Mission & Vision

Our Mission

• We Gather: Worship is where the Spirit gathers a people of Hope.
• We Nurture: Discipleship is how the Spirit nurtures a people of Hope.
• We Send: Integral mission is why the Spirit sends a people of Hope.

Our primary focus is to prepare students for the Church as grateful lifelong followers of Jesus Christ, knowing the freedom of the gospel as we gather, nurture and send students out to live holistic lives in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Our Vision

Growing World Christians in the Soil of Hope

“They are like trees planted by streams of water.” —Psalm 1:3

Growing...

The poet of Psalm 1 offers a guiding image for our philosophy of spiritual growth and formation at Hope College: “They are like trees planted by streams of water” (Psalm 1:3). We recognize that students are in the process of formation into a whole person, where the emotional, physical, intellectual, and spiritual grow organically without division. We use the image of tree growth to describe this process. In the life of every tree, a decisive moment occurs when a seed dramatically transforms into something new, a moment that the seed can take root and break through the darkness in the hopeful stretch for the light. Though Campus Ministries recognizes this sudden transformation in a seed, we also recognize that long-term growth towards maturity requires patience. It takes a long time to grow from a seed to a rooted tree.

We recognize that tree growth is shaped in the rhythm of light and darkness, rain and drought, season reaching into season, always growing deeper in order to grow taller. Tree growth does not happen overnight. It is never in a hurry. When you look at a tree, it appears that nothing is happening. But in reality a healthy tree is always growing, little by little, millimeter by millimeter. Christian growth is much the same: it is often invisible to the eye, the action taking place inside rough protective layers. But its growth is happening, all the time, in and out of season, despite what we see. The image of growth suggests that students are always developing their identity and their vocation or calling and reminds them of the patience required for being and doing.

Because this process does not happen overnight or at one event nor through one program, we recognize and celebrate that Campus Ministries does not make up the whole experience of a mature spiritual formation but is one part of a greater whole. The process of spiritual maturity happens in the entire college experience — in conversations with friends and faculty, in residence halls and the classroom, on athletic teams and trips abroad, in student activities and community service. Campus Ministries works intentionally with the entire Hope College community. We want to join Hope in creating an environment in which students grow in the conditions of a vibrant Christian community of study, worship, service, discernment, friendships, creativity, scholarship, and reflection.

Like the tree described in Psalm 1, we want our students to grow deep roots, sturdy trunks, and strong limbs that produce fruit and leaves in their season that offer food for the hungry and shade for the weary. Like the psalmist’s tree, we desire every student to be so rooted in good soil that they are free to spiral their canopy of hope towards the light. Campus Ministries seeks to discern which experiences, sermons, books, curricula, themes, resources, and training will encourage mature and steady growth over a lifetime. At a more fundamental level, we ask ourselves, whom are we encouraging students to grow into before they are graduated as agents of Hope?

世界上基督徒…

我们要照顾一个能培养世界基督徒的环境。世界上的基督徒从字面上理解约翰福音中神爱世界的陈述，相信世界是因爱而创造和认可的，虽然被罪扭曲和破坏，但已被爱所救赎。他们相信，神圣的爱，化身并居住在世界上，召唤世界始终走向完整，这是最终与上帝、人类和所有创造的和解和赎罪。世界上的基督徒相信，这种赎罪和和解是通过神唯一的儿子耶稣基督化身的恩典而一次性发生的。这种转变的恩典是由圣灵的力量激活的，因为它是在信心中经历的(罗马书3:21-26)。在这种信仰的神秘框架下，世界上的基督徒，连同见证人的云断言，基督已经死，基督复活，基督将再来。这个忏悔让他们在耶稣的道路上踏上了一条新的道路。

From the perspective of a world Christian, the entire global creation is God’s campus. The world, with its diversity of culture, color, and community, is where we live out this redemptive way of Jesus. Thus, at Hope College we do not prescribe one Christian expression, denomination, or spiritual experience. Instead, we focus on what unifies the diversity of the kingdom of God with the early Church’s radical confession: Jesus is Lord. Though Hope College is self-consciously in covenant with the Reformed Church in America, and celebrates and honors our storied relationship together, we also celebrate and honor the reality that God’s forest is large, diverse, and spacious. As the “Vision of Hope” statement articulates, we seek to be “ecumenical in character while rooted in the Reformed tradition,” with an unashamed evangelical calling to be transformed by an experience of God’s grace through revelation.

World Christians seek to promote, in the words of Hans Frei, a “generous orthodoxy.” We desire to articulate an orthodox voice between Christian extremes, left and right, always holding to our central confession that Jesus is Lord, and we seek to promote a Trinitarian rule of faith that explains how the story told in Scripture bears upon our own story and the world’s. World Christians are generous in celebrating what God has done in Christ for saints in every “tribe, and language, and people and nation” (Revelation 5:9). To that end, Hope College seeks to serve others in Christ-like submission by inviting people from around the world to come to be celebrated and to teach us what God is doing in their home. We desire that our students graduate as citizens of “global village,” ready to serve, study, engage, worship, pray, and learn wherever they find themselves in the world, in a multiplicity of vocations, languages, and cultural settings.

