Preparing to do good in deed as well as in word

[http://www.goglobalatsnu.blogspot.com]

In my first blog post/Facebook note of 2010 (the blog automatically posts to Facebook), I thought I would comment on some interesting online articles that I've come across over the last couple of months. I've already commented on a couple of these articles either on this blog or on Facebook, but I wanted to join them together with another article and see if I can make them relate to each other. The fourth article is one I just read today. It lays some groundwork to argue for the value of an undergraduate education at a teaching university like Southern Nazarene University (SNU). So, here goes for the first for 2010.

"Earning Commissions on 'The Great Commission'" (Wall Street Journal, 11/12/09) describes "missionary" entrepreneurs. In my blog post on 11/14/09, I differentiated missionary entrepreneurs from entrepreneurial missionaries and bivocational missionaries. Missionary entrepreneurs use their entrepreneurial skills in profit-making enterprises to carry out both the Great Commission and the Great Commandments. "Evangelical, and Young, and Active in New Area" (New York Times, 11/27/09) talks about how young, activist evangelicals are turning their activism toward making the world a better place for marginalized people. The article states, "Without disowning longstanding causes for evangelical activists like opposition to abortion or support for school vouchers, these young evangelicals have taken up issues previously abdicated to secular and religious liberals: climate change, AIDS prevention and treatment, Third World poverty." These first two articles are overtly religious in subject matter. The third article, an Op Ed piece by Nicholas Kristof ("How Can We Help the World’s Poor?," New York Times, 11/20/09), is about international do-goodism in general and makes the case that a healthy dose of healthy capitalism (my redundancy is intentional) could be the best hope for world poverty relief. He observes, "I was recently in Liberia, a fragile African democracy struggling to rebuild. It is chock-full of aid groups rushing around in white S.U.V.’s doing wonderful work. But it also needs factories to employ people, build skills and pay salaries and taxes. Americans are horrified by sweatshops, but nothing would help Liberia more than if China moved some of its sweatshops there, so that Liberians could make sandals and T-shirts."

The common perspective I find in all three articles is a focus on pragmatism, on specific, concrete, real world actions that address intractable issues that affect millions of people around the world. As I think about our SNU students and graduates, I see many who are focused on fulfilling the Great Commission and Great Commandments and doing so in pragmatic ways, ways that produce real, measurable, long-lasting results to combat many of those intractable issues. I am proud of those students and graduates. I'm also glad that SNU offers students excellent preparation to go out into the world and make an impact that lasts. As I write this, I think of those students who right now are on Commission Unto Mexico, ministering and gaining practical experience that will help many years into the future. I also think about our students who have just returned from the Latin American Studies Program (LASP) in Costa Rica and those who are preparing to go to LASP in a few days, as well as those who have studied at SNU's Queztal Education and Research Center (QERC) in Costa Rica and those who leave for QERC on Monday, 01/04/10. Add the students who have studied at the Nazarene International Language Institute (NILI) or other study abroad sites as well as those who have done internships in Honduras and Uganda and you start to get a feel for all the ways that SNU prepares students to go into the world do something that makes a difference.

Later on this month, I will travel to Chiapas, Mexico, to help set up an internship under the auspices of the Morningstar Institute, SNU's international development and poverty alleviation training institute. Our goal in Chiapas is for SNU students to contribute to the development of micro-enterprises that will support and help expand an existing ministry already there. The Morningstar Institute is also working to set up micro-enterprise related internships in Swaziland. To any evangelical high school student who is serious about exploring God's call to love the world in deed and not just in word, I would say take a serious look at SNU. I do not believe you will find a school that will help you along your way any better than SNU will.

Finally, another plug for SNU: "The Case of the Vanishing Full-Time Professor" is a New York Times article from 12/30/09 that talks about how more and more top-tier universities are using grad students and adjunct instructors for their undergraduate courses. According to the article, "In 1960, 75 percent of college instructors were full-time tenured or tenure-track professors; today only 27 percent are. The rest are graduate students or adjunct and contingent faculty — instructors employed on a per-course or yearly contract basis, usually without benefits and earning a third or less of what their tenured colleagues make." Many grad students and adjunct instructors are excellent teachers. However, in many cases their primary focus is not on teaching or they teach so many courses in order to make a living that they cannot do an adequate job. (I know that happens. When I was an adjunct, at times I taught so many courses that there was no way I could give my best to any of them.) SNU does use adjunct instructors, and by and large they are excellent teachers. However, the focus at SNU is clearly on undergraduate teaching and the majority of courses are taught by full-time faculty, most of whom hold doctorates in their teaching fields. Another reason for high school students to give SNU a good look.

Here's to 2010. Let's make it a good one.