Entrusted with the Gospel

“We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar’s. But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is God’s” (adapted from Matthew 22:21 and quoted from the Manhattan Declaration, page 6).

This statement proclaims a foundational principle of a document called the “Manhattan Declaration.” On Friday, November 20th, this document will be introduced to the nation and world at a press conference in Washington D.C. It was crafted by a large group of religious leaders from the Orthodox, Catholic, and Evangelical traditions. I add my signature and declare my support to this declaration not in my official role as president of Trinity International University (TIU), but as a follower of Christ and citizen of the United States and global community. I understand that anytime I give my name to a document it also reflects on TIU, so I wanted you, the members of our community, to have the opportunity to read this document and comment as it becomes public. Please go to http://manhattandeclaration.org or click on the above image to read the “Manhattan Declaration” in its entirety. I also invite you to join with other Christians in endorsing the “Manhattan Declaration,” by adding your signature on the website. My commitment to you is that you will hear information like this about TIU from me, rather than hearing it on the street or through the rumor mill. After you read and reflect on the declaration, I would appreciate your feedback.

Yes, this six-page document is controversial in its strong biblical stand. I pray that people will also see the humility, respect, and grace, which we hope to communicate as we proclaim these truths of God. We attempt to biblically address: the dignity of life; the sanctity of marriage; the importance of healthy families; the need to serve the poor and underrepresented; the value of seeking justice for all through the application of God’s standards for justice; and the necessity of preserving religious liberty. We call Christians world wide to appropriately rally around these uncompromising truths. The intent of this document is to be clear and courageous, but not inflammatory. I judge you will see these values throughout the declaration.

I judge it is time for me to take a stand on these crucial issues for the sake of the gospel, the church, and the global community. The resistance and criticism will be fierce. I anticipate intolerant personal attacks and vicious criticisms, such that our university is old fashioned, out of touch with today’s society, and intolerant. When the religious leaders of their day threatened the Apostles Peter and John with violence and retaliation unless they stopped preaching and teaching in the name of Christ, they replied, “Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God’s sight to obey you rather than God” (Acts 4:19, NIV). While I personally struggled with the value of publicly supporting the Manhattan Declaration, I judge it is time to honor and obey God while committing myself to serve society in the name of Christ. Please join me in prayer as this declaration becomes public.

Sincerely,
Craig

At Least It Is Not H1N1

As I am writing this blog entry, I can look out of my office windows and see that the day is sunny and beautiful. Also today, for the first day in almost two weeks, I finally feel like I am on the road to recovery from a nasty bout with flu. This is probably the worst flu I have experienced in years.

At the immediate care facility the first thing the masked nurse and doctor wanted to do was an H1N1 test. Have you had that done, yet? They take this six inch long swab and stick it up your nose and twist it around trying to obtain a substantive sample of the green goo that is flowing from your sinuses. The nice doctor said to me that she needed to continue swabbing for at least ten seconds in order to get an ample sample. Well, after about three seconds, I sneezed out what looked like a four ounce sample onto her lab coat—much to her chagrin by the way. We both knew that she now had more than enough sinus sample to test for swine flu. The results? No H1N1 but I did have acute bronchitis—whatever that is, exactly. So, the doctor quickly sent me off with a prescription for industrial strength antibiotics and codeine based cough syrup, telling me to drink plenty of fluids, get lots of rest and take it easy.

Well, you know how that goes. I got sick in the midst of a two week period when I had half a dozen speaking engagements, many articles to write, important decisions to make, crucial meetings with various groups and donors, and the responsibility for preaching on consecutive weekends. Get plenty of rest—what in the world does that mean in a culture of relentless appointments, responsibilities and expectations?

So, I pressed forward. Coughing and sneezing my way into the lives of so many people who probably wished that I had stayed home instead of infecting them with my acute bronchitis. I did tell everyone that I didn’t have H1N1, but I am not sure that provided much comfort when they saw me sway back and forth while standing, pop cough drops like a chain smoker, and stuff nasal tissue up my nose to stop the incessant post nasal drip. My red eyes, nose and cheeks probably weren’t very appealing either.

