Our Why

By Dr. Nick Pacurari, Vice President for Enrollment Services & Student Life

When I first arrived on a college campus, I was a new Christian. The certainty of what Jesus had done for me on the cross was a central reality of my life. But the depth of the Gospel and the unconditional love of God were foreign to me. Growing into that depth is the work of a lifetime, and helping students begin that work is exactly why a place like Bryan exists. We are not mainly here to hand out an education, but to walk with people as they become, whether they are meeting Jesus for the first time or, like me, still learning how deep his grace runs.

I think about that season more than I expected to, because I now get to watch it happen to others every day. That is one of the quiet joys of my work. A student arrives at Bryan carrying questions they have never said out loud, and somewhere along the way, in a classroom or a dorm room or a conversation after practice, they start to change.

Everything we do at Bryan comes back to one sentence: Educating students to become servants of Christ to make a difference in today’s world.

It would be easy to read a sentence like that quickly and move on. Mission statements can end up as wall decorations, printed nicely and mostly ignored. But Bryan’s is not decoration. It is our why. 

Educating.

You can get an education almost anywhere. A degree, a transcript, a set of marketable skills; those are available on a thousand campuses. What is rare is a gospel-centered education, one built on a biblical worldview, where students learn to see all of life the way God sees it. That is what we are after. We are not adding a Bible class on top of an ordinary education. We believe the gospel shapes all of life: how you read a novel, how you run a business, how you study a cell, how you coach a team, how you love your neighbor. Christ is not a subject we cover once a week in chapel. He is the lens for the whole of life.

Become servants of Christ.

Notice the word become. Not “already are.” Become. And this might be the reality that I love most about Bryan! Our campus is full of students who are in different places in their journey with Christ. Some students arrive walking closely with Jesus and hungry to go deeper. Some arrive curious, or unsure, or worn down, and they have never met the risen Jesus for themselves. Bryan is a home for both. It is a place where someone can encounter the resurrection of Jesus for the very first time, and a place where a believer of many years can be stretched and grown.

Make a difference in today’s world.

The sentence does not end at graduation, and it does not end on campus. The measure of our mission is not in the exceptional student experience, but in those whom we send into the world to make a difference for the glory of God. Our students leave here and become teachers and nurses and coaches and engineers and pastors and parents, and they carry Jesus into every one of those rooms. The difference we care about is not a résumé line. It is a life that looks like the One it belongs to.

In the weeks ahead, our team will break down our mission statement with you clause by clause. But first, read it once more and notice this: every part of it bends toward Christ. Educating, becoming, serving, making a difference; all of it exists to hold one thing above everything else. That is our why, and it is the one thing we hope you never lose sight of. Christ Above All.