Not All Ironic T-Shirts Are Humorous

Yesterday, I threw on this t-shirt and, for the first time, realized it was more than a little ironic. This was a t-shirt I ordered as a give-away for the Summer Honors College we hosted at Taylor University Fort Wayne in the summer of 2008. I bought the shirts from my friends at Church Art Works in Salem, Oregon.

I chose the theme “Start Strong to Finish Strong,” with the idea that getting an early start on college studies can help students be successful in college. Only yesterday, more than a year after Taylor University closed the doors of the Fort Wayne campus, did I realize that this shirt summed up the life cycle of TUFW.

From its very beginning, as Summit Christian College was “acquired by” or “merged into” Taylor or whatever, TU didn’t help the Fort Wayne campus start strong. At times, it seemed that the main campus was even hindering the efforts in Fort Wayne. And indeed, eventually, the campus did not finish strong. Sad and ironic.

Start strong to finish strong. Shoulda tried that, Taylor University.

An Article About TUFW's Final Commencement

One last hurrah for Taylor
Final class receives diplomas before school closes May 31

Kelly Soderlund
The Journal Gazette

The stages of grief were set into motion.

Denial, anger, bargaining, depression – Taylor University-Fort Wayne students and staff went through each feeling.

The October announcement that their university was closing as of May 31 forced the Taylor community to accept the fact that their lives were going in a different direction than they had thought.

“It’s been something like having a terminal illness,” said Roger Ringenberg, professor of Bible and intercultural studies. “We knew exactly the day the school would die.”

Students have to choose a different place to finish their college education. Saturday’s graduates are the last to receive diplomas reading “Taylor University-Fort Wayne.”

Instead of an alumni-filled, balloon-strewn homecoming scene this fall, there will be an empty campus. Come next week, about 120 faculty will leave the Christian university and campus on Rudisill Boulevard they’ve called home and either continue their employment search or be on to their next job.

University officials cited a poor business model and a downward spiral of enrollment as the chief causes for why they decided to close the Fort Wayne campus. Taylor’s main campus in Upland, where Fort Wayne students were encouraged to transfer, had to provide the Fort Wayne campus with $15 million since 1992 to make up for annual budget shortfalls.

With the decision to close, many feel they’ve reached that final stage of grief: acceptance.
“Either we could become really bitter and not enjoy the rest of this year and it could just flat line, or we could be really excited and just spend as much time with people as possible. And I would say that’s the way it’s gone,” said Jenni Ritschard, 19, junior.

But the story of Taylor-Fort Wayne is not over. A local company was hired to help determine the best use of the 30-acre, 17-building campus, which has an assessed value of nearly $17 million for nine parcels of land, according to the Allen County Assessor’s Office.

The Taylor campus sits between Fairfield Avenue and Broadway and is surrounded by a residential area. There are academic buildings, a library, residence halls and lawn areas for students.

The fate for the buildings has not been determined, and it’s unknown when a final decision will be made, said Matt Lesser, project assistant for Ambassador Family Enterprises, a company based in Fort Wayne that looks for businesses to invest in and operate.

Budget woes

The financial problems of Taylor-Fort Wayne were no secret to faculty, who for years watched enrollment tumble, said Randall Dodge, dean of students.

Taylor’s enrollment began at 410 students in the 1992-93 school year and peaked in 2002-03 with a fall headcount of 649 students.

Since then, the number of students has decreased each year, bottoming out at 429 undergraduate students for the 2008-09 school year. Fewer students equals less tuition dollars to support university operations.

“Every time enrollments aren’t meeting what the goals are, budgets take a hit,” said Dodge, who has been at the Fort Wayne campus for 12 years.

“We were not able to sell the product at the price the product had to be sold at in order to make ends meet. While I think that the product was a good product, costs in order to deliver the product had escalated to the point that it was difficult to find a customer base who could afford it.”

Tuition, room, board and fees at Taylor for an undergraduate student for the 2008-09 school year was $26,774, spokesman Jim Garringer said.

Taylor President Eugene Habecker, former Fort Wayne campus Chancellor Duane Kilty and Richard Gygi, president of the university board of trustees, all declined to comment for this article.

Habecker and Gygi said they did not have anything new to say regarding the closure, and Kilty, now chief financial officer at Indiana Wesleyan University, did not feel it was appropriate for him to comment considering he is no longer affiliated with the university.

God’s plan

Since October, students, faculty and staff at Taylor have asked themselves, what’s next? For about half the Taylor faculty and staff, it’s unknown.

Three professors have secured jobs at the Upland campus, and 16 of the 31 faculty members have found other employment, Dodge said. But the others are still looking, Dodge said. The same statistics apply to non-faculty, he said.

Ringenberg has been on the Rudisill campus for 26 years, through the days when it housed Fort Wayne Bible College and Summit Christian College. He thinks he’ll have a one-year position at the Upland campus, but otherwise doesn’t know what his employment future holds.

Students have had the option of applying to transfer to Upland or moving elsewhere.

