by Brianne Welch | Jan 28, 2014 | Uncategorized
Author of Cold Tangerines, Bittersweet and Bread and Wine, Shauna Niequist addressed every college students’ favorite subject, relationships, in the Gathering Tuesday morning. Niequist’s plan was to talk about the “secret and the heart of all relationships.” With that opening statement, she grabbed the audience’s attention. She followed up that statement later on with the one sentence that she feels the need to say whenever she is at a college campus. “Whoever you are, male or female, freshman or senior, single or dating or engaged or married,” Niequist said. “You are significant with or without a significant other.” Niequist made the statement to remind students how significant they are, and that being a part of a couple does not make a person more important, and also to remind students that everyone’s life timeline is different. After making her opening remarks, Niequist’s got to her main point of discussion, the secret of relationships, which she says is forgiveness. Forgiveness when dating, in the family and with friendships. Niequist stressed the importance of friendships at this time in a person’s life. “Worry less about dating and invest more in friends,” Niequist said. While talking about friendships, she made the point that even those will not last unless forgiveness is active in the relationship. She said that conflict is inevitable, and the only way to maintain those relationships is by being able to forgive. “When brokenness happens in a relationship it doesn’t mean it’s over, it means it’s normal,” Niequist said. The next thing Niequist addressed was how to forgive and what it means to be a forgiver. She says it is...
by Emily Snell | Nov 1, 2012 | Uncategorized
After working on campus 38 years and serving in more than a dozen positions, Dr. Jim Thomas said he still has the same focus: helping students graduate from college. Thomas said his experiences in different jobs on campus help him understand how to get students to Lipscomb, how to keep them here and how to help them pay for their education. “I do truly believe they’re a huge help here,” he said of some of his former roles. “I think all of that history and background converges to give me an understanding of how they all link together.” “I think I’m someone who believes in what they’re trying to do,” he said. “I’m passionate about students graduating from college. I am so absolutely driven to helping college students graduate, but they’ve got to be a partner with me in that.” Thomas, who currently acts as executive assistant to the president, graduated from Lipscomb in 1969. After completing three years in the military, he began teaching at the university in 1974. Thomas said, of his jobs at Lipscomb, being chair of the speech communication department was one of the most enjoyable. “Probably that was one of my favorite jobs, if you want to know the truth,” he said. “I thought as department chair you had a greater opportunity to influence students’ lives and the curriculum to help them develop.” “My heart has always been on the teaching side,” he explained. “I just think that’s why you get into higher education—to help the students learn and grow and develop their talents to the fullest extent that they can.” Thomas spent one...
by Cory Woodroof | Mar 7, 2012 | News Slider
This past Friday, Lipscomb students were given a rare treat. Mat Kearney, best known for hit songs “Nothing Left to Lose”, “Undeniable” and more recently, “Ships in the Night” and “Hey Mama”, headlined the free SGA-sponsored spring concert alongside Kiernan McMullan in Alumni Auditorium. Kearney, a resident of Nashville, offered insight into his past, his music, his faith and his love of everything Lipscomb. A native of Eugene, Ore., Kearney’s found his musical influence from A Tribe Called Quest, Bob Dylan and Weezer. Growing up, any sort of hip-hop music caught Kearney’s attention. In college, Kearney started to write his own music. “I would steal my roommate’s guitar and go sit on the front porch, and I was so bad at covering other people’s music that I would just start writing my own songs.” Everything changed when Kearney helped a friend move to Nashville. As a junior soccer player at the University of California State, Chico, Kearney agreed to help a friend drive to Tennessee. “We drove across country in the summer in our un-air-conditioned Chevy S-10 and got to Nashville. And by the end of the summer, I was hanging out at Fido; that was it,” Kearney said. “I was like ‘I’m not going back. I’m not going home’.” Kearney, who had just started to record music here in town, saw that Nashville was the place to be. “I just called home and said ‘I’m moving to Nashville’.” Kearney, a Christian, wants his faith to play a major part his music. “I think my faith is a huge part of what I do,” Kearney said. “Being a Christian,...
by Danielle Boyd | Oct 16, 2011 | News Slider
Lee C. Camp, professor of theology and ethics, this week released his second book,Who Is my Enemy, guiding Christians through the misconceptions of the Islamic Faith and self-contemplating questions of war and peace in a Christian society. Camp’s interest in this issue was sparked several years ago after a Lipscomb seminar on the “theological rationale for peaceful coexistence with people of other faith.” “I did this lecture…and the next day it was on the front page of the Tennessean,” Camp said. According to Dr. Camp, the front page article misquoted and mischaracterized his statements, which led to his deepening interest in the issue of the Islamic faith. “It stirred up all sorts of deep anger and name calling,” Camp said. “By the end of the day, I had heard from people from California to Manhattan to Tel Aviv to New Zealand.” Camp’s misquoted information in the Tennessean also caught the media’s attention from all over the world, which stirred conversation and public interest. “I was intrigued with the anger and fear, especially towards Muslims that came out in that experience,” said Camp. As a result, he began to research, travel and learn more about the Islamic faith in order to compare the Christian and Islamic traditions in the realm of thinking about war and peacemaking. “The methodology behind this book is: seek first to understand and then to be understood,” Camp said. This concept is an old prayer tribute to Saint Francis, Camp said, that sets the undertone for the book as Christians began to contemplate on the idea of the Islamic faith. Instead of becoming defensive or fearful to the...
