June 01, 1984 by

Missions Invades the Colleges!

What an arresting fact that these six outstanding colleges have recognized the crucial worth of choosing as their presidents men who have a profound international grasp of the global Christian mission. (We know there are others; we'd be glad to hear about those of which you're aware!) McQuilkin, whose college and graduate school stands out uniquely in the prominence of its mission emphasis, will be featured as a cover story in an upcoming issue.

Clyde Cook: 'World Perspective is Essential'

Dr. Clyde Cook assumed the presidency of Biola University in 1982 with a unique background as an educator, administrator and fourth generation missionary.

Both his great grandparents and grandparents were missionaries, and his mother followed in their footsteps to China. While (raveling there by ship, she was invited to the captain's table and a year later was married to this Christian captain from Scotland. Darn in Hong Kong, the fourth of six children, Clyde was faced with adversity at an early age when the Cook family was imprisoned in three different concentration camps during World War I!, not to be reunited until 1942 in South Africa,

After graduating from atota College and Talbot Theological Seminary, Cook served from 1963 to 1967 in Cebu City of the Philippines as a missionary with O . C. Ministries. He participated in pastors' conferences, city.,or crusades, toy institute training, youth conferences, and Bible school teaching.

Returning to Btata in 1967 as on assistant professor of missions. Cook was then appointed director of intercultural studies. In 1979 he was called to the presidency of D.C. Ministries, to which capacity he served until assuming the presidency of State University in 1982.

In July 1984. Cook suffered severe hear; attack, and as this issue of Mission Frontiers goes to press, he is still a patient in Dallas hospital. Mission Frontiers readers are encouraged to pray for this brother in Christ.

Before Cook's heart attack. Mission Frontiers' Dave Dougherty spoke with him in a brief phone interview:

Cook: Absolutely. I believe that anyone in s position of leadership or executive capacity needs crosscultural communication skills. We see that in California, by 1990. over 50% of the people will he non English-speaking. The world is definitely shrinking and I believe that this kind of world perspective Is essential for someone serving In y senior management position.

Dave: Dr. Cook, what are you doing now to encourage the Body CChrist to meat some or the world's needs?

Cook: Here at Blola we have established the School of Intercultural Studies and World Missions. We believe that this School will have a great deal of input and Influence across our entire campus. We want to see it create an atmosphere of seeing our mission in the cross cultural.

Cook: Our student summer missions program sends students to locations around lIsa world each year, recruited, supported and sent from among our student body. Each Friday, a missions chapel highlights this ministry as well as other opportunities for service. Each of our students has a three hour ministry involvement each week, and a number of these are in cross cultural ministry right here in our own area.

Finally, i should nose that we suspend all Classes for a full week each spring to focus on our missions conference. In place of classes, students attend presentations from missionaries and Third World Christian leaders morning, afternoon and evening. We've had over 150 missionaries on our campus for this event the past year. For the most part they all stayed on campus, living with students in the dorms, taking meals in the dining hall, and spending time interacting about their various roles In the missionary enterprise.

Jim Bond: 'It's for Us to Develop God's Change Agents'

Jim Bond, president of Point Loma Nazarene College, started his collegiate education where the U.S. Center for World Mission is now located  at, then. Pasadena Nazarene College. He graduated in 1959. going on to receive his M.Div. from Nazarene Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Kansas.

Bond held three pastoral positions in Olathe, Kansas, Casper, Wyoming, and Nsmpa. Idaho before the Church of the Nazarene sent him as a missionary to Brazil from 1970 through 1972. On returning to the united States. Bond continued pastoral ministry in, first. Oklahoma City, then Colorado Springs. He later became chaplain and  a professor of practical theology in the Nazarene Bible College in Colorado Springs before moving on to serve as assistant to the President at Point Loma College (San Diego, California) In 1961. He was appointed president in August of 1983.

Bond, a native son of Pampa, Texas, has also shown himself to be an outstanding athlete. 'He really knows his basketball,' one colleague has remarked. Bond came to Pasadena College as a high school All American after rejecting scholarship offers from 50 other schools, including UCLA and USC. He was inducted Into ins Texas State Basketball Flail of Fame in 1974 and into the NAIA Basketball Hall of Fame in 1983. But, at his co workers at Point Loma College commented, "He knew that the Lord had called him so preach and that his career wasn't going to be basketball."

