Harold Shank

     It’s an odd habit. 

    I keep birthday cards in order to reread them four or so months later.  I just went through the stack from my last birthday.  I reviewed them all, including the one from my “friend” who sent a newspaper clipping on “getting older means getting better deals,” a step-by-step guide to all the senior discounts.

     Maybe I keep them because they represent the deep value we place on relationships.  Each friend carefully picked out an appropriate card, signed, stamped and sent it.  Maybe I hold on to them because I am by nature a “keeper.”  It’s hard to throw away the cards with their pictures suitable for framing and their wise advice.

      Whatever the real reason, as I revisited them this morning, I was struck by how the words never grow old.   People age and retire, but words seem to remain young and employed.  The words wishing me well, poking fun at the growing number representing my age, calling on God to bless me, affirming their friendship, expressing their admiration resonated in my heart today just as on my actual birthday. 

      We do well to attend to the words of our lives.  God himself knew the significance of words.  He used them to carry the message of his Bible.  He sent a book not a video.  He turned words into flesh.  Not a single word of God has retired or ceased to have value.  

      Birthdays are so important. I just threw the cards away, but not the words.  Words!  What would we do without them?

Recently I shared the platform with State Senator Kerry Roberts of Tennessee.   We both spoke about Ohio Valley University where he attended in the 1980s.

In his remarks, he noted the common occurrence of people complaining about “today’s young people.”   Indeed we hear objections about their dress, hair styles, loud music, morals, tatoos, and a host of other items.  Sen. Roberts urged us to quite complaining and get involved with efforts to train young people in a different way.   If we are not part of raising up youth to respect authority, seek high standards, and do their jobs well, then on what basis can we complain?

As I listened I was struck by the simplicity of the rationale.  We can fret about the future of today’s upcoming generation or we can be at the front of helping them be all they can be.  We can moan about what we don’t like or pass on the qualities we do like.

That is the point of teaching in Sunday school, serving as a youth sponsor,  being kind to the neighbor kid, nurturing our children’s friends, and, yes, supporting Christian education.

Thanks, Sen. Roberts for drawing our attention to a simple plan.  All of us, especially our young people, will be better as a result.

Those words suggest one thing to basketball fans and another to teenage girls. However, I’m referring to something completely different.

When I was inagurated as president of OVU, I asked 16 preachers and elders and Sunday school teachers to walk in the processional with me. They represented the churches in the 16 states in the northeastern part of the nation, from Maine to Kentucky and from Virginia to Indiana.

There were two reasons for the Sweet 16.

First, as they marched in with their state flags I wanted them to know that Ohio Valley University is their school We exist to advance the kingdom around the world, but especially in these states.

Second, their presence reminded all of us at the university about our constituency. Our goal is to serve them. Instead of focusing only on our delightful environment in the Mid Ohio Valley, their flags keep us on a broader focus.

Who were those Sweet 16 representatives. We asked people who serve in those states who were able to make the journey to Vienna.

Here they are: Connecticut—Mike Landon Delaware—James Wilson Indiana—Richard Partezana Kentucky—Brian Auxier Maine—Tom Olbricht Maryland—Floyd Williamson Massachusetts—Aaron Tremblay New Hampshire—Paul Clark New Jersey—Dan Cooper New York—Jerry Hill Ohio—Scott Miller Pennsylvania—Wanda Krevel Rhode Island—Norm Seiders Vermont—Ken Nicholson Virginia—Barry Bryson West Virginia—Steve Fox.

I appreciate these men and women for serving in the Sweet 16!

Note: A version of this address “Go Deeper–Inauguration Speech” was presented at  Ohio Valley University on October 7, 2011, by Harold Shank.

                Bill Hewlett and David Packard became friends in graduate school.  After graduation they decided to work together.  They formed a company called Hewlett-Packard in 1937.  You probably own either a laptop or a printer made by that company.    Started in a garage in the thirties, in 2010 the firm earned $126 billion.  The company now operates in almost every nation on earth.

