Flourishing at a Mission-Driven Institution
Now these three remain: faith, hope, and love—
but the greatest of these is love.
1 Corinthians 13:13, CSB
For many of our students, making it to commencement is their goal, and they pursue it like a runner reaching for the finish line, not realizing that it is also a starting line. Now that you have come to the final chapter of Faithful Faculty, you are reaching what might appear to be a finish line, but I would liken it more to the prerace warm-up that gets you ready to run the race to the best of your ability.
While we might not agree with the Beatles that love is all a person needs,[1] love for God and those made in his image has been a central thread woven throughout this book. I believe that this kind of biblically shaped love can propel you forward through the unpredictable twists and turns that await you on this journey. If love is the key to our long-term flourishing, where can we go in the Scriptures to get a picture of what this love looks like in action? For our purposes, I think 1 Corinthians 13, often called “the love chapter,” will give us all we need.
When the apostle Paul wrote 1 Corinthians, his relationship with the church at Corinth was fracturing. He was particularly frustrated by their public displays of “spirituality.” They believed their spiritual gifts displayed spiritual superiority rather than the immaturity Paul saw in their unloving actions toward one another, which were likely caused by their pride and dangerous misunderstanding of Jesus's resurrection and its implications for daily life (1 Cor 15). Paul signals his concerns about these matters through savage sarcasm in a quite ironic thanksgiving that begins the letter (1 Cor 1:4–9). In these verses, Paul sandwiches his bitter comments about their practice of the spiritual gifts and their enduring hope grounded in the resurrection of Jesus Christ (1:5–7) between the delicious bread that extols God’s faithfulness to bring them into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, and strengthen them to the end (1:4, 8–9). As the letter unfolds, Paul clarifies the central issue. Spiritual maturity is not defined by the practice of spiritual gifts but by disciplined obedience that is defined by pursuing unity in all things under the lordship of King Jesus, boasting only in the Lord, developing godly wisdom, practicing God-glorifying, biblical sexuality, and persevering in the hope of the resurrection.[2]
What role then does “the love chapter” play within all this mess? Paul placed it at the heart of his answer to the Corinthians' questions about the practice of spiritual gifts in chapters 12–14. In these chapters, Paul built his teaching on the principle that only God's Spirit can empower someone to say, “Jesus is Lord.” Consequently, the primary purposes of the Spirit-given gifts are to proclaim the lordship of Jesus, the foundation of unity, and to build unity in the church through the diverse gifts of its members. In Corinth, neither goal was being pursued. Love, properly defined, provided the answer. Paul explained first that practicing the “visible” or “sign” gifts, which the church seemed to value above everything else, without love for God and others is worthless (13:1–3). Then, since the people's practice of the gifts reflected a lack of love, Paul defined love for them by describing the posture that love does and does not take toward the members of the body and, by implication, all neighbors (13:4–7). He concluded the chapter by framing the gifts against the backdrop of the resurrection of believers that will happen when King Jesus returns. The gifts exist to counteract the lack caused by sin. When no lack remains, neither will the church's most beloved gifts. But the gifts they had so easily overlooked—faith, hope, and, most important, love—will.[3]
By now, you might be wondering what Paul’s teaching about spiritual gifts has to do with flourishing at a mission-driven institution. Here’s what: No matter how focused the administration of your institution is on aligning its day-to-day decision-making with the core mission and values that inspire you to persevere in your calling as a professor, they will make wrong, even sinful, decisions from time to time. On many occasions, they make decisions that don’t appear to be wise from the outside but are actually the godliest choice to be made because they possess information related to the decision that you don’t know and they can’t disclose. Every decision, even the most seemingly obvious ones, could be the starting point for disunity. Beyond the administration, no matter how spiritually mature your colleagues are—both in your discipline and outside of it—they have the potential to become prideful about their achievements, desire the recognition others receive, or just become bitter over a piling up of perceived slights over the years. They could begin to sow the seeds of discontentment that lead to disunity.
And you (or I) could too. This is where Paul's instructions to the Corinthians intersect with our flourishing in a mission-driven institution. Just as he taught the Corinthians that faith, hope, and love were essential for fortifying and unifying the church to endure in its mission, these three gifts of the Spirit are essential for faculty members to flourish in their callings as academic disciple makers, who aren't just preparing students for jobs but for the lives that God is calling them to live. If we walk daily as examples of the fruit that the synergistic relationship between faith, hope, and love can produce, we will fulfill our calling and flourish personally in ways that exceed all that we could ask or think (Eph 3:20).
