Grove City College Opening Convocation Remarks, August 27, 2025
delivered by Grove City College President Bradley J. Lingo ’00
In one of the most dramatic scenes in all human history—hours before the crucifixion—Jesus stands before Pilate. Pilate asks Him two of the most important questions ever asked. Two of the most important questions each of you must consider while you are at Grove City College.
First, Pilate asks Jesus, “Are you the King of the Jews? Are you a king?” Pilate is asking Jesus: Who are You?
Jesus responds, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.”
Pilate asks his next question, “What is truth?”
Who is Jesus? What is truth? Those are the questions asked by Pilate as Jesus stands trial hours before the crucifixion. The questions are as relevant today as they were 2000 years ago.
The Gospel of John does not record a response from Jesus to the second question.
Maybe that’s because Pilate wasn’t really asking. In asking, “what is truth” just moments before sending a man to the cross that Pilate knew was not guilty, Pilate is mocking the very idea of truth and saying, “I don’t care about the truth.”
Pilate would be at home at many universities today. Mocking Christ and disregarding truth in favor of the wishes of the crowd.
The pursuit of truth used to be the purpose of a university, the reason institutions of higher learning existed. Today, many schools see truth as something too dangerous to touch, much less teach. Many college students and professors, in the words of the Apostle Paul, “claim to be wise” but “have exchanged truth for a lie—and in so doing have become fools.”
Not so at Grove City College. We steadfastly uphold our commitment to the pursuit of truth and the integration of faith and learning. We will help you ask—and point you to answers—to these most fundamental of questions: Who is Jesus? What is truth?
It turns out that these questions are related. In fact, you might say that they are the same question.
In this passage at the end of John, Jesus states that His very purpose is to “bear witness to the truth.” Also, in John 1, John introduces us to Jesus by saying, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.”
It’s not just John telling us this. Jesus describes Himself as, “the way, the truth, and the life.” That is, one of the names that Jesus gives Himself is “the truth,” meaning that to seek truth is to seek Christ. Seeking truth is at the heart of Christianity. Truth is something more than just a set of facts. Whether you study mathematics, chemistry, economics, or theology—whatever field you pursue—if you seek truth you will find Christ.
To discover truth is to discover Christ. To know something of creation is to know something of the creator. As we understand the order and design of the world, and as we master the subjects of our studies, we discover the wonder of His ways. As the Psalmist wrote, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims His handiwork.”
As we pursue truth, two things happen: we are transformed, and we are set free.
Romans 12:2 is inscribed onto the side of our Breen Student Union here at Grove City College. It states: “Do not be conformed to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”
As we pursue truth together, as we learn together—semester by semester, week by week, class by class, paper by paper, test by test—your mind is being renewed and you are being transformed as you pursue truth one step after another.
Scripture tells us something else happens as we pursue truth: we become more free. Jesus says in John 8, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.” Knowing the truth allows us to live in right relationship with God and frees us from the bondage of ignorance and sin.
As I shared with the freshman and their parents last week, you might have heard it said that Grove City offers a liberal arts education. Liberal in this context doesn’t refer to politics, it refers to freedom—think “liberty” or liberating. When we say we want your education to be liberating, when we say we want your education to make you free, we are talking about a sense of freedom that means much more than not restrained, not locked up, not in jail.
A prominent theologian once explained freedom this way: Imagine you want to play a great work of Beethoven on the piano, but the piano is locked inside a room. If someone lets you inside the room and permits you to play the piano, you are, in a sense, free to play it. No one is going to stop you. But if you have not studied, nor practiced and trained to play the piano, you are not truly free to make beautiful music.
The same is true for the work you are called to do—whether you are called to be a musician or do something entirely different.
I am not very musical, so before becoming a professor, I was a lawyer. I’m now a recovering lawyer, about six years clean. It might sound to you like being a lawyer and being a musician are very different. But they have something in common. When I sat down with a blank piece of paper and then used my mind and my pen and my legal education to transform that blank piece of paper into a legal argument that was beautiful and powerful, I experienced joy that a pianist must feel when he makes beautiful music.
