Why we don't say we're "proud" of Bear Creek Church's grads

A NOTE OF CONGRATULATIONS TO BCC'S GRADS

We have quite a lot of graduates at Bear Creek Church this year.  Some of you are high school grads completing your “compulsory” education, while others are older scholars completing advanced degrees as you have juggled jobs and family in a way that leaves us weary just watching.  On behalf of BCC’s Elders, I am writing to say that we are very thankful to the Lord for you and for the hard work and discipline that you have displayed in completing your course work.  Your attention to deadlines, your study of fact, your scrutiny of theory, and your perseverance in your long academic program are all admirable displays of qualities that are essential in every thinking disciple of Jesus, and encouraging models to those of us not similarly taking a degree or diploma.  Looking ahead, our hope is that you “Commit your work to the Lord,” as it says in Proverbs 16:3, and then see “..your plans be established.”

We do not say that we are proud of you, because we believe that would be sinful, and reduce the goodness of your hard work to something vain and conceited or petty, when instead our aim is to honor the value of your work to the great glory of God and not a man.  And that is why we say, rather, that we are so very thankful to the Lord for outstanding students such as the crop with which our church has been blessed in 2