“It’s definitely been a process, I would say,” said Jenni Ritschard, a junior who plans to finish her degree on the Upland campus. “The first day was really hard and the first week at least a lot of us were just crying and stuff and really sad.”

Ritschard will join between 70 and 95 other Taylor-Fort Wayne students in Upland, Dodge said. Ritschard’s decision was based on money and practicality, since she didn’t think her credits would transfer seamlessly to another university.

The remainder of the student body is choosing other educational paths, including Sarah Lachowicz, 21. The junior is moving to Minnesota to be with her fiancé and will complete her Taylor degree online.

“It was really hard, but I have since realized God has a bigger plan for it, and he’s going to spread us out and use us in bigger ways than we thought he was going to,” Lachowicz said. “I’m kind of excited now for all the options.”

The university’s online learning program will remain intact; it moved to the Northeast Indiana Innovation Center in March.

The WBCL Radio Network, currently on campus, will also remain. But it’s unclear whether it will continue to operate at its current location or move, said Matt Lesser, project assistant with Ambassador Family Enterprises.

In the coming weeks, Ambassador and Taylor officials plan to release a report with 15 criteria. Any proposal they receive for buying or taking over the campus must measure up to the list. Some faculty and neighbors have said they hope another educational institution moves in.
The neighborhoods surrounding Taylor have become attached to the campus and its viability and don’t want to see it become an eyesore in the community.

Bruce Lehman, president of the Oakdale Neighborhood Association, said Ambassador has not reached out to his group to gather the association’s advice on what should be done with the campus.

“We’re still quite concerned about these wonderful buildings sitting empty,” Lehman said. “Many of my neighbors … have expressed a concern over this happening at a time when we’re really working hard at taking care of the neighborhood and seeing it progress instead of regress.”
Saturday marked Taylor-Fort Wayne’s last commencement ceremony and the closing of what Dodge called a great year filled with celebration.

“Our theme is, ‘Where your calling takes place,’ ” Dodge said. “Where people’s sense of what God was calling them to do with their lives; where that kind of gelled in their minds and in their hearts here.

“That’s what the life of this place is. It’s not buildings, it’s not fields, it’s not classrooms. The life of this place is the connections people made here with a sense of purpose and passion and calling for how to make a difference in this world.”

The Twilight Zone, II

In my October 6 blog entry, I told a little about my sudden "retirement" from Taylor on September 29. I'm now nearing the one-month-anniversary of that event. It's been an interesting month and I guess I'd say it's been a good month in a lot of ways. Let me begin with the most dramatic turn of events.

Just after noon on Monday the 13th, exactly two weeks after Taylor let me go, I got a call from Angelo Mante, one of my admissions counselors, who was out on a recruiting trip. He asked, "Have you heard the news?"

No.

"We're done."

Huh?

"They're closing the campus!"

What? You've got to be kidding. You're kidding, right?

"No, it's true. Jeanne just called and told me to come home, they just announced they're closing our campus."

What a shock! Never in a million years did I anticipate such a decision at this point in time, when just a few months ago the Taylor board had given Fort Wayne the go-ahead to propose a new business model and even begin work on building its own board of governance. To me, especially as a newly minted outsider, it seemed like a total 180 degree turn on the part of the board.

So, Taylor Fort Wayne--the campus I had given much of my life to for the previous fifteen months, the place where I hoped to spend the rest of my career--will be no more after May 2009. Oh, Taylor will keep the online courses and the new programs that we developed aimed at working adults, but the heart and soul of TUFW will be gone. I feel terrible for the staff and students of TUFW. As I've spoken with colleagues at some other colleges, I've told them, "It might be easy to dismiss TUFW as a little, subpar school with nothing to offer, but the fact is that there are a lot of very good, very competent people there; people that any college would be fortunate to have as a part of its campus. Not only that, but TUFW people are low maintenance. They aren't into campus politics (well, except for one or two of them), they don't whine, they work hard and they put students first."

Since the announcement was made, I've had several well-meaning friends call or e-mail to say, "Well, your story just got a lot easier to tell." No need for explanations about a strange end to my time at Taylor. My response each time has been, I'd trade an easy story for me for 120 jobs for these good people any day, a number of whom just joined TUFW within the last five or six months.

At the same time, I do have to acknowledge that the board's decision to close the Fort Wayne campus has made things easier for me in some ways. I'm not on my own, in a sense. There's no need to explain what happened to me in most cases. It's helped me take some of the focus off of myself--to realize that it's not all just about me--and to avoid some bitter feelings.

I feel so blessed now that I was let go two weeks before the announcement. I've been able to get a start on searching for a job and, honestly, I'm not stuck in the middle of all the trauma that is happening on campus. I care about the people there and am trying to help them with job leads, letters of recommendation and so on, but I'm not there every day and it's not "my job" to deal with the steps leading to closing the campus. I ask myself frequently why God was so good to let me "get retired" when He did . . . and why He didn't do the same for others, more deserving than myself. I imagine I'll never know the answer to that.

