“In my beginning is my end. In my end is my beginning.”
Dr. Charles W. Pollard’s Inaugural Address
John Brown University, October 8, 2004

Members of the Board of Trustees, First Lady Janet Huckabee, President Hudson Armerding, Chancellor John Brown Jr., President John Brown III, President Lee Balzer (represented by his son, Dr. Cary Balzer), distinguished guests, alumni, friends, family, faculty, staff, and most especially, students, I want to thank you for being here for this celebration of John Brown University. It is a great honor and a sacred trust to be asked to serve as the sixth president of John Brown University, and I want to thank the Presidential Search Committee and the Board of Trustees for entrusting me with this responsibility.

I am also deeply grateful to the Brown and Balzer families for their commitment and wisdom in guiding JBU and for their gracious assistance to my family in this transition. Finally, I want to thank the Presidential Inauguration Committee, the faculty and staff of JBU, and Aramark for all of their work in preparing for today’s event. Carey and I deeply appreciate those who have served to make this day possible.

Two weeks ago, my eight-year-old son, James and I were on our way to the JBU rugby match, and he asked me what the president of JBU does. Now I had already spent some time drafting this inaugural address and was frankly in need of some inspiration, so I asked him what he thought the JBU president should do. He puzzled for a minute and then said, “Well, you own all of these buildings, so you must go around campus and tell people that you own this building and that building.” When I told him that I don’t own the buildings and that we don’t, in fact, even own our house anymore, he was noticeably disappointed, so he tried again.

“Well, you go and speak about JBU to people in foreign countries like Texas.” Now I had met with alumni in Dallas, but again he seemed disappointed when I explained that Texas was not quite a foreign country. Finally, he lowered his expectations and said, “I guess that you go to a lot of meetings where people talk a lot. Dad, do you like being president of JBU?” I laughed and assured him that I did. I also promised to try to answer his question in my speech today, which takes its title from two lines in T. S. Eliot’s poem, East Coker. James did not seem overly impressed.

In 1936, T. S. Eliot visited East Coker, a small English village about three hours west of London. It is the village from which his ancestors had immigrated to America in 1669. Eliot was in the middle of his life. He had achieved literary and financial success, but he had suffered great disappointment in his personal life. He had converted to Christianity in 1927, but he came to East Coker still unsure about the purpose of his life.

Here is how he describes his life: “In the middle, not only in the middle of the way / But all the way, in a dark wood, in a bramble, / On the edge of a grimpen, where is no secure foothold.” Eliot determines that the purpose of his life is shaped by his past, so he opens the poem with the line “In my beginning is my end.”

Eliot’s line consciously echoes the opening of John’s Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.” This claim is one of the central truths of our faitht—that Christ was “with” God in the beginning because Christ was God. I love words—English professors usually do—but I have an unusual affection for prepositions. They are such useful words, sort of the ligaments and tendons of language, the connective tissue that relates the words of a sentence together fittingly.

In particular, I am fond of the repetition of the preposition with in these verses: “the Word was with God” and “He was with God in the beginning.” These phrases suggest the deep identification, the warm intimacy, the true love between the Father and the Son. Christ was with God; indeed Christ was God. It is an example that we should emulate today. As we gather today to celebrate this new beginning at John Brown University, I ask you to commit with me that we will be “with” God, that we will both corporately and personally seek an intimate relationship with Him, that in our beginning we will covenant to be with God to the end.

When T. S. Eliot writes, “In my beginning is my end,” he is also suggesting that his personal history shapes his purpose. It is also true of me—what I will do as JBU president will be shaped by who I am. And, as it says in the Psalms, God has drawn the “boundary lines” of my life in “pleasant places.” I grew up in a family of faith, not just my siblings, parents, and grandparents, but also aunts and uncles and cousins and friends. This family of faith was a gift of God’s grace—a gift that I did nothing to deserve and for which I remain deeply grateful.
My own mother brings out the best in people. She asks the right questions; she offers timely advice; she encourages with words of confidence; and she extends a helping hand. We don’t always agree, but if I have any grace with people, it is largely through her influence.

My father has a restless desire to understand an issue, to solve a problem, and to know his God. He has run a Fortune 500 company, coached my Little League baseball team, and worshiped in church, all with the same intensity and love for people. We don’t always agree, but if I have any skills in godly leadership, they have largely been learned from his example.

