Beth Bowers, D.Min.
Rochester University
Instructor of Theology and Ministry
INTRODUCTION
Rochester University is a relative late-comer within institutes of higher learning associated with the Church of Christ branch of the Stone-Campbell movement. Positioned well outside of the southern Bible-belt, the locus of Church of Christ wealth both in people and dollars, southeast Michigan attracted thousands of southern Church of Christ members in the era following the second World War as the automobile industry exploded. In these decades, southeast Michigan housed the “largest concentration of Churches of Christ in the northern United States.” This climate fostered desire for a local, liberal arts, Church of Christ college, and in 1959, years of dreaming, planning, and grass roots fundraising came to fruition in North Central Christian College, housed in the rural community of Rochester Hills on the outskirts of Detroit. The documented “aims of the college” stated that North Central Christian College would aspire to “[lead] its students toward high academic achievements while at the same time dedicating [themselves] to the teaching of Christian principles and the maintaining of a total environment that is Christian.”
FOUNDING
In the months before its opening in the fall of 1959, board members introduced Otis Gatewood as the college’s first president and E. Lucien Palmer as the first dean. Both Gatewood and Palmer, in addition to faculty members like Maurice Hall, led the college from their own particular backgrounds in global missions, as well as from their religious convictions formed in the Church of Christ. Not only did North Central Christian College emphasize a global missionary posture as it prepared students to engage their sense of calling in the world, they understood themselves as an outpost of the kingdom of God, particularly an outpost of Churches of Christ. In 1965 they added language in their “aims of the college” stating that the student body was formed primarily from Churches of Christ, but noting “the student body is not limited to this constituency.” The college also distinguished itself as non-segregationist from its inception, consistent with its own cultural context in the North, but in contrast to its southern affiliated schools and southern Churches of Christ. Archivist and institutional historian, Larry Stewart suggests, “[The early leaders’] strong emphasis on missions fostered an open attitude toward diverse cultures and helped define the character of the institution.”
The missions emphasis among the leadership at North Central Christian College patterned the larger movement in Churches of Christ following World War II. The number of foreign missionaries supported by Churches of Christ grew from 46 to 724 in the 20 years after the end of the war, and Otis Gatewood was instrumental in that combined effort which mirrored the astronomical growth of congregations in the US. Understanding Church of Christ culture during the 1950s and 1960s, as well as deep-seeded historical postures, is crucial. James Maverick Cook reminds us that “religion was an integral part of the nineteenth-century march-of-human-progress via Western culture. Ideas of progress, science, Americanism, Enlightenment rationality, and Christianity were…intertwined.” The world wars of the early twentieth century halted our collective trust in the march of progress, but Churches of Christ were birthed in the climate of reason and progress. That, combined with a desire to restore embedded into their DNA, a conviction that they possessed the key to the one true church, and controversy about missionary societies a concern of the past, cultivated the post-war climate ripe for renewed missionary effort. Alan Henderson suggests the rapid expansion of missions in Churches of Christ resulted precisely from leadership in its institutes of higher learning, in addition to the “explosive growth” of churches in general and the cultural climate of “robust optimism.”
Additionally, a self-proclaimed “pioneer spirit” defined North Central Christian College’s foundational years. Otis Gatewood wrote, “The young people who enter North Central this fall will truly be pioneers in their own right. They will be blazing a trail that thousands of other youth will follow.” Gatewood was a trailblazer in his own right. He spent the first half of his career as a missionary alongside his wife, Alma, in Western Europe. They were the first American missionaries to work in Germany after WWII, focusing a majority of their energy toward humanitarian relief efforts. The Gatewoods returned to the US in 1957 and in 1958 accepted the call to lead this newborn college in the North. “Even the college’s own seal featured an open Bible pointing to a globe and commanding students to ‘Go Ye.’” In its own early publications, emphasis on the combined 100 years missionary experience among faculty drew the attention of prospective students and constituents. A missionary ethos permeated the soil of North Central Christian College, which in 1961 became Michigan Christian Junior College.
When Otis Gatewood finished his tenure as president in 1964, E. Lucien Palmer filled the role. Palmer, like Gatewood before him, had missionary roots. His emphasis, however, was the expansion of Christian education, particularly in Nigeria, and he was instrumental in establishing Bible colleges. When he came to North Central Christian College, alongside the other founders, his emphasis was on crafting solid academic, systemic, and social foundations. His energy permeated the institution and set it up for a season of hard-earned growth, even as Churches of Christ were on the brink of stagnation.
