From the President

This week we have witnessed two exemplary displays of what makes Catawba College such a special place.

On Monday night hundreds of the Catawba community – students, faculty, staff, alumni, and other supporters – filled the stands of Goodman Gym to cheer on our Women’s Basketball team as they competed in the NCAA II Southeast Regional championship.

These women, led by Coach Terrence McCutcheon and his stellar staff, made history by winning the program’s first NCAA Regional Title with an 85-75 victory over Georgia Southwest State University, and they are now headed to the Elite Eight in St. Joseph, Missouri.

The atmosphere in Goodman Gym Monday night was electric. Our Catawba Band, Cheerleaders, and Dance team led hundreds of fans in support of our team. Thank you to every student who showed up to give our team a true home court advantage. What a night!

Championships aren’t won easily. They are the result of much hard work, training, skill, dedication, and resilience. All were on display by our team Monday night. It is good to be proud of the accomplishments of Catawba Women’s Basketball, and I hope you’ll all join me in cheering them on in the Elite Eight, beginning Monday, March 20 at 1:00. (You’ll soon receive details about a campus viewing party!)

Just hours after the exhilaration of Monday night, hundreds of students, along with staff and faculty, joined in a celebration of the life of Chase Tripp, Catawba’s Director of Sports Performance, who passed away on March 2, 2023.
Through the reflections of coaches, students, and family, we were reminded how much every life matters, what it means to live out one’s calling, and how much it matters for us to care for one another.

Chase is remembered as a man who cared for the well-being of others, who challenged those with whom he worked to be their very best, and who impacted many lives during his time on this earth.

While there are many things to celebrate in our campus community, these two events remind us of so much of what makes Catawba a remarkable place to live, work,  and learn. We are reminded of the value of caring for every member of our community. We are reminded that we are an institution committed to excellence, always working to be better tomorrow than we are today. We are reminded that we are more fully ourselves when we give ourselves in service to others. We are reminded that a college at its best is a learning community – not simply a set of classes in a curriculum or a means for individuals to acquire credits toward a degree, but a place where together we form our lives and discover the wonder of living lives of significance.

This is Catawba College. This is your college. You are Catawba College.

Over the past months we’ve asked you all to engage in a planning process to help us consider who we will be over the next years and what we will do to be Catawba College at her very best. Hundreds of you have contributed to that process. We’ll soon update you on what we’ve been hearing as the strategic direction for our future takes shape, culminating in a completed plan we’ll present to the Board of Trustees in June. As your president, which I consider to be a high privilege, I am reminded by the events of the past few days — including some additional amazing accomplishments of members of our Catawba community that I look forward to highlighting in the days to come — that not only is Catawba’s future very bright, but our present is filled with love, light, and much good.

And that’s worth spotlighting today.

Last year at this time I spoke to you about time. We thought together about how many weeks we have in all of life (about 4,000 for most of us), and about how many weeks we had coming up in the academic year (about 37). As I said, college is the time of your life, and I meant that in the most literal sense possible. This is your life, and this is how you are spending your time. It is the time of your life. Being your president is the time of my life.

I concluded with the reminder from the Apostle Paul, who admonished the Ephesians to “redeem the time, for the days are evil…” To redeem is to “buy something back.” Days are not “good” of their own accord; you have to “buy them back” from what may be wasteful, and make them good. Time is fleeting. Time by its nature escapes us. It dwindles. Time is easily eaten up by things that don’t matter the most, or sometimes by things that don’t matter at all. It’s up to us to redeem the time. It’s up to you to redeem your time.

Today I want to ask how you’ll redeem your time in a particular way—that is, to what end will you redeem the time that is the 2022-23 academic year?—and to suggest that you should make the most of your time to explore your vocation.

For those of you who have been around here for a while, you know we talk quite a lot about vocation at Catawba. The term vocation derives from the Latin vocare, “to call.” The Lilly Center helps us think about our vocations and our values, how we can align our lives—the time of our lives—with the things that matter most. These are questions that are central to our lives, and they are questions we all wrestle with. Dr Clapp has helped us for years to think about these questions. This Fall we’ll welcome a new chaplain who will carry forward this tradition. And we all know these questions aren’t relegated to the times we spend in this chapel. These questions matter, whatever faith—or no faith—is a part of your life. They are the stuff of our every day. The stuff of the time of our life.

