The Paul Ylvisaker Center for Personal and Public Responsibility is a forum on the campus of Bethany Lutheran College designed to promote volunteerism, philanthropy, and public service, values which were enunciated in an especially profound way by Paul Ylvisaker, an alumnus of Bethany College.

The Center wants to promote these values among the students at the college, but wants to go beyond the boundaries of the campus community as well, so that those principles can be discussed and promoted in both the private and public sectors in the community beyond the campus.

The Paul Ylvisaker Center functions within the context of Bethany Lutheran College's uniqueness. Paul Ylvisaker was fully aware of the uniqueness of the institution in which he received his high school and junior college training, and which was a part of his family life for many years. In his later life, he readily acknowledged the contribution that those values gave to his later vision.

Bethany is a Christian Liberal Arts College. The college's Christian commitment has its voice in the Lutheran confession which understands the Gospel to be the fundamental root of man's relationship to God. That confession is articulated especially in the Lutheran Confessional writings, which make the Gospel the single power which can transform human lives. In the words of Reformation scholar Heiko Obermann, "Moral rearmament is not the primary goal of his reformation.... The heart of the Reformation is the recovery of sound doctrine-only true faith will lead to a renewal of life." (Heiko Obermann, Luther: Man Between God and the Devil, p. 57). The Christian Liberal Arts education offered at Bethany thus proceeds from the presuppostion that the Gospel of God's forgiveness of sins in Christ-the justification of the sinner on the basis of Christ's righteousness and not human righteousness or human decision-is the source of any renewal of life that takes place in the life of the Christian. The values with which Bethany wants to send its students out into the world are values which are taught under this understanding.

It is presupposed that in this world, no man is in possession of all perfections. Only Christ the Son of God was such a perfect man. All human endeavors are subject to frailty and failure, and even the best efforts of man come short as acts that can stand before God. And so we do not expect perfection from each other or from our institutions.

But we believe that lives which are lived under the gospel can, and will show forth in good works, which are the natural consequence of the Gospel. And in this Christians are to be encouraged. In other words, an inescapable by-product of Christian faith is a life of love and service toward ones fellow human beings.

We also believe that there is a civic righteousness which is a natural part of human life, which is not born of the gospel, but of a desire to improve and protect society and social institutions. And so, with as much strength as they proclaim the gospel, Christians are to promote civic righteousness.

As a part of Liberal Arts education and service to the community, the Paul Ylvisaker Center wants to serve the memory of an esteemed alumnus and servant of society by promoting these values in the same context that they arose in Paul Ylvisaker. It is the specific goal of the Paul Ylvisaker Center to instill in the students of Bethany Lutheran College not only a commitment to the values described here, but also a practical involvement in the kind of community service and volunteerism envisioned by Paul Ylvisaker. The Center equally wants to promote those values and commitments among the college's constituency, community leaders, and others in the larger community in which the college finds itself.

If I were to visit with these dedicated and generous Christian young folks again I would try to refocus my remarks to stress the desirability of their cultivating in their own lives now the virtues of generosity, courtesy, civility, kindness, and compassion with their fellow students, their families, their friends and their teachers (i.e. in contrast to searching for new tasks of service now). That service can come later..

- James P. Shannon, April 25, 1995