The End of the Adventure & The Start of Another

You know I can be verbose. If all you want to know is what I’m going to do with my life now, scroll down to the three paragraphs under “THE PART YOU’RE WAITING FOR” in all caps . . .

On September 29, I got blindsided at Taylor University (sounds like an episode of Survivor . . . I was voted off the island, though I don’t think the whole tribe had spoken) and found myself in the land of the jobless [http://palmersworld.blogspot.com/2008/10/whole-lotta-catchin-up-to-do.html]. In retrospect, it seems providential, in that just two weeks later the board at Taylor decided to close our entire campus at the end of this school year [http://palmersworld.blogspot.com/2008/10/twilight-zone-ii.html].

If you know me, it won’t surprise you to know that I jumped into the job search pretty aggressively right away. For a little while, it appeared that my search would be over quickly: Within a couple of weeks I had had a number of phone interviews and two invitations to interview on campus. Using 20-20 hindsight now, I may even have been too proactive as it turned out that I didn’t interview particularly well coming off the shock of suddenly being “retired.” In all, I applied for jobs at thirty different places—colleges, high schools, and companies that work with these schools. I ended up doing phone interviews with 17 of them, was invited to eight or nine campuses and did face-to-face interviews with six.

Just before Christmas, I sent an e-mail and resume to Lincoln Christian College and Seminary in central Illinois. I had heard of Lincoln when we lived in Kentucky because our pastor, Mike Breaux, is an alumnus, but didn’t really know anything about it. My attitude, however, was that I should knock on any door that seemed to have a chance of being a decent fit for us and so, given my background in Christian higher education, it made sense to check out Lincoln Christian. Shortly after Christmas, while I drove through Wisconsin and he drove to Texas, I had a long phone conversation with Brian Mills, the guy in charge of Lincoln’s search. It seemed like a long shot that we would be able to make it a win-win situation but we had a good talk and decided to keep the discussion going.

As soon as 2009 started, I went on a whirlwind of interviews from Georgia to Washington to Minnesota, followed by a trip to metropolitan Lincoln. To make a long story short, we just kept the door open at Lincoln. They saw how I might help them keep moving forward at a time that’s pretty exciting in their history and tried to figure out how they might be able to accommodate our family’s needs. One of our highest priorities in looking for a job was, if possible, to find an opportunity that would allow Phillip to stay at Blackhawk Christian School for his senior year next year. Lincoln’s president was very sensitive to this concern, which I appreciated. A couple of weeks ago, I took Jeannette back to Lincoln so that she could see the campus and community and meet some of the folks there.

THE PART YOU’RE WAITING FOR

On Wednesday at 8:51 PM, I sent Brian Mills a text message: “I’m yours.” Hmmm, that sounds creepier now than it did when I typed it into my phone. Oh well. The plan is that Jeannette and I will go to Lincoln soon and I’ll move into an apartment on campus, then Jeannette will return to Fort Wayne. I’ll serve Lincoln Christian College and Seminary as their director of admissions with the additional designation of “enrollment management consultant.”

Founded in 1944, Lincoln Christian has a little less than 1100 students, with roughly two-thirds being undergraduates. It’s located in a small city about a half hour southwest of Bloomington and northwest of Springfield. Lincoln is 300 miles or so from Fort Wayne, depending on which route you follow. The school is affiliated with independent Christian Churches and Churches of Christ, a non-denominational fellowship with six thousand congregations in the United States, while students come from more than thirty different denominations.

The first priority for me is to invigorate and refine their undergraduate admission efforts. Later, as the school rebrands itself as Lincoln Christian University next year, they hope I can investigate ways for the institution’s three admissions operations—undergrad, seminary and, for lack of a better term at this moment, adult ed—to work together more cohesively and effectively. In my head, I’ve already been working at Lincoln for a few weeks and I think it will be a lot of fun there.

BACK TO TEDIOUS SELF-REFLECTION

Undoubtedly, there will be modifications along the way, but the plan is that I’ll be on campus four days a week and then return to Fort Wayne to be with the family. This won’t be easy for anyone, but we can definitely see this as God’s provision for this season in our lives. We don’t know if this will turn into a long term or permanent relationship but both Lincoln and we are taking it one day at a time and are excited to see what develops.

This has been an interesting process. People have expressed admiration for how we’ve handled the disruption in our lives but, really, it hasn’t been all that terrible a trial. God has met our needs. Jeannette and the kids have been great about not panicking or putting extra pressure on me. And whenever things seemed about to become discouraging, there were expressions of support and encouragement from unexpected corners . . . a phone call out of the blue from a colleague in Oregon wanting to know how we’re doing . . . a Facebook post from a former student employee saying that she had thought of me at 2:30 in the morning and prayed for us . . . the friend of a friend letting me know about a job possibility . . . a helpful book in the mail . . . and on and on.

We’re very excited to close the chapter on unemployment and anxious (a purposefully chosen word) to move into the next chapter in our lives. We still need your backing and encouragement but want all those who read this to know how much we have appreciated your help and expressions of support over the last five months. Thank you!