No doubt many of you could point to a faculty member, a staff member, who has helped shape your perspective on your vocation. Some of you in this room have been generous to give time to Kimberly and me as we consider our own vocations. We have a sense of not just a calling, but we have a sense of callings that form our sense of vocation: calling to God, to family, to neighbors/community, to our work.  We are deliberately thinking about how we spend our time, just as I’m asking you to consider your time. It makes good sense for all of us to take time to consider how to spend our time on what matters most. How you spend this time—your college time, your Catawba time—really matters.

Questions of vocation aren’t questions that you answer once and then you’re all set. Not many of us have enough light to see our path to the very end. The psalmist described “a lamp unto my feet”—enough light to see the next step. We take that step, and we keep listening for the “calling”—the vocation, that voice from outside of ourselves that compels us toward the good things we’ve been created to do, where our passion and our skill meet the world’s need in this moment. As Frederick Buechner would put it, vocation is where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet. Buechner passed away yesterday, August 15, at age 96. He devoted much of his life to questions such as these, and in Now and Then, he exhorted, “Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is.” As you listen, you may begin sense where your greatest joy meets the world’s greatest need.

As your president, I am passionate about your success at Catawba College, and I am dedicating all of my skills to cultivating an environment where you can thrive. This is my joy. And I attempt to make good out of every day, to redeem the time, toward that end. 

For every member of the faculty and the staff sitting in this chapel, I trust you would give a similar answer—that you dedicate your days to Catawba because you take joy in using your skills and abilities to help form the lives of students.

As a student, some of you perhaps sitting in this chapel for the first time—What brings you joy? What’s most important to you? What are you most gifted to do? What do you believe really matters? You’ve dedicated yourself to four years at Catawba precisely to develop your answers to those sorts of questions. You’re in a unique place and time in life where you can explore the world and discover your place in it. You should make the most of this opportunity to explore. And, as you do, I want to call you to pay attention to two callings that are yours at present.

Remember we are tensed people, that is we are people who exist in time. I don’t mean we are ‘tense’ people, as in ‘anxious,’ though maybe we are, but rather ‘tensed.’ We exist as beings who inevitably experience the present while anticipating the future and remembering the past. So often when asking questions of vocation, we tend to think toward some potential future that may be ahead of us. But for the next few minutes, let’s think about vocation not in the future tense, but in the present tense, in the now time of your life.

Amidst the question like, What major? What job? What career? Who will I partner with?—those questions that can feel so weighty at times—let’s not miss the very obvious thing right in front of us, the lamp for our feet, the light for this current stretch of the path. I want to call your attention to two callings that are at least a part of the vocation of everyone in our learning community. They are callings we all share.

The first is the calling to learn. We are sitting in a college chapel that honors the light of learning. The window above me depicts the light of Christ, and the rose window behind you, where you will depart into this semester, depicts the light of learning. (Recall our motto engraved in our seal, sit lux, let there be light.)

Students, this place represents (what for most of us is) a once in a lifetime opportunity—to work with expert faculty and with supportive staff as you explore vocation and live out your calling to learn. I will note that the act of imagination may be one of the most practical things you can do to discover your place in the world. Einstein said “knowledge is limited, but imagination encircles the world.” And you are in a haven to do just that—to learn and to imagine. Faculty, who are a bit ahead of you in this journey, have brought their wisdom to bear to craft a curriculum for you, a course they have very deliberately laid out to help you along your path. At commissioning I charged you to be curious and to be courageous to explore subjects that you might not ordinarily explore (and to be kind).

Faculty and staff likewise have a calling to learn. None of us has arrived at the end of our journey. Whoever among us has the most expertise in any given area would likely be the first to tell you just how much more remains to explore. Those who know the most recognize how much more there is to learn. (And you can guess what I think about those who think or act like they know it all.) We have assembled ourselves together at Catawba College because we are called to learn, and what a rich tradition is ours to experience together during this window of time we have together!