Why am I telling you this? I guess I needed to somehow apologize collectively to all of you within my contagious range over the past two weeks. I needed to share my empathy for those of you who may have caught this from me. Carolyn is suffering from this flu now and she has been pretty clear that she holds me responsible.

And, finally I needed to acknowledge that I think too highly of myself. The socially responsible approach would have been for me to stay home, drink plenty of fluids, get lots of rest and experience my misery privately. But, who would have met with those donors? Also, I didn’t want to let the pastors down who were looking forward to a weekend off from preaching. Besides, I knew that if I stayed home it would have taken me a month to get all the back-logged work done. Or, at least that is what my life-long commitment (maybe addiction at times) to working hard, meeting others’ expectations, over-achieving and serving Christ tell me. If Christ returns today, I hope He is pleased with my loving obedience and He has lots of Kleenex. Better yet, I hope He cures Carolyn and me of this flu, immediately.

Words of Denial

I am thoroughly intrigued by the subject of denial. Every time another major Christian figure “falls”…whenever a dictator makes an outrageous statement as truth…every time I find myself wanting to change perceptions to form something more acceptable or “comfortable,” Craig and I find ourselves discussing the subject of denial as part of our weekly chat time.

I recall the last time the public fall was someone we knew, personally. I didn’t believe it at first and was angry with the media for ruining the man’s reputation. Turned out…he’d ruined it all by himself. Craig and I were discussing the sad situation while working out on side-by-side treadmills. I had gradually raised the elevation as I trudged along, and when we were finishing up, I lowered it completely in one push of the button. I recall we both chuckled at the irony of my ensuing statement: “Wow. I had no idea how high I’d put this thing! So while we were talking about self deception, I busy deceiving myself!”

And that encapsulates what’s so frightening about self deception: it’s slow. Stealthy. And it could happen to me. I think that’s the first line of defense against the formidable foe—admitting I’m not immune. So I’d best be on guard, always.

I have a theory about the progression of self denial and it goes something like this:

• Its germ of inception begins when we as Christians are so uncomfortable with anger and confrontation that we avoid admitting to the existence of the one and the need for the other.
• Therefore we don’t release the anger in a healthy way.
• We also can’t confront when we desperately need to.
• The result is that we must therefore change (better: distort) our perceptions of reality to make life…”okay.”
• Distorting reality, then, slowly becomes more and more a habit as we seek to make our perceptions of life more acceptable.
• And that step-by-step subtle slide of decisions can lead to disastrous consequences.

There’s nothing stealthy or subtle about Chairman Mao’s statement about why the people of China were starving during his rule. He said that there were no vegetables to be bought in markets (because peasants with food-growing skills had been moved to the cities, and professionals from the cities were now in the country, attempting to farm) because “the tomatoes are so enormous that we cannot lift them into trucks to deliver them to market!” (I’m paraphrasing from Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang, a fascinating and extremely well written true story; I apologize for paraphrasing and not quoting the page, but my book is still buried somewhere in a box!)

It appears to me that Mao and others like him try to pull us mere mortals into their orbits by creating truth through their own words. But only One has the ability to speak truth into existence, and that is God himself! In God alone is there no difference between promise and promise fulfilled; what is yet to be uttered and concrete fact; and spoken word and reality.

Take time to think about that if you haven’t before: God speaks. There is no gap, no waiting to see if the words will come true, if they’ll happen. No time between them really, since God isn’t limited to or doesn’t live in a time period; He exists in all time. So God speaks. It….is.

So I ask myself, almost daily: How am I trying to distort reality to form perceptions for a more comfortable world? Am I attempting to create truth by speaking what’s clearly untrue? How am I deceiving myself? God, reveal to me how and what I really am. Show me my sin. And please God, change me from within!

Life-long Friends

Over the weekend, I participated in the wedding of a daughter of life-long friends of ours. I have known the bride since her birth and she’s like an adopted niece to Carolyn and me. Our youngest son and his family also attended the wedding. My four-year-old granddaughter sat near me, wiggling during most of the ceremony, asking questions and taking it all in. When we were on our way to the reception, she leaned over to Carolyn and asked if the princess (referring to the bride) was coming to the party because she wanted to talk with her. Carolyn responded with a big smile, saying, “Yes, she will!” Then Carolyn asked our granddaughter if she wanted her Boppa (my granddaughter’s name for me) to officiate her wedding when she got married. She shook her head, saying, “No, I just want to go to preschool.” That isn’t actually the topic of this posting, but I thought it was a delightful story. The mixed emotions of being with life-long friends whom I love and value is what I want to focus on in relation to our eventful weekend.

