The toughest job in the Church of the Nazarene is NOT General Superintendent. It’s not regional director, district superintendent or pastoring a large church. By far the most difficult job is university (or college… I’m looking at you in Quincy, MA) president. The difficulty lies in the fact that so many groups think they have a right to tell the president how to do the job. The list is long: faculty, students, staff, board of trustees, parents, general superintendents, the accrediting associations, the government, athletic governing bodies, local church pastors, fringe Nazarene groups like The Holiness Partnership and Nazarene’s for Peace, and a multitude of groups from outside the Church of the Nazarene. Everybody believes they have a right to the university president’s ear.

These vested voices are coupled with the burden of educating a student body who endured the pandemic, deals with social media pressures and life in these turbulent times. Ask any college (not just Nazarene) and they will tell you that their mental health services are being used at an all time high. Students feel the weight and pressure of college life like never before. Along with such realities come the societal stress aftermath (drugs, alcohol, depression, suicide) that offer the opposite of help. The college presidents’ job is much more complicated than simply educating young adults.  

Moreover the colleges are becoming less and less “Nazarene.” One school’s Nazarene student body population is 7%. It’s hard to maintain Nazarene identity when less and less students know anything about the Church of the Nazarene. (Olivet’s attempt to address this issue by offering a free four year tuition to the NYC senior class participants was well received by students and their families, not so well received by the other colleges. The “Olivet Way” was seen as pushing the other colleges out of the way). 

Of course, the other main issue (maybe the biggest issue) pressing on college presidents is money. It’s expensive to maintain a Christian university these days. There are less traditional college-age people in the population. Less students are attending college Less tuition means less money, yet inflation doesn’t stop. The pressure of keeping everything afloat is enormous. A Christianity Today article from 2023 stated that 18 Christian colleges closed since the pandemic. You can read the article here. A few more are on the brink of closing (including a Nazarene school? Who knows). The economics of a Christian university is challenging. 

Added to all of this the Church of the Nazarene is currently going through a shakeup in its university presidents. Olivet’s president began in 2021, Ambrose, Mount Vernon and Eastern installed new presidents in the past year; Point Loma is in the process of electing a new president; Northwest’s president has announced he will retire next year. MidAmerica and Trevecca both have presidents who are in their 70’s and will likely retire in the next few years. This change in leadership may not be bad. It will be different for each campus. Bringing in the right person is paramount for the school (obviously) but also for the denomination. 

All this to say, we need to be in prayer for the universities and their presidents. Christian higher education leadership is the toughest job in the Church of the Nazarene. The second toughest job is youth pastor (that’s a blog for another day).

College and Seminary President Prayer List:
Ambrose University— Rev. Dr. Bryce Ashlin-Mayo 
Eastern Nazarene College – Rev. Dr. Colleen Derr
MidAmerica Nazarene University—Dr. David Spittal
Mount Vernon Nazarene University—Dr. Carson D. Castleman
Olivet Nazarene University—Rev. Dr. Gregg Chenoweth
Northwest Nazarene University—Dr. Joel K. Pearsall
Point Loma Nazarene University– TBD
Southern Nazarene University– Rev. Dr. Keith Newman
Trevecca Nazarene University—Rev. Dr. Dan Boone
Nazarene Bible College—Rev. Dr. Scott Sherwood
Nazarene Theological Seminary—Rev. Dr. Jeren Rowell