GROWTH TO FRAGILE STABILITY
Don Gardner was inaugurated president of Michigan Christian Junior College in 1971 when Lucien Palmer assumed a new position as chancellor. Gardner’s presidency was marked by growth. He expanded a team of administers, staff, and faculty while tightly controlling costs. The 1970s were a time of expansion and excitement on campus as student populations flourished, activities and programs grew, debt was reduced, giving accelerated, and steps were made to develop the college’s first four-year degree and drop “Junior” from the name. Like Gatewood and Palmer before him, Gardner had some background in missions, and though his primary experience was in education and preaching, a missions culture still infused the campus of Michigan Christian College. Students participated in aggressive door-knocking campaigns through the student organization Mission Emphasis during these years in partnership with local Churches of Christ.
In 1978, Walter Gilfilen assumed the presidency of Michigan Christian College. His term only lasted two years, but during that time he managed to bolster the college’s endowment and ushered in the first four-year degree. Milton Fletcher became the fourth president of Michigan Christian College in 1980, and in contrast to Gardner, Fletcher worked tirelessly to foster a climate of stability and consistency. His financial stewardship “preserved the college when other private two-year institutions failed.” Fletcher made it a practice to visit area Churches of Christ on weekends, building and nurturing relationships. The missions focus shifted a few degrees in the 1980s as the college began organizing programs in service to local churches. A newly formed church relations office provided training, workshops, and seminars, and during that decade, the college hosted over 60 events in local congregations in addition to bolstering its lectureship programs. This emphasis served to identify Michigan Christian College as a key resource for area Churches of Christ in southeastern Michigan. According to Hughes, by the 1970s Churches of Christ essentially fell into three broad traditions:
…a mainstream that embraced some diversity but that sought, by and large, to preserve the dominant vision of the 1950s; a group of progressives who challenged that vision; and a group of conservatives who, in reaction to both the progressives and the relativizing tendencies of the 1960s, absolutized the historic vision of Churches of Christ, claimed to understand absolute truth absolutely, and maintained that Churches of Christ were not ‘Christians only’ but the ‘only Christians.’
Particularly situated outside of the Bible belt, Michigan Christian College’s constituency consisted of every sector of this three-pronged reality, but on a much smaller scale than her affiliated institutions in the South. Thus, while the larger colleges tended to lean toward one of the prongs more heavily than the others, Michigan Christian College had no choice but to skirt the borders of all three.
Additionally, the numbers of congregations and people within those congregations that formed the student pool was simply smaller than other sister schools. Thus, when Churches of Christ experienced minimal growth in the 1970s, this trajectory affected Michigan Christian more rapidly than her affiliated schools. As is true for practically every decade in her history, Michigan Christian College sat on a precipice of growth and potential but precariously close to the edge. In 1973, the college added language to their “aims of the college.” Specifically, they state:
The college is aware of extremes facing an institution so oriented [as Jesus centered, Bible focused]. First, that religious attitudes may be so inflexible and rigid that students are merely catechized, in which case the purpose of a liberal arts college is defeated. Second, that the religious philosophy of the college may be so nebulous and ill-defined that the college is not distinctively Christian. The task of Michigan Christian College requires it to steer a course between these two extremes.
This addition seems to reflect the self-knowledge that attentiveness to identity within the broader Church of Christ movement was on the horizon, and though this attention to identity would not be fully articulated by the college for almost another two decades, the mid-1980s produced the college’s first mission statement: “Michigan Christian College is a Christian institution of higher education whose mission is to help students develop academically, socially, and spiritually in order to achieve their potential, to possess a meaningful faith, and to serve God and others in their occupations, family, church, and community.”
CHANGE OR DIE
When Fletcher retired in 1991, Michigan Christian College called Ken Johnson to the presidency. Like Don Gardner before him, Johnson preached growth. Unique to Johnson’s presidency, however, was an emphasis on change. Ken Johnson was acutely aware of the religious climate in Churches of Christ, and in many ways he was troubleshooting a pattern of decline two decades before his counterparts in larger Church of Christ affiliated colleges. Hughes notes that the 1970s brought swift decline in mainline protestant churches while conservative evangelical churches began growing; at the same time growth rates in Churches of Christ stagnated. The response of congregations, according to Hughes, typically fell into one of three categories: promoting the Church of Christ as relevant in sharing the concerns of other (growing) conservative churches (e.g. family values and/or soft nationalism); doubling down on sectarianism (e.g. the Boston/Crossroads movement on the extreme end); or revisiting the theological posture of Churches of Christ and asking deeper questions of identity (e.g. a renewed vision of grace and an updated hermeneutical posture). These realities played out in congregations in the 1980s and 1990s all over the United States, but it happened more noticeably in the North where there were fewer congregations to begin with, and Michigan Christian College felt the effects of a consistently shrinking student pool as Churches of Christ began differentiating themselves theologically from each other and from their perceptions of the college. Johnson made several significant moves in light of this religious climate.