The wedding was held at a church here in the Chicago area where I served as an associate pastor while also a student at TIU. There, Carolyn and I built deep and enduring relationships with the people of the church—especially our small group of married couples. Most of those couples also attended the wedding. Reconnecting with them was sweet and bitter. Sweet because of the fond memories of the lives we lived deeply with each other over the last two decades. Bitter because of how life has not always been what we thought it would be. One couple lost their relationship due to betrayal and divorce. Listening to our friend talk about her grief and the progress of her healing in the midst of continued betrayal was so sad. Some of the couples experienced other significant types of loss and their faces and spirits reveal the lingering sadness.

Yet, I also felt joy. Joy that we have lived life meaningfully and deeply with each other. Joy because even in the midst of enormous life challenges, almost all of us continue to live lives dedicated for Christ. Yes, our lives are now different: naïveté and youthful optimism are replaced with a profound commitment to Christ that has been refined through suffering, brokenness, loss and unmet expectations. We more clearly understand the pervasiveness of sin and the price that Christ paid. This realization has made us more dedicated to Christ and the full meaning of following him, even when the journey is filled with expected and unexpected hardships. We have all been changed and transformed—our bodies and spirits demonstrating those changes.

Some things were still the same, however. At the reception we stood together, talking about general light topics while knowing some of the intricacies of each other’s private life stories. I could feel a silent understanding that we valued each other; a lot of words needed not be spoken. Instead, we communicated though our presence and history of being together. We reconnected as couples ready to restart where we last ended, if given the chance. I am blessed to have such wonderful friends and companions for this journey.

Blessings,
Craig

What Are You Passionate About?

When I want to get to know someone, I’ll often ask, “What are you passionate about?” That question – more so, the person’s response – can bypass the inconsequential pretty quickly. It also tends to reveal whether we’re going to have what I term a safe, surface relationship or an intimate, more vulnerable one. An honest one. That’s what has driven me to seek a soul mate type of friend in every location we’ve lived.

Maddy - our rambunctious puppy. Watching her learn to obey has become a passion of mine.

I check them off as I run through the many places we’ve landed over the years…at least ten granting me the privilege of deep friendship … not counting my absolute best friend, Craig. I recognize that they are all gifts from God; I certainly did nothing to deserve or to somehow earn them. At the same time, my greatest passion is an on-going, intimate relationship with my God. And on the heels of that, deep, fulfilling relationships with Craig, my family members, my friends. I guess you could say that one fuels and feeds the other. A growing relationship with my Abba Father drives me to find that with those around me. Insightful and inspiring relationships with my friends push me to seek an ever-deepening tie to God.

Time and time again, when attempting to prioritize and adjust where to put my limited energy, I come back to one constant: only relationships will last. Though in the short term I don’t have much to show for time spent reading the Word and praying, that investment (since 1975, when I started journaling and praying in earnest) hopefully has produced a more godly life. Every once in a while, I gain a deeper understanding of who God is… how he’s working in my life… some insight that brings tears to my eyes, conviction to my soul. That’s what I’m passionate about. It’s like… brushing up against the eternal. Knowing joy. Illumination!

Serving with Craig. Seeing what makes his eyes twinkle. Laughing so hard my cheeks hurt. Snuggling with a grandchild…hearing him or her giggle! Writing something meaningful. Reading a book that makes me cry. Learning something new about my mom or dad. Our yearly family Christmas sharing time with Robb, Tricia, Jay and Rachael, lights low and candles in hand. Climbing to the top of a mountain, drinking in the beauty of creation! Snowshoeing in deep snow on a sunny day. Swimming a mile. A cardinal on our bird feeder. Miracle of miracles: our rambunctious puppy obeying a command! A mug of coffee across the table from a friend. Cooking a good meal for loved ones. Creating something lovely. Investing in relationships.

Passions. What are yours?

Carolyn

The “Real Me”

Here's Carolyn and I riding our Harley into the Alumni tent during Homecoming.