Now These Three Remain
Faith
Paul uses the term translated as "faith" in our Bibles in multiple ways.[4] He first employs faith to describe the belief in King Jesus that makes us God's children and sustains us as servants in his kingdom who hope for the day when his reign will come on earth as it is in heaven (Matt 6:9–10). He also uses the term to describe the faith, those shared theological commitments that establish the boundaries of what someone must affirm as true to confirm his or her faith in King Jesus is biblical. In 1 Cor 13:13, Paul is describing this personal faith in King Jesus that accompanies the regenerating work of the Spirit to transform our hearts and creates a desire in us to walk in fellowship with God rather than run and hide because of our sin. It is the kind of faith that the writer of Hebrews says someone must have to please God (Heb 11:6). This faith can be strong such that we can pursue God's calling when others, even other believers, think it is impractical, but it is also imperfect and prone to waver because of life's circumstances and our own sin.
Even though Paul is not directly referring to the faith in 1 Cor 13:13, it is essential that we consider our personal faith in conjunction with the faith. I understand the nervousness that this assertion might cause you. You might be thinking, "I am not a theologian." If so, I am going to say something that might terrify you: You are a theologian. Flourishing at a mission-driven institution demands that you accept this fact and commit to growing the doctrinal knowledge that comes from becoming better interpreters of Scripture, deepening your knowledge of Christian tradition, employing the skills of reasoning that you use in your academic disciplines, and, finally, considering how the truth you have learned makes sense of our life in a fallen world.[5] If you are afraid that deepening your knowledge of the truths about God might remove the mystery from your personal faith, knowledge of God rightly considered will only deepen the mystery and enhance your love for him. And a knowledge of the truth formed over time will protect you from abandoning your personal faith when the most painful experiences life has to offer begin to cascade upon you.
Growing in your personal faith and in the faith begins with living in community with other believers in a local church where the Scriptures are faithfully taught and members are equipped to grow in their knowledge of the truth and their pursuit of holy living. The discipleship that takes place in the local church can then be enhanced by seeking out opportunities to grow your faith and deepen your knowledge of the faith through intentional conversation with colleagues in every segment of your mission-driven institution. As you mature in the faith, the web of relationships in which you can disciple others and be discipled will expand into the larger community in ways that you cannot predict.
Hope
A few years back, my wife, Amber, and I started watching a television show called Ted Lasso. It is a classic "fish out of water" story in which an American football coach is hired to coach an English Premier League soccer team. The premise of the show is as ridiculous as the main character's mustache, and the characters are broken, immoral, and foulmouthed messes. Despite all this, the show gained a significant following. I think that the main reason for the growth of its audience (and our ability to endure the show's faults) was the unrelenting optimism displayed by the lead character in a culture rampant with cynicism, particularly toward leaders. At the end of the first season during Ted's last pregame speech, I learned a saying that apparently is used a lot in England: "It's the hope that kills you." As a sports fan whose teams have endured some tragic losses, I get it. (I was a student at the University of Kentucky when [Christian] Laettner hit the shot that has now been replayed for thirty-four years during March Madness ... but who is counting?) But Ted won't stand for it. He counters that with "It's the lack of hope that gets you." While hope that your team might win a championship is inconsequential and exponentially more fragile than the hope followers of King Jesus should have, it often seems to endure more easily, and sadly we regularly give our teams more grace than we give the fellow Christians whose failures become our excuse for walking away. The key to making sure this is no longer the case is defining hope biblically so it can be applied powerfully to our daily walk with the Lord.
Paul explains this hope in expansive detail in 1 Corinthians 15, but this hope can be summed up in the fact that one day King Jesus will return to his people. He will complete the destruction of Satan, sin, and death that began with his death and resurrection. He will free creation from the curse of sin and provide believers with glorified bodies forever freed from the curse. And ultimately, the triune God will dwell with his people in perfect communion for the rest of eternity on a recreated earth. So, how does this future hope empower us to flourish in life and as members of our mission-driven institutions? First, hope enables us to embrace our human limitations and to long for God to make all things new. Second, hope empowers us to view disciplinary excellence as an opportunity to sharpen the mirror's reflection until we see face-to-face and know as fully as we are known by God (1 Cor 13:11–12). Finally, hope encourages us to persevere in our work because we know that our labor in the Lord is not in vain (1 Cor 15:58).
The hope of the resurrection helps us to recognize our limitations as fallen people who live in a creation that is groaning for the revealing of the sons of God (Rom 8:19–23). In Rom 8:24–25, Paul describes this hope in terms that mirror biblical descriptions of faith as belief in something unseen but still real. A steadfast hope in the resurrection of the body forces us to admit that we are limited. Admittedly, I feel a little hypocritical in asking something of others that I have so often failed to do myself. Serving at a mission-driven institution can be exhilarating because you are fulfilling your calling and making a difference in the lives of your students. God made us to work so that we could extend his wise rule. You want to serve, and the idea of saying no to an opportunity on campus can feel painful. But developing good habits of prioritization at the beginning of your time serving at a new institution will help you to work hard and be physically sustained for the long haul. Have faith that the God who created you for this work will empower you to accomplish everything he has ordained for you to do within your creaturely limits. Submit yourself to your limits in a way that causes you to worship God in his limitlessness. Allow a rightly ordered hope to remind you of your limits before your body, your spouse, or your children do.
