Ouachita Stories

With Convocation, we bring together new and returning students with faculty and staff to formally begin the academic year.

Once a week, we pause campus life for Chapel. We come together to sing, to pray, to hear scripture, and to be encouraged. Together. Chapel is a priority at Ouachita. It’s a priority for me. I rarely miss it – I like being with you during this time.

Ouachita was “born” in September 1886. Next Monday, we’ll celebrate our 138^th birthday. During the lunch hour, I’ll be in the Caf giving away special birthday treats.

Recently, I’ve been thinking about why Ouachita has sustained being a Christ-centered learning community for 138 years. It’s remarkable when we consider there are fewer than 200 distinctly Christian universities like Ouachita in the country.

The people of Ouachita are doing something that’s difficult and different. So why have we been able to do this for so long? And how do we keep it going?

Scripture tells us every good gift comes from the Lord, so the short answer is the grace of God. What is the role of students, faculty, and staff in sustaining and strengthening what makes Ouachita, Ouachita?

While there are several good answers, this morning I want to suggest one. It begins with a story.

Thirty years ago, in 1994, life appeared to be great for Lisa and me. We owned our first home, had three young children, lived close to grandparents, were involved in our church, and completed graduate school. I served as a Christian college vice president.

Yet, we were unsettled. We sensed a strong calling from the Lord to serve as international missionaries.

After college, we spent a year in China, which had just opened to foreigners. That experience expanded our world and gripped our hearts. In 1994, we said, “Lord, here we are. Send us to a difficult and unreached place in the world to help people and to share the good news of Jesus Christ.”

We applied to be career missionaries with the Southern Baptist International Mission Board, the organization that had sent us to China. With our experience, credentials, and commitment, we were confident our application would be accepted.

I remember the day it was denied for an unexpected health reason. We were devastated.

We so strongly sensed this calling, though, that we didn’t give up. Within a few months, we found a mission agency based in Pasadena, Calif., that needed people with experience in higher education and interest in missions.

Since we couldn’t go to another country, we would help mobilize and prepare people who could. However, there was one catch: We had to raise our own financial support. Instead of a steady paycheck from a university, we would depend on supporters to send contributions monthly to fund our salary. This concept was new to us and our family and friends, but they quickly rallied to support us.

In January 1995, I resigned from my job. We sold our home and moved 1,500 miles from our families. I remember the day we drove away with three young children and with great excitement and expectations about our faith adventure.

I also remember the day we arrived in Pasadena – a place where you can be in the mountains or on the beach within an hour. The mission agency’s small campus was surrounded by houses for staff to rent, and we were eager to see our new home after three days in a car with three children in car seats.

When we opened the front door, the house wasn’t ready and we couldn’t move in. In that moment, we began doubting our decision. Not because the home wasn’t ready; they were improving it, and we had arrived early.

Rather, I began questioning our decision-making, commitment, and future: leaving job, home, and family, wondering if we had misinterpreted the Lord’s leading. It was a bad day and a low point in life.

Let me pause the story. This summer, in a scrapbook Lisa is making for our children and grandchildren, I found the card we used to enlist prayer and financial support 30 years ago. Next to the card, Lisa had written, “We took a big risk here – Dad quit his job and we raised our financial support…we left in 1995. What a great, great season of life Pasadena was.”

What changed during this three-year experience that saw us go from being devasted we couldn’t serve overseas to the excitement of moving to Pasadena, from starting with a “bad” first day with doubts to a “great, great season of life?”

In Pasadena, we discovered a community of like-minded people unlike any we’d known before. They were sincere in wanting to follow Jesus. In many cases, they too had wanted to serve overseas but couldn’t. So, like us, they were committed to helping mobilize and prepare people who could go places where Jesus was not known.

We were all totally dependent on supporters for our salaries, so we sensed a deep obligation to be responsible and accountable for our lives. We all lived far from family, so we helped one another as if we were family members.

We also learned something about the homes donors had gifted for staff to rent at below-market rates.

The agency provided some upkeep for the homes, but they also expected us to care for them. While we were not owners,  there was a culture that expected us to be more than renters. We were to be like stewards in the way the Bible describes that role. There was an understanding that each family, when they had finished their time of service, would leave their home better than they found it.

We enjoyed our home, we improved it for our benefit, and we left it better for those who followed us. This mindset of stewardship – of leaving it better than we found it – permeated everything we did at the agency.

To complete the story, three years after we started our journey to Pasadena, the International Mission Board – which had denied our application – invited us to work at their headquarters in a role that would be transformative in my life.

With the benefit of time, I can see and testify how God redeemed devastation, disappointment, and doubts for our good.

Now, back to the original questions: Beyond the grace of God, why has Ouachita been able to sustain and strengthen itself for 138 years? And what is the role of students, faculty, and staff in keeping Ouachita, Ouachita?

I want to suggest we can draw some insight from the story I’ve shared.

Over the years, Ouachita has drawn like-minded people who want to be part of a Christ-centered learning community, who desire to study, teach, and work in a university focused on intellectual and spiritual growth.

It has required people to take responsibility for their lives. It’s been defined by faculty and staff investing their lives in students and in one another. Thank you, faculty and staff.

It’s also been defined by students serving, helping, and leading each other. For example, most of the seniors this year started at Ouachita in Fall 2021 as members of our largest freshman class in history. They helped refresh campus traditions that had been paused by the pandemic, made the most of their experiences, and sought to make Ouachita better. Thank you, seniors.

We’re a community that celebrates when members of our campus succeed. We stand with them in difficult moments, and we persist when problems arise. These qualities and more that have attracted each of us here – the qualities that make Ouachita, Ouachita – didn’t just happen. Rather, they were created and sustained over time by those who came before you and me.

For 138 years, each group of Ouachita students, faculty, and staff has inherited something special from those who preceded them, stewarded it well on their watch, and left it better for those who followed: a community where we can grow intellectually and spiritually with one another.

Convocation marks the formal beginning of a new year, and it’s an invitation for each of us to consider how we’ll approach the year. Students, faculty, and staff, let’s make the most of this year for your benefit.

Let’s leave Ouachita better than we found it for the benefit of those who follow us.

I believe this is our heritage. This is our hope. And in all things, may we be God-honoring.

By Dr. Ben Sells, Ouachita president

 

 

 

Lead photo by Emma Mayes

• Tags:
• Chapel
• President