The Making of a Distinctive Church College: The Fresno Pacific Model of Becoming 1960-2000

By Dalton Reimer

The Making of a Distinctive Church College is a collection of essays that reveal the heart and soul of an institution of higher education in the making. The author, Dalton Reimer, has been a major contributor to this making as a participant-observer from its beginning in 1960 as a church-related liberal arts college, now university. Toward the beginning he contributed to the formation of The Fresno Pacific Idea, which has been the unique, central guide in the development of the institution. The story of the heart and soul of this making is told, beginning with a small faculty and administrative group of mostly recent college and university graduates during the challenging 1960s.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9781664125438

Dalton Reimer

Dalton Reimer is a peace educator in the mode of the traditional storyteller. Professionally, he is professor emeritus, former academic dean, and cofounder of the Center for Peacemaking and Conflict Studies at Fresno (California) Pacific University. As an extension of his university involvements, he has retold selected stories of this work with commentary in educational and public settings on ¬five different continents. Using the medium of stories already embraced by a significant portion of the world's population, he has challenged his hearers with new insights and practical applications as he has examined these stories through the lens of conflict and peacemaking. Reimer is also the co-editor of a reader in conflict and peacemaking published in St. Petersburg (Russia) in the Russian language as well as an author of The Making of a Distinctive Church College: The Fresno Pacific Model of Becoming 1960-2000.

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Copyright © 2020 by Dalton Reimer.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Scripture quotations marked NRSV are taken from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, Copyright © 1989, by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Website

Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright 1996, 2004. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. [Biblica]

Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

Rev. date: 08/20/2020

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CONTENTS

Preface

Acknowledgments

PART I   CREATION

Chapter 1   The Church College in God’s Playhouse

Chapter 2   The Fresno Pacific Idea

PART II   SEEDLINGS

Chapter 3   People and Programs: The Idea in Practice

Chapter 4   Pilgrims All

Chapter 5   A Pedagogical Triad

Chapter 6   Being Prophetic

PART III   RESOURCING

Chapter 7   Finances in the Making

PART IV   WINNOWING

Chapter 8   The Yin and Yang of Church and School

Conclusion

Appendix

Fresno Pacific College Idea (Original Version of 1966)

Fresno Pacific Idea (Third Revised Version of 1995)

Endnotes

Dedication

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To

all those who, over the years, have joined hands

in making Fresno Pacific the institution it has become

PREFACE

Rooted in a church, centered in an idea. That, in brief, is Fresno Pacific University.

However rooted, distinctive institutions are centered. The authors of Creating Distinctiveness: Lessons from Uncommon Colleges and Universities (1992), observe, Distinctive colleges and universities share certain characteristics: a unifying theme or vision of what education should be, the expression of this theme or vision in all or most institutional activities, and the striving for excellence to achieve their purpose.

In a mid-twentieth-century critique, however, Warren Bryan Martin, distinguished American educational leader of the time, noted, There are not many colleges in America, and almost no state universities, characterized by values so distinctive as to really shape the place. Fresno Pacific, nevertheless, has attempted to be such a place.

But has it succeeded? Early external testimony suggested that to begin with, at least, it had. An early regional accreditation team (1973) bore witness. Chaired by John Cantelon, then vice president of undergraduate studies at the University of Southern California, the team noted that the ideals of the Mennonite Brethren, [the sponsoring church], are alive and well at Pacific. Moreover, they concluded, The Pacific Ideal is something of unique value which should be preserved and nourished in the American educational scene.

As one person in the story of Fresno Pacific, I, too, was rooted in the founding and sponsoring church while also contributing to the centered idea and its realization. I joined the faculty in 1960, the year the institution was reborn as Pacific College. When I came, Pacific was transitioning from a Bible institute, established in 1944, to a church-related, liberal arts junior college. By 1965, it had become a fully accredited senior liberal arts college and, by 1975, a graduate level institution. Enrollment has grown from twenty-eight students in 1944 to more than four thousand today.

Since 1960, I have had the unique privilege of being a participant observer of this development, serving the institution in various faculty and administrative roles until retiring from full-time involvement in 2002 but continuing part-time teaching until 2014. While fresh out of graduate school in 1960 as a young twenty-three-year-old faculty member in a fledgling institution, I could not have imagined that Pacific would become what it is today or that I would still be a part of it, now as professor emeritus. I came, in part, to fulfill my draft obligation as a conscientious objector inasmuch as the institution had been qualified as a site where the required service could be rendered. I also came, in part, out of loyalty to the sponsoring church in which I had grown up. Furthermore, my uncle had just been appointed as president and was beginning to recruit a new faculty appropriate for a liberal arts college. I seemed to be a likely candidate, given that I was completing my master’s degree at the time.

