the college's Christian tradition
as a liability to be overcome or as irrelevant. Or they may not give
the founding tradition much thought at all. Mentoring new faculty is
one vital component in nurturing the connection between institutional
mission and the everyday life of colleges and universities. It forms the
foundational activity of a mentoring community that seeks to meet the
needs of faculty as they begin and as they continue in their careers.

Mentoring: An Occasion for Grace

Both "mission" and "mentoring" have become hot topics in the business
world, but mentoring for mission informed by the Christian tradition
will be profoundly different than mentoring for mission in some
businesses.

Take, for example, a fast-food franchise that posts its mission
statement on a prominent wall in each of its restaurants and mentors its
employees. Mentoring in such a context serves as a means to an end of
delivering quality service and uniform product with the ultimate goal
of maximizing market share and profitability. Veteran employees and
shift managers will teach new employees how to make burgers and fries,
when to discard food that has spent too much time under the heat
lamp, and how to smile, make eye contact, and always ask, "Did you
want that super sized?" Such businesses may seek to treat their employees
fairly, but their workers are, at bottom, replaceable means to set corporate
goals.

"Mentoring" of this sort would be severely impoverished both
from a broadly humanistic and a Christian perspective.
Continues...

---

Excerpted from Mentoring for Mission
by Caroline J. Simon Laura Bloxham Denise Doyle Mel Hailey Jane Hokanson Hawks Kathleen Light Dominic P. Scibilia Ernest Simmons
Copyright © 2003 by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co..
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---