David Packard was one of the first billionaires in Silicon Valley.  When he retired he still lived in the same small house he built for his family in 1957 complete with kitchen with linoleum on the floor.  When he died in 1996 he gave his entire $5.6 billion estate to charity.   On the pamphlet at his funeral the biography said, “David Packard, 1912-1996, Rancher, etc.”  The flyer said nothing about the computer revolution, billionaires, or multinational corporations.

                At one point Packard made this remarkable comment: “Why are we here? I think many people assume, wrongly, that a company exists solely to make money. Money is an important part of a company’s existence, if the company is any good. But a result is not a cause. We have to go deeper and find the real reason for our being.”

                Packard noticed that many never decide their real reason for being.  Whether it’s a multinational company or a college freshman, whether it’s a congregation or a Christian university, we often fail to ask and answer the critical questions.

                Your presence here today indicates some involvement in Christian education or some connection with those who are involved.  We have honored guests from the community and beyond, representatives from other Christian universities, members of the Ohio Valley University Board of Trustees, alumni, and a cross-section of personal and institutional friends.   I am humbled and honored by your presence and take it as a measure of your support and encouragement.  

                Some time prior to this moment you may have asked yourself, “Why are we here?”   All of you have other places you could be, important tasks you could pursue, and other institutions that you could support.   You deserve an answer to the question, “Why are we here?”

                Packard said that many people assume that a company exists solely to make money.  He said they were wrong.  Many might assume that this university exists to educate students, give them a degree, and prepare them for a career.   All three of those purposes are an important part of our existence, but there is a deeper set of purposes, two of which I must mention.  Those deeper purposes are our real reason for being.

                Deeper Purpose Number One: Calling.   

Almost all schools focus on getting students ready for a career.  We do that well at Ohio Valley University, in fact, I think we do it exceptionally well.  But this school goes beyond career to calling.  

                It seems to me that many people settle for less in life than what they really want.  They become satisfied with what they call the “good life.”  If they have a coke and hamburger in front of the game, they think they have arrived. 

                But deep inside of us we all want to make a difference.  We want to leave some imprint.  We want a deeper sense of satisfaction.  Many people never find it.  Many do not know how to find it.

                Daniel and Nathan are my sons.  I am proud of both of them.  Every morning I pray for them.  I ask God to give them good careers, but I also ask the Father to help them achieve their dreams.  I pray that they will live lives of full satisfaction.  My hope is that they will find their calling.

                That is my prayer for all OVU students. 

                Some might think that the purpose of a college education is to get a job to make money.  At OVU we go further.  We think life is not about making money, but making a difference.  Our graduates will get jobs, often exceptional jobs, but the career will be a vehicle for following their calling.

                From what I’ve seen at OVU we prepare students not just to earn an income but to follow a dream, not just to get promoted but to make a difference, not just to get vested in retirement but to find real satisfaction.

At the core of calling is preparing our graduates to make a difference in the world.  Think about recent OVU graduate, Scott Johnson, who works with the Clifton Church of Christ in uptown Cincinnati.  Last year he baptized 15 students from two different universities.    An anthropology graduate student approached him recently.  As an atheist he decided to better understand what he was against.   A dialogue followed and Scott baptized the young man and his wife.  Scott has a job, but he’s following a calling.

Think about Kerry Roberts, an OVU student from the 80s.  He is now a Tennessee State Senator.  When issues of life and justice arise in those chambers, Senator Roberts takes a high road.  Kerry has a job, but he’s following a calling.

As we dig deeper at OVU, we go beyond career to calling.

Deeper Purpose Number Two: Character. 

All schools pass on information.  Education includes the mastery of a subject area.  OVU does that well, but we seek to go deeper. 

As a Christian university, we proceed out of a Christian world view.  We do not hesitate or equivocate on this matter.  We believe in one God, his son Jesus Christ, and his word the Bible.  We believe the Judeo-Christian moral ethic is not only ancient, but successful.  We seek not only to instill knowledge but Christian character. 

