The Commons Spring 2018: Graduation Edition | Page 5

President’s Welcome
WELCOME TO THE COMMONS,
the New Saint Andrews College period-
ical for alums, students, and friends of
the college. This is our special print edi-
tion in honor of Commencement 2018.
We take this opportunity to say goodbye
to our graduates; it has been a privilege
to instruct and equip you for “living a
life worthy of the calling.”
A busy and glorious Spring has come
upon us. The Grace Agenda confer-
ence, only recently completed, brought
a number of both old friends and new
guests to town; quite a few of them were
prospective students who came to visit
our campus for the first time. If you ha-
ven’t come to a Grace Agenda weekend
yet, I highly recommend that you find
time to attend one.
The conference theme this year was
“enraging the culture,” and I was asked
to speak on the challenge before us in
the world of higher education. For one
portion of my talk, I focused on the
question of what exactly the purpose of
education is, because over the last fifty
years there has been a dramatic shift in
how we answer this question.
The older understanding of what con-
stituted an education has recently been
reduced to the acquisition of skills and
credentials necessary to be hired for a
particular job. We think less now of be-
ing “educated” and more of being “certi-
fied.” College education, once primarily
It is not fitting for the
children of God to see
themselves as merely
hopeless cogs in a large
employment machine. We
are called to be leaders
and shapers of our culture.
a liberal arts venture, was intended to in-
still and sharpen the qualities necessary
for cultural leadership. But now college
is primarily thought of as specific voca-
tional training. While at first this shift
may feel very subtle, the implications are
fairly significant.
Someone who seeks “certification”
wants to become qualified to perform
the list of tasks associated with a certain
career. However, someone who seeks
education wants to learn how to think
broadly and critically about a whole
host of larger matters. While the “quali-
fied” man looks to become employable,
the educated man looks to become in-
fluential. The result is that the former
becomes someone well-suited to follow
orders and the latter becomes someone
well-suited to give the orders.
Of course, since vocational training
is obviously necessary at some level, I
don’t want to dismiss the importance of
being well trained for certain jobs. But
it is a shame if we do so with a dilut-
ed understanding of what an education
really looks like. As Christian men and
women, we have been called to advance
God’s kingdom, to fill and subdue, to
preach and to baptize. It is not fitting for
the children of God to see themselves as
merely hopeless cogs in a large employ-
ment machine. We are called to be lead-
ers and shapers of our culture.
This is why we continue our labors
here at NSA; to provide a rigorous liberal
arts education and pray that God will be
glorified in the lives of our graduates.
Dr. Benjamin Merkle
President
SPRING 2018 5