Bond's service as a missionary deepened his appreciation for the mission field, and this appreciation manifests itself today in the urging of his students to consider such service themselves. As he tells them, "it is for us to develop God's change agents."

He also actively challenges young people to apply themselves to evangelism in whatever capacity they serve. "The kind of young people produced by Christian liberal arts colleges are the sort who can change the world," he says.

At one time Jim Bond held the office of General President of the Church of the Nazarene International Youth Organization. He is in constant demand today as a speaker in churches, youth conventions and workshops.

He believes that "Christians have inherited a role of significance in shaping society," and that "Christian liberal arts colleges are the last best hope for a world that appears to rushing headlong toward a rendezvous with selfdestruction.'

David LeShana: Taking Cues From William Carey

'Ultimate Purpose of Christian Higher Education... is World Evangelization.'

Dr. David C. Le Shana was named president at Seattle Pacific University (SPU) an September 7, 1982, the sixth president in its 93 year history. The son of missionaries himself, Dr. Le Shana was reared in India and was one at 70 persons selected ta make a fact finding tour of Bangladesh. Under Le Shands leadership SPU is creating an Intercultural Institute far Missions, intended to work hand in hand with existing academic schools to help educate students for mission service, especially in rhird World countries. In the article below, excerpted from the September 1983 issue of

SPU's school paper, Response Le Shono, explains how his summer reading reinforced his convictions regarding "the ultimate purpose of Christian higher educot son." (Le Shano's summer devotions included use of the Frontier Fellowship Prayer Guide now called the Global Prayer Digest.

Next to my family, some of my favorite companions this summer have been authors These have been people like Robert Sandra and his new book on Christian colleges. Altstet MacLean and his adventure novels Andrew Murray and his book on holiness in Christ, and Thomas Peters and Robert Waterman and their account of American business success, In Search Of Esce/fence perhaps the most significant author for me has been Englishman William Carey.

I rediscovered this founder of the modern missionary movement during try daily devotions this past July. As I read again how this man committed 41 years of his life to missionary service in lnd:a, 1 heard Cal speaking to me both as a Christian and as a university president.

Here was an individual who had no formal college training. Yet he learned Latin, Greek. Hebrew, French and Dutch as a teenager, and he could read the Bible in six languages. This dedication to learning, combined with a personal commitment to Jesus Christ, worked out primarily in the mission field, was enough to show me how William Carey may help turn a new page in the history of Seattle Pacific University.

Knowing how Carey used his mutual love of the Lord and of learning to establish missionary schools in a previously unreached land, my growing conviction has become simply this: The ultimate purpose of Christian higher education here at Seattle Pacific is world evangelization Let me explain what I mean.

For over nine decades, Seattle Pacific has upheld a dual commitment to academic excellence and the Christian faith. "Learn to think critically and believe faithfully" have been the stated expectations of our students quality of life. Scholarship and service. Both are admirable goals. But it is premature. I believe, to assume that merely good students and good Christians are going to automatically make a radical difference for God's Kingdom here on earth.

The problem comes when we try to combine individual performance and personal piety. Somehow we think that by sandwiching the two, we will naturally wind up with just the right combination of characteristics that will make our Christian lives consistent, responsible and respected.

Much of the time, however, just the opposite is true. People often wind up with their thoughts, actions and commitments commuting between the worlds of professional vocation and professed faith

There is an alternative route that I believe brings both our vocational and our faith aspirations together in a true union. Its truth is born out in the fact that each Christian has a Biblical mandate from God to spread the gospel wherever he or she may be. This is a far different calling than the well minded though misunderstood conviction of Christians who think it's enough to think intelligently and believe correctly.

These two ideals don't have to be played off against each other: they can find their fullest meaning in Jesus who desires that we use both our God given talents and our unearned faith to follow Him in order to "make disciples of all the nations."