We transfer knowledge, but a knowledge driven by a deep respect for others and a recognition that it all comes from God.  For us, it’s not enough to produce knowledgeable graduates. We must send out graduates that are kind and respectful.  We send out students who know the law, who can even help make the laws, but our highest goal is graduates who honor and respect the law.   We produce graduates who know their mathematics and who understand chemistry, but our unique contribution is to send out students who multiply integrity and who compound trustworthiness. 

We want our students to understand showing appreciation as much as accounting, learn consistency as much as chemistry, value equity as much as education, pursue generosity as much as geography, practice justice as much as journalism, understand mercy as much as management, know punctuality as much as psychology. 

We want our students to have As in adaptability, attentiveness, and availability.  We seek high degrees of dependability, diligence and discretion.  We want graduates who walk across the stage dressed in humility, meekness and truth.   Our goal is not to mass produce the highest quantity of graduates, but the highest quality of graduate.  We don’t measure our success by how much money our graduates make, but how positive an influence our graduates have. 

Is there any business out there looking to hire people trained at a highly ranked academic university who have also been tutored in personal responsibility, who refuse to cheat and steal, who abhor falsehood, and whose goals in life are the noble, the upright and the good?   How many CEOs does a board have to hire who squander company money on corner offices and private jets while the company loses money before they realize that they need a person of integrity at the helm?   Does the public not want to elect people to office who will tell them the truth, who will treat them with respect and who will maintain purity and humility in the midst of graft and pride?   Yes.  Yes.  Yes.  There are people everywhere who are looking for what we do.  

Today is about going deeper.  Our gathering prompts exactly that.  I commit my leadership at OVU to keep this a Christian university, to make it a place of calling and character, to keep it focused on our deepest dreams.

I hesitate to say what many of you may be thinking.  As I wrote this speech Hewlett Packard, the giant computer company, faces a crises.  Both founders are gone.  As I’ve read the Wall Street Journal many say this company has lost its way.  I mean to add no pain to any who work for or are invested in that firm.  But it is a reminder that no person, no institution is safe from forgetting its purpose.  Occasions like this provide a reality check. Why are we here?  What do we hope to accomplish.

Let me close by recognizing that I stand on the shoulders of many people.  There are those here who have devoted their lives to this school.  I ask for no credit for what I have been given or the task for which I have been chosen.

I can only say I have found a treasure on this hilltop in West Virginia:  It is a community focused on its mission, a school set on transforming lives. 

This is a great time to be alive.  There’s no other time I’d rather live.  There’s no other place I’d rather be.

Harold Shank

Ohio Valley University

 Note: This address was presented to the faculty and staff of Ohio Valley University at the opening session of the 2011-2012 school year on August 17, 2011.

O. P. Kretzmann became president of Valparaiso University, a Lutheran school, on Oct 6, 1940. The world was deep into war. America was doing all it could to stay out of the conflict. It was a dark time. The Great Depression haunted every business and affected every school. Supplies were flowing to the Allies across the north Atlantic.

As Kretzmann stood to give his inaugural address, he said it was like entering the world’s winter, not knowing when or if the springtime would come. The world seemed under the power of the barbarians. It was not a good time to become president of a Christian university. Then he said, “I can only say that I am persuaded that lost causes are the only ones that are finally never lost.”

During one of the initial interviews that I had with the search committee at OVU, the issue came up of why I would want to be president of this university. I forget now exactly what I said, but I can tell you the reason why I came. During that discussion, Professor David Hamm said something. My wife, Sally, and I have talked about his comment a great deal. As the discussion of that question wound down, David said, “Schools that struggle for their very existence depend more on God.”

That day almost 61 years ago, Kretzmann reminded his audience that God is not on the side of the strongest armies. He said, “He may not balance the scales of history every day, but when He does, the weight of the universe is on the side of truth and mercy and justice and faith and hope and love.” If God is with an institution, they cannot lose. If God is with us then no power on earth can hinder OVU from accomplishing its mission.

