by Norm Miller
“You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
The Apostle Peter made this declaration when Jesus asked His disciples just who the local citizenry thought he was.
“You are the Christ, the Son of the living God, ” Peter answered.
Jesus told Peter he had spoken a heavenly revelation, adding, “And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.”
The “rock” Jesus noted was the granite-hard truth of His Messiahship, his Sonship, his Deity. Jesus Christ is the foundation of the Church.
The George Blaurock Student Recreation Center name was public but a few weeks before Truett-McConnell College students bean referring to the proposed facility as the “Rock.”
President of the college, Dr. Emir Caner, is also an Anabaptist scholar; and he chose to name the center after George Blaurock, a 16th century Anabaptist evangelist.
Blaurock gave his life as a martyr for steadfastly embracing the essential truth the Apostle Peter had uttered 1,500 years earlier.
Fast forward about 500 years to see that the same flawless truth Peter cited, and for which Blaurock died, is the same truth driving Truett-McConnell College officials to undertake the capital campaign to build the “Rock.”
Christian history is replete with those who so valued the biblical, heavenly Truth that they, too, laid down their lives.
Dr. Caner, the staff and faculty all realize that God is calling young people to lay down their lives as well. And these young people are doing that by training for various fields of ministry and service in the church, on mission fields, and in the workaday world.
The George Blaurock Student Recreation Center will help reach even more students for the causes of Christ. And improving the college’s reach will increase the number we teach.
Dr. Caner often says: “If we are going to reach this generation, then we must teach this generation.”
The proposed recreation center may sound like fun and games, and it certainly will offer those needful things. But it is far more than that: it is a tool for enriching the lives of students who will graduate in service to the Lord, as well as an attraction for recruiting more students who will be exposed to the call of God upon their lives.
The “Rock.” It is infinitely more than a building. It is akin to biblical truth. The rock is Jesus.
Truett-McConnell College will build the next generation of the Lord’s disciples upon this foundation.
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For more info, email gjarnagin@truett.edu
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