First, he spearheaded a name change, and in 1997, Michigan Christian College became Rochester College. Overall, this change was met openhandedly as the college’s constituents embraced the reasoning behind the change: the perception in the greater community (and even among churches) that Michigan Christian College was a preacher training school. There were, of course, some vocal opponents who suggested the name change was an identity concession: the college was abandoning its Christian identity. The truth, rather, was that Rochester College and its leaders were attempting to better articulate its Christian identity. Johnson wrestled with the contexts and realities shaping and informing the college’s present, and he was convinced that its future was in danger if the college failed to articulate its identity and posture. Thus, he wrote and presented on several occasions during the late 1990s and challenged the college’s board, constituencies, and the broader Church of Christ college community to join him in asking some hard questions.
In a 1997 board of trustees meeting, the board discussed the selection of lectureship speakers, prompted by an invitation and subsequent un-invitation of a particular speaker following pressure from a small but vocal group of area fundamentalist preachers. In response, Johnson said the following:
I am strongly opposed to the aggressive but failing movement on the right among Churches of Christ to take control of and mandate a creed for our fellowship. And I am just as concerned about the left who would manage our fellowship into the mixing bowl of unparticular doctrine that we see among conservative evangelicals. However, we must serve all three camps if we want what is best for Michigan Christian College…If we skew to the left, the danger is that we will fade away into lack of identity alongside other conservative religious evangelical groups and we won’t be distinctive about who we are. We do not want death on the right and we do not want to disappear into the independent evangelical church movement.
Johnson re-narrates the broad categories noted by Hughes, anecdotally defining a left, right, and (unstated) middle ground posture found in Churches of Christ. Hughes notes that, “To a great extent, Churches of Christ were moving squarely into the orbit of American evangelical Christianity.” This orbit, defined by relationality rather than “patternistic primitivism,” carried with it a new set of evangelical baggage which would clutter the closet in the years to come.
Johnson’s initial, private, expression of concern shared with the college’s board turned into a public narration, somewhat evolved, by December of 1998. In his position paper titled, Rochester College, Churches of Christ, and Nondenominational Christianity, Johnson again articulated the desire of the college to serve the spectrum of Churches of Christ and argued that a commitment to non-denominational Christianity must serve as a guiding principle. Johnson describes the narrow, public image of Churches of Christ: “they insist they are the only ones going to heaven” as differentiated from the founding Restoration axiom, “Christians only, but not the only Christians,” and states that “by 1958, when Rochester College was founded, this narrow view was dominant among acapella Churches of Christ. In recent years many voices within Churches of Christ have worked to eliminate the narrow view, but changing the public image will be difficult as long as a vocal and combative group perpetuate the view.”
Johnson was insistent that in order for Rochester College to survive and even grow, it must break free from some of its own foundational assumptions and dig deeper into the core of what it means to be “Christians only, but not the only Christians.” Johnson was clear that he was not interested in leading the college to what he calls a theological liberalism (in the true sense), but that he was also not willing to concede control to a traditionalist position. Rather, he aimed to articulate a middle of the road posture knowing, “That range, however defined and whether expressed by policy or practice, will be unsuitably broad for some friends of the college and unsuitably narrow for others. For that reason the college will always be under pressure to modify its policy and/or practice…It must defend the freedom of open dialogue…An appropriate measure of openness creates a marvelous environment where it is safe to hold questioned beliefs, safe to question held beliefs, and safe for everyone to grow.” This posture opened the door for a intentionally more religiously diverse student population, and it also incited several area Churches of Christ to formally withdraw their support of Rochester College.