Our second shared calling is the calling to love. You are in a learning community. Community implies relationships: roommates, classmates, teammates. An ensemble or choir or a club is by its very nature a set of relationships. Relationships make up our lives. The question isn’t whether we will love, but who and how we will love. We are creatures of our loves. Who and what we love—as those of you who were in class with Kimberly and me last semester will well remember—is central to our very being. Jewish tradition nourishes us with the command to love God and neighbor. Jesus spoke of the greatest commandment and the one that follows after it—love of God and love of neighbor. And we’re even taught by Jesus how to love neighbor—as we love ourselves.

Learn to live well with yourself. The Jewish Torah exhorts Israel to love their neighbors because they have first been loved by God. Aristotle exhorts us to be a good friend to ourselves, so we can be a truly good friend to others. He does so because to care for our own good in the most virtuous ways enables us to virtuously love our friends for the sake of their well-being. It’s in this sense that Jesus teaches us to love our neighbors as ourselves, and in 1 John we are reminded that “if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.” This is no selfish affection toward ourselves; it is a sense of self that is uncovered by receiving love of the O/other and creates a self-awareness that we are loved, that we fittingly love ourselves, and that we are then free to love others.

This calling to love is a calling we all share. This is your life. It is my life. Buechner reminds us, then, to listen to your life. Listen to this life, your life that is centered on the calling to love. Take care of yourself. Take care of one another. The Apostle Paul taught us that the one thing we owe every person is love.

The callings to learn and to love are not separate. They are integrally related. Loving requires learning—about yourself and others and the world around you. Learning requires loving—as the very name we give to the highest degree of educational attainment suggests. The PhD is doctorate of philosophy—a love (phileo) of wisdom (sophia). I believe love is the logic of life, and I believe that we know better when we love better.

My hope for all of us this academic year is that we will demonstrate a love of wisdom, and that we will learn the wisdom of love.

Both learning and love are lifelong pursuits. There’s nothing wasted in responding to these callings, to these vocations during your years here. This is a good use of your time, a redemptive use of your time, to take the time to cultivate the calling to learn and the calling to love.

Sit lux.

I am soon to complete the second year of my second presidency in higher education. During my tenure at both institutions at which I’ve held the title “President,” I spent considerable time learning about the institution, learning what it does well and not so well, learning how the institution functions, learning how decisions are made, learning about our leaders and how they work, and considering how we might lead the college to enact its mission with integrity in the years to come. One fascinating aspect of my service as a president is observing how various campus leaders lead and also understanding the expectations of a campus for their president.

This document offers a glimpse at my view of “the presidency” and some thoughts about leadership, organizational development, and organizational culture that are central to my idea of “presidency.” My hope is for us to clarify in coming months the part each of us play in the presidency as we prepare our campus for a strategic planning process that will guide us into an important season of organizational development at Catawba College.

I note that the purpose of this document is to be clarifying, but not exhaustive, and to be generative, and not determinative. That is, from the document you should have a clearer notion of what I mean when I say “presidency,” but I am leaving open some aspects of the concept that we’ll sort out together in coming months. Likewise, my hope is to generate thinking about how the presidency will best work at Catawba College, without determining at this point how it must work.

Presidency As Interrelationship

Ed Penson, a former university president, describes the presidency as “a set of relationships; complex, sometimes fragile, sometimes indestructible, always dynamic and changing.” Drawing on this notion of presidential leadership as “a set of relationships,” John Moore, president emeritus of Indiana State University, refers to the presidency as a tapestry, woven of the president (the public person who holds the office as well the human being, the private person who is the president), the board, the president’s personal relationships (with spouse, family, special friends and partners), the senior administrative team, the faculty, and major stakeholders.

I applaud Penson’s recognition that the presidency is a “set of relationships.” I appreciate the notion of a tapestry and the threads of relationships Moore describes. I like to describe the presidency as facets of a jewel, a complex yet cohering whole which gains its particular character from how the facets refract light in and through one another. The presidency is this kind of interrelationship of many persons and constituencies, those named above as well as – to be explicit in identifying a university’s major stakeholders – students and alumni.

