Will you still be there?

DEAR FRIENDS IN CHRIST:

Imagine moving out of your home after 50 or 60 years. If you can, set aside the raw grief such leaving evokes. Set aside also the hope you hold for your next home, exciting as that may be. Live instead in this moment, the daunting task of all you have amassed and what to do with it now, the predicament that haunts with three questions: keep or give or throw? Some of you have known this torment even after just a brief residency. Others bravely faced it on behalf of someone no longer capable, so each little choice was layered with their loss. At this time for our school, we need not imagine such a move. It surrounds us every day.

Our days have gravity, but there is no pall. This is instead a time of energy, renewal, even strange humor. Who knew we might not need hundreds of fundraising tchotchkes from 1979? Who knew we could have kept fewer colors of copier paper or file folders or pens? Who knew all the gifts we received–books in unknown tongues, or coffee mugs, or books about unfamiliar places, or engraved paperweights, or books by obscure authors–would later be less treasured? And did I mention all the books? The curse of surplus space is exposed in the absurdity of what comes to fill it, the leftover detritus of bygone days we can never revisit.

Thank God we toil together. We are a community on the move in many ways, including the shared labor of sorting, packing, reducing. This work shows us at our best, not denying our fears but also not letting them control, moving onward with the common task of becoming a new school. These are days of discovery–forgotten spaces, clearer commitments, bold ideas. And as always, the offbeat humor to accompany it all. In homage to an ELCA slogan and the longtime staff leader overseeing our move, some now proudly sport a button that reads “Bob’s work, our hands.” Who wouldn’t want to be on a crew like that?

There is, however, one quite solitary part of this move that falls only to me, about which I have said little. It turns out that when you relocate a main campus, you must petition accreditors and regulators to approve of the move. No one ever hinted I would one day have to justify our most challenging decision to remote officials looking mainly for flaws. These petitions are not brief. Just one of them (so far there are four) involves narrative replies to dozens of questions, followed by hundreds of pages of supporting materials like minutes, agreements, floorplans, finances, and so forth. You would think we were applying for citizenship.

A friend said it sounded like the worst address change postcard ever, as if the post office merged with the Internal Revenue Service and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But if you wonder why this fuss about moving, it’s not so hard to grasp. Rules often confront a bad thing that happened long ago. They name our retching point more than our aspirations. Sadly, there is indeed a long history in this country of seemingly reputable schools in business one day and vanished the next, leaving former students with useless transcripts and crushing debt. A relocation petition is really about one core question: Will you still be there?

Will you still be there? It’s not just a question of buildings or books. It’s the deeper issue of who we are and what we represent, whether we will be faithful and reliable and true. It’s at the heart of institutional mission, how it becomes fragile or remains sustainable. It’s been the question nestled within every anxiety we have felt at our school since relocating was first put on the table four years ago. It’s also an ancient existential question, as old as Psalm 22 and our terror before ultimate abandonment. Will you still be there–my God, my neighbor, my friend, my beloved. Can I still count on you? It doesn’t get more basic than that.

What we have learned in these waning months at our nearlyformer address is that we are still here in all the ways that matter–not within walls but through vision, caring, hope. You see the positive answer in the many different people who work here for change, bearing a great legacy while embracing a bold future. That comes as no surprise. Being there for others is woven into our fabric, as old as the five founding schools who found themselves in Hyde Park so long ago. I once asked the adult daughter of a Seminex leader why she stayed so loyal to our seminary. “When we had nothing,” she simply said, “you were our haven.”

So on the verge of a great turning point for us, let me turn this deep question toward you. You who read this, who support us, who recall us, who ally with us and pray for us, let me ask: Will you still be there? We haven’t made a change like this in more than five decades, so we’re a little rusty and would welcome your help, your patience, your good will. As you answer that question, let me assure you that we will still be here, just like always, come what may – evangelizing, advocating, exploring, giving and forgiving, trying and stumbling and trying again. From where we stand, our students and our church and our wider world need nothing less.