The Preacher opines in Ecclesiastes 3:1 that, “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.”
And so it is with me—that is, with the season of my tenure as Vice President of Advancement here at Bethlehem College and Seminary. I’ll soon be stepping down, and today we begin a new season of praying and searching for someone new to fill my role.
During the last five years, it is true that I have run something of a gauntlet of challenges regarding my physical health. But, by God’s grace, I remain alert, strong, and still able to advocate for The Serious Joy Scholarship just as vigorously as I always have. Still, I’m soon to be 69 years old, and the most common indicator of chronic heart disease is sudden death, and well it just seems a matter of good stewardship that someone else ought to be staged to take up this mantle of responsibility.
We don’t yet have a specific person in mind. We invite you to join us in praying that God will soon call someone, as he once called me. In the meanwhile we will prospect and recruit. It could be that our new VP might be, as I was, an already-generous contributor to Bethlehem College and Seminary. It could be that he will be a grateful alumnus, capable of advocating from the basis of his experience. It could be that the one who follows me might have experience as a professional fundraiser. It could be that my successor will be a much younger person who might need to sit under my teaching and coaching for a season. We don’t yet know, but God does.
God called Adrien and me out of lives of affluence and comfort in 2013 to come here to undertake the work of calling out the generosity of others for the sake of the mission of Bethlehem College and Seminary. In all of this she has been my glad co-laborer. We knew then only a handful of people here and really nothing at all about fundraising—save that of what it felt like ourselves to be asked for money. During these years in this community we have been blessed beyond measure with a deeper understanding of our Bibles, an enhanced view of God’s sovereignty, richer church and devotional lives, and now a vast community of eternal friends whom we consider among the very best of our lives.
With God’s help we have accomplished many things, not the least of which has been garnering 12 years of faithful supply of the financial resources required to do this work. As we think of our own fingerprints on this mission, we think of:
- Authoring with John Piper our school’s slogan, “Education in Serious Joy.”
- Conceiving of The Serious Joy Scholarship as the mainstay of our advancement efforts.
- Forming The Alex Steddom International Student Fund to support efforts to take Bethlehem teaching to theologically famished regions of the world.
- Organizing The Chancellery as a community of generous contributors to Bethlehem College and Seminary who fund all or half of scholarships per year.
- Coordinating a twice-annual public lecture series to serve our constituents, and to meet new ones.
- I’d also like to think I’ve made some contributions in the classroom. The opportunities I’ve been given to teach Cicero, Al-Farabi, Maimonides, Machiavelli, Thomas Reid, Hume, Adam Smith, Locke, Burke, Paine, and Tocqueville have afforded me the chance to reconsider Great Books like these in of the Greatest Book for the sake of the Great Commission.
- I hope that my counsel to three presidents here has always been mature, steady, and wise, and am grateful to God for the confidence each of them reposed in me.
- I was asked to contribute one sentence to a collection of 80th birthday well wishes to our Chancellor. I wrote, “I thank God for John Piper because he was used of God to call me to the most important and fruitful work of my life and to encourage me in it as his friend all along the way.” Indeed, I am profoundly grateful to God for the ministry of John Piper.
- Greatest among the blessings has been watching God at work in the countless number of students and graduates who have emerged from this place ready and able to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ; a new generation of Christian Hedonists who know that “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.”
We have traveled with you through the wind and rain, fire and flood—through internal controversies, civil strife, pandemic virus, government-imposed lock down, the death of George Floyd, the burning of the Third Precinct, the uptake of ICE enforcement, and, most recently, the assault on Cities Church.
And we have witnessed God’s steadfast hand grip us through it all. Through it all. It causes me to call to memory the words of one of our former trustees at a time when our financial prospects were not nearly as well settled as they are, today. He said, “It is entirely reasonable that God would show Bethlehem College and Seminary his favor.” It was reasonable then, and remains so.
While we have labored hard at our assignments here, there’s never been a moment when we’ve regarded the real work as being accomplished by anyone other than our sovereign God, himself. Only he produces fruit. Year after year we’ve started from scratch, not knowing from whence God’s bounty would flow. And year after year, we found him faithful—often instead, if not in spite, of our own endeavors. It has truly been my life’s highest privilege to stand on the tarmac with flashlights in each hand guiding the arriving and departing flights of God’s providence to and from these gates.
And as I have done so, I have depended through nearly all of these years on the very able assistance of Miss Leah Bruneau, without whom none of this work would have ever come to any degree of execution.
Recall the claim that we have made so often to you: “Pulpits are being filled, ministries staffed, nations reached, Classical Christian K–12 faculties supplied, workplaces influenced, and the theological academy seasoned with a new generation of men and women who have learned and are eager to share the truth that ‘God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.’” This claim has been for me, and remains for all of you, the glorious impulse for getting up and at it every day here at Bethlehem College and Seminary.
I do not plan to be finished in ministry. My heart, and Adrien’s, remains full of love for this school and passion for its mission. Our hearts are full of love for you, our dear, dear, colleagues. Once my responsibilities are reassigned, we shall make ourselves available to labor for the cause of Christ in whatever manner we may be called to for as long as God gives us ability to do so.
So, this is not really a good-bye, but simply an expression of “God speed us on our way.” And speed us on our way we pray he will. On our way to a new colleague who will steward this work in the years to come and take us to places that I couldn’t. On our way to the full scale of 250 students that has always been our aim. On our way toward future decades of academic ministry. On our way to spreading a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ. And ultimately on our way to Jesus himself.
In the meanwhile, with God’s help, I will labor as vigorously as I am able on behalf of The Serious Joy Scholarship, dedicate myself to onboarding my replacement as carefully and attentively as I can, and then listen carefully for what God intends next for me.
So we are thanking God for the confidence that He, and all of you, have long reposed in us, for the deep spiritual richness of this experience, and for the fruit he has produced from our labor—which has been inarguably abundant.
Please pray over this important search. Send us your referrals. Raise your hand to let us know whether God might be tugging at your own heart to serve in this regard. God will supply this need as faithfully as he has supplied all of our other needs. Of this we can be certain.
Rick Segal
Vice President of Advancement & Lecturer of History and Political Philosophy