Meanwhile, the climate on campus in the late 1990s and early 2000s largely mirrored a “progressive” Church of Christ culture, which mirrored a larger evangelical church culture. Ken Johnson seemed to sense this shift happening in real time, when at a college dean’s conference hosted for Church of Christ colleges in 1999 he noted that should the college “retain significant numbers of enrollees from other religious groups, it will change the spiritual climate on a college campus,” and that the faithful response of the college ought to be to “lead a changing spiritual dynamic on our campuses…with the hope of being in charge of our formal campus religious culture and being the primary shapers of the informal campus religious culture.” He ended that presentation by noting that many in the room could “leave these concerns to a subsequent administration. However, our situation at Rochester College has forced us to address these issues in the 1990s.” The situation being, continue the dying process or implement change. Students, as in decades past, embraced the desire to participate in missions, but in the late 1990s and early 2000s the emphasis focused attention on local service projects rather than evangelistic efforts aimed at conversion. In 1999, the college changed its mission statement to reflect a broader and simplified posture: “The mission of Rochester College is to engage students in a vigorous liberal arts education within a Christian community for a life of study and service.”
OPEN HANDS
The early 2000s brought another change in leadership to Rochester College, and in 2004, Michael Westerfield, the college’s vice president of academic affairs, became the president after serving in that capacity on an interim basis for several months after Johnson’s departure. Westerfield’s presidency focused on the continuing development of academic programs, including the first graduate program in religion, but in 2008 he returned to a full-time teaching role as the college entered the most financially precarious season of its 50-year life. Faced with a nationwide financial crisis alongside its own multifaceted financial crisis, the board asked graduate professor Rubel Shelly, also widely known in Churches of Christ nationwide, to assume the role of president. Shelly agreed, sensing the urgency, but committing to five years knowing that his long-term calling was not in college administration. Nevertheless, Shelly led the college through the hardest years of its history. In many ways, appointing Rubel Shelly as president severed any floundering ties with the ultra-traditional sects of Churches of Christ, for Shelly’s reputation in Church of Christ circles placed him in the “progressive” category. At best these groups were suspicious, and at worst, Shelly, and by association Rochester College, was categorized as heretical.
Alongside navigating floundering budgets, limited resources, and constant pressure, Shelly reflects, “The long term hope was to expand the footprint of the college into the larger community and to justify its existence to people who knew little to nothing about it…Connections were established that enlarged the school’s visibility as a four-year liberal arts college with clear Christian commitments.” As such, emphasis in recruiting shifted hyper-locally, but at the same time more broadly into high schools, focusing attention on sports teams, theater programs and the like, and no longer dependent solely on churches. The survival of the institution rested on this commitment to expanding the college’s footprint more broadly. In 2010, the college once again changed its mission statement: “Rochester College cultivates academic excellence, principled character, servant leadership, and global awareness through a rigorous educational experience that integrates liberal arts and professional studies within an inclusive Christian heritage.” Perhaps the most significant word in this new articulation of mission and purpose was “inclusive.”
At the same time, a theological movement was gaining traction, particularly in the academy, and certain theologians and practitioners in Churches of Christ found themselves articulating this movement broadly known as the missional church. Gailyn Van Rheenen, professor of missiology at Abilene Christian University, articulated the contrast between the missional church movement and the “church growth” movement which dominated so-called progressive Churches of Christ mirroring the larger evangelical culture of the 1980s and 1990s. The church growth movement, like many iterations of mission strategy (both domestic and foreign) before it, utilized an anthropocentric approach, a “what can we do for God?” mindset which inevitably focused on questions of programming, strategy, and effort while missing the foundational questions of God and what God is up to in the world. A missional approach, on the other hand, did exactly that: it shifted the focus to God, what God is doing in the world, and how we as human communities might participate in the mission that is, first, God’s.
In some ways, Johnson’s desire to shift Rochester College’s identity outward reflected aspects of missional postures, though he did not have the language to convey this. But even more importantly, hiring choices he made, such as bringing in Sara and John Barton, former missionaries in Uganda (with a non-traditional, missional posture), to teach (John) and lead campus ministry (Sara), reflected Rochester College’s long-standing missionary ethos while challenging its traditional assumptions and postures. Additionally, the choice Mike Westerfield made to hire Rubel Shelly reflected the openness that Johnson worked so hard to effect during his presidency, and Shelly himself brought a missional posture to Rochester College, reflected both in his teaching and leadership. In his own words:
I use the term [missional] to mean the intentional aim to connect with persons and cultures for the sake of influencing them with the acceptance, love, and nurture distinctive to the gospel of Christ. I use it principally for the sake of distinguishing a dynamic mindset and lifestyle from the corporate, institutional, and static model of faith that has come to dominate what is commonly referred to as Christendom. Missional Christians, churches, and parachurch entities (e.g., Christian colleges) function in their various environments to bring God’s kingdom reign to reality by connecting the gospel’s metanarrative to the life narratives of persons, families, institutions, and cultures in those settings. They cross cultural lines, break down barriers, introduce salt and light, model and share God’s shalom, and otherwise live into their Christian confessions for the sake of introducing people to Jesus.