As I take the driver’s seat of this university, I promise to drive it on the road to our eternal destiny. I have absolute confidence in that destiny. There can be no other.

The task before us this fall is to transform lives. From the beginning to the end of Scripture that is God’s primary task. He wants it. He does it. He empowers it. He makes it happen.

We are a small school. In all the ways that count, our size makes absolutely no difference to our mission. We are not interested in quantity, but quality. There is no point in producing 100 mechanics who know how to use a screw driver if not one of them knows which way is the right way to turn it. It is one thing to train a thousand people to drive a car; it is another to train people to drive the car who know where it’s going. Because we are small does not mean we make no difference. We dream that the lives transformed here will be of the quality that they will exert more influence, make more progress, open more doors, and achieve greater heights than they might have otherwise done.

It is possible to hear this as overconfidence and prideful. I apologize for that improper impression. OVU is not the light; at best we are a mirror. OVU is not the water of life; at best we are a pipe. OVU is not the bread; at best we are the plastic bag in which it is delivered to the world’s kitchen.

We send out students with a respect for truth. We give the world men and women who value integrity, respect, hard work, and responsibility. We seek to train young adults who admire diversity, who have experienced the work place under an well-trained guiding hand, and who value the worth of all human beings.

Speaking about mission can lead to over simplification and even sentimentality. We know our task is difficult. In the thoughts of Kretzmann, how do we produce people who are committed to truth and still open minded, who are deeply spiritual but highly intellectual, who are not of this world, but know every inch of it. Many would say we are an oxymoron for thinking such poles can meet, but we believe they can, see that they do, and promise that they will.

One of my teachers, E.H. Ijams said that ideas are more powerful than bombs. Bombs destroy a building, maim a body, and tear up a road. But ideas can destroy a civilization, cripple a soul, and block the road to any good future. We have no explosives at OVU, but what we do can empower a new world. We have no power as the world sees power, but what we do can transform a nation.

Despite the secular nature of our culture and the irreligious approach of our educational industry, the biggest and most discussed questions of our day continue to be the spiritual ones. What is the nature of God and can we continue to believe? What does it mean to be human? What do I do with these spiritual questions that continually come to mind? Those are not the add on things we debate in this university, but the core issues we discuss.

Some would say that the greatest concerns this university faces are finances and enrollment. Those are critical issues. They could spell the end to this or any school. Yet if we set ourselves to the task of saying we are on a quest to integrate faith and learning, to do it within a high quality academic environment and within a strong Christian community, that we are owned by and exist for the fellowship of Churches of Christ, I believe that there are people who believe in that dream, who will join us at our side, who will write the checks, send their children, and pray to the God of heaven that OVU must succeed in its dream.

All Christian schools debate the intersection of Athens & Jerusalem. How do we maintain integrity with our chosen discipline in Athens, keep our professional memberships, accurately reflect the academic requirements of the land and yet be people of faith in our Jerusalem, honor our religious heritage, and worship God? Why is it that we are here? What makes us distinctive? What is our vision?

Let me propose the following as the immediate vision for this university. It need not be our vision forever, but it is one we can achieve, it is one we must achieve, it is one that we are well on the road to achieving.

Our vision is to do integration of faith and learning better than anybody else. We all know some of the schools who do it so well. Let’s do it better than they do. Let’s do it better than Calvin College. Let’s do it better than Wheaton and Abilene. Let’s excel beyond Baylor and Valparaiso. Let’s be the best school in the nation that integrates faith and learning.

We may not be big, we as faculty and staff may not have gone to what world considers best schools, we may not have best campus, we may not have most majors, we may not draw the top SAT scholars, but we can be a fully integrated Christian university better than anybody else.