That is one of my deep hopes for each of you. That you know the joy and freedom that comes from working hard to develop a gift, using your gifts to create beauty, and sharing that gift with others.
Do you want to find your purpose? Do you want to find freedom? Do you want to find life? Then find answers to those two important questions: Who is Jesus? What is truth?
Those are the questions we want to answer.
Grove City College’s Core Values
Now, I want to speak about how we want to live together as we answer them. As a college and a community, we’ve committed ourselves to five core values. Maybe you saw them in the rotunda outside of the admissions office. Perhaps you noticed them on the light posts along Campus Drive, or displayed on the wall in the student union.
They describe the kind of place we want to be at Grove City College and the kind of students we want to produce.
Grove City College has five core values: faithfulness, excellence, community, stewardship, and independence.
This is the fruit we want to be known for at Grove City College.
Our first core value is faithfulness. We aspire to seek, teach, and apply biblical truth in all that we do. Faithfulness is a defining characteristic of this college and the hallmark of its graduates.
We don’t simply want to educate the minds of our students, we also hope to shape their hearts and nourish their soul. We want to make disciples. We aspire to be the best four-year discipleship program on the planet.
As we pursue truth faithfully—as we live, learn, and grow together—we pray that we will not be conformed to the patterns of this world but instead be transformed by the renewing of our minds.
Our second core value is excellence. In everything we do, from classrooms to dorm rooms, from performance stages to athletic fields, we are devoted wholeheartedly to excellence.
It is not easy to be excellent. It takes hard work, dedication, and persistence. It is hard. But there is great joy in doing hard things. One of my deep hopes for each of you is that while you are here, you know the joy of working hard to pursue excellence and then use your gifts to create things that are beautiful and excellent and that make our world a better place.
Maybe you will become excellent at business and create new jobs and valuable products for people. Perhaps you will become excellent at science and invent new technologies or help cure diseases. Maybe you will become excellent at teaching or ministering to others or learn to create beautiful music or powerful prose. Whatever your calling, we want Grove City College graduates to leave here knowing the joy that comes from doing hard things and doing them with excellence.
Our third core value is community. We want our campus—our community—to be a welcoming place marked by fellowship, service, and the love and respect we have for each other.
We want to be a community where the fruit of the Spirit is abundant in how we teach, how we study, and how we live together.
We aspire to be a Christ-centered community. At a time when so many universities are overwhelmed by anxiety, anger, fear, and division, we aspire to be a community that overflows with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.
When we talk about “Wolverines Together,” we are talking about community. We mean that even though we all have different interests, different gifts, and different personalities, we are one, we are in this together and we support, celebrate, comfort, and encourage each other.
Each of you has something to offer this community.
We often talk about how this time you are in college is preparation for life. We take what we are doing very seriously here because we are doing more than just giving you job training. We are equipping you with the tools and skills that you will use to live out God’s call on your life. That sense of calling, and the purpose it gives to the years we spend together as we prepare you for your life’s work, leads us to take seriously the four precious years that we have together.
But if you think of this time merely as preparation for life—you miss something important. You’ll miss the community that we share right here, right now.
The years you are living now are preparing you for life and to live out your calling, but I hope they will also be some of the richest and most meaningful years of your life. This is not just preparation for ministry, but a time to minister. Not just preparation to be a leader, but time to lead. Not just a time of waiting, but a time of living and a time of stepping into and living out your calling.
You are not just here waiting to live your life—waiting to step into your calling—you are called to be here in this community, and you are living your real life right now. I hope that one day you’ll look back and say: Not only was I living my life, but I was living a life full of opportunities to form friendships, minister to others, lead, and learn and grow and contribute to an amazing community.
Enjoy Each Season—Your Time Is Now
While I was at Grove City, and certainly when I was in law school, it was sometimes easy to look past my time in school. I was looking forward to the next things, like graduating, getting a job, getting married, a home, a career, a family. It was easy to think of all those things as what would be my “real life” and what was happening at school as something less than real life.