My siblings and their spouses are some of my best friends. I have learned about perseverance from my brother’s overcoming of a learning disability to create a successful business; I have learned about love from my older sister’s care for foster children; I have learned about faithfulness from my younger sister’s notes of encouragement. Again, we don’t always agree, but if I have any ability to work with a team, it has been significantly shaped by the gift of living within this family.
My own family is also a large part of my beginning. I am thrilled to watch my oldest son, Chad, compete in soccer and mature as a young man. I am touched by Ben’s gentleness with others and amazed by his willingness to argue with me. I love to watch Emma read books and wonder at her capacity to imagine. James tries my patience with his insistence but warms my heart with his enthusiasm. All of them have honored me with their courage during this transition to Northwest Arkansas. As my kids will be the first to tell you, we don’t always agree. However, if I have any capacity to enjoy the different gifts of others, it has been developed through enjoying the different gifts of my children.

And, then, there is Carey. She has been my best friend since I was fifteen. She knows what makes me laugh and what makes me cry. She prays for me and with me. She reads everything that I have to write and listens to every speech that I have to give. By the way, she doesn’t think that I will be able to make it through this part of the speech. She always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres. Again, we don’t always agree, but if I have any capacity to love others, it has been deepened by the love that we have shared over the last twenty-five years.

As T. S. Eliot writes, “In my beginning is my end.” My extended family and friends have shaped my beginnings in ways that have led to this end, and I am deeply grateful to them for their presence in my life and their presence here today.
My beginnings also involved spiritual and work experiences that have shaped my end. I committed my life to Christ at age seven on a family vacation, after my ten-year-old older sister knowingly informed me that she knew I wasn’t “saved.” I grew up in a Plymouth Brethren church, in which I grew to appreciate being silent before God, the gift of communion, and the priesthood of all believers. I have worshiped in evangelical Anglican churches, in which I learned to love the old words of the prayer book and the preaching of the word. More recently, we have been members of the Christian Reformed Church, in which I was nurtured to engage the world for Christ. Throughout it all, we have taught Sunday school, led youth groups, counseled at Bible camp, and sought to practice the habits of our faith: prayer, Bible study, giving, and hospitality. These spiritual beginnings have shaped my ends.

Work has also shaped my end. I was a janitor from my sophomore year in high school to my senior year in college. As I scraped gum from under desks and swabbed toilets, I often felt invisible to the people I met. I learned firsthand that all work can be done in a way that glorifies God because all work is done by people made in the image of God. Practicing law taught me to pay attention to details, to prepare thoroughly, and to redeem time. Teaching has also been a pleasure; the classroom can be irresistible, particularly when students amicably but vigorously debate their most deeply held ideas and beliefs. I find joy in writing, but I believe that it is the hardest task to do well—what Eliot calls “the intolerable wrestle with words and meanings.” Finally, I take delight in administration, a delight in the organizing of people and a process to enable people to flourish and the process to achieve results. These work beginnings have shaped my ends.

While Eliot opens his poem with the line “In my beginning is my end,” he concludes the poem by reversing the proposition: “In my end is my beginning.” He suggests with this line that only by choosing an end can he make a beginning; only by establishing a purpose can he set a course; only by identifying a direction can he commence a journey. “In my end is my beginning” is an apt phrase for me today because my sole end in taking on this role as president is to advance the mission of John Brown University; it is this purpose that sets the course for my beginning today.

Again, the verses in John offer direction for how to describe the purpose of JBU. John writes that “through him [the Word] all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.” In the act of creation, God made all things good and His goodness still sustains this world. We should expend every effort at JBU to understand, celebrate, and promote those patterns of goodness.

When God created, He created beautifully. JBU is and should continue to be a place that recognizes and encourages beauty, not only in the brushstroke of a painting but also in the backstroke of a swimmer; not only in the solo of a singer but also in the interview of a broadcaster; not only in the soliloquy of an actor but also in the animation of a digital designer.

When God created, He created in an orderly way. JBU is and should continue to be a place that understands and fosters order, not only in explaining fractal equations but also in nurturing marriages; not only in designing the weight-bearing wall in a house but also in planning the worship service for a church; not only in describing the patterns of historical thought but also in laying out the landscaping of the campus.

Finally, when God created, He created truthfully. JBU is and should continue to be a place that seeks, speaks, and enacts the truth—the truth about students’ performance, the truth about the principles of ethical leadership, the truth about the needs of the poor, the truth about the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Beauty, order, and truth are attributes of God’s good creation, and those attributes enable John to say of Christ, “in him was life, and that life was the light of men.” We should covenant today that JBU will continue to uphold and promote beauty, order, and truth to extend life and light to each other and to those we serve.