Almost every day, I'm exchanging Facebook messages with students at TUFW who are not sure what they should do next. A group of them want to transfer to Indiana Wesleyan--"we'll show Taylor" by transferring to their rival--and I encouraged them to focus on where they would get the best education and get to their degrees most economically. Some students have to find other colleges because they can't afford to move to Taylor's main campus or their major is no longer offered and they want to know how to approach other colleges. It's sad, especially because it really seemed like this year at TUFW was off to a great start and we were making progress toward turning the corner as a campus.

So the closure of TUFW has certainly continued the Twilight Zone-like climate of my life recently. But things have been going very well generally. I thought I would have so much free time and looked forward to spending time reading. Instead, I've been quite surprised to see how quickly time fills up. I actually feel somewhat busy most days!

My concentration has largely been on the job hunt, and God's been good to give me encouragement on this front almost every day. My goal initially was to apply for a new job every day. That hasn't happened but I have been doing something to either find new openings, research opportunities, complete application files or submit resumes daily. Without going into details, I've been able to interview on two good college campuses, I've had a phone interview with another college (which probably won't lead to anything) and another one with a fourth school is scheduled for Monday. I've done a phone interview with a sales company and am hoping to be invited for a follow-up interview in person. I'm also working on some possibilities in the world of college counseling in private high schools. I'm just knocking on doors and waiting to see what might open up. And when doors do open, we're praying that we'll have wisdom and patience to make the right decision about which one to walk through.

Through all this, I've been amazed at the support I've received from friends and colleagues both here and around the country. Actually, around the world. Several colleagues have nominated me for vacancies. In one case, the friend of a friend--someone I don't even know--contacted me to suggest a lead. Yesterday, one of my colleagues wrote a recommendation letter for me that made me sound like the second coming of Christ, or at least the second coming of St. John. I don't know how all of this will turn out but, for now, we're feeling confident that something good will result from all the distress.

Well, thanks for letting me have my therapy session here! Please don't send me a bill for your services . . . we can't afford to pay it!

11 Days Later

The length of time between posts is often a good indicator of whether or not my life is out of control. In this case, as you can see, it's been eleven days since my last "real" post on the blog. Welcome to the asylum. We got back from Oregon on Tuesday night late and at midnight I was in Meijer restocking our refrigerator. By 8:00 Wednesday I was in the office and by the end of the day, my vacation was long forgotten and I was in need of another!

Last Friday and Saturday were TUFW's first summer orientation for this year. Thanks to some good work by my new staff, and the cooperation of others on campus, the event came off very well. Sometimes it was by the skin of our teeth but we problem-solved and stayed on our toes and it all worked out. None of us had ever done summer orientation on this campus before. One very positive thing was that we only had three "no shows" from amongst all those who signed up for registration.

Right on the heels of orientation in a feat of outstandingly bad planning, our annual Summer Honors College started on Sunday. Under any circumstances, that would have been questionable planning but it was made all the worse by the fact that--with a complete restructuring of TUFW's admissions office--the lead responsibility for both events fell on one person, whereas we originally had it split between two staffers plus someone from another department on campus.

Our theme was . . .

We weren't particularly thoughtful in selecting the theme, though I think it was a great one . . . I just went on the Church Art Works web site and looked for a t-shirt design that we liked and, voila, we had a new theme for the week.

Forty-four high schoolers from around the US (and even an MK from Nigeria) came to TUFW to take one of four classes. They were, generally speaking and overwhelmingly, a great bunch of kids. Even though the Summer Honors College program is a ton of work, having seen it in action from start-to-finish this week, I am convinced it is a great way to introduce kids to the university. As with the orientation event before it, the entire admissions counseling staff came through with flying colors to keep everything going smoothly.

Here is a video that one of our student workers made of the week. The highlight of the video is at the 4:17 mark:



Another aspect of this week was that Pam, one of Jeannette's friends from Klamath Falls (now living in Missouri), came to Fort Wayne to bring her daughter to Summer Honors College. Robin enjoyed her writing class and her brother, Brian, one of Jameson's old friends spent the week with us. Pam and her mother spent much of each day with Jeannette at our house.

On Tuesday evening, I took Jameson and Brian with me to the Fort Wayne Wizards baseball game. Brian went enthusiastically; Jameson reluctantly. We spent much money on snacks. I had to be there to present TUFW's "Teacher of the Month" award. Jameson documented the event for posterity. As you can see, Dinger was excited about the whole thing. He's pointing at a section of the crowd where the teacher's former students were cheering for her . . .
Lest you think this was a particularly impressive event for me to be involved with, you should take a look at that evening's crowd, as seen here . . .
After the third inning, Jameson, Brian and I moved from our seats in the ninth row right down to the front row behind the dugout . . .
. . . so we had pretty outstanding seats for most of the game. And, believe it or not, Jameson actually watched the entire game. One final handful of Mike & Ike candy got him through the last inning. I ended up talking with the father of one of the Wizards' pitchers, Jeremy McBride, for the last two innings and that was a lot of fun. He had driven up from Oklahoma City for the week and his son had started that night's game.