That was a mistake. Don’t look past your time here. Don’t wish away your life. As scripture tells us, life has many seasons and different times for different things. Enjoy each season.
College students look forward to graduating, graduate students want to become professionals, single people want to date, dating couples want to be married, married couples without kids want to have kids, married couples with kids want a break from their kids, and empty nesters long for when their children are back home.
It’s easy to think life will “really” begin when you get to the next season. Life will begin when I graduate, life will begin when I start my job, life will begin when I get married, life will begin when we have children, life will begin when I get the next promotion or settle into my forever home or, believe it or not, some people think life will begin when they retire. You’ll end up waiting your whole life for life to begin.
It’s a mistake to view this season, your time here at Grove City College, only as preparation for life or as a practice run before your real opportunities for ministry or discipleship or leadership or impact.
If you are a senior—you are in a year of your life where you may have richer opportunities to lead and serve and contribute than almost any other year of your life.
Whether this is your first year at Grove City College or your last year at Grove City College, you are called to be here—in this community. You are living your real life right now.
Our fourth core value is stewardship. We’re committed to stewardship of our resources at the college. We’re not the wealthiest college with the fanciest dorms or best athletic facilities. But we’ve never let that stop us—we’re hard working, we’re gritty, and committed to making the most of what we have.
We’re also committed to helping you steward the gifts and talents and desires God has given you—so that you can return them to Him multiplied.
When I think about our commitment to stewardship, I think of a famous parable of Jesus. The parable of talents. Jesus tells the story of a master entrusting wealth—or talents—to his servants before going on a journey. He then returns and asks the servants what they have done with the talents he gave them.
Two of the servants took their talents, traded, and multiplied them. When they reported that to the master when he returned, the master said, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” Then he entrusted them with more talents—saying, “You have been faithful over a little, now you will be faithful over much.”
One servant was scared to invest his talent—he was scared he might lose it—so he buried it in the ground. The master was not happy—he condemned the servant for failing to take his talent and turn it into something more.
God has given each of you specific talents. He’s looking to you to steward them, He wants you to multiply them and we want to help you do that. We want you to learn the value of stewardship. We want you to hear, “I have entrusted you with little, now I will entrust you over much.” We want you to hear, “well done, good and faithful servant.”
Standing for Truth, Faith, and Freedom
Our final core value is independence. At Grove City College, we value faith and freedom. We cherish our independence. That independence has come at a cost. Grove City had to fight for its independence in almost a decade of litigation that ended at the U.S. Supreme Court in a famous case, Grove City College v. Bell. I’m proud—and I hope that you are proud—that after that case, Grove City College took the hard path in choosing faith and freedom over federal funding. That was the hardest, and the best, decision the college ever made. We stand for truth, we stand for faith, and we stand for freedom, even when that stand is costly. We want to do that as a college, and we hope that will inspire you to do that in your own lives.
Faithfulness, excellence, community, stewardship, and independence. Those are our core values—those are our key commitments at Grove City College.
Before I close, I’d be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge that we’re starting an extraordinary year in the life of our college—and no, I’m not referring to the fact that we have a new president. Beginning in January, we’ll be celebrating our college’s 150th anniversary.
J. Howard Pew, a giant in our college’s history, would give the same short talk at Grove City College every year. He’d say, “This school should encourage and inculcate into the minds and hearts of the students and abiding faith in God and country, a love for freedom, as respect for truth, an acceptance of personal responsibility, and a desire to contribute to the betterment of the human race.”
When Mr. Pew spoke those words, he must have known how much a college like Grove City was needed in our country. But even he could not have known how much it is needed in America today. As we start the 2025-2026 academic year and look ahead to our college’s 150th anniversary, there has never been a more important time for a school like ours. There has never been a more important time for students like you. And there has never been a more important time to ask and discover: Who is Jesus and what is truth?
Thank you.