The Anxious Middle

Planning for the Future of the Christian College

Todd C. Ream and Jerry Pattengale

foreword by Mark A. Noll

In the 1990s, Christian colleges and universities experienced a record boom in students and employees. However, less than twenty years later Christian institutions experienced new challenges spurred on by four major changes: first, the “Great Recession” of 2008 and widespread debt; second, declining birthrates in certain regions of the United States; third, the passing of the Affordable Care Act, which raised the question of whether Christian institutions were required to cover contraceptives; and fourth, the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize gay marriage, which brought issues of employment to the forefront at certain Evangelical institutions. Yet despite mounting challenges, most Christian colleges and universities are still stronger now than at any point in their respective histories by almost any measure.

ISBN 978-1-4813-1850-1

$39.99 | Hardback

Contents

Foreword: Mark A. Noll

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Life in the Anxious Middle (Again)

1 Aspiration

2 Imagination

3 Collaboration

4 Illumination

Postscript 1: Jon S. Kulaga

Postscript 2: Linda A. Livingstone

Postscript 3: Beck A. Taylor

With The Anxious Middle, Todd C. Ream and Jerry Pattengale engage the work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer as a model for navigating our tumultuous times. The authors argue that if the present age is defined by what Bonhoeffer calls in Creation and Fall the “anxious middle”—somewhere between Eden and the Apocalypse—the challenges faced by Christian higher education must be recognized as both existential and practical. To confront them while still embracing any opportunities afforded by occasional cross breezes, Christian colleges and universities would be wise to employ a fourfold approach to planning informed by Bonhoeffer’s work as well as historic and contemporary examples: institutions should be articulate about their missions, imaginative in advancing them, collaborative in deploying them, and strategic in sharing them.

Trustees, administrators, faculty members, and others concerned with the future of Christian colleges and universities will find in The Anxious Middle a planning process applicable to organizational levels ranging from the campus-wide to the departmental or the programmatic. The result is an understanding of Christian higher education not merely focused on surviving but thriving between Eden and the Apocalypse.

178 pages

5.5 x 8.5

September 15, 2023

“This book is free of both hand-wringing gloom and fist-pumping boosterism. Some of the most respected leaders in Christian higher education see with clarity the obstacles facing Christian colleges and universities, but see just as clearly the path forward. If we pay attention to the vision behind this book, the future of Christian higher education will be better than we’ve ever dared to hope.”

RUSSELL MOORE, Editor-in-Chief, Christianity Today

“The Anxious Middle is the one new book you must read if you are connected to Christian higher education in any way. Ream and Pattengale make a bold and correct claim that the future of Christian higher education lies in understanding the ’why’ it should exist. And that ’why’ is the discipleship of the student into a firm belief that God is the creator of all things and therefore God is at the center of all things.”

SHIRLEY HOOGSTRA, President, Council for Christian Colleges and Universities