Back to Summer Honors College . . . SHC concluded last night with a banquet of sorts and most of the students' parents were there. It was a very nice end to the week. I sat with three students and it was cool at the end to hear one of my favorite girls say, with tears in her eyes, "I don't want to leave!"

From SHC, I went straight to another Wizards game. Last night was Taylor alumni night and so there were a number of Taylor and TUFW alumni and employees there. The Wizards blew the Dayton Dragons out but I stayed to the bitter end so that [a] I could chat with Jeremy McBride's dad again for an inning or so and [b] I could see the performers "Quick Change" do their act. You might remember them from that generally awful show, America's Got Talent . . .


Well, after the game, they came out to home plate and they did an act very similar to what you saw on TV, including the finale where he just throws glitter up in the air over her and when it settles, she's in a new outfit, but it was all the more impressive given the fact that they were doing it outdoors with an audience sitting at all angles. And, like the television studio audience, we gave them a standing ovation, too.

As you might gather, I basically did not see my family this week, but to give you an update, Jameson had all four wisdom teeth removed yesterday. These photos testify to the fact that he did not want his picture taken, but I wrestled him to the ground and got a photo . . .

As you can see, he's actually doing quite well. [Update on 6/29 - Not doing quite so well any longer . . . Jamey's pretty sore and grumpy now. He stayed in the house all day today and his face is a little more swollen. Still, I think he's doing better than Jordan did.]

In other family news, Phillip's glasses broke last week and so Jeannette made a trip to Sam's Club (that's what happens when you don't have vision insurance anymore) and these are the results . . .
Tonight, it's off to see the neighborhood fireworks show with friends. We've spoken with Jordan frequently in Oregon and it sounds like he's doing just fine. It'll be good to have him home next Friday. I've noticed that the house is both more peaceful and more boring in his absence.

Travelogue 2

Tuesday morning began with a workshop but then all of us in the TUFW crew boarded a school bus for Gloucester and a “lighthouse-n-lobsters harbor cruise.” When I made plans originally to come to NACCAP, I was coming alone and decided I didn’t want to travel all the way to New England and not see any of the sights, so I booked myself onto this little 90 minute excursion. Later, when it became clear that [a] I was going to have an entirely new counseling staff at TUFW and [b] no one was going to be in the office to supervise them for their first few days of work, I decided to bring all of them to the conference and that it would be a nice team experience for us all to do the harbor cruise together.

It was a perfect day for a trip on the water. Temperatures in the upper 70s, blue skies and gentle breezes. About fifty NACCAPeans (okay, I just made that up) came on the cruise, while another forty went on a three-hour whale watching trip deeper out to sea. We were joined by a group of about forty kids who probably were on their high school senior trip or something. Anyway, we scouted out a spot near the bow (that’s the front) of the boat.

From L to R below, the back row is Roy Danielian (Programs Manager), Jeanne Crafton (Senior Admissions Counselor) and Angelo Mante (Admissions Counselor). The front row is Amanda Heinsch (Admissions Counselor), me and Kirsten Harrison (Communications Manager).

And you gotta love this photo of Roy. He looks like somebody's Uncle Vinnie. Fuhgidaboutit!

This picture is of the historic Gloucester marine paints factory, which painted the old wooden fishing boats with a copper-based paint that helped prevent damage to the boats. And then they discovered that the copper killed the marine life. You win some, you lose some.

They also showed us the Hammond Castles. This first one was built by someone named Hammond, naturally . . .

However, when his son wanted to marry, the parents did not approve of his fiancee, so Hammond Junior decided to build an even bigger castle just down the road, or shore, from his parents' shack. If I remember right, he incorporated three distinct eras in castle architecture into his new home, which are somewhat apparent as you look at the castle from left to right, with the most recent style (I think from the 18th century) at the left and the oldest at the right.

As this was a “lighthouse-n-lobsters cruise," they stopped along the way to pull up some lobster traps for us. I wondered if we would get a refund if the traps were empty but that was a moot point since they did pick up several critters. Everyone gathers on the port side of the boat to observe the drama, which caused us to list quite a bit. The captain did not appear to be alarmed, though.
Near the end of June each year, Gloucester celebrates St. Peter’s Festival. One of the highlights of the event is when they grease up this large horizontal pole in the middle of the harbor and then men from all over, many of who probably are drunk, I imagine, attempt to walk the full length of this round, slick, bouncy pole as crowds cheer from the shore.
As the cruise drew to a conclusion, they showed us this famous statue on the shoreline, dedicated to the thousands of fishermen who had lost their lives at sea over the years. I guess they thought it was best not to tell us about this part of sailing the ocean prior to departure.

A Sneeze, A Swim and A Snooze

This has been a little bit of a rough week, preparing for two and a half weeks out of the office and coming down with a very nasty cold. MelodyJoy developed a cough and a runny nose early in the week and let's just say that the concept of covering your mouth when you cough didn't come quickly to her. Actually, she did pretty well often . . . with the second cough or sneeze. The first one each time usually went unchecked and more than a few caught me full in the face.

