Excerpts from President David Dockery's Inaugural Address - October 17, 1996
"We stand on the doorstep of a new century with great hopefulness, but simultaneously with an awareness of the changing times in which we live."
"We recognize the High Tech World as a useful servant, but a horrible master. More important questions even than the use of technology loom larger for us today: We must ask, `What is education for, or more specifically what is Christian education for, and what are the common values we want to share with the next generation?'"
"Union University has been called at this unique time in history to step forward as a leader in Christian higher education to prepare students to enter the changing world of the 21st Century. In order to answer this call we must prioritize our commitment to the words of Jesus called the Great Commandment (Matthew 22:36-40). Here we are told to love God with our hearts, our minds, our souls--and to love others completely . . . The purpose of this institution is to educate students so they will be prepared for whatever vocation God has called them, enabled and equipped with the competencies necessary to think Christianly and to perform skillfully in the world, equipped to be servant leaders who impact the world as change agents based on a full orbed Christian world and life view. Thus we are called to be a Great Commandment University."
"As we prepare to enter the 21st Century we need more than just new and novel ideas and enhanced programs; we need distinctively Christian thinking, the kind of tough minded thinking that results in distinctly different action."
|
|
"The purpose of this institution is to educate students so they will be prepared for whatever vocation God has called them, enabled and equipped with the competencies neccesary to think Christianly and to perform skillfully in the world, equipped to be servant leaders who impact the world as change agents based on a full orbed Christian world and life view. Thus we are called to be a Great Commandment University." |
"For to love God with our minds suggests, as T. S. Eliot said, `to be able to think in Christian categories.' This means being able to define and hold to a world-and-life view grounded in the Truth of God's revelation to us. It means seeing life and learning from a Christian vantage point; it means thinking with the mind of Christ."
"Never before in America has it been so important to awaken our institutions of higher learning to the significance of Jesus' words for us. For as George Marsden has suggested in his ground breaking work, The Soul of the American University, we have moved from a time of `Protestant establishment' to one of `established unbelief.'"
 Dr. Dockery looks on as Dr. Millard Erickson lectures during the Inaguural Chapel and Academic Lecture. Dr. Dockery has recently edited New Dimensions in Evenagelical Theology, a collection of writings in honor of Erickson. |
"Union University's objective is not just the educating of business students, or nursing students, or art students, or music students, or science students to the latest fads. Nor is it bound to certain methods of delivering this information. For our goal is not just the teaching of certain subject matter. No. It is both broader and more basic than that."
"The problem we face is not necessarily increasing academic specialization, it is the lack of interrelatedness between the disciplines. This unwillingness to relate disciplines to one another has resulted in a fragmentation of knowledge. The fragmentation of knowledge should alarm all committed to Christian higher education, for it strikes at the foundation of our purpose . . . I would suggest that the starting point of loving God with our minds, thinking Christianly, points us to a unity of knowledge, a seamless whole because all true knowledge flows from the One Creator to His one creation. Thus specific bodies of knowledge relate to each other not just because scholars work together in community, not just because interdisciplinary work broadens our knowledge, but because all truth is God's truth, composing a single universe of knowledge."
 Dr. Morris Chapman, president of the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, congratulates Dr. Dockery during the Inaugural Ceremony. |
"For Union University to become a truly Great Commandment university does not mean that we will blur disciplinary boundaries--not at all! It means that we will take our varying, and at times seemingly conflicting approaches and traditions, and seek to interpret and explain our subject matter under the Lordship of the Creator God, the revealer of all Truth. If we can learn to integrate faith thoroughly with our various disciplines, drawing on the long Christian tradition to do so, we can restore coherence to learning. Then will education not only mean the passing on of content to our students, but it will also mean the shaping of character, and it will move toward the development and construction of a convictional world and life view by which we can see, learn, and interpret the world from the vantage point of God's revelation to us. We must therefore seek to build a Christian liberal arts university where men and women can be introduced to an understanding and appreciation of God, His creation and grace, and humanity's place of privilege and responsibility in God's world."
|
|
The Dockery's parents. Sam and Pansye Dockery and Mrs. Polly Huckeba, proudly pose for a photo with their children during the Inaguration luncheon. |
|
Bob Campbell, '76 national spokesperson for the Union University Alumni Scholarship Program, thanked donors for their leadership and commitment to Union at the Red Carpet Banquet. |
"But being a Great Commandment institution means more than the integration of faith and learning, it involves the integration of faith and living. This means we will seek to serve one another by demonstrating the love of God to students, colleagues, and others who have contact with Union University. We will show love and respect for those we serve. We will attempt to work for their highest good."
"The implications of a commitment to the Great Commandment call for us to be student friendly in our educational delivery systems and service oriented in our dealing with faculty, staff, alumni, and other constituencies. At the heart of this commitment is the visible demonstration of valuing one another. We want to model the love and forgiveness of Christ. We will seek to recognize achievement, to reward and applaud success, while learning together from our failures. We will search for ways to recognize the rare quality of community that already exists and the need to safeguard this most cherished of Union's qualities, strengthening it against the pressures of society, and constantly to develop an attitude of service and graciousness to all people."
"As Union University prepares to celebrate the 175th anniversary of its original charter, it is an institution that stands on the brink of a future that holds enormous promise. It is an institution with a large and loyal constituency that must recognize and fully embrace the possibilities for Union. It is a university with a gifted faculty and an outstanding staff that now must take the next step into the highest tier of the nation's Christian universities. Union University is positioned to move into a new century in a way that would surpass the dreams of the founders and many who have gone before us on whose shoulders we now stand."
|
|
|
"For these dreams to become reality we need a dedicated Christian faculty to achieve excellence in their teaching. Union University is at this time one of the few great teaching universities of this country, far better than larger schools with greater assets and more impressive buildings. Union has a unique opportunity to exert influence and cast a long shadow in a world in which this emphasis is fading. At the same time we need scholars contributing significantly to their respective disciplines through research, publication, service, and professional leadership. We need scholar-teachers, and teacher-scholars, who will always prize classroom teaching."
"We need a vision established on the values of the priority of worship and service in all aspects of life while seeking to develop a generation of students who can be agents of reconciliation to a factious church in a hurting and broken world resulting in reconciliation to God as well as to one another. Therefore as we begin this new administration we invite you all to run the race with us as we set forth the vision of building a great Christian liberal arts university established on the values of a commitment to the coherence of knowledge and God-revealed truth, flowing from our submission to the Lordship of Christ, and exemplifying the Great Commandment in all that we do. I believe a Great Commitment to the Great Commandment, its implications and applications, will bring about a Great University, faithful to a Great Heritage, resulting in great days for the future of Union University, which can only be accomplished by God's Grace and for His Glory."