Pacific was founded by the Pacific District of a small church denomination called Mennonite Brethren. During the latter years of the nineteenth century, German-speaking Mennonites emigrated from South Russia, now Ukraine, to escape the czar’s efforts at Russification of minority communities in the country, including abrogation of previously guaranteed special rights. These immigrants first settled in the Midwest of the United States. Some, however, soon found their way to the West. A strong concentration, though still relatively small, developed in central California.

Though primarily farmers, these immigrants strongly valued education. In 1908, they established Tabor College in central Kansas, which continues as a liberal arts college until today. Those moving west, however, wanted their own school. This led, in 1944, to the establishment of Pacific Bible Institute in Fresno, the primary urban community in California’s Central Valley, where many had settled. Pacific College, Fresno Pacific College, and finally, Fresno Pacific University followed.

This work is not a formal history. Rather, it is a collection of my writings over the years that reveal the heart and soul of the institution as it has developed. Given the nature of such a collection, inevitable repetitions occur, particularly in reference to examples and details. Where repeated, they are generally illustrative of a new theme. Together, they provide a picture of the formative years of a distinctive church-related institution of higher education in California’s Great Central Valley.

Inasmuch as this work is a collection of what I have written over time, chapters need not be read in sequence, depending on the reader’s interest. The two chapters in Part I, however, provide a useful, beginning orientation.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The cover graphic was inspired by Michael Novak, who, in Ascent of the Mountain, Flight of the Dove (1971, 1978), envisioned religious studies as akin to the hard work of climbing a mountain coupled with unplanned and surprising transformative moments symbolized by the appearance of the dove. So it is also in the development of an institution. The hard work of growing an institution is matched by surprising, unanticipated moments in which new possibilities suddenly present themselves, gifts of the dove.

Chapter 1 was originally published in The Christian Leader (August 28, 1979), the national periodical of Fresno Pacific’s sponsoring denomination. The article was a shorter version of a prior 1978 Fresno Pacific College Hour (chapel) address. Copyright retained by the author.

Chapters 2 and 6 were originally published in Mennonite Idealism and Higher Education: The Story of the Fresno Pacific College Idea, edited by historian Paul Toews and published in 1995 by the Center for Mennonite Brethren Studies at Fresno Pacific. Reprinted here with permission.

Chapter 3 was originally published as The Educational Experiment in Pacific Journal (vol. 14, 2019), the academic journal of Fresno Pacific University. Copyright retained by the author.

Chapter 4 was originally published as Pilgrims at Fresno Pacific in Pacific Journal (vol. 11, 2016). Copyright retained by the author.

Chapter 5 was originally a paper presented in a Fresno Pacific faculty workshop on January 6, 2000, under the title The FPU Idea and Pedagogy.

Chapter 6, as noted above, was originally published in Mennonite Idealism and Higher Education, along with Chapter 2.

Chapters 7 and 8 are new, previously unpublished papers.

PART I

CREATION

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In the beginning …

Genesis 1:1, KJV

CHAPTER 1

The Church College in God’s Playhouse

All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players:

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages.

—Shakespeare

The church college is a rehearsal hall in God’s great playhouse, the world. Throughout this hall, small groups of aspiring student actors gather with experienced faculty directors to explore the purpose and meaning of the life-drama to be played on the world’s stage, the roles through which the drama is realized, the details of time and place which give shape to the drama, and the particular skills which will have to be learned to enact the chosen roles.

The Spirit of the drama’s Creator fills the hall. The Spirit helps the directors and actors discover the super-objective of the drama, toward which every thought, feeling, and action of the actors must be directed if the performance is to be successful. That super-objective is the will of the Creator.

The roles in the drama are many. And choosing a particular role is not always easy. But some roles the Creator challenges all to play. The church college is particularly committed to teach these in fulfilling its own unique role as servant of the Creator and the Creator’s church.

Steward

God calls all on the world’s stage to live the role of steward. Therefore, church college faculty directors will teach aspiring student actors this important role.

God’s call to stewardship begins with that sweeping and majestic Genesis declaration of creation: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. Into the inaugural garden of this amazing creation, God placed man and woman to care for it. As earth’s first gardeners, Adam and Eve were given authority to manage—to name and rule over fish, bird, and animal; to till the soil; to harvest the fruit—and in so doing to participate in God’s ongoing creative activity. Though this idyllic garden scene was soon marred by sin, God did not disown what had been created or relieve Adam and Eve of their authority to rule. True, the coolness of the garden was replaced by the sweat of the brow and the moist clean earth by the dry weedy field, but man and woman remained the stewards of God’s creation.