Late this morning, after a long night of thunder and lightning, we headed over to the neighborhood pool. It was my first time there, even though we've lived here for ten months. MelodyJoy's not quite the water rat that her brothers were but she enjoys the pool a lot. Jeannette and Jordan both worked on teaching her how to swim and she's already fairly comfortable dunking her head under the water.



This afternoon was dedicated to napping and packing. Tomorrow I fly to Boston to attend the North American Coalition for Christian Admissions Personnel conference at Gordon College. This is always one of the year's highlights for me and I'm looking forward to taking five of my staff members with me, including three who don't start their employment at TUFW until tomorrow.

We're Going to See the Wizard(s)

At the end of this month, we're losing three of our long-time admissions staff members at Taylor University Fort Wayne, Leo, Myka and Jennifer. Since we are a sponsor of the Fort Wayne Wizards minor league baseball team, they offered us one of their "luxury suites" for a baseball game. Luxury suite is in quotes, because it certainly was not on the scale of the suite we had at the Mariners games back in the early '90s. Basically, it was a 20x20 room with a table, a refrigerator, a TV and a counter with three stools, along with ten seats outside in the grandstand. Still, it free and we had a good time.
Our seats were directly behind home plate and the game ended up being a good one, despite the blustery weather and the noise generated by a couple thousand school kids.

In the picture below, Leo (and Paul to his left) are participating in the Y-M-C-A song. I think that's supposed to be an M. Hard to believe that YMCA could be a popular song with motions acted out by people of all ages at ballgames across the country 30 years after the Village People first sang it.
All in all, we had a good time. Lots of hot dogs and it was better than working.

The Longest Blog Post Yet . . . Everything but the Kitchen Sink

This has been a pretty crazy week, so blog posts have been a bit on the thin side. Sorry. Monday and Tuesday were fairly light days for me but were very heavy for Jordan and Phillip because they had the final practices for the school musical Annie. Jordan is working lights for the play and Phillip is doing sound and their practices went until about 10 PM. Thursday was the premier matinee, followed by a performance last night and then tonight we plan to go see the final show.

Wednesday started with a trip to Indianapolis for me for the spring IACAC meeting. IACAC . . . sounds like some medicine you might take for an upset stomach. Anyway, it's really the Indiana Association for College Admission Counseling, our state's version of NACAC. I couldn't really afford the time out of the office but I wanted to be there to get to know some more people since I'm so new to this territory. At the business meeting, Terry Knaus--from Indiana U's admissions office and past president of the organization--introduced me to everyone as a nominee for the presidency of NACAC. He did a really nice job with that and it was nice to get to talk with some of the people afterwards.

As soon as I got back to Fort Wayne on Wednesday, I headed to Come2Go Ministries near TUFW's campus. We had signed on as sponsors of a national gospel concert tour stop at C2G and so I was going to man a table there with TUFW literature. I arrived and Quincy McGhee, one of the ministry directors and a part-time student at TUFW, greeted me by saying, "Come to my office and I'll tell you what's going on." A red flag should have gone up at that point for me. Quincy showed me an e-mail he had just received on his phone from the tour organizer, literally less than an hour earlier, saying that he was cancelling the entire tour, including that night's performances. Quincy was fit to be tied but he was proactive and pulled together some folks and they were going to go ahead with an impromptu praise and worship concert using performers from the area.

I went ahead and set up our table and I'm glad I did. Three or four hundred folks showed up and I got to have a few good conversations with several. As we're continuing to build relationships within the African American community of Fort Wayne, it's important simply for us to be "present." I think one of the most enjoyable and sometimes challenging aspects of being at TUFW is the opportunity to be in a more diverse environment than I've experienced since my first years of school in Oakland, California.

The highlight of my Wednesday was a phone call from Roy Danielian. I've known Roy since my freshman year of college and he's been in admissions at Grace College for the last eight years, as well as coaching men's soccer there. About a month ago, he let me know that he was in the job market. Coincidentally, TUFW had both a couple of jobs open in our admissions office and a need for a men's soccer coach, so we talked several times and he decided to interview with us. Well, he called as I drove back from Indy to say that he'll come on board as our Programs Manager (planning events for us) and head men's soccer coach. I am very excited to have him on our team!

Thursday was consumed primarily with preparing for a concert on campus featuring Ag Silver. That's "Aye Gee Silver," as in the periodical table. And, no, the name doesn't mean anything at all. TUFW's chancellor, Duane Kilty, and I have been talking since last summer about the desire to make our campus visit events more attractive, and I've been anxious to see us develop a more vibrant campus life. Bringing in Ag Silver was one step toward this.

Who are these guys? I didn't know either. I found out about them when my good friend from high school and college, Colleen Cowan, told me that her son was moving from Oregon to the Midwest to play pass for a band that was touring hard trying to make a name for itself. Aaron Cowan is second from the right in this photo. I checked Ag Silver out online, thought they sounded pretty good, made a few inquiries and decided to bring them in. You can check them out at www.agsilver.com.

