A Glimpse Into the 1990s

We pulled out an old Church Relations brochure this morning at the Spiritual Life Office. No matter how many times you clean out closets in the summer, there are always more treasures to unearth (or recycle). The pamphlet is entitled, “Your Values Are Our Values” and has great copy. It highlights, “Continuously affiliated with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) since its founding in 1903 the College cherishes this mutual covenant based upon shared intellectual, moral, humanitarian and spiritual values.” Anyone familiar with the Disciples church will realize the brilliance of this text. Disciples congregations have varying values and quite frankly the values across the campus vary as well, so while we might not all agree, we could make some good matches.

Being a newbie on campus I had not heard of the “Knowledge Initiative” in the 1980s which required all entering students to have a personal computer. Billed as innovative and the “First in Virginia,” this requirement must have quickly gone by the wayside as no student would come to campus today without a computer, music storage, maybe a gaming system or two, and a smartphone. The Q & A panel at last year’s SOAR did get a question about if the College required smartphones for class! So it is easy to see why the College needed to reassure the churches that we still had the same values – there are some churches which still don’t have computers, and one that I know of that has never had a phone line!

I learned a lot from the brochure. I didn’t realize that LC had ever had a water polo team or intramural bowling. The picture of Snidow Chapel is very similar to the Chapel of today, although the new landscaping gardens that Curtis and his crew have added make a big difference. Some things change like the addition of lacrosse and other things don’t, like our commitment to scholar-athletes or the need for good Financial Aid to draw students.

But it made me feel very good that the core values haven’t changed. We use different words and different writing styles (the old brochure had a lot of words in small type), but I liked the taglines of the era:

Lynchburg College teaches its students:

To value intellectual accomplishment.
To work for change, first in themselves, then in the world.
To collaborate, a skill and spirit valuable in a society where substantial achievement typically results from team effort.
To use knowledge constructively.
To take pride in being responsible.

I wonder if the Disciples preachers and lay-folks of 1903 could have imagined what Virginia Christian College looks like today, but I think they would be quite pleased. One last quote from the 1990s:

“Education,” wrote nineteenth-century philanthropist John Ruskin, “is leading human souls to what is best, and making the best out of them.”

An apt description of the formidable yet compelling mission Lynchburg College sets for itself: the transformation of lives.

Blessings,

Stephanie