Everything that God has created displays his creativity, consistency, majesty, glory, and an endless list of his other attributes, but we are broken observers observing a creation "subjected to futility" (Rom 8:20). This means we are never going to see the perfect harmony of creation untouched by the curse of sin until King Jesus makes all things new, and right now, people can claim that creation came into being without the direct activity of God. Resurrection hope provides the proper framework within which we can think biblically about every discipline that seeks to make sense of life in this world, because the promise that God will restore creation to a "better than Eden" existence guarantees that the majesty of God in creation will one day be undeniable. While this phrase doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, maybe it would be best for us to think about our task as the "reintegration of faith and learning."[6] This phrasing forces us to acknowledge that creation has been broken by the fall but also allows us to face the potential scorn of our guilds with confidence because we know that "when all the facts are known," the Bible's teaching, rightly interpreted, about every matter of fact will be confirmed as true.[7] In light of this truth, pursue distinction in your discipline in full confidence that what God has revealed in creation will never ultimately contradict what he has revealed in Scripture.
The beauty of teaching at a mission-driven institution is that as we grow in our understanding of the intricacies of our fields, we will identify new elements of God's creative design that will give us glimpses of the greatness of our God.[8] These flashes of God's glory can reinforce our hope by giving us a hint of what it will be like when God makes all things new. And then, we get to share those things with our students! When we approach our work with this God-focused hope, we won't have to search for or force connections between our disciplines and the Christian faith; we will be recognizing those connections because the triune God has placed them there.
Finally, hope encourages us to persevere in our work because we know that our labor in the Lord is not in vain. After describing the hope of the resurrection to a group of people who either thought that their present spiritual experience was the fullness of the Christian hope or had not yet overcome their previous belief that eternal embodiment would be a curse and not a blessing—or both—Paul concluded the chapter by saying, "Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the Lord's work, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain" (1 Cor 15:58). As you tackle the everyday demands of serving as a professor, "be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the Lord's work," because you know that the investment of your time, talent, and energy is making an eternal difference that you may never recognize in this life.
But the Greatest of These Is Love
A trope exists in some sectors of academia that love or emotions have no place in our academic pursuits because truth can only be known by dispassionately applying the skills of reason to answer the question at hand. While this method of pursuing truth might seem attractive, even necessary, divorcing truth from rightly ordered love is too great a risk. Rationality alone does not guarantee moral judgment.
In How to Think, Alan Jacobs demonstrates the dangers of relying on reason alone through a compelling case study on English philosopher and religious skeptic John Stuart Mill.[9] In the education he received, largely from his father, Mill believed that right thinking had to be divorced from all feelings. Jacobs explains that when his promise as a social reformer was about to be realized, Mill had a "crisis in [his] mental history" because he discovered that achieving his goals would bring him no joy and brought him to the place of having nothing to live for. It was only in the cultivation of his feelings through the reading of poetry that Mill was brought back from the precipice. The case study leads Jacobs to conclude that applying analytical power alone to a problem is insufficient to make a difference in the world:
Rather, one must have a certain kind of character—one must be a certain kind of person, a person who has both the ability and the inclination to take the products of analysis and reassemble them into a positive account, a structure not just of thought but also of feelings that, when joined to thought, can produce meaningful action.
The second component is this: when your feelings are properly cultivated, when that part of your life is strong and healthy, then your responses to the world will be adequate to what the world is really like.[10]
And let us never forget that, in Avengers: Age of Ultron, dispassionate rationality caused Ultron to think that the only way to save humanity was to destroy it.
This love will energize our hope and give us the courage to evaluate how the foundational commitments of our disciplines align with the revealed truth that can be discerned when the Scriptures are interpreted rightly. And when we determine that those presuppositions are out of alignment with the truth, love will compel us to honestly evaluate how the social acceptance these disciplinary commitments provide are forming us and to decide that the scorn of the academy "for the sake of Christ" is far better than any accolade it can offer (Heb 11:26).
