Normal Life

As I write, a feeling of normalcy is coming back to our city. Masks are (not quite) gone, venue capacities are close to 100 percent, and we are looking forward to a school year that is—more or less—normal. It feels good, covering up for the odd feeling of a currently student-less campus.

But what if “normal” is a really bad goal?

A “norm” is something that is ordinary and expected. “Normalizing” test scores means making them all alike for the purpose of finding the exceptional. If “going back to normal” means throwing away lessons learned during a trying time—lessons that include the faithfulness and work of the Living God in Jesus Christ—then you can keep normal.

The Free Lutheran Bible College and Seminary is anything but normal. In the past year, many people around the world have started asking foundational, primary, and fundamental questions. At FLBCS, that’s what we do all the time, and we answer those questions from God’s Word.

Going off to college to get a degree to gain certification to make money in a career is normal. We turn that paradigm on its head: What is work for? Or better yet, WHO is work for. Or with better grammar, “For whom do we work?” We work for the One who has granted us His finished work, but we work for the benefit of our neighbor.

When we say, “start here, go anywhere, grounded in God’s Word,” it’s not just a clever slogan to get people to come to FLBCS. Teaching students God’s Word is a high enough calling, but we also engage students to help them find out where their “anywhere” might be, and we send them off to that future, grounded in God’s Word.

I wish that was normal. But it’s not. Take a page from the students, staff, and alumni who have written for this issue of Kinship. Be … abnormal.

Dr. Wade Mobley, FLBCS President

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