This is a complex view of the presidency. Not least among its complexities is the manner in which these various relationships function in a coherent and effective fashion. To some, I am sure, the model I am suggesting here is a recipe for confusion and ineffectiveness. Certainly, a strict CEO model is less complex. But I believe such a model is less efficacious, especially for an institution of higher learning whose mission cannot be simplified to a “bottom line.” I choose, rather, to embrace the complexity and to pursue the ideal of shared governance and shared responsibility in a manner that is most consistent with the identity and mission of our college.

So, the presidency is a set of relationships. The presidency is the set of relationships, involving the persons and constituencies previously named, by which our college is led. The presidency is not the president. The president is the leader of the presidency, but is not the presidency itself.

What We Do

None of us “own” the college, though we rightly refer to it as “ours.” It is ours because we share a stewardship of it and because we embrace the mission of the school. The college’s administrators serve its mission and its people.
The concept of administration, from the Latin “to minister” or “attend to,” is literally the act of serving. The presidency is an administrative concept, drawn from the verb “to preside.” To preside is, in our setting, to lead and manage by means of service and stewardship. Administrators are stewards of the relationships and resources of the institution. An effective presidency allows for a vital living and learning environment in which faculty and students thrive with the support of professional staff who enable their work. As there are various facets of the presidency, so there are various facets to the service of the presidency:

Preservation and Enactment of the Mission
Many schools drift from their mission, and often this undermines the integrity of an institution. Therefore a primary responsibility of a president, along with a board of trustees and vice presidents, is to preserve and enact the institution’s mission. The role of faculty, deans, and other administrators in carrying out the mission cannot be overstated. Our identity depends on it. It is our responsibility together to preserve and enact the mission of Catawba College.

Education
We are an institution of higher learning, a college by name. The academic enterprise is the center of all we do, and to be true to our mission, we will always be committed to the good of our students. This is a fundamental concern of the presidency.

Development of People
As much as we talk about programs and budgets and buildings, we are not primarily here to build any of those things. We exist to develop people. The presidency must ensure that students are growing and learning, that staff are able to do their work in an environment that is rewarding and accommodates growth, and that faculty are able to develop and flourish in their teaching, research and creative activity, and service.

Executive Leadership
The presidency is guided by a president and vice presidents, along with other administrators and faculty and staff leadership, who provide various levels of oversight of the institution. The president serves as the senior officer of the institution and reports to the board of trustees.

Financial Oversight
The presidency includes securing resources (from donors and grantmakers, government entities, tuition and fees, room and board revenues, and auxiliary revenues) to support the work of the college, the administration of annual budgets, and the assurance that resources are used with integrity.

Fundraising
The presidency is involved in the securing of resources from foundations, corporations, private donors, and other grant-making entities to support the work of the college and to build an endowment and create alternate revenue streams to secure the school for the future.

Civic Leadership
The college is necessarily a civic institution, because we exist within a community. The presidency enacts our role as a cultural institution in the city of Salisbury, in Rowan County, in North Carolina, and in the United States. We practice civic leadership through the preparation of students to do their work in the world, to engage in the well-being of their society, through community engagement in many forms, and through thought leadership.

Strategic Planning and Implementation
The college should always operate with a strategic plan that is formed with community involvement, that is both visionary and tactical, and that includes assessment and accountability. An important facet of the presidency is oversight of the accomplishment and renewal of a strategic plan.

Manage Resources for the Good of the Mission
Beyond financial stewardship, the presidency manages other critical resources for the college. Buildings must be maintained. Relationships with key partners must be developed. The development of people, human resources, are most vital to the ongoing success of the institution.

Effect Change
Institutions constantly change. Sometimes change is organic and incremental. Sometimes change must be instituted when the organization is in dysfunction. Always, change should be managed responsibly, consistent with our mission and our values.

Build Trust and Shared Vision
An institution without trust is inevitably dysfunctional. Distrust is often bred because the work of creating a shared vision is ignored. It is the work of the presidency to continually foster a shared vision and to cultivate trust in the college.