However, we know that life and light are not the whole story. As John says, “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not understood it.” We live in a world deeply shadowed, even blackened, by darkness, a world thoroughly stained by our original disobedience and repeatedly blemished by our individual choices. JBU cannot ignore or dismiss this darkness and still speak the truth.

It is the darkness of broken friendships and of gossiping colleagues; it is the darkness of cheating on an exam and of stereotyping an international student; it is the darkness of a necessary war and the destruction of a hurricane; it is the darkness of a teenage son sobbing at the casket of his father; it is the darkness of feeling abandoned by God when we pray; it is the darkness that we suffer and perpetuate every day. We should covenant today that JBU will continue to recognize and respond to this darkness in ourselves and our world, that our purpose should involve confession, forgiveness, and restoration of the world’s brokenness.

We are not, thank God, left on our own to respond to this darkness. Indeed, a better translation of the verses in John may well be “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” Even when the darkness seems overwhelming—in the death of a spouse, in the depth of personal despair, in the devastation of a natural disaster— we have hope because we believe that Christ is “the light” that “shines in the darkness” and that “the darkness has not overcome it.” As John Brown Sr. said, “fling [the words of Jesus] out into the dark night of man’s sin, or sorrow, or suffering and immediately there is light.” Or, as it says in Colossians, the mystery of the Gospel is “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”

And so, we should covenant today that JBU will continue to teach students to be people of hope, whether they are undergraduates in the dorm or adults in Fort Smith, business executives at Greystone or couples in church, scholars at an academic conference or counselors in a graduate seminar. This instruction of hope at JBU has enabled the light of Christ to shine far beyond Siloam Springs.

It shines in war-torn northern Uganda as Daniel Propst, a 2003 engineering graduate who is working with Samaritan’s Purse, designs and builds schools for refugee children. It shines in cohort NW-44 of our Advance program, a group of twenty-three adult students who contributed over $1,900 to one of their classmates to enable her to obtain a diagnosis of her heart condition at the Mayo Clinic. It shines in Iraq as Myriah Jordan, a 1998 journalism graduate, helps to rewrite Iraqi commercial law as part of the Coalition Provisional Authority. It shines in Nagi Khalil, a master’s student in our leadership program, who will be returning to the Adventist Development and Relief Agency to plan and direct relief work in Yemen.

It shines in Guatemala through our SIFE program; it shines in Northern Ireland through our study and mission programs; it shines in Central America through our Walton Scholars; the light of Christ shines and shines and shines in hundreds of homes, schools, offices, churches, missions, and communities across the country and the world where JBU graduates bring a message of hope.

JBU will face challenges to complete this work. There will be the challenge of maintaining and advancing our historic mission to educate “head, heart, and hand” in a rapidly changing world. How will we focus, deepen, and innovate in our training of the mind to enhance the excellence of our academic program? How will we nourish Christian formation in ourselves and our students to serve more effectively in an increasingly secular world? How will we develop and adapt our commitment to train students professionally in a world in which people may have seven to ten jobs in a career?

There will also be the challenge of communicating to a wider audience the unique identity of John Brown University, a broadly evangelical university founded by a leading American evangelist and located in the third-fastest growing county in America. There will be the challenge of resources, keeping education affordable while compensating people fairly, raising funds to advance the mission while making choices to increase our effectiveness.

Now, if the JBU family is anything like my own family, I expect that we may not always agree about the details of how to respond to these challenges, but I trust that we will respond so that we will continue to be a place that fans into flame the God-given gifts of its students and one another.

However, the opportunities, not the challenges, are what should mark this new beginning, for JBU is at a time of unprecedented opportunity. God has blessed this university through the wise leadership of Chancellor Brown, President Brown, and President Balzer, and JBU has never been stronger.

JBU has a growing reputation for academic excellence. JBU’s campus has grown exponentially in quality facilities. JBU has never been more intentional and effective in encouraging students to follow Christ. JBU’s educational mission has never been more expansive through the reach of its Advance and graduate programs and the influence of its Center for Marriage and Family Studies and the Soderquist Center.

But the best and most exciting opportunity in being part of JBU remains the same—working with people in ways that may affect them for eternity. As C. S. Lewis writes, “there are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations,” —and, one might add, presidential administrations and universities—“these are mortal, . . . But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit” —and, one might add, teach, encourage, coach, conduct, and disciple.

It is the task of shaping the ends of these immortals, what Lewis calls bearing “the weight of my neighbor’s glory,” to which I dedicate myself today and in which I ask you to join me. In my beginning is my end. In my end is my beginning. And may all of our beginnings and ends bring glory to God, for “as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.”

Thank you.