I sometimes wonder what the founders of Jackson Male Academy — the institution that would one day become Union University — were dreaming and envisioning when they launched their school in 1823 on the remote American frontier. Jackson, its hometown, had just been established the year before, and there was certainly a good bit of optimism.
But, did they have any idea that the academy they were starting would last for 200 years? Could they even fathom that it would educate tens of thousands of people, and that those graduates would make amazing contributions to the world in fields as wide-ranging and diverse as theology, education, the sciences, politics, nursing, business, social work, pharmacy, communications, engineering and many others?
It would be thrilling to go back in time and tell them everything their institution would become. Their reaction, I'm sure, would be priceless.
One thing that strikes me about Union University's beginnings is how small and humble they were. Union wasn't a school that began with loads of money or big-time supporters committed to its success. It was begun by people who simply wanted to improve life in their small community. So they did what they could to make that happen — and over the past 200 years, God has blessed their efforts at simply being faithful and turned their school into something they never could have imagined it would be.
There's a lesson there for all of us, I believe. Most of the time, God doesn't call us to perform monumental tasks that will change the world. He simply calls us to be faithful, day in and day out, in the small responsibilities of our daily lives. He then takes those small acts of faithfulness and makes more of them than we ever thought possible.
Union's story over the past 200 years is indeed a story of faithfulness: faithfulness on the part of countless leaders who worked hard to build the university, faithfulness on the part of faculty and staff members who poured out their lives in service to students, faithfulness on the part of alumni who courageously lived out their callings unto the Lord, faithfulness on the part of churches and families and individuals who have shared their resources, often sacrificially, so that students might have the opportunity to study in a Christ-centered university, and most of all, faithfulness on the part of the Lord, who used their efforts to build Union University into what it is today.
A bicentennial is an event certainly worth celebrating. As we do so over the next year, we hope you'll join with us in giving thanks to the Lord, who has provided for Union time and time again, and who will continue to direct us as we look toward a third century of providing Christ-centered education in service to Church and society.
With joy,
Samuel W. "Dub" Oliver, Ph.D.
