Dreaming Big

This past week, the proposals for the Micah Think Tank were unveiled. The proposals range from creating a new semester schedule to bringing four live emus on campus and giving them a place to live. All told, over thirty-two different proposals were submitted, all dreaming big about how we as a university can fulfill our mission to "do mercy, love justice and walk humbly with our God."

The common denominator of all the proposals is that they are dreams. Monday night at the Micah Think Tank appreciation dinner, President Loren Swartzendruber said, "Our dreams should always outstrip our ability to fund them." But there is incredible worth in expressing our dreams and in the administration paying attention to those ideas. Our future as a university is dependent on our ability to continue dreaming and moving forward.

It is when we stop dreaming that we lose our vitality as a place of learning. When we become too set in our ways we become disconnected from a world that never stops changing. In the last twenty years, technology alone has revolutionized the way we connect with the world. EMU's cross-cultural program is a good example of how we have embraced a different way of learning that opens up students to the world. However, EMU must never stop trying to be progressive in this world.

For our message of Anabaptism to be relevant in today's world, it is necessary to keep dreaming and progressing. Many of the proposals are addressing the question "What could and should our commitment to being an Anabaptist university look like?"

The question of whether we live out the call to Anabaptism is a serious one and many of the proposals reach to the heart of this question. The idea of dreaming big is vital for EMU as a place of learning in that it enables us to continue to look to the future and adapt to an ever-changing world. More importantly, they address whether we live up to our Anabaptist calling.

Shalom,

Dan