Hope College | Campus Ministries

The poet of Psalm 1 offers a guiding picture for our philosophy of spiritual growth and formation at Hope College: “They are like trees planted by streams of water…”. (Psalm 1:3) They shall be like trees. This is our picture. We recognize that students are in process of formation into a whole person, where the emotional, physical, intellectual, and spiritual grow organically without division. We use the image of tree growth to describe this process. In the history of every tree a decisive moment occurs when a seed dramatically transforms itself into something new, a moment that the seed can take root and break through the darkness in the hopeful stretch for the light. Though Campus Ministries recognizes this sudden transformation in a seed, we also recognize that long-term growth towards maturity requires patience. It takes a long time to grow from a seed to a rooted tree.

We recognize that tree growth is shaped in the rhythm of light and darkness, rain and drought, season reaching into season, always growing deeper in order to grow taller. Tree growth does not happen overnight. It is never in a hurry. When you look at a tree it often looks like nothing is happening. But in reality a healthy tree is always growing, little by little, millimeter by millimeter. Christian growth is much the same – it is often invisible to the eye – the action taking place inside rough protective layers. But its growth is happening – all the time – in and out of season – despite what we see. Growth is an image that suggests students are always in process of developing their identity and their vocation or calling. Tree Growth is an image that we use to help connect students to the patience required for being and doing.

This slow growth is a process we trust – and consequently, try not to get in the way of. Again, we recognize this process does not happen overnight, nor through one event, nor one program. We recognize, and celebrate, that Campus Ministries does not make up the whole experience of a mature spiritual formation, but is one part of a greater whole. The process of spiritual maturity happens in the entire college experience – in conversations with friends and faculty, in residence halls and cottages, in the classroom and in study, on athletic teams and on learning trips abroad, in student activities and in community service, and yes, even in Chapel. As a Campus Ministry department we self-consciously see ourselves working with the entire Hope College community. We want to join Hope in creating an environment in which students grow in the conditions of a vibrant Christian community of study, worship, service, discernment, friendships, creativity, scholarship and reflection.

Like the tree described in Psalm 1 we want to grow students who have deep roots, sturdy trunks, and strong limbs producing fruit and leaves in and out season, that offer food for the hungry and shade for the weary. Like the psalmist’s tree, we desire every student to be so rooted in good soil that they are secure to spiral their canopy of hope towards the light. Thus, it is proper for us to ask ourselves what kind of environment will best help students root themselves and grow toward the light. What kind of experiences, sermons, books, curricula, themes, resources, and training will encourage a mature and steady growth that will be sustainable over a lifetime? Fundamental to finding the answer to these formative questions is a further question: who is it we are encouraging students to grow into before they are graduated as agents of Hope?

We want to tend an environment that grows World Christians. World Christians take literally the statement in John’s Gospel that God loves the world. World Christians believe that the world was created and approved by love and, though twisted and spoiled by sin, insofar as the world is redeemable, it can be redeemed only by love. World Christians believe that divine love, incarnate and indwelling in the world, summons the world always toward wholeness, which ultimately is reconciliation and atonement with God, humanity, and all creation. World Christians believe that this atonement and reconciliation happened once for all through the grace of the incarnation in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son. (John 3:16) This transforming grace is activated by the power of the Holy Spirit as it is experienced in faith. (Romans 3:21-26) Framed by the mystery of this faith, World Christians affirm: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. (1) It is this confession that not only serves as the proclamation of World Christians, but also sets their feet on a new trajectory that leads into a whole new way of life in the way of Jesus.

From the perspective of a World Christian the entire global creation is God’s campus. The world with its diversity of culture, color, and community is where we experience how to live out this redemptive way of Jesus. Thus, at Hope College we do not prescribe one Christian expression, one denomination, or one spiritual experience. Instead, we focus on what unifies the diversity of the kingdom of God with the early Church’s pivotal confession: Jesus is Lord. (2) Though Hope College is self-consciously in covenant with the Reformed Church in America, and celebrates and honors our storied relationship together, we also celebrate and honor the reality that God’s forest is large, diverse, and spacious. We seek to be “ecumenical in character while rooted in the Reformed tradition,” (3) with an unashamed evangelical calling to be transformed by an experience of God’s grace through revelation.