We had a good time . . . they have a nice concert with some good showmanship. They actually sound better live than on CD, which is unusual. Somewhere between 150 and 200 people came for the show, including about a dozen high schoolers who came to campus early for Friday's "Backstage Pass" campus visit event, and we would have had more if [a] a group of students hadn't been in New York City for a Management Department trip and [b] I'd had more time and energy to promote the concert to local churches. I felt like it was a successful evening, though . . . and by midnight they were out the door and I was on my way home.

Friday was the campus visit day and it was kind of hectic because we don't have a campus visit coordinator right now--Roy will fill that need when he gets started--and it was interesting to deal with all the little details that none of us have handled in the past, which means things fell through the cracks. But it was a good day and Clinton Faupel, the general manager of the new remedy.fm radio station did a great job in chapel, focusing on how we're often consuming things in the media that are at odds with the values we purport to hold.

Continuing the theme of a nonstop week, Friday evening was TUFW's Junior-Senior Banquet at Goeglein Homestead and we decided to go and then have an "after party" for everyone at our house. We didn't know if we should prepare for fifty or for five, but Jeannette put together snacks and cleaned the house and made sure a new net was on the ping pong table and waited for people to show up.

We ended up with about a dozen students at our house, which was fine. This was the first time that we've had TUFW students over but we really enjoyed having groups over when I worked at Asbury College, so we're hoping we can do this type of thing again. There was some ping pong and Wii, but a game of Scattergories was the main focus, and Jeannette's Italian cream sodas were a big hit. Now that we've done it once, it'll probably get easier to get students to the house.

Today, however, was THE day and MelodyJoy was in a pretty good mood despite getting to bed late last night . . .



Jeannette got up and worked hard making a very special cake for MelodyJoy's third birthday:



Around noon, our good friends the Clarks came over for lunch and a little birthday party. Lance brought his guitar in order to sing the "Barney Barney Birthday" song and he joined Phillip for an acoustic set of the Star Wars theme song . . .


Jordan tried his hand at barbecuing steaks on our new grill and Jeannette fixed some Mexican food and we used our new patio furniture since the weather was so nice today.




After the cake, we went inside so that Melody could open all the gifts that had tempted her for a week or two, starting with the Ladybug Game from Tianna and the rest of the Clarks . . .


Then there were also gifts from grandparents and aunts and uncles . . .






Jeannette got Melody a doctor's kit . . .

TUFW YouTube Challenge Recap

The TUFW YouTube Challenge came to a close last weekend. The boys' video did qualify as a finalist but wasn't a prize winner, which might have been just as well. Even though I wasn't a judge (I didn't even know who all the judges were until afterwards), it would have looked bad if they had won. Phillip got a nice hoodie sweatshirt out of the thing.

The various entries racked up over 14,000 views during the contest. I was especially pleased that so many of them got our TUFW "branding" right, which tells me we must be doing something okay. Anyway, the grand prize winner was an entry called Banana Man:

Seeing the Obvious Finally

As Jesus was going up to Jerusalem, He took the twelve disciples aside privately and told them what was going to happen to Him. "Listen," he said, "we're going up to Jerusalem, where the Son of Man will be betrayed to the leading priests and the teachers of religious law. They will sentence Him to die. Then they will hand Him over to the Romans to be mocked, flogged with a whip, and crucified. But on the third day He will be raised from the dead."
- Matthew 20:17-19 (NLT)

I don't know why it is that sometimes you see something that is totally obvious but it just doesn't penetrate your brain. I was reading Matthew 20 last week and when I came to the verses above, a light bulb came on for me. I don't know why but I never realized that Jesus had so clearly, concisely, blatantly and accurately foretold His death and resurrection. For some reason, in ignorance I always thought He had spoken in code, giving only obscure hints as to what was ahead. But that's not how it was. Jesus told twelve people in a group that He would be betrayed, beaten and killed . . . specifically, crucified. Oh, and three days later He would rise from the dead. No "hinting" there . . . he was pretty plain-spoken.

This was on my mind yesterday when in chapel at Taylor University Fort Wayne we sang "All the Earth Will Sing Your Praises" by Paul Baloche. The lyrics include:

You lived You died
You said in three days You would rise
You did You're alive
You rule You reign
You said You're coming back again
I know You will
And all the earth will sing Your praises
And all the earth will sing Your praises

In yet another "oh duh" moment, singing those words I realized that if Jesus accurately predicted in detail His death and resurrection, then He is trustworthy to have correctly foretold His return to earth:

"Don't let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me. There is more than enough room in my Father's home. If this were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? When everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am."
- John 14:1-3 (NLT)

The realization that Jesus batted 1.000 in His first prophecy was a huge encouragement to have confidence that He also will bat 1.000 with regard to His promise to come back to receive His people . . . even if it takes two thousand years . . . or more.

Help the Boys Out

The boys made this video for the TUFW YouTube Challenge and they desperately need to get some more people to view it or they are not going to make it into the finals. If you haven't watched it, please give it a look and/or send it to someone else to watch. The contest closes tomorrow.

The URL for the video is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGRx-xk2bU0.