When Shelly became president, Mark Love was hired to direct the graduate program, and his experience and expertise in missional theology and practice shifted the focus of that program to missional leadership. Several years later, Mark Love hired Naomi Walters as a professor of ministry, and within three years, she was named chair of the department and the undergraduate theological program evolved to reflect a particular missional posture.
Holding to his 5-year commitment, Shelly resigned the presidency and ushered in John Tyson in 2013. Tyson served the campus for two years as finances continued to stabilize, and in 2016, long tenured professor and provost, Brian Stogner, became the tenth president of Rochester College, which became Rochester University in 2019. The climate on campus continued shifting as recruiting brought in higher percentages of students from diverse religious backgrounds, and the spiritual culture on campus reflected those changing realities. From the early 1990s, campus ministry played a significant role in student life, and campus ministers were hired to nurture spiritual formation on campus. This office reflected the passion and training of its leaders, and the emphases and practices implemented during these different seasons both mirrored changing Church of Christ culture and contributed to the changing spiritual climate on campus.
The shift away from exclusive sectarianism toward a general evangelicalism, the trend that began as early as the 1970s, but did not become fully realized until the late 1990s in large swaths of Churches of Christ, served to exacerbate a “sheep shifting” culture. But rather than people moving from one Church of Christ to another (particularly in the North), they felt a new freedom to explore any non-denominational church, which in the 1990s and 2000s were experiencing explosive growth. Additionally, many Churches of Christ, now feeling the pressure to adopt the “church growth” patterns popular in the larger non-denominational world rather than the time-intensive identity work necessary for missional engagement, became attractional, program-oriented bodies, mostly un-distinctive from other non-denominational churches. Churches of Christ (from the most traditional to the most progressive within the movement) have, in general, continued their pattern of decline, as have all Protestant denominations and community churches in the United States. The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 only served to accelerate this pattern. The future is open, and only time will tell what it holds for Churches of Christ.
CONCLUSION
Rochester University finds itself on a precipice as we, once again, work to articulate our particular identity. The last 25 years have clearly differentiated the university from its exclusivist sectarian roots. In Fall 2022, only 6.2% of the student population came from Churches of Christ. Rochester University has become ecumenical. In 2019, the college adopted its current mission statement: “Rochester University prepares students for professional and personal success as they serve in God’s world.” Once again, this statement expands the university’s shared imagination, shifting the focus toward God and what God is up to, broadly, in the world. In the spring of 2022, Dr. Stogner shared the following with the faculty and staff at opening meetings:
Our heritage (the heritage of the Church of Christ) is in the Stone-Campbell Movement, which had its beginnings on the United States frontier in the early 19th century. This movement conceptualized and proclaimed an arguably noble attempt to accomplish both unity and restoration of the church. Though I believe all reasonable people would agree that neither of those ideals has been realized, the best elements of that heritage still provide a helpful set of guiding principles for us today. One of those key principles is the theologically and socially profound notion of the Lord’s Supper as an open table. Because Jesus is the host, his hospitality is open to all who are willing to come. Consistent with that heritage principle, Rochester University will strive to exemplify the spirit of the open table. RU exists to provide “a rigorous and holistic education” that prepares students for personal and professional success as they serve and participate in God’s mission in the world. Such an objective entails with it (among other things) a relentless pursuit of truth (which makes the epistemic presumption that such a thing as truth both exists and is discoverable,) and devotion to practices of discernment that engage, involve, and respect the voices and perspectives of the entire community. So, at RU, anyone of any stripe who is willing to sit at this metaphorical table with us, will be extended the hospitality and welcome of the Table of the Lord, as together we pursue truth, a rigorous and holistic education, and participation in God’s mission in the world.
Brian Stogner’s “open table” posture is the beginning of a new articulation of what God is up to in this small campus in the North. As Rochester University pursues articulation of her particular identity and sense of calling in God’s world, we carry with us gratitude for those who have come before us, faithfully navigating their contexts and cultures, and we move forward with open-handedness trusting that the Spirit moves ahead of us, providing courage and hope for the future.
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