One of the first steps SPIJ is taking this fall in its commitment toward world evangelization is the creation of a new Intercultural Institute of Missions. Recently our Board of Trustees approved a pilot project to explore, with the faculty the establishment of an institute to provide an integrated. interdisc:plinary institutional center for the training of missionaries, with particular emphasis on third world countries,It is my desire that Seattle Pacific come to be known as the evangelical Christian university that best prepares students for ministry both home and abroad. Whether Somalia. Uganda or the urban canyons of an inner city, training for the mission field begins right here on campus.

Guided by the same Holy Spirit that led William Carey, there is no limit to our vision of world evangelization.

David L. Rambo - 'Intensifying The Missionary Effort'

"No one starts out as a missionary expecting to become a college president, and I certainly didn't either." says Dr. David Rembo, president of Nyack College in Nyack, New York and president of Alliance Theological Seminary (located on the same campus. "My father was a pastor and I lust figured I would be one, too."

Rambo had completed his undergraduate studies and was halfway through graduate training before he really considered service on the mission field. "I met a young woman who had foreign mission service as a 'must' in her life's goals, so it also became one of my goals," he explains. The young woman became his wire.

After David graduated from seminary, the Rambos served as missionaries in the Philippines from 1960 to 1967. They returned to North America so that he could pursue doctoral work, fully planning to go back to the mission field. But instead Dr. Rambo was asked to serve as a professor of missions at the Canadian Theological Seminary I,, Regina. Saskatchewan, and he accepted. In 972 he was appointed president. Then, in 1978. the Christian Missionary Alliance asked him to become Vice President for Overseas Missions, at which post he served until appointment as president of the Alliance college and seminary in 1982.

Dr. Rambo claims that he has not made any major changes in the curriculum or programs at Nyack College. His Influence, he says, has rather been "to intensify the missionary effort." Nyack College was the first Bible Institute in America, Rambo observes, "and it has sent over 3.000 missionaries into the field over the last 100 years."

This "Intensified effort" on missions in a college that boasts a number of other liberal arts majors has been seen in the fact that nearly one third of the present student body states that they are seriously considering overseas mission service.

Rambo feels that the "sunrise of missions" is just arriving, but that to take advantage of it "me must recognize the importance of flexibility." "The world is changing rapidly,' he notes. 'and new missionary candidates must be able to adjust to these changes and in addition learn to communicate across cultural lines. We must also recognize the extension churches which already exist overseas. And our special focus," he concludes, "must be on the urban populations and the unreached people areas."

Virgil Olson: Equipping Tentmakers to Proclaim the Gospel of the Kingdom

Virgil Olson is not new to the academic world though he has been at William Carey International University (WCIU) for only three years. Prior to his coming to WCIU in the fail of lStl to serve as president. Olson had spent 2's years at Bethel College and Seminary. I? years as Professor of Church History end Missions at the seminary, and seven years as Academic Vice  President and Academic Dean at Bethel College.

Added to his experience in the academic world is a seven year term with the Baptist General Conference as director of the World Missions Board. Overseeing the work of missionaries in 11 countries on three continents broadened and intensified his conviction that everything in life needs to be seen from a global perspective. "The last word is God's kingdom," says Olson. 'and we develop our curriculum based on that idea.'

The curriculum at WCIU centers around this global perspective, offering specialized training in "tentmaking" type of skills. While WCIU is training missionaries, the focus is not on missionary but on ccmmunicative and technical skills that are needed by developing countries.

In a sense, the curriculum is determined by the needs of the developing world.

The high demand for English teachers in many parts of the world, for example, prompted the establishment of a master's program in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). Already WCIU students have gone to many countries closed to other Christian workers. Other programs in the WCIU curriculum include community development, appropriate technology, primary health care, and area studies focusing on various language and cultural groups.

Students at WCIU are also deeply influenced by the numbers of missionaries who live and work at the U.S. Center for World Mission, adjacent to the WCIU campus, and by missionaries and mission scholars who frequently visit the Pasadena area. In addition to studying in an environment rich in mission perspective, students in the Bachelor of Arts program are required to spend up to half of their degree program overseas. The first such group of B.A. students, presently in a North African country, have had unusual opportunity to learn the language and culture by living with people of that country.