Editor’s note: In February, the Alumni Association board gave the first Young Alumni Award to Katelyn Beaty ’06, the managing editor of Christianity Today. The award seeks to encourage more recent Calvin graduates to continue doing the work of renewal that they’ve already been doing—and in impressive and inspiring fashion. We’ve reprinted Katelyn’s reflections at the awards dinner and hope they encourage you, too.
Thank you so much to Calvin’s Alumni Association for this dinner and this award. It’s a privilege to have a chance to reflect on what crucial role Calvin has played in preparing me for my work at Christianity Today magazine, where I just celebrated eight years. In thinking about what I wanted to share with you tonight, I realize this is really a chance to reflect on the faithfulness of God, to this institution and to all of us. So thank you for that opportunity.
I have been asked to say a few things about my experience at Calvin College, and what God taught me here and afterward. So I thought I would start with the most important detail: I am not Dutch. You will not find a Beaty in your game of Dutch Bingo. When I arrived on campus as a freshman in 2002, I really had no idea how deeply Calvin’s roots run into Dutch heritage and piety.
Before arriving at Calvin in 2002, my faith had been nurtured at a United Methodist church in Dayton, Ohio. I went to public school my whole life and am one of only two graduates of my high school to have attended Calvin. But despite lacking a clear cultural connection to the school, I was drawn to it by a couple factors.
The first was our family’s campus visit, which I remember distinctly. During the tour our student guide said, “At Calvin we want Christians to be known what they are for rather than what they are against.” He explained the notion of “responsible freedom”—that Calvin wasn’t here to shield students from the world but to help us engage the world, which is God’s world, with wisdom and discernment. As an 18-year-old, that sounded good to me.
The second factor was that my grandmother, Joan Riggs, lived 45 minutes away from campus, in Grand Haven. Throughout my four years here, I would spend long weekends at what we ended up calling Nonnie’s Bed and Breakfast. Over dinners out and puzzles we developed a special friendship that continues to this day. So it’s very fitting that my grandmother Joan is able to be here tonight.
As I tried to navigate a new schedule, a new roommate and a new subculture, I spent my freshman year trying to find my spiritual and social bearings. And it was rocky at times. But when I returned as a sophomore, all of a sudden, it was as if I had found my fit. The next three years would end up being a spiritual and intellectual incubator. It was a special time God used to shape me as a Christ-follower, a learner, a communicator and a friend. Three aspects of my life here at Calvin proved the most formative and foundational:
1. The classroom.
Calvin was the first place where I learned, in the words of the psalmist, that “the earth is the Lord’s and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it.” Calvin’s commitment to a robust liberal arts tradition taught me that every dimension of human life and human inquiry fell under the Lordship of Christ. That everything from Latin American history to astronomy to pop-culture studies could reflect the glory and grandeur of God, and move His people to praise for His provision and creativity. (Well, everything except for badminton. In badminton class I learned that badminton is irredeemable and must be stopped.) I have distinct memories of leaving classrooms feeling as if my mind and heart were filled to the brim with inspiration and awe. Through my classes at Calvin, I learned, in the words of Abraham Kuyper, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!”
2. The Cultural Discerners program.
If my classes taught me how to appreciate truth, then the Cultural Discerners program taught me how to appreciate beauty. I joined the Cultural Discerners program as a sophomore at the invitation of Student Activities Director Ken Heffner. Every week about 15 students and I would meet with Ken to discuss movies, music and books that were being discussed by our peers and in the broader culture. And then we would discuss ways that the Holy Spirit might be showing up in even the poppiest wings of pop culture. There I learned that we are shaped not only by facts but also by stories. There’s a reason that most people outside the church know C.S. Lewis, the great Christian writer and thinker of the 20th century, not for his apologetics works, but for The Chronicles of Narnia. Stories and the imagination wake us up to the reality of God and the life to come in ways that sheer fact cannot. I would go on to work for the Student Activities Office for two years, helping to plan one of the first Festivals of Faith and Music, which runs every other year in between the Festival of Faith and Writing.
3. The Chimes office.
It was in the cramped office where sleep-deprived students prepare Calvin’s weekly student newspaper that I learned the joys of publishing. I was first lured in as a sophomore by the promise of free pizza on Mondays and free chicken sandwiches from Johnny’s Café on Wednesdays. But after three years of writing and copy editing for the publication, I left having learned the crucial role that journalism can play for a community. Speaking on journalism, David Neff, former editor in chief of Christianity Today, has written, “A community’s health depends on having an accurate picture of itself.” And the role of the journalist is to hold up a mirror of truth to his or her community. Now, the Chimes staff sometimes printed grammar mistakes, and we definitely gave some members of Calvin’s administration high blood pressure with our annual spoof issue. But through it all we learned how to work as a team to bless our community, believing that whatever blemishes and smudges were in the mirror, God was at work wiping them away.
So, in the classroom and the Chimes office and the concerts hosted by the Student Activities Office, God was shaping me in often unperceivable but real ways. And perhaps he could have done so at any college I chose to attend. But it’s hard for me to imagine doing the work I’m doing now, as managing editor of Christianity Today magazine, without the deep reserves of knowledge, community and faithfulness found at Calvin College. In my daily work I draw on Calvin’s appreciation for the wideness of God’s world and the human responsibility to tend it; its celebration of beauty, the arts and storytelling; and its first-hand lessons in writing and truth-telling for a community.
It was at Calvin that I first learned the word shalom. It’s a rich Hebrew word that means “comprehensive flourishing.” It’s the way God intended for all of His creation, from the natural world to individuals to entire structures of law and government, to be in harmony. Obviously we are very far from the shalom that God meant for us. We at Christianity Today daily have to report on news that clearly shows the world is “not the way it’s supposed to be.” What is the Christian’s role in this? Cornelius Plantinga, former president of Calvin’s seminary, says it well:
“The point of our lives is not to get smart or to get rich or even to get happy. The point is to discover God’s purposes for us and to make them our own. The point is to learn ways of loving God above all and our neighbor as ourselves and then to use those loves the way a golfer uses certain checkpoints to set up for a drive. The point is to be lined up right, to seek first the kingdom of God, to try above all to increase the net amount of shalom in the world.”
Well, I can’t believe I’m going to end by drawing on a golf metaphor. But thank you, Calvin, for providing the perfect checkpoint to set me up for pursuing shalom over the past eight years. May we all continue to do the same in our respective spheres of influence, wherever God has placed us.