World Christians are prepared and equipped to live out their calling to practice shalom, God’s holistic vision for the flourishing of all creation with God. To encourage our students to pursue the hope of shalom in various disciplines and vocations, we want to provide opportunities for them to engage and discuss the far-reaching issues that threaten shalom. We want to grow students with a global consciousness and critical discernment, able to think and respond to the big issues of the world from a Christian perspective that is grounded in Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. For example, how are we to respond to the realities of poverty, structural racism, globalization, the AIDS pandemic, disparate views of sexuality, or environmental degradation? As Christians, how do we respond to the widening gulf between political ideologies fueled by the rhetoric from the right and the left? Campus Ministries wants to join with the entire Hope community in creating an environment that promotes and supports shalom, while at the same time refusing to let the gospel or Christian Church be framed or commandeered by political agendas — right or left — that often hinder the church from pursuing its mission to proclaim and incarnate God’s love in the world. To achieve this will require us all to think theologically out of our identity as Christians.

World Christians have their identity restored in God, through the vicarious communion and priestly act of Jesus the Son, by the power of the Holy Spirit. It is with this Trinitarian identity that we love the world as God loves the world, becoming last so others can go first (Philippians 2). This mutual submission to the other provides the basis for students to engage the world with a “renewing of their mind” (Romans 12:3). It is with this mind that we want to frame a theology of study, worship, witness, and vocation that can be transplanted into whatever context students inhabit after their Hope College education.

作为全世界的基督徒，我们希望我们的敬拜生活能体验到全球的声音、声音和歌曲的融合，这些声音和歌曲反映出学生们在霍普学院毕业后将经历的现实。世界杯荷兰vs厄瓜多尔走地我们相信敬拜对于世界基督徒成长的形成是至关重要的，因为在敬拜中，我们在宣讲、歌唱和祷告中体验到神的世界的慷慨的多样性，同时承认使世界统一和中心的是耶稣基督的主，他是现在的、过去的、将来的(启示录1:3)。这是正统的中心，给予世界基督徒慷慨的围圈。

In the soil...

当我们寻求世界基督徒的成长时，我们认识到成长发生在特定的环境中。土壤的图像给了全球视野一个特定的地理位置。生长发生在特定的土壤中，每一种土壤都是长期禀赋的结果:一英寸的表层土壤需要500年的时间积累。堆积是缓慢的，如果不加以保护，总是面临快速侵蚀的威胁。虽然土壤是普遍存在的，但在当地也是独一无二的。每棵树在特定的土壤中生长得最好;杨柳喜水，喜湿土。因此，关注土壤的种类是必要的，包括矿物质、微生物和营养物质，它们赋予土壤丰富的质地和健康。好的土壤有足够的深度让根系深入，并且需要营养。

希望学院的土壤也是如此。世界杯荷兰vs厄瓜多尔走地希望的土壤是由敬业的教师、管理人员和学生的丰富养分组成的;它拥有忠诚的校友、忠诚的会众和活跃的当地社区。世界杯英格兰队vs丹麦队足彩希望有一片肥沃的土壤，可以让学生和教师在学习、敬拜和人际关系的节奏中深深扎根。希望之土为生活支离破碎的学生提供了一种必要的地方感，为成长中的世界基督徒提供了一个特定的位置、历史、文化和背景。为了保存和继续培育希望校园的土壤，校园事工寻求成为这丰富资源的好管家，并协助校园做同样的事。

Campus Ministries also recognizes that good soil grows an abundant diversity of life: flowers, trees, shrubs, fruits, and grasses of all kinds (Genesis 1:11-12). The plant life of a particular place is diverse, and, if the soil is healthy, is full in color, fragrance, and stature. Hope College seeks to cultivate a soil where each student who is transplanted into our soil of Hope will sink his and her roots into a rich geography that will allow them to grow deeper as they grow taller. Good soil is strong enough to take in transplants and help them to thrive.

我们在努力培育好土壤的同时，也承认一个卑微的事实:我们什么也种不出来。成长是一个谜，是一种我们无法控制的力量。成长是上帝的管辖权。我们所能做的就是为生长之谜的发生提供合适的条件。正如温德尔·贝里在《木头唱诗班》中所写的那样，“在欢乐中预见到的一切/必须日复一日地实现/在黑暗中保持开放的视野/通过我们上万天的工作。”/收获会填满谷仓;为此，手一定会痛，脸一定会出汗。”正是这样的召唤，用痛苦和汗水为成长准备条件，不断地唤起希望的信念。但这是能预见喜乐的信心。

Of Hope

We grow in the soil of Hope. This is, of course, a dual image. We want God to grow world Christians in the specific soil of Hope College. Hope is our local geography. But Hope College does not exist for its own self-promotion, nor does the world need another liberal arts college that serves as a pipeline to privilege. Rather, the mission of Hope College is to be a place where the totality of human experience is taken seriously within our historic Christian faith, so that generations growing in the soil of Hope are ready to engage and serve the world and the Church with “wisdom and revelation” (Ephesians 1:17). Thus, we look to the God of Hope who incarnated hope in the person of Jesus Christ. It is this incarnation that gives Hope a center. While students are here we seek to provide the necessary conditions for the ultimate Hope of all to be rooted in the gospel, and that Hope is the person and work of Jesus, mediated through the Spirit, by the will of God.

The mission of Hope is not easy. Hope is the longing we do not yet see fulfilled and so requires our faith in one another and in God. But it is possible in grace. Our chief Hope, as the Heidelberg Catechism puts it, is rooted in the reality that we are “not [our] own, but belong — body and soul, in life and in death — to [our] faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.”

Rev. Trygve D. Johnson, Ph.D.

Hinga-Boersma Dean of the Chapel

世界杯荷兰vs厄瓜多尔走地