Practicing Hope
Are you needing some hope right now? I have come to understand that hope is not only, or even primarily, a feeling. It is a practice. It requires muscles. Here are three strong practices of hope.
President Rebecca J. Stoltzfus
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Distinctively Goshen
Reflections from President Stoltzfus
Mennonite Church USA vs The Department of Homeland Security
We are writing jointly, as a Mennonite pastor and college president, to explain and support a recent lawsuit filed to protect our religious freedom to practice our faith in the sanctuary on this campus.
My word for 2025
My word for the year is RENEW. Renewal is part and parcel of the God-filled life. It is the stuff of life – we see it in the turning of the earth and the seasons and in death and birth. And it is hard and scary. What if we at Goshen College took this moment to renew our clarity around how we form faith in our campus community?
Celebrating our first-generation students
Today is national First-Generation College Celebration Day. Nearly half of our students are the first in their families to go to college, and many of our staff and faculty are similarly first-gen. I am the second generation in my family to go to college, but as the 18th president of Goshen College, I am the first president who is not first generation. Goshen has a long history of serving and being led by first-gen scholars.
Sacred solidarity
Last week, Dr. Wendsler Nosie brought us a gift and an invitation. The gift was his call to awaken to the sacred nature of the land. The invitation was to stand in solidarity with the Apache in their struggle to preserve their sacred land, because all religious freedoms are interdependent.
Anniversary of anguish
As we pass the anniversary of the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, we are witnessing the predictable horror that unfolds when the arithmetic of revenge – “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” – is taken as an exponential license to crush and exterminate.
Winds of conflict and streams of water
If you are a college president, which I happen to be, your inbox is full of alarms and advice about the winds of conflict on campuses this fall.
The power of girls: ‘Let me be myself’
I honor Anne Frank this Women’s History Month because hearing her voice speak across the decades through her house-turned-museum woke me up to the power of girls. My experience in those upstairs rooms made me see not only the world in new ways, but also my daughter and all girls in new ways.
Goshen’s hedgehog
Jim Collins, author of the business books Good to Great and Built to Last, defined a Hedgehog Concept as what differentiates great companies from good ones. He writes, “A hedgehog concept is not a goal to be the best, a strategy to be the best, an intention to be the best, a plan to be the best. It is an understanding of what you can be the best at.”
My word for 2024
My word for the year is faith because it’s what I need. Faith is such a familiar word that it can sound bland, and so I’ll try to explain what I mean. Faith for me is the belief that God is love and that God is at work in the world and in me. In these times, I need to feel a deep confidence in the marrow of my bones that love is the most powerful force in the world.