Additionally, this love will compel us to think and pursue truth in community with colleagues across every sector of our campuses rather than continuing in the siloed dysfunctionality of the modern multiversity. Love will compel us to take the risk of building deep relationships with people who share the same commitment to Jesus Christ but also think differently and have different gifts than we do. Thinking within the membership of small communities within our institution that are committed to the unity and growth of the whole community will be essential for our growth in wisdom. Love will compel us to give grace to one another, even (maybe especially) to members of the administration, when frustrations and disappointments arise. As Paul explained to the members of the Corinthian church, God had placed every one of them in the church and gifted them uniquely so that the body would function properly and fulfill the mission he had given them (1 Cor 12:12–26). He is doing the same thing at our mission-driven institutions.
Finally, love will compel us to invest ourselves in the mission of forming our students to possess the character, judgment, and critical thinking skills that will allow them to glorify God by excelling in any venture they pursue. This holistic, Christ-centered vision for education honors them as image bearers whose lives are far more than what they add to the economy. It prepares our students for a vocation and the rest of life, not just a job. Even more, when we teach the truths of general revelation that our academic disciplines can discern in concert with the truth and love revealed in Scripture, we will also flourish and find the wholeness that comes from pursuing our callings in obedience to the command to love God and our neighbors.[11]
Conclusion
Our growing personal faith and knowledge of the faith will be perfected when our hope is realized in the return of Jesus.[12] The only other gift of the Spirit that will remain is love. When all things are made new, we will experience fully the love that compelled the triune God to send the Son into the world in the likeness of sinful flesh to rescue sinners from the power of sin and death and to demonstrate that he is both just and the justifier of those who have faith in Jesus.
When you get up for work tomorrow morning, you may not get out of bed singing a peppy song like "Everything Is Awesome!," as Emmet does in The Lego Movie,[13] but you can approach your work with a better joy that is grounded in the truth rather than the deceptive reality that blinded Emmet to what was really going on in his world. Here is the better news: Pursuing the calling for which you were made, focused on growing in faith, hope, and love, will give you a satisfaction with work that will transcend anything you could imagine and will encourage your students to pursue their callings with the same fervor. And, ultimately, you will truly be able to sing "Everything Is Awesome!" for an eternity as you live out your calling on the new earth that God will create when he makes all things new.
This essay was originally published as the conclusion to Faithful Faculty: Vocational Flourishing in Christian Higher Education (B&H Academic, 2026), edited by Donny Mathis and Jacob Shatzer. Reprinted with permission from the publisher, inclusive of minor edits for formatting.
Notes:
[1]: See the Beatles, "All You Need Is Love," by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Parlophone, Capitol, July 1967, non-album single.
[2]: See John B. Polhill, Paul and His Letters (B&H Academic, 1999), 246–47.
[3]: For a more complete description of the purpose of spiritual gifts, see Thomas R. Schreiner, Spiritual Gifts: What They Are and Why They Matter (B&H, 2018).
[4]: See Rom 4:12, 16; 14:23; 1 Cor 16:13; 2 Cor 13:5; Gal 1:23; Eph 4:13; Phil 1:25, 27; Col 1:23; 2:7; 1 Tim 1:2, 14; 3:9, 13; 4:1, 6; 5:8; 6:10, 12, 21; 2 Tim 1:13; 2:18; 3:8; 4:7; Titus 1:1, 13; 3:15.
[5]: See Jacob Shatzer, Faithful Learning: A Vision for Theologically Integrated Education (B&H Academic, 2023), 1–17.
[6]: See Arthur Holmes, "Integrating Faith and Learning in a Christian Liberal Arts University," in The Future of Christian Higher Education, ed. David S. Dockery and David P. Gushee (B&H, 1999), 161–67.
[7]: See David Dockery, Christian Scripture: An Evangelical Perspective on Inspiration, Authority and Interpretation (Wipf and Stock, 2004), 64–66.
[8]: Shatzer, Faithful Learning, 4. See also Phil Davignon, "Faithful Scholarship," in Donny Mathis and Jacob Shatzer, eds, Faithful Flourishing: Vocational Flourishing in Christian Higher Education (B&H Academic, 2026), chapter 6.
[9]: Alan Jacobs, How to Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds (Currency, 2017), 39–43.
[10]: Jacobs, 43–44. Emphasis original.
[11]: My colleague Dr. Jan Foster, associate provost for administration and accreditation and professor of biology at North Greenville University, describes the opportunity to teach anatomy and physiology in the context of a mission-driven institution in this way, and I think that this opportunity is available to professors in any discipline. Rightly understood, any academic discipline can be pursued for the glory of God and the spiritual good of the practitioner.
[12]: See Polhill, Paul and His Letters, 247.
[13]: See Tegan and Sara, "Everything Is Awesome!" by Shawn Patterson, JoLi, and the Lonely Island, in The Lego Movie: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, Water Tower, 2014; and The Lego Movie, Warner Bros. Pictures, 2014 (film).
Donny Mathis
Associate Provost | Dean of Faculty Development | Professor of Christian Studies | North Greenville University