President’s Perspective: The Young Men Who Give Me Hope

I love all our Biola students. I have for now 19 years. When I’m having a heavy day from the normal stressors, I walk out the office door and descend the steps of Metzger Hall to the outside world. There they are. Students! Rushing to class. Playing Spikeball. Coming and going from Heritage Café. Heading to chapel. Conversing on benches.

My days are always lifted when I spend time with our students, and my administrative fast-panting becomes pastoral deep-breathing. After all, how can I lead a school if I only know about higher education’s economics or curricular structures? How can I be institutional if I’m not also incarnational?

Not long after I started at Biola in 2007, I began a mentoring group of young men. The idea was to go deep with a handful of students, stepping into their journeys and gaining insights and inspiration to serve as an in-touch president rather than an out-of-touch bureaucrat. If I can know well two handfuls of students each year, I figure I can better understand the thousand other new undergraduates who chose Biola.

In recent years, I’ve been thinking about and praying over the men of Biola, who comprise about 45% of our student body. I think about them because I mentor them. I care about the women at Biola as well, but in some ways I have a more up-close-and-personal relationship with these young men.

I think of them in light of the recent data out of research organizations like Barna, Pew and Gallup. What they are discovering is the great reversal of young men leaving the faith. In fact, a trend is underway as young men are getting serious about Jesus. For decades we have heard about the “decline of religion,” but for the past two years in-depth reports have proven the opposite. They are bucking the trend.

I heard this the other day from Tony. Tony stopped me on a Biola sidewalk, saying one day he’d hoped to run into me. His son, Lucas, is a junior business administration major who plays second base for our NCAA Division II Eagles. Tony’s throat clutched as he talked about his son, saying that not only has Lucas made great friends and received a first-class education, but Lucas’ faith has blossomed at Biola. His entire family has been inspired in their Christian walk because of the leadership that Lucas is modeling as a follower of Jesus and a student of the Bible. When I hear about Lucas, I think Pew, Barna and Gallup are onto something.

I met Perrin when he was 10 years old, over a decade ago in 2014. I was speaking at a church in Memphis when after the service a young family approached me. The parents were both physicians — the mother a Biola alumna — and they told me how much they appreciated the quality of a Biola education. Eight years later Perrin enrolled at Biola, where he became part of my mentoring group. He played club lacrosse, majored in cinema and media arts, and earned a place in our prestigious Epsilon Kappa Epsilon Honors Society. This May, he graduated and married the young lady he met as a student here. He is a strong man, inside and out, with a heart that is shaped like Jesus. When I talk to Perrin, I think Pew, Barna and Gallup are onto something.

Ivan is 13 years younger than his next oldest sibling. His four sisters had already graduated from Biola when I met the family at their home in Hyderabad, India. I posed for a photo with the extended family. I showed Ivan that photo when he enrolled in Biola’s Crowell School of Business as a freshman three years ago. Today, Ivan is entering his senior year. He was just awarded first place and $15,000 in our annual Startup Competition, honored for the drone business he’s launching focused on construction site safety. When some of his family met with me recently, he articulated the quality of his education, his aspirations for new business development in India, and how his faith has grown through the courses and mentoring he’s received at Biola. When I sit with Ivan, I think Pew, Barna and Gallup are onto something.