World Christians are those who seek to pursue Hans Frei’s advice to promote a “generous orthodoxy.” We seek to articulate an orthodox voice between Christian extremes, left and right, always holding to our central confession, Jesus is Lord. We seek to promote a Trinitarian rule of faith that explains how the story told in Scripture bears upon our own story and the world’s. World Christians are generous in celebrating what God has done in Christ for saints in every “tribe, and language, and people and nation.” (Rev. 5:9) In growing World Christians, Hope College seeks to be a place of hospitality where people from around the world will come to be celebrated and to teach us what God is doing in their home. Here, generous (4) means that we are to live together in Christ-like submission to the other. We desire to graduate students entering a “global village” who are ready to serve, study, engage, worship, pray, and learn wherever they find themselves in the world, in a multiplicity of vocations, callings, languages, and cultural settings.

World Christians are prepared and equipped to live out their vocations for shalom. (5) Wherever they find themselves, World Christians possess a calling on their life to practice shalom: the webbing together of God, humans, and all creation in justice, fulfillment, and delight. Shalom captures the spirit of God’s calling on all Christians and God’s redemptive vision for the world. We want to begin to encourage how we can pursue the hope of shalom in all our different disciplines and vocations. Thus, we want to promote an environment where we can engage and discuss the far-reaching issues that threaten the experience of shalom. We want to grow students with a global consciousness and critical discernment, able to think and respond to the big issues of the world from a Christian point of view as it is grounded in Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. For example, how are we to respond to the realities of poverty, structural racism, globalization, the pandemic AIDS crisis, disparate views of sexuality, or the death of life in environmental ecosystems? As Christians, how do we respond to the widening gulf between political ideologies fueled by the rhetoric from the right and the left? Campus Ministries wants to join with the entire Hope community in creating an environment that promotes and supports shalom, while at the same time refusing to let the gospel or the Christian Church be framed or commandeered by political agendas, right or left, that often hinder the church from pursuing its mission to proclaim and incarnate God’s love in the world. To achieve this will require us all to think theologically out of our identity as Christians.

World Christians have their identity restored in God, through the vicarious communion and priestly act of Jesus the Son, by the power of the Holy Spirit. (6) It is with this Trinitarian identity that we love the world as God loves the world, becoming last so others can go first. (Phil. 2) It is with this perichorietic identity, one of mutual submission to the other, that students might begin to engage the world with a “renewing of their mind.” (Rom. 12:3) It is with this mind that we want to frame a theology of study, worship, witness, and vocation that is transplantable into whatever land or culture students locates themselves after their Hope College education.

As World Christians, we want our worship life to experience a fusion of global voices, sounds, and songs that reflect the reality students will experience in their years after Hope College. We believe worship is critical for the formation of growing World Christians. In worship we practice World Christianity by experiencing the generous diversity of God’s world in preaching, song, and prayer, while at the same time confessing that what unifies and centers the world is the Lordship of Jesus Christ, who is, who was, and who is to come. (Rev.1: 3) This is the orthodox center that gives World Christians a generous circumference.

As we seek to grow World Christians, we recognize that growth happens in a specific context. The image of soil gives a global focus a specific geography. It presumes a particular place. Soil is where the mystery and action of growth occurs. World Christians are not Gnostics. Rather than being suspicious of our material place as something bad, something from which to flee, or escape, we embrace our place, and all matter (for that matter), as something intrinsically good.

Soil contains the natural history of a place. It is a make up of a long endowment of time: one inch of topsoil takes 500 years. The build-up is slow and is always under threat of quick erosion if not protected. Soil is universal, yet, at the same time, locally unique. Some soils grow some things better than others. Not every soil can grow every kind of crop. It is impacted by its larger weather, climate, and topographical conditions. For example, Jack Pines grow in sandy soil, while Tamaracks and Willows love water and wet soil. Thus, it is an imperative to pay attention to the kind of soil one keeps. The make up of a particular soil includes minerals, microbes, and nutrients that give it a rich texture and health. Good soil has a depth for roots to sink deep into and requires nourishment in the rhythms of water, light, and darkness. This is also true of the soil of Hope College.

