125 Years

Remembering the First Hypernikon

When I began teaching at Barrington College in 1963, blackboards and chalk trays were state of the art. Such things look so “vintage” to today’s electronically-wired students, a generation whose orientation to learning inside and outside the classroom has been greatly altered by the technological revolution. Who knows what was cutting edge in 1889 when A. J. Gordon founded the Boston Missionary Training Institute; teaching styles and technology shift quickly. But for 125 years what has been permanent in a Gordon education is the Word of God. The bedrock has always been to go back to Scripture to give us perspective for whatever we do in life. We depend on God daily for living; and we mature through the wisdom of experience; and as we go through struggles and trials we gain greater appreciation of the life that awaits us.

This is as true in 2014 as it was in 1889. All that is different is the nature of the struggles. At Barrington College, at Gordon College, and now at the United College of Gordon and Barrington, students have grappled decade by decade with a constantly changing array of cultural and intellectual issues…