Preside
A president presides. Those in the presidency preside in various ways. Faculty preside over classrooms, student leaders preside over student government, vice presidents preside over their divisions. Presiding is not dictating; it is not an act of hegemony. It is often an act of consensus-building, and it is always to be done with the good of the whole in mind. The president and all those who have a part in the presidency lead and manage primarily by means of service and stewardship.

What We Value

I admit that “value” can be a loaded term. By “value” I mean deeply held beliefs that guide our actions. Here I refer to those matters of importance, even principles, that are significant to our identity as Catawba College. And I hope to lay out what I believe are shared values in our community as I have come to know it in my time here. As I see it, if we do not uphold these shared values, we will become less than we should be, and if neglected, the absence of such values would render us a different community. Nevertheless, I admit these are values I consider of import for the leadership model I prefer. These are, in my estimation, crucial values for an effective presidency.

We relate to others with honesty and integrity.
We are truthful with one another, and we are careful to truthfully represent one another, even when our individual perspectives differ.

We respect every person’s dignity.
Respect is something we give to another. Dignity is the value intrinsic to each person, possessed by them because they exist. We don’t simply offer respect to one another, because we could give someone our attention and politely listen to them and then deny their dignity. Instead, we respect the dignity of every person.

We embrace difference and diversity.
We do not believe there is only one way of seeing things, so we welcome difference in perspective and different ways of being in the world. Because we appreciate the wonder of diversity in the world, we welcome and value diverse people from diverse backgrounds with diverse ideas in our community. We believe our differences make us better.

We are responsive, and we get things done.
We acknowledge those who ask something of us or who are in need, and because we understand leadership as service and stewardship, we do what we can to respond to the needs of our community.
We welcome problems and appreciate suggested solutions.
Problems exists in every community and always will. We all make mistakes. We welcome people bringing problems to us so we can address them. We also welcome proposed solutions. And even when we cannot satisfactorily solve a problem, we will always address it.

We celebrate successes and acknowledge our failures.
Catawba College is a place of excellence. Achievements abound, and we celebrate them. In our best efforts we are also bound to fail at points. When we fail, we admit our failures and learn from them. When others fail, we are understanding and generous toward them.

We practice transparency in decision-making.
We are a community, so we believe it is important for decisions to be made in such a way that the community can see how and why a decision is made. We recognize that certain matters must balance privacy with transparency, especially personnel issues, and therefore afford less transparency to the community than other decisions. But when transparency is not precluded, it is always preferred.

We understand that trust is essential.
We recognize that organizations that lack trust are generally unhealthy. Thus, we practice honesty, integrity, and transparency in order to cultivate trust in our community.

We listen to understand; we speak to be understood.
We don’t just hear one another, we practice active listening, seeking to truly understand what someone is trying to say, even if we disagree. We try to speak in such a way that we can be understood clearly. We avoid dissembling and, especially in important matters, we take the time to carefully plan what we say so the community can understand us.

We are empathetic, vulnerable, and reflective.
Empathy occurs when one person feels with another, when one tries to enter in to what the other is feeling. Vulnerability is one’s openness to be seen and understood by another, even when that may be frightening. Reflection is one’s willingness to think and ponder a matter. Note that empathy and vulnerability occur in relationship one with another. Reflection, while it may be done with another, is something we do in relation to self. Empathy, vulnerability, and reflection each require openness, to other people and other ideas and other ways of seeing.

We embrace collaboration.
To collaborate is to co-labor, to work together. We know that in many instances we can do more together than we can do apart. This does not preclude the obvious need or preference for some of our work to be done in isolation or solitude, but some things are best done together. And we know that some things must be done together or they will not be done at all.

We are curious, creative, and adaptive.
We are curious because we know the limits of our current condition, we are creative because we are human, and we are adaptive because change is inevitable.

We understand the wisdom of determining which is more costly, action or inaction.
Sometimes something must be done, and we should do it. Sometimes doing something is worse than doing nothing, and we should refrain from action.