Advice for the President, a Wii and Fazoli's Pizza

Jeannette was out of town for a week, visiting her mother in Oregon along with MelodyJoy. The boys were stuck at home with me and, for the most part, it went very well. The day before Jeannette was to return, though, Jameson and I had a major problem. Without going into too much detail, he did not want to do a particular homework assignment . . . he hates essays . . . this one was to be a letter of advice to the president of the United States.

I gave him about fifteen ideas (yes, seriously) to help him get started. None of them involved lowering gas prices. I took away his computer privileges for the next day. I gave him some time. I took away his Wii privileges for the next day. I offered to start the essay myself, writing part of the first sentence to get him started. I packed up his precious Lego blocks, all 44,532 of them. Finally, I just let him go to bed, but I told him that if he cranked the essay out before breakfast the next morning, I'd reconsider taking away all three of these favorite activities. I wanted so badly for him to just get this thing done and get back on track.

The next morning, I reminded him about the essay but by the time I left for work he hadn't touched it. To make a long story only semi-long, when I came home from work, I learned that he finished the essay during recess and turned it in late. However, he was not interested in telling me what the essay said, which led me to conclude it probably was not his best work. He was, however, interested in finding out which privilege he was getting back. Um, no . . . that was not our deal. Oh my! You would have thought that I'd just sentenced him to five years at hard labor! The mourning went on so long that I finally told him that I was going to make him a PB&J for dinner while the rest of us went to Fazoli's.

Up the stairs he went. From outside his closed door, I could hear him cursing me up and down. Okay, he didn't curse but if he knew how to, he would have. He was so mad! I tried not to laugh. Finally, when I heard noises that I thought might be either destructive or painful, I went in. "Pretty mad, huh?"

Jameson settled right down. I put my arm around him. After a minute or two, he said he was sorry for his behavior and that the essay probably was "kind of mediocre really." I told him he could come with us to Fazoli's, but the Legos, computer and Wii would remain in time-out for the day, and he accepted that.

Jameson was, quite honestly, horrible throughout the episode. He was disobedient, rude, rebellious. He would not listen to any of the options I presented, and I was working very hard to be flexible with him. Yet I was so anxious to forgive him. The minute he expressed some remorse, some change of attitude, I immediately forgave him and rewarded him in some small way.

So what's the point of this story? Today in chapel at TUFW--a chapel service that, by the way, may have been the most powerful one of all the college chapels I've attended since 1978--we were worshipping and I reflected on this whole affair. And it occurred to me that this is how our Heavenly Father feels toward us. He is so eager for us to come to Him that when we turn our backs on our sin and stubbornness, He immediately welcomes us and forgives us. He doesn't hold it over our heads. There may still be consequences . . . we may not get our Wii back . . . but we have His forgiveness. It convicted me about my own reluctance to seek forgiveness from God and I realized how much it pains Him to wait for me to come around, and how happy He probably is when this prodigal child of His does finally figure things out.

They Shall Walk and Not Faint

Today at Blackhawk Ministries, Pastor Kelly Byrd introduced a six week program of daily Bible readings to lead up to our celebration of Easter. One of today’s two passages is Isaiah 40:18-31. Reading it, I realized that I had never paid any attention to the first verses of that section—commentary on the massive greatness of God—but instead have gone directly to the end of the chapter. Naturally, it all ties together . . . verse 29 asserts that God “gives power to those who are tired” (NLT) but the prior verses make it clear that God actually does have more than enough power to share!

Anyway, I have been feeling pretty dry and cold (spiritually, but maybe even in other ways, too) lately. The fact that God has not poured amazing miracles out on Taylor University Fort Wayne despite our hard work and conviction that He has given us a vision and calling that He will bless has sometimes made me fearful that I’m like Jonah in that storm-tossed boat . . . Once Jonah was tossed overboard, the seas calmed down and the sailors were safe. I don’t want to be the factor that is holding back TUFW from smooth sailing.

Reading Isaiah 40:31 reminded me that even though I may feel cold and dry, I still need to keep moving and be faithful. And whenever I read this verse, I remember some great words from John Ortberg’s book, If You Want to Walk on Water, You’ve Got to Get Out of the Boat. What follows are some extended excerpts from pages 184-189 of that book . . .

If you are waiting on God these days—if you are obeying him, but you don’t see the results you hoped for yet—you need to know that in the Bible there is a wonderful promise attached to this waiting.

Even youths will faint and be weary
And the young will fall exhausted;
But those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,
They shall mount up with wings like eagles,
They shall run and not be weary,
They shall walk and not faint.

I can never forget David Hubbard’s comment on these lines. . . . . The last letter I ever got from him, just a few weeks before he died, had a wonderful comment on these lines from Isaiah about waiting. David said that we must live these words—soaring, running, and walking—“one line at a time."

Sometimes you will mount up and soar on wings of eagles. This is a beautiful picture. Ornithologists say birds have three methods of flight. The first is flapping—keeping their wings in constant motion to counteract gravity. Hummingbirds can flap up to seventy times per second. Flapping keeps you up in the air, but it is a lot of work. Flapping is an awkward, clumsy business. I spend a lot of time flapping around. It gets me from here to there, but there is not a lot of grace involved.