The soil of Hope has a natural history that endures. (7) It is composed of rich nutrients of committed faculty, staff, administration, and students; it has the endowment of a loyal alumni, a committed church, and an active local community. Hope has a rich soil that allows students and faculty to sink roots deep into the rhythms of study, worship, and relationships. The soil of Hope offers students, who live fragmented lives, a needed sense of place – it provides a particular location – history – culture – and context – for growing World Christians. Of course, soil is always shaped by its particular relationship to a local context. A particular soil’s ability to grow anything is conditioned by how it is treated. Like any relationship, soil needs to be nurtured. For long-term health, soil needs irrigation, fertilizer, stability, and protection from selfish instincts that mistreat the soil for short-term profit and gain. When soil is mistreated, it loses the health and stability needed to grow seeds to full maturity. Bad soil grows nothing.

Campus Ministries wants to pay attention to the soil we are as a college and ask ourselves what we can do to be good stewards of this rich resource. If a soil is good it has the potential to grow a diversity of life: flowers, trees, shrubs, fruits, and grasses of all kinds. In other words, we recognize that good soil grows life that is not uniform. If soil is healthy, it has the power to grow life that is full in color, smell, size, and sound. It is the distinction of each growing in the soil of Hope that makes the whole beautiful. Hope College seeks to be a soil where each student who is transplanted into our soil of Hope will find his and her roots in rich geography that will allow them to grow deeper as they grow taller. Good soil is strong enough to take in transplants and help them to thrive.

We grow in the soil of Hope. This is, of course, a dual image. We want God to grow World Christians in the specific soil of Hope College. Hope is our local geography. But Hope College does not exist for its own self-promotion. Our mission transcends existing for the sake of existence. The world does not need another liberal arts college that serves as a pipeline to privilege. Rather, the mission of Hope College is to be a place where the totality of human experience is taken seriously within our historic Christian soil, so that generations growing in the soil of Hope are ready to engage and serve the world and the Church with “wisdom and revelation.” (Ephesians 1:17) Thus, we look to the God of Hope who incarnated hope in the person of Jesus Christ. It is this incarnation that gives Hope a center. While students are here we seek to provide the necessary conditions where our ultimate Hope for all is rooted in the gospel, which is the person and work of Jesus, mediated through the Spirit, by the will of God. But this mission of Hope is not easy. Hope is the longing we do not yet see fulfilled. By grace, it requires our faith in one another and in God. It is not easy. But it is possible in grace. Our chief Hope, as the old standard puts it, is rooted in the reality that we “belong–body and soul, in life and in death – not to [ourselves] but to [our] faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.”(9)

(1) This is a declaration of the mystery of faith woven into the RCA’s sacramental prayer for communion.

(2) The Lordship of Christ is a basic Christian teaching that unifies every tradition in the Church – Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant. Its centrality as a confession was evident in the earliest records of the Jewish Christian Community. “Jesus is Lord” has long been regarded as the oldest and most basic Christian confession of Christian faith. It quickly became the favorite confessional claim of the early Church and has persisted to echo down the canyon of time as an authoritative expression of Christian orthodoxy and identity. There is little room to doubt that the confession “Jesus is Lord” occupied a prominent place as the central Christian confession of the New Testament era: it was that affirmation to which every Christian gave assent and which distinguished communities that employed the term Christian. See John 20:28; Philippians 2:11.

(3) Taken from the 1992 Hope College vision statement.

(4) See Kathryn Green-McCreight, “Feminist theology and a generous orthodoxy,” Scottish Journal of Theology 57, No. 1 (2004).

(5) See Nicholas Wolterstorff, Educating for Shalom: Essays on Christian Higher Education (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2004).

(6) See James B. Torrance, Worship Community & The Triune God of Grace (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1996).

(7) See Carol Simon and James Kennedy, Can Hope Endure? (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2005).

(8) See Wendell Berry, A Timbered Choir (Counterpoint: Washington, D.C., 1998), p.18.

Whatever is foreseen in Joy
Must be lived out from day to day
Vision held open in the dark
By our ten thousand days of work.
Harvest will fill the barn; for that
The hand must ache, the face must sweat.

And yet no leaf or grain is filled
By work of ours; the field is tilled
And left to grace. That we may reap,
Great work is done while we’re asleep.

When we work well, a Sabbath mood
Rests on our day, and finds it good.

(9) The Heidelberg Catechism (Cleveland: United Church Press, 1962), p. 9.

A Vision for Hope College Campus Ministry: “Growing World Christians in the soil of Hope.”

A Vision for Hope College Campus Ministry:
“Growing World Christians in the soil of Hope.”