We identify and develop talent.
We rely on skilled people who care about Catawba’s mission and do quality work. Good leaders identify such people, then provide them resources, and entrust them to do their work.

We know when to say ‘No.’
Not everything we might do is consistent with the Catawba’s mission and values. And we do not have the capacity to do everything, even if it is consistent with our mission. Therefore, we determine what we will not do in order to do what is most important.

We are willing to take a risk.
Sometimes we simply must take a risk.

We want to do work that matters and that brings joy.
Most people want to work with purpose. Likewise, most people want to do work that truly brings joy, to them and to others. Catawba College has always highlighted meaningful work, because it is about preparing students for meaningful lives. We want to pursue that work in such a way that we not only get the job done, but in a way that brings joy to those who labor.

We reward what we value.
If we truly value something, then we should reward it. There are different kinds of reward, and we should reward consistently.

Concluding Charge

The success of this presidency depends on us all embracing the complexities of our relationships and responsibilities for the good of students, for the good of our community, and for the good of our society. We will measure our progress not just by numbers but by trust and joy, by personal achievements and shared triumphs. If we are all in, I believe the risk of all the complexities will be well worth the successes we enjoy.

On the launch of the "Bible Challenge" at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Winston Salem, NC
September 29, 2013

Each of us here today has some experience with the Bible, and most of us are here today because we are entering a “Bible Challenge,” a venture to re-engage with the Bible, perhaps in a new way, hopefully to experience anew the Bible as a treasure. We’ve accepted the challenge – we’ve taken it off the shelf. What are we to do with it now?

Our invitation is to hear the Bible and to see – to have our eyes and hearts opened to possibilities. “I see” is a way of saying “I understand.” This is an invitation to “faithful understanding” in the Christian tradition of fides quaerens intellectum, faith seeking understanding. The invitation is not merely to understand, but to understand – to see – from the standpoint of faith. We trust that God speaks by the Holy Spirit and that we are empowered by that same Spirit to enact the faith we come to understand.

Faith requires imagination. And today I’m suggesting that we take up this Bible Challenge with imagination, reading the Scriptures by faith, for faith. “By faith” means we read and hear the Scriptures as those who trust that there is something to be heard, that “the faith once for all delivered to the saints” is still being passed down in the church today. “For faith” means we aren’t simply hearing so we can gain knowledge, but so that we can enact faith in the world in which we live, so we can live faithfully as those called to love God and love neighbors. By “with imagination,” I mean that as creatures made in the image and likeness of God, we are able to ourselves “image” – to see – what God calls us to see. We are imaginative beings.

I don’t mean that we see something that isn’t real. We can imagine worlds filled with giants and Lilliputians, or a world of elves and hobbits and orcs. We have the ability to imagine in that sense – to see what isn’t and never will be – but that is fantasy. We can imagine what isn’t real. But that’s not the kind of imagination I mean. Imagination is equally and perhaps more so a matter of seeing what may not be but can be. We file into metal tubes with large engines and fly 35,000 feet above the ground from one place to another because people imagined we humans might fly like birds. We have a statue called “The David” because a person of immense talent saw a work of art where most would see only a block of stone. By “imagine” I mean that we should see what is really real: that God is, and that God loves. As we “imagine” in this sense, we can see the world that is, and we can see the world as God intends it to be.

The text of the Bible conveys a world and invites us to imagine our world differently in light of it. The Bible sometimes reminds us of the ugliness and corruption that exists in the world. Sometimes the Scriptures disturb us and disorient us and trouble us as much as they encourage us and comfort us and heal us. This book tells us about hatred and evil and fractured relationships and disunity. The Bible also shows us the possibility of a different world – a world of delight like Eden and the promise of an “age to come” called the “new heavens and new earth.” It tells us of a kingdom of love that has broken

into the broken world in which we live, and instead of simply asking us to hope for that world, it calls us to enact it by faith in the here and now. It urges us to see differently than we sometimes do and to act otherwise than we sometimes might. It reminds us that true religion isn’t about a lot of talk – an “unbridled tongue” – but about caring for orphans and widows, about loving others as we love ourselves, about trusting that God’s wisdom about the world is better than our own.

