The paper has had a lot to say about the mission statement, so rather than give it another, I'll post my thoughts on the blog.
For reference, this is the Erskine mission statement:
The mission of Erskine College is to equip students to flourish by providing an excellent liberal arts education in a Christ-centered environment where learning and biblical truth are integrated to develop the whole person.
I'll be making comments regarding both form and content. Content is more important (so that's where my focus will lie), but if people are to get an impression about Erskine from a single sentence, its form should also be impeccable. Also, as a liberal arts college, a poorly-written mission statement would be ironic at best.
As a whole, it looks fairly good, but for something this important, minor errors, ambiguities, and false connotations should be fixed. If we're going to be represented by one sentence, it needs to be a really, really good sentence.
Form:
*"The mission of EC is" is unnecessary. The label already says "mission statement;" there's no need for repetition. Also, in any case where an action verb strengthens a statement, one should use it rather than "is." I propose "Erskine College strives. . . " as a stronger beginning.
*Similarly, "where learning and biblical truth are integrated" would work better as an active, such as "which integrates learning and biblical truth."
Content:
*"Flourish" seems like a catch-all. Do we want people to interpret in their own way? Or do we want a more precise word? I'm honestly not sure.
*It bothers me that "Christ-centered" describes the environment and not the education. Both education and environment should be Christ-centered, but I would expect people to pull the Christian worldview out of the education before the environment. Also, to some degree, the state of the environment should follow from the state of the education. I'd rather see the phrase "excellent, Christ-centered liberal arts education."
*The phrase "learning and biblical truth" suggests a dichotomy. I'm not sure whether "biblical truth" is meant to mean "God's truth" or meant as a euphemism for Scripture, but any sort of dichotomy between The Bible and learning bothers me. Taken in the former sense, there should be no reason to have learning and God's truth, because all learning about any sort of truth (and I hope we favor truth over falsehood) is about God's truth; learning is a subset of learning God's truth. If "biblical truth" merely means "Scripture," the sense of dichotomy lessens somewhat; however, saying "learning and Scripture" still conveys the idea that learning and Scripture are unrelated. Would something like "learning to think with a Christian worldview" sound too Schaefferian for Erskine? Probably. But the sense of separation between the two still needs to disappear.
-Jay Brantner
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
More on the dead horse
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3 comments:
The only comment I have thus far is about the phrase "Christ-centered environment." I think this is one of the better parts of the mission statement. The so called environment speaks of the totality of life at Erskine. Christ should not be left in the class room or in convocation. A Christ-centered environment would encourage Erskine students to not only honor God with their minds but also with their entire lives. I want to make a point that I said "encourages" and not "forces." Having a Christ-centered environment is certainly a tall order but we should expect nothing less from a Christian liberal arts college.
I don't know if I like the word flourish either. I think that it has a positive connotation but I just don't know if it is the word I would have chosen to use here. As far as Biblical truth goes, I think that the intention was moral truths. I cannot speak on behalf of the people who drafted the mission statement but I think that the drafters wanted to make the point that Erskine students are encouraged not only to grow intellectually but spiritually as well.
Lee,
I believe you make some good points concerning the phrase "Christ-centered environment." Much of that will hopefully be unpacked by the Student Services Committee during the strategic planning process, but suffice it to say that the whole point of that language is that Erskine is attempting to be intentional in encouraging a Christian environment. And that Christian commitment ought to ground a respect for individuality and diversity and that community will not be a one-size-fits-all entity. We're not trying to produce fundamentalist robots, just as surely as (Lord willing) we're not trying to form an environment were students will be apathetic about their Christianity and applying it to all aspects of their lives.
The word "flourishing" has a rich history stretching back to Plato and Aristotle, and denotes full human excellence -- excellence and well-being in all aspects of life. I would like to see an explanatory statement that explains that (as I wrote in an editorial back in October) we are passionately committed to seeing people flourish as whole persons, a wholeness that touches all dimensions of human life. The most prominent aspects of this consist of the social, intellectual, ethical, physical, emotional, and (and, as a Christian liberal arts college we say this ties them all together) spiritual dimensions. In tandem with the last dimension, Erskine affirms that people can only ultimately flourish when they see that God is, as Psalm 36:9 puts it, "the fountain of life." As the Erskine Institutional Mission and Commitments document from the Strobel Administration put it, as a Christian liberal arts college Erskine is "to create an environment that exposes the community to the truth of God's redemptive love" (IMC, 15). Full and abundant human flourishing only come through the person and work of Jesus Christ (John 10:10), and Erskine participates in this insofar as we strive to "redeem all of life" under the Lordship of Jesus Christ (http://www.erskine.edu/about-erskine/missionstatement.shtml).
Cheers,
Josh
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