“With change, comes loss. With loss, comes grief.”

“With change, comes loss. With loss, comes grief.” 

While I’m excited for the continued kingdom impact of LCU (I love this place) and hopeful for this new more sustainable direction, I am at the same time so very sad and I grieve the necessary changes that had to be made for LCU. 

The fall was very hopeful with a large incoming freshman class. Gifts were up. But with the retention rate of the spring semester plummeting, it became a sad reality in January that something had to be done to save LCU. I didn’t foresee this being the reality. Actually, I was fearful of a worse outcome. I knew we couldn’t keep going with declining student enrollments: “we can’t teach when we don’t have students.” However, even this spring, I was hoping for another big fall class. The administration had been doing everything they could to make LCU affordable for students and competitive among other educational options: there haven't been department budgets or employee raises for over a decade. But less students means less dollars to pay for everything. That is the current unstainable model. 

I love LCU, even though I did my undergrad somewhere else. When I first started in youth ministry, I sent a couple of students to my alma mater, but then I met LCU and fell in love with the way that this college wrestled with hard issues. I was impressed and started encouraging more and more to LCU. That is why I chose to become a prof here. I love the space to wrestle with hard issues, to say, “I don’t know what to do with that,” to live in the tension of the messy middle between the two unacceptable and unlivable alternatives of fundamentalism and liberalism (both want and claim certainty). However, when you live in that messy middle, you get attacked by both sides. And LCU has. But that is where real life exists, in my opinion. 

This last year has been one of my favorite years teaching at LCU. I love my students, and I have so loved teaching Children, Youth, and Christian Ministry students in this wonderful community these past 21 years. Many of my former students, whom I adore, have reached out to me asking how I am. I tell them, “I am so sad.” I grieve for my current students whose school will look very much different next fall than it does now if they choose to stay and finish out their degree. We will teach out their classes. This will be hard. I am just so honored to be a part of so many incredible young people's journeys over the years. I have been so blessed. Each one of you holds a special place in my heart! I will cheer you on toward love and good deeds forever.

I grieve with many of my friends and colleagues, including my wife, Jennifer, who will be concluding their service with LCU at the end of May. I did find out that I will be a part of the revamped LCU to You and will help current Children’s, Youth, and Christian Ministry students be able to finish their degrees, if they so choose. I will be a part of carrying out the mission of LCU. I am deeply grateful to continue to do what I so love: creatively helping students discover the think on their own becoming interdependent servant leaders. That will continue. However, I deeply mourn the classes that I will no longer be able to teach and the students who I won’t have in my classes on the campus and in the community of LCU in Lincoln. 

Change has come. It is a loss on so many levels, and I deeply grieve. In that grief, I am glad that LCU has not shut its doors completely, that the mission will more tightly focus on vocational ministry preparation and will partner even more with churches. Many other schools don’t offer Christian Ministry degrees. We can and must. As an eternal optimist, I know that change is a necessary part of life and that it can foster creativity and innovation. It all just hurts right now. However, I am hoping that that creativity, innovation, and Kingdom impact will be a part of the new reality. I love you all.

Here is the link to the press release, the full memo, an Alumni letter, and a FAQs page. https://lincolnchristian.edu/news/lcu-to-you/

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[PS: I am posting words from my friend and LCU grad, Adam Johnson: So good:]

“Time passes and things change.”

It’s a phrase that found its way into more than one Christmas in the Chapel over the years. I’ve had the honor of helping to write CITC for the past 15+ years. Usually, at a particularly emotional moment, a character or voice over would say these words to simply explain the complexity of whatever story arc was taking place in the stage in the chapel. I don’t know where the phrase originated from. Likely a brain child of the genius that is Jeff Colleen.

I’ve always liked the phrase. Perhaps it’s the simplicity. Perhaps it’s the inevitability. It was CITC’s version of “death and taxes.” In every single good story, these two elements, as simple as they are, exist.

Time passes.

Things change.

And there is absolutely nothing we can do about it.

As I reflect on the recent press release from LCU, this is the phrase that came to mind. It’s simple, but in the simplicity there is deep emotion. Time passes whether we want to or not. Children keep growing and people keep aging. One tick at a time, the inevitability of time passing pushes directly into the cause, or the need, or the result of change.

Time passes, therefore things change.

Things change, therefore time passes.

I imagine people connected to LBI/LCC/LCS/LCU all process the announcement of a model change differently.

Some with shock.

Some with sadness.

Some with confusion.

Some with anticipation.

Some with understanding.

Some with many things in between.

I don’t know where I fall, perhaps a little bit of all of the above. But what I do know is that time passes and things change. They must. There’s no choice. Like gravity. Or death. Or taxes. Time keeps ticking and things keep changing.

And I’m reminded today, that’s the way it’s always been. That’s the way it will be. We find ourselves with the narrator again saying “time passes and things change.”

But often, directly following this phrase, the narrator would go on to explain that even in time and change, God is still God. And throughout all time, and throughout all change, He is enough, He is in control, and He is not impacted as we are. For He is timeless and unchanging.

For me, in this moment, I choose to remember times passed, lives changed, and wait in anticipation to see what the next time and next change will bring.