In Genesis 1-3, we encounter a world with a powerful creator, a naked couple, a talking snake. We hear God’s promise of delight. We see a serpent questioning God. Trust is broken. Not only does delight disappear but life itself is threatened. God questions those who question God. Distance results; relationships are fractured; grace is extended. We all have our own little garden of Eden experiences. We distance ourselves from God and one another. Consider what the text does: We who are made in God’s image are asked to imagine a different world. To return to the delight of God by delighting in God. To live on God’s terms, not our own. We are invited to imagine the world in a particular way – the Bible orients us, it disorients us, it reorients us.

Consider Psalm 23, a familiar text, a comforting text, a disorienting text. We are fearful beings. As pre-articulate beings we express fear – the crying of a baby who anxiously wonders if she will be fed. What do you fear? The text of Psalm 23 disorients us: “I will fear no evil.” That’s comforting, yes, but it is also disorienting. “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. It isn’t “I will fear no evil because there is no evil.”  Faith beckons us to live not as if there is no evil, but to live differently in the face of it. Scriptures cause us to form a way of life that “images” deep realities that may not be obvious to us. What would it be like to “not fear death”? Why would I not, and what would life be like if my life were formed in such a way? It might look like Jesus, who faced the greatest evil of all. And it was the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus that enabled someone like a deacon named Stephen to imagine a different kind of life than he otherwise might.

In Acts 7, Stephen imagined his own life in light of the life of Christ and the redemptive narrative of God’s story of the world. In a few short paragraphs, with his life in the balance, Stephen traces the arc of history and fits his own life into that story. As he died – as he was murdered – he loved those who killed him. And as we read this narrative, we can’t help but imagine what it must have been like, to imagine what Stephen thought and felt, to imagine what his audience thought and felt, what his persecutors thought and felt. What do we think and feel? What do you think and feel? Would you love those who persecute you?

A man named Saul witnessed and approved of Stephen’s execution. He saw Stephen “image” Christ on that day. The account of Stephen’s death reads like a reenactment of the crucifixion of Jesus. As he dies, Stephen asks of God that the sins of his executioners not be held against them. Saul sees this enactment of love in the death of Stephen, and this same Saul who becomes Paul the Apostle of Jesus later pens a letter to the Corinthians which contains one of the most memorable passages ever written about love. The one who formerly approved of murder calls us to imagine “a still more excellent way.”

In a few moments we will walk over to the nave, where we will worship together. The liturgy is a ritual enactment of the Scriptures. The liturgy is in some sense a retreat from the world and a transport to the better world the Scriptures call us to imagine. It is in another sense a way of seeing that better world enacted in this world, a way of enacting what we pray in the liturgy: “thy kingdom come, thy will be done.” After hearing the Scriptures read and a pastoral reflection on them, we stand to confess our faith. We pray for one another, and then are called to “confess our sins against God and our neighbor.” We kneel and confess our sins, and we admit that we have not loved God with our whole heart and we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We express our sorrow over this. We “humbly repent.” The priest pronounces words of absolution. But we do not stop there. We then offer “peace” to one another. It is a ritual enactment, yes. But this is a faithful ritual. In it we turn to some who are probably the closest to us and yet may be the most distant, and we offer peace. This is the world we are called to imagine, one where Christ’s gospel leads us to love God and one another.

As we reengage with the Scriptures during this “Bible Challenge” and beyond, I propose that we read the Bible frequently and thoroughly. I propose that we read it liturgically, before God, and in conversation with the saints, dead and living. I propose we read purposefully, to imagine ourselves within God’s redemptive story, to the end that the Scriptures may form in each of us a truly Christian way of life, to be faithful to love God and neighbor.

We don’t stay in our little rooms reading the Bible. We don’t stay in the nave after worship. But as we leave the liturgical space, I hope we don’t leave the liturgical world that is formed in us, that better world in which we as divine image bearers see with faith, through eyes of love, with hearts open to carry that more excellent way into every corner of the world in which we live.