By Dr. Kevin Brown, President of Asbury University
Rob Westervelt, one of the founding members of TG Three, a well-known and effective Christian higher education strategy firm, says every school has one question they must ask and answer above others: “Do we make a promise that matters?”
First, students want it (i.e., the school offers something desirable, necessary, and in-demand).
Second, the school can credibly deliver it.
Third, the school can credibly deliver it in a way that separates them from competitors.
So, with these criteria in mind, does Asbury University make a promise that matters? I humbly assert the answer is yes. At Asbury, our promise is that students will “belong, become, and be set apart.”
Belonging always begins with an experience of kindness and hospitality. But its mature expression is far more demanding. Relational flourishing occurs in thickly webbed environments characterized by obligation, commitment, and responsibility. One of our faculty members put it well several years ago in a chapel talk: “If your community does not demand something of you, it is not a community.”
Asbury’s commitment to belonging is forged from our theological anthropology. Specifically, the understanding that persons created in God’s image are relationally constituted beings. And, paradoxically, our freedom is bound up in binding ourselves in committed relationships to God and others. David Brooks describes this paradox well. “If…you resist the autonomy ethos and put loving passion at the center of your philosophy of life, you will find yourself tied down by all sorts of obligations—to things like a spouse, kids, community, God and a vocation,” he says. “It is one of the weird paradoxes of life that the constraints you choose are the ones that set you free.”
Indeed, relational obligation is hardly something we suffer; it is part and parcel of the abundant life Christ described in John 10:10. Author David Epstein recently recognized the inverse correlation between mature relational commitments and our emotional health. “The less dense [a person’s] network of reciprocal obligation…the more likely they [are] to be depressed and take their own life.” Conversely, strong bonds of belonging are intrinsic to human flourishing. Consider, for example, the fact that flourishing studies (Global Flourishing Study), happiness studies (Harvard Study of Adult Development), and even memory studies (Sandra Weintraub research on “super agers”) all point to the preeminent importance of one thing for our lives: Relationships. Thickly constituted relationships.
A demanding form of belonging is intrinsic to the good life. That matters.
The promise to become is a promise to grow, but growth of a certain type. The author Andrew Root recently addressed the concept of growth, particularly in churches, ministries, and schools. We often talk of growth plans or strategic growth initiatives that associate health (or “favor”) with greater size. Root’s comments remind me of author Derek Thompson’s quip that the dominant mantra of the 21st Century is “make number go up.” But these discussions, Root says, miss a key distinction. Specifically, the need to differentiate between growth of something and growth into something.
Growth of something is just that, a thing’s additive or exponential expansion. Grass grows. Cancer grows. Money/Debt grows. Whether such growth is good or bad is context dependent.
But growth into something speaks to trajectory; a thing’s intended arc of development. A puppy is meant to grow into a dog. An acorn is meant to grow into an oak tree. A cadet is meant to grow into an officer. If this trajectory is stunted or diverted, we would rightly recognize that something has gone wrong.
At Asbury, a student’s story of becoming speaks to growth into something: intellectual, social, moral, and spiritual maturation as it is understood in the Christian tradition. More specifically, we characterize this as “deep thought, effective service, ordered love, and holistic practice.”
Reasoning from the Christian tradition, an Asbury education provides a holy imagination for the embodied practices that habituate us into certain kinds of people. This undoubtedly involves knowledge, prudential judgment, and relevant skill acquisition, but growth into maturation has a substantive moral dimension.
In his essay The Loss of the University, the late Wendell Berry writes, “a good artist also has claim to be a good forger.” In other words, it is not simply the skill, but it’s moral application, that separates a creative artist from a deceptive forger. The importance of this insight is magnified in an age of ever-expanding artificial technology. For this reason, Harvard’s Michael Sandel rightly recognizes that even the smartest technology cannot tell us how it should be used. That is a normative question—answered with a moral imagination and carried out with virtue.
An education worthy of the name does not simply consider what we know, but our growth into something—people of character, virtue, and moral excellence. That matters.
Finally, our desire is for every student to be set apart. My favorite compliment of Asbury students and graduates is that they are (refreshingly) uncommon.
“Your students are different.”
We hear this about our students who work at the Olympics every two years. Or our Christian ministries majors who populate churches and mission organizations throughout the world. I hear this with regularity from leaders within the professional sphere who employ our graduates. In athletics, we have had students transfer to Asbury because they noticed our teams weren’t like other teams in our conference—our programs, our people, and our coaches were different. Interns. Medical school students. Volunteers. The feedback is the same. “Your students are different.”
In Christ’s most famous sermon in Matthew chapter 5, Jesus asks, “If you love those who love you, what reward will you get?…And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others?”
“Are not even the tax collectors doing that?” He asks. “Do not even pagans do that?”
In a world of idols and idolatry, disunity, competing agendas, toxic discourse, suspicion, corruption, mind-numbing digital dopamine, waning institutions, and a lack of trust—Christ’s wisdom is strikingly relevant: Doesn’t everyone else do that? Are we not different? The passage ends with these powerful words from Jesus, “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” In other words, don’t pattern your life after what everyone else is doing. Pattern your life after what God cares about.
If this is our collective vision…
And if we all stand at the same table—a table that is Christ centric, committed to a faith that is cross-shaped and sacrificial, gathered at a table where our shared commitment is to “seek the things above, where Christ is” (Col. 3:1), equally committed to self-emptying humility (Phil. 2:5-11), and overflowing with the Fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-23)…we would be set apart.
This is our vision. And it will only happen because we ruthlessly pursue this holy aspiration together. That matters.
I want as many students as possible to experience the full fruit of this promise. A dense network of life-giving community, holistic maturation (growth into something), and a life set apart because of our collective pursuit of looking more like Christ.
That is a promise that matters.
Dr. Kevin Brown serves as 18th president of Asbury University, bringing to the role a deep commitment to Christ-centered higher education, academic excellence, and faithful institutional stewardship. His leadership reflects both a long-standing connection to the Asbury community and a clear vision for guiding the University in a rapidly changing cultural and educational environment.
Learn More about President Brown and the leadership of Asbury University here.
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