"Winsome"

By Cynthia L Rigby

First, a confession: When I came to Austin Seminary in 1995, I had to look up the word “winsome.” It was in our mission statement, that Austin Seminary is a “winsome and exemplary community” of faith, and I had the feeling I was somehow expected simply to know what it would look like and had the good sense not to ask and thus reveal my ignorance. And I did have a vague sense of the term, associating it with tall willowy Jane Austin-type figures.

Over the twenty-eight years that I have had the privilege to serve as a professor at Austin Seminary, I have sat on a number of faculty and trustee committees that reconsidered our mission. Never, in my recollection, have we ever given consideration to taking out “winsome.” It is an untouchable, formative concept for us.

Still, what does it mean?

Webster says, along these lines, that someone who is winsome is “pleasing and engaging” and who has childlike charm and innocence: and a “winsome smile,” someone is “cheerful and lighthearted … inspiring trust.” OK, but frankly I’ve come to a place where I don’t think I, or the world, needs innocence and lightheartedness as much as it needs a deep-seeded wisdom and authenticity, which—in the face of creaturely suffering— eschews light-heartedness in favor of truth.

This doesn’t mean, of course, that I think we should walk around morosely with “sober faces,” as if the salvation of the world is on our shoulders, or as if we are little versions of the Messiah (Barth). That job’s been taken. And to live stressed-out lives, wearing our burden as a badge of honor, is to deny that he has freed us to engage in “better and happier and more important activities” that characterize the abundant life Christ calls us to enjoy (John 10:10). Now, this is winsomeness with legs.

And I learned what it looks like at Austin Seminary, with faculty colleagues who always show up in the Trull boardroom to discuss critically each others’ presentations, even when they are over their heads with work. It looks like students who go to class like they are going to a wedding—expecting something good to happen so strongly that they overlook a multitude of foibles on the part of their yet-to-return-those-papers professor. It looks like trustees who do not simply check up on faculty publications, but who photocopy articles during their limited free time during a hectic board meeting so they can reflect further when they get home. It looks like administrators who always somehow remember that policies are made for people and not people for policies. And it looks like being cheerful when there are things to be cheerful about and lamenting and advocating for healing when people get sick, or standing up for justice when those who have power use it to rob the lives of others.

I did not always see winsomeness like this. I used to think to be a Christian was to be happy all the time. I am grateful that my Austin Seminary friends have taught me otherwise, because this means I can always be joyful. Whether I am scared or courageous, whether happy or sad, whether doubting or faithful, God is faithful still. Thank you, friends, for being exemplars of God’s winsomeness, which is nothing short of grace.

The Reverend Dr. Cynthia L. Rigby, The W.C. Brown Professor of Theology, might have been the kind of professor Board Chair Clarence Frierson had in mind when he (allegedly) offered the phrase “winsome and exemplary community of God’s people” for Austin Seminary’s mission statement.