All universities deal with words. This university deals with the 1,010,649 words in the English language. But we deal with them based on the Word become flesh. Hydrogen and Oxygen make water here just as they do at Marshall, but here we begin with the realization that all water is made by God. Botany and Zoology are part of our curriculum, but here we know that plants came on Tuesday and animals on Friday. There was a plaque outside the building that housed the Theology and Philosophy departments at the school where I took my doctorate. The inscription debated, “Is philosophy the mother of theology or is theology the mother of philosophy?” At that school philosophy was on the second floor and theology on the first floor. At OVU we don’t need a DNA test to determine maternity.

Transforming lives in an academic community that integrates higher learning with biblical faith and service to God and humanity is our mission. If we excel in staying on task, several things will happen.

First, students will be transformed. God will do his work. Incorporate faith and service into higher learning and God will add the increase. It works. Most of us can tell stories of our own personal transformation. We can regal each other with tales of former students who came in with a chip on their shoulder and left with Christ in their hearts. They arrived to cause trouble and they left to change the world. God will do his work.

Second, if we stay on task, people will notice. We will attract more students. People of means will want to partner with this institution. A fully integrated Christian university is like a magnet. It pulls in. It attracts. After all it’s our mission that bonds us to our constituency. Our Board of Trustees, our President’s club, our donors throughout the nation do not align themselves with us because we have the best buildings or the highest degrees, but because we are about transforming lives through the integration of faith and learning. Do it well. Do it better than you’ve ever done before. Let’s be the best school anywhere doing it. As the word spreads, so will the support.

Third, if we maintain our focus, if we take every opportunity in every single class, in each conversation with every student to fully connect faith and learning, we, too, will be transformed. Jim Collins in his book, Good to Great says the first task in building a great institution is to get the right people on the bus and make sure they are on the right seat in the bus. I believe we have the right people on the OVU bus. I’m glad you are here. I think we have the right people in the right seats. I’m delighted you do what you do. Once you have the right people on the bus and have them in the right seats, then the bus can move on to its destination. When we arrive there, and that arrival comes in stages as we witness this transformed coed and then this changed ball player and then this converted freshman, when we see that happen, we are filled with satisfaction, fulfillment and a sense of accomplishment.

Why is it so easy to misplace the mission of the university? Maybe it’s not so much misplaced but misappropriated. Meeting the demands of consumerist society and students raised in that environment constantly push us away from the road on which we were meant to travel.

The road we follow is the one less travelled. It is not the four lane super highway with roadside stops, and big green directional signs. The road we travel is often overgrown from lack of use, occasionally washed out from financial landsides, and sometimes filled with potholes from attacks made by the dominate culture.

Often our partners make demands on us that push us off our narrow dirt road. Driving the university down the big four lane makes better press, attracts more attention, seems more relevant and contemporary. Why not aim to have our school on American Idol program in order to enjoy a moment of nationwide attention? Why support a university that takes the back road through the rocky terrain when the bulldozers of modernism and the work crews of post modernism have cleared the way on the freeway.

We do well to remind ourselves of the pointed observation of Jesus that the broad roads continually beckon, fill with happy travellers, and offer fewer obstacles on the way. Most GPS systems don’t even have the narrow road, if one should happen to find it, it takes a steady hand to keep on course, and he says we encounter few fellow travelers.

Our goal is not to be effective. We will be effective. Our goal is to be faithful. Our mission is not to train young people to be qualified for the best jobs in the land. We will train young people for the highest level jobs. Our goal is to prepare their lives for eternity. This is not a monastery where students come to escape life. This is a launch pad from which students rocket out to change lives. This is not a market place where all goods are available for the lowest cost. This place is a store that offers only the genuine article. We have no $10 rolodexes and no $1 illegally copied DVDs. OVU is the real thing.

I want to spread the news about a hidden treasure I’ve found on this hilltop in the Ohio Valley. For me, there’s no better time to be alive and no better place to be than OVU.

The task before us is great. Our time is short. We must approach it with commitment. We must remain humble. We must trust God. We must single-mindedly and relentlessly drive toward the goals which we have set under the guidance of Almighty God.

The students are about to arrive. They bring with them all sorts of issues and concerns. I say bring them on to OVU. They are about to be transformed.