So God continues to entrust the creation to us humans as stewards of the earth. Fish, bird, animals, soil, water, air, minerals, and man and woman themselves—all of the resources and life the earth has to offer—are ours to care for.

God calls us to be stewards not only of the world but also of God’s Word (1 Corinthians 4:11). Through that Word, we understand that not only did God create the universe, but also God judged it to be good, and that even now, God views the creation as good (1 Timothy 4:4). We further understand that God loves the creation and yearns to restore it to its original perfection and that through the ages, God has progressively revealed himself to humankind, climaxing that revelation in the Word become flesh personified by Jesus, who declared his mission

to announce good news to the poor,

to proclaim release for prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind,

to let the broken victims go free, and

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor (Luke 4:18–19).

Furthermore, we understand that God offers to restore all to the perfection of the image in which we were originally created and which we now understand to be the perfection modeled by Jesus. Of this Word, we are to be stewards.

The world and the Word are both God’s creations! Evangelicals, including the Mennonite Brethren, quickly support God’s call to be stewards of the Word, but our ears often hear only distantly and uncertainly his call to be stewards of the world as well. Yet the Word is clear about the world:

The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof;

the world, and they that dwell therein.

(Psalm 24:1, 1 Corinthians 10:26)

The mission of the church college is to prepare stewards of both the Word and the world. In comparison, other institutions of higher education have a much more limited mission. The mission of the Bible institute is to prepare stewards of the Word. The mission of the secular college-university is to prepare people for life in the world, but without the Word. God has no official role in the secular college-university, so students suffer by not encountering a commonly shared witness among faculty regarding the essential life questions of purpose and meaning. Though resource rich, the secular college-university is direction poor. So the mission of the church college is the most comprehensive and complete. God calls us to be stewards of both the Word and the world.

The church college then will echo for its students God’s call to play the role of steward on the world’s stage. This stewardship will include care for the earth and its resources, as taught through the school subjects of biology, chemistry, physics, geology, and other sciences; care for human growth and relationships, as taught through psychology, sociology, economics, government, social work, business, and other social sciences; care for the spirit and quality of human life, as taught through music, art, literature, history, and other humanities; and care for God’s Word itself, in which the meaning and purpose of life is ultimately rooted, as taught through courses in Bible, church history, and theology.

The teaching and study of any subject will be more than technical. Indeed, church college teachers will imitate the farmers of our tradition. For our farmers, at their best, have not only taught their children the technique of steering a straight furrow but also, through word and example, taught them how to care for the earth and its life, to depend on God for the crops, and to return to God the first fruits of the field. All learning has a technical component, but wise stewards know that technical skill must be coupled with the values and purposes of God if it is not to be misdirected and irresponsible. Teaching which neglects this fusion of the technical with values will only further produce youth already characterized by a national youth panel in America as information rich but responsibility poor. So the church college, in all areas of study, will fuse technical learning with value learning.

A Bible department alone then will not make a college Christian, nor will a single course in stewardship be adequate to train stewards of God’s Word and the world. Rather, stewardship will be a thread which will run through the entire college curriculum and program. Faculty, whether in history or science, will teach and model it. Students will learn it. For stewardship will permeate the entire life and style of the church college.

Servant

God calls all on the world’s stage to live the role of servant. Therefore, church college faculty directors will teach aspiring student actors the role of servant.

Jesus set the example. He came as a servant in order to serve (Philippians 2:7). He served through preaching, teaching, and healing (Matthew 9:35). And then he gave even his life for those he had come to serve, reconciling heaven and earth as he hung in the sky between.

Jesus passed the servant role on to his disciples, declaring that the greatest among you must be your servant (Matthew 23:11). But in bequeathing this role to his disciples, he was simply affirming the intent of God’s original creation, which had become obscured by humankind’s sinful effort to dominate rather than serve. For God has woven interdependence, and therefore service, into the very fabric of the creation. One portion of the created order stands in a servant relationship to another. The sun helps the plants to grow, the tree cradles the bird’s nest, the cow’s milk sustains her offspring—each serves the other. And so also among humans. One person grows another’s food, another sews still another’s clothes, still another writes another’s reading—each serves the other.

When performed by humans, we most often call this service work. What Jesus did is sometimes referred to as his work. And his work was, indeed, service. For the servant, work is transformed into service. A servant’s work is first service and then a livelihood. Work which is first a means to personal gain is not a servant’s work.

Work then is a human activity designed to meet some real or imagined human need. We plant, water, and harvest; we cook, sew, and clean; we plan, finance, and build; we mine, process, and manufacture; we study, organize, and teach—all to meet real or imagined needs. If paid for this work, we call it making a living. But if we