Symposium -- October 1-3, 2026

Overview

College and university mission statements are often little more than arrangements of vapid platitudes to which any reasonable institution and constituents would commit.  Amongst those arrangements, one may find adjectives such as excellence and global, verbs such as welcoming, creating, developing, and disseminating, and nouns such as scholars and leaders.

Variations in the arrangements of such terms may include reference to the geographic location of the institution (in the case of public universities) and/or reference to the organizational structure of the institution (in the case of community colleges, liberal arts colleges, and research universities).  As a result, little is left to distinguish the mission statements of public research universities such as the University of Michigan and the University of Virginia from one another.

Unfortunately, the mission statements of Church-related colleges and universities often fail to fare better.  Comparable arrangements of platitudes exist.  Instead of a reference to service to a particular region or state, Church-related college and university missions often include reference to a particular Christian tradition.

At times, even references to such a tradition can prove vapid.  The use of a word such as heritage often serves as an acknowledgment of a past relationship and/or an acknowledgement of a connection to a particular ecclesial body.  For example, the last sentence in Southern Methodist University’s mission statement reads, “SMU affirms its historical commitment to academic freedom and open inquiry, to moral and ethical values, and to its United Methodist heritage.”

In contrast, the first sentence in Southwestern University’s mission statement reads, “Southwestern University, under the auspices of the United Methodist Church, is committed to undergraduate liberal education involving both the study of and participation in significant aspects of our cultural heritage, expressed primarily through the arts, the sciences, the institutions, and the professions of society.”

Whether acknowledged at the end or the beginning of mission statements, the problem with these references is that no connection is made between how such a relationship with the United Methodist Church animates the commitments.  The true measure of that claim, of course, demands a visit to campus.  However, the fact that no reference is made to that relationship on the homepages of those institutions reinforces the likelihood such references are little more than acknowledgments of a past relationship (in the case of SMU) or a bureaucratic connection to an ecclesiastical body (in the case of Southwestern).

To highlight the difference, Wheaton College’s mission statement reads, “Wheaton College serves Jesus Christ and advances His Kingdom through excellence in liberal arts and graduate programs that educate the whole person to build the church and benefit society worldwide.”   Perhaps the most critical term in that sentence is the preposition “through.”  Details of that connection are then highlighted on the homepage.

In addition, the first sentence in the mission of the University of Notre Dame reads, “The University of Notre Dame is a Catholic academic community of higher learning, animated from its origins by the Congregation of Holy Cross.”   Perhaps the most critical term in that sentence is the verb “animates.” Details of that connection are then also highlighted on the homepage.

Even when the language in a mission statement is clear and the connection between how a particular faith tradition animates a Church-related university is compelling, at least two other challenges emerged in recent years with which trustees, administrators, and educators (referenced collectively from here forward as stakeholders) need to contend.  One challenge has to do with the culture Church-related colleges and universities presently find themselves engaging.  No sooner had stakeholders become familiar with and accustomed to the challenges posed by the secular age, they found themselves contenting with what a growing number of sociologists label the post-secular age.

In An Awareness of What is Missing: Faith and Reason in a Post-Secular Age, Jürgen Habermas was amongst the first to acknowledge this shift, along with the challenges and opportunities that may emerge.   While the future initially looked bright for the Church and, in turn, Church-related colleges and universities, what followed, however, was a general indifference to religion and a rise in people claiming no religious faith.

In the Czech Republic, Tomáš Halík was amongst the first to witness this indifference, acknowledge its challenges, yet also contend that it may provide Christianity with an opportunity for the fullness of faith to find expression.  Writing in The Afternoon of Christianity: The Courage to Change, Halík argues, “If it is humanly authentic, faith will retain legitimate scope for critical questions that will help it to grow and cooperate more fully with its divine aspect (faith as a gift of God’s grace).”   As a result, in what ways do stakeholders need to reposition the missions of Church-related colleges and universities in order to advance their respective rationales for existence and engage with a post-secular culture?

Another challenge has to do with how stakeholders view their relationship to the missions they are called to steward.  Quite often, stakeholders view the mission as something they possess even if only for a season while they are employed by a particular institution.  Mission is thus pliable to meet their social, political, and even theological sensibilities.  One needs to look no further for confirmation of this challenge than to review the social media accounts of stakeholders and measure some of their messages against the missions of the institutions where they serve.

Mission, in contrast, is an organizing rationale designed to be to be held in trust by members of a community, inherited from predecessors and stewarded with the intention of being passed along to successors.  In Philosophical Foundations in Fiduciary Law, Paul B. Miller contends “A fiduciary relationship is one by which one party (the fiduciary) exercises discretionary power over the significant practical interests of another.”   In the case of the mission of the Church-related college or university, that second party not only includes the ones to whom the mission will be passed but also  the ones from whom the mission was inherited.  As a result, how are stakeholders serving Church-related colleges and universities being formed for such service?

In an effort to address the challenges facing Church-related colleges and universities and the missions they strive to advance, this project seeks to make a tripartite contribution by providing strategies for:

1) understanding how mission statements serve as organizing rationales for how Church-related colleges and universities exercise their identity; 

2) understanding the larger cultural context in which Church-related colleges and universities find themselves operating and how their mission statements intersect with that context; and 

3) understanding the theological, philosophical, and legal characteristics of fiduciary service and how stakeholders serving Church-related colleges and universities are formed for such service.

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