Last weekend at Trinity’s homecoming, Carolyn and I rode into the alumni tent on our Harley-Davidson motorcycle. Some alumni in the tent cheered and a few others couldn’t believe that a university president would do such a thing. One participant maybe said it best: “Craig, I love how you are recreating the presidency as a picture for recreating TIU.” Yes, it is probably true that few presidents of universities have ridden into an official university event on a motorcycle and dressed in leathers; however, Carolyn and I wanted to present ourselves as real people who love TIU, Christ, and life while enjoying some fun hobbies. Don’t worry — motorcycling will not be a new major at TIU! But this does illustrate what’s on my heart today.

As a first year president, understanding how people can and will perceive you is a delicate balance—not like when I was in middle school and wondering if Tracy liked me. Rather, it’s critical that I communicate Christ and who I am as a person, my values and the message of the university, without presenting an overly manufactured, artificial image. I hope that how I present myself will encourage people to value TIU and its role in educating leaders. I want people to discover who I am: an approachable, friendly, capable and professional leader who loves Christ and takes his responsibilities seriously while not taking himself too seriously.

What we do here at TIU touches lives for eternity. I feel that deeply. Because of the magnitude of my position, I also want to show that I can have fun while working so hard. I want to invite onlookers to become partners with the university because of the value of our mission, how effective we are, and because they see me as a true follower of Christ and God’s servant here at TIU. If I am truthful and consistent in how I present myself, I don’t have to worry about what people will think if they see the “real me.” I’ve already shown them the real me.

This approach brings some peace to the personal insecurities of serving as a leader. Yet, it can also mean that some people will reject me. I guess the bottom line is that, if they reject me, they will have seen and rejected the real me, not a manufactured version. I judge that Christ is honored in this authentic approach.

My motto: love Christ, give yourself diligently to serving Him, while having the fun that I believe Christ wants us to enjoy as we lead in His kingdom.

Blessings,
Craig

My First “State of the University Address”

Welcome to the first entry of the blog of Craig and Carolyn Williford.  Currently, I serve as the new president of Trinity International University.  Over the next few months, Carolyn and I will post regular updates.  Some of the entries will be from me, some will be from her, and at other times we will coauthor our postings.

In these first few months, I want to focus my postings on the five core values of Trinity International University and what it is like to be a first year president chronicling the process and my emotional and spiritual responses.  We hope you will dialogue with us as we journey together.

So, let me start with yesterday.  It was September 16, 2009 and I delivered my first “State of the University Address.”  Yes, I was nervous and also excited about the opportunity–nervous because I didn’t know exactly what to expect.  You know what it is like to go into a new situation without any knowledge of people’s expectations and unclear awareness of what you are supposed to do or not do.

I was nervous because I needed to set a direction for the university that will require us to make some significant changes.  The senior leadership team, which we call Executive Council, and I firmly believe that God is calling us to redirect the university in order to build a sustainable, growing and effective institution that connects with students and the church.  We move forward with this while remaining absolutely committed to inerrant Scripture, given by God as our final authority for faith and life.

Also, I was nervous because I feel that some of our learning community members may not be ready for change of this magnitude.  So, how could I set the right tone, convey a positive message of hope and renewal while also being open about the realities of the challenges we face.

I was so determined to be a vessel for God to speak His words to the community.  After thirty-five years of leadership, I am finally starting to worry less about how people view me and more about whether I am connected to the message God wants to convey through me.  Don’t misunderstand, I am not there yet.  I am humbled that the Holy Spirit has enabled me to at least get to the point where my greatest emotional angst is about God and His message not just about me.

But despite being nervous, I was excited because I am wired for this type of role.  I love communicating the message of hope and the possibilities of the future.  I am energized by dialogue and handling tough questions about the presentation.  We used Twitter to allow people to send questions, while also taking live questions from the audience.  I found this use of technology to be a lot of fun.  Having instant feedback and that type of open dialogue can really keep a speaker authentic.

So, enough for now. Soon a video of the presentation will be posted on the Trinity web site at www.tiu.edu/tiu/president. Take a look and let me know what you think or what questions you have as a result of the dreams and hopes I present.

Blessings,
Craig