March 31, 2008

Dear Friends,

Greetings from Klaipeda. Spring is late in coming here. We still have snow now and then. Winter and spring are competing, it seems.

In our lives we are seeking balance. Reflecting in Easter season on our presence here, we are perceiving a tension between the few and the many—between the need to be present in the classroom daily as teachers and the pressure to use our time and talents to help build an institution.

We are in a time of reassessment of the nature and structure of mission. Folks in at the PCUSA in Louisville recently called our attention to a presentation given by the noted missiologist Ralph D. Winter in Christian Today “12 mistakes Western mission agencies have made” (posted November 6, 2007). Mistake number one is “starting Bible schools, not universities.” LCC International University, where we have been sent as teachers for the past eight years now, is intentionally a university and not a Bible institute. LCC is a strong and identifiable Christian witness to its students and to the communities we serve. But this service and witness is within the context of higher education. The Reformed faith tradition of a commitment to education—part of the founding vision of LCC—lives on at LCC. The mission vision here is right, it seems to Becky and me. We’re both graduates of Christian liberal arts colleges (Lebanon Valley College ’93; Allegheny College ’70). Our experiences as undergraduates helped form our faith. We see daily evidence of similar experiences among our students and colleagues here in Klaipeda.

Toms, a student from Latvia, awaits the arrival of his teacher.

LCC is in the midst of a reopened presidential search. Finding a new president with the skills and staying power to build the institution is proving to be a difficult task. Two external forces are at work. First is the challenge of accreditation as a university. LCC has met the basic organizational tests and has three majors licensed to offer degrees. To be a viable educational institution, to be credible to students and their parents, LCC must be fully accredited. Accreditation is a continuous process. In Europe, these standards are evolving and LCC needs the final approval of the state Ministry of Education to expand its course offerings beyond just three majors into a full-fledged liberal arts curriculum. Accreditation requires university-level skills, significant resources, and a well-executed growth strategy. Today, several pieces of the accreditation process are still outstanding—approvals in English, business, teaching English as a foreign language, and psychology are under state scrutiny.

The second institutional challenge is stability among a qualified faculty. Credentials and experience matter in teaching and accreditation; what matters more at LCC is longer-term commitments by this faculty. Many teachers are available only for short periods, too often just for a semester or even less. Of necessity, LCC uses these resources. But a viable academic program cannot be built around such short-termers. The ranks of classroom teachers in the coming academic year look especially thin. A core faculty is essential for survival and growth of a creditable institution. LCC today just does not have the resources to hire all the teachers required to offer the curriculum required by accreditors and demanded by prospective students. So the role of the PC(USA) in continuing its commitment to keep us here over the years is vital to the university. This need will not diminish in the coming years.

Since its founding in 1991, LCC has become a complex and flourishing academic institution.

Building an institution may not seem like a compelling mission task. Get things started and then leave the building as a task for the locals is perhaps what some assume today is the right mission strategy.   But our experience is different. Ralph Winter says another mistake mission agencies make is sending short-term rather than long-term missionaries. The PC(USA) is another institution in the process of change. The mission assessment process at PC(USA) has been dubbed “retooling.” The renewed commitment of individual Presbyterians and the structures of our connectional church is a refreshing breeze in our lives. We were glad to read that Presbyterian mission efforts will continue to reflect the desires of mission constituencies like our mission partner LCC to deploy high-quality, long-term mission personnel. Our personal challenge remains to be as faithful and committed to the work before us as God gives us the spirit and the staying-power to persevere.
 
Where do we fit in?  The most common question students ask us these days is, “How long are you going to be here?” Students are inviting responsible adults and, we hope, authentic Christians to be part of their lives. Jesus faced the questions of the few and the many. In the run-up to Easter, Jesus was the popular candidate with the crowds. His turnout was in the thousands.Yet the numbers quickly faded at Calvary; the many plummeted to the few. But he took time to speak with these individuals—by name. The resurrection encounters were very personal: Mary in the garden, Peter after breakfast, Thomas who wanted to see the evidence. Becky and I are wondering how to balance the question of building an institution with the needs of the individual students we know by name and see everyday. For us, this is the challenge of mission today.

What would Jesus do? We read “The sight of the people moved him to pity…and he said to his disciples, ‘The crop is heavy, but the laborers are scarce; you must therefore beg the owner to send laborers to harvest his crop’” (Matthew 9:36, 38 New English Bible). So we pray to the Lord of the harvest for classroom teachers and institutional builders to be called and sent.

Grace and peace to you in the name of the risen Christ in this Eastertide. 

The 2008 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 158