A second flight method is gliding. Here the bird builds up enough speed, then coasts downward a while. It is much more graceful than flapping, but unfortunately it does not get the bird very far. Reality in the form of gravity sets in quickly. Gliding is nice, but it does not last.

Then there is the third way—soaring. Only a few birds, like eagles are capable of this. Eagles' wings are so strong that they are capable of catching rising currents of warm air—thermal winds that go straight up from the earth—and without moving a feather can soar up to great heights. Eagles have been clocked at up to 80 m.p.h. without flapping at all. They just soar on invisible columns of rising air.

Isaiah says that for those who wait on the Lord, times will come when they soar. You catch a gust of the spirit—Jesus said, "The wind blows wherever it pleases .... So it is with everyone born of the Spirit."

Sometimes in your life you will be in an era of spiritual soaring. Maybe you are there right now. You find yourself simply borne up by God's power. You are out of the boat. God is answering prayer with extravagant generosity, using you in ways that leave you astonished, giving you power to rise above temptation and sin, making you surprisingly productive in your life's work, and flooding you with strength and wisdom beyond your ability.

Be very grateful. Do all you can to stay in the stream of the Spirit's power - be very obedient as the Spirit guides you. Keep praying, and don't assume you are soaring on your own strength. Maybe there are particular disciplines helping you catch the Spirit's power - solitude, memorizing Scripture, simply getting enough rest. Identify these and be very diligent in them, build on them and enjoy the ride. You are walking on the water. You are soaring with the Spirit.

But there is another line in Isaiah's description. Sometimes we are not soaring, but we are able to run and not grow weary. If this is where you are, your life isn't feeling effortless. You do not see a lot of miracles. You have to do some flapping. But with persistence and determination, you know you are running the race. You feel frustration, but you also feel God's pleasure in your obedience. You need to keep running - faithfully obeying, serving, giving, and praying. Do not try to manufacture spiritual ecstasy. Do not compare yourself with someone who is soaring right now. Your time will come. Just keep running.

Then there is a third condition that Isaiah describes. Sometimes we will not be soaring, and we cannot run—because of doubt or pain or fatigue or failure. In those times all we can do is walk and not faint. This is not water-walking. It is just plain walking. All we can do is say, "God, I'll hang on. I don't seem too fruitful or productive, and I don't feel very triumphant. But I won't let go. I will obey you. I'll just keep walking."

. . . . We have some very fast runners in our world. We have some eagles that soar much higher than we can see. It is a hard thing to be a walker when you are surrounded by racers and eagles. But sometimes walking is the best we can offer God. He understands all about that. Walking counts, too.

. . . . So you keep walking, because what we wait for is not more important than what happens to us while we are waiting.

Now it is just a matter of time.

My Own TUFW Video

Our TUFW YouTube Challenge is only three weeks away from closing. All along I've wanted to make a video of some sort, even though I'm not eligible to compete. Finally, today with a great deal of help from Phillip, I put together this little video.

YouTube Publicity

Our TUFW YouTube Challenge made the front page of yesterday's Greater Fort Wayne Business Weekly. You can read the article by copying the following URL and pasting it into the address bar of your browser:

http://tinyurl.com/2zcb3v

The article's not 100% accurate but it's pretty darn close and I'm not complaining.

YouTube Update

Finally, at long last, we have our first entry in the TUFW YouTube Challenge. But it was worth waiting for. I can't believe that it took this long to see our first submission, but I think more will come soon. Several media outlets are interested in covering the contest but somehow it'll be a bit more impressive when there actually are some contestants.

TUFW Staff Christmas Party

Last night, we had the Taylor University Fort Wayne admissions staff over for a Christmas party. We didn't deliberately exclude the financial aid staff . . it just turned out that they had a conference in Indianapolis scheduled for today so they bowed out.

My former staffs from Klamath Falls will be quite familiar with the format for this party . . . appetizers provided by the staff, the annual Christmas ornament exchange, followed by cheesecake. Anyway, we had a good time, there was just enough "stealing" of ornaments to keep things interesting (and Jeannette snagged her favorite snowman ornament from the bunch so she's happy) and the food and fellowship both were great.

For Christmas gifts this year, I got each person a CD and I was quite proud of myself . . . At a recent staff meeting, I asked everyone what great new music they had discovered, so everyone threw in some choice that they were enjoying currently. Well, I made note of the different things each person said and then I went to www.pandora.com and plugged each artist in. From there, I was able to discover similar artists and so I ordered CD's from that group. For instance, Leo said that he was enjoying listening to Whiskey Falls so I ordered him a Dierks Bentley album while Myka mentioned Michael Buble so she got a Dean Martin CD. I hadn't heard of most of the musicians the staff mentioned so it broadened my musical horizons, too. Anyway, people seemed to like the little personal touch and it was a pretty easy way to do the gifts.

When we moved here, we hoped that our home would be good for entertaining but this was our first real foray into having company over. The house worked out great and I hope we can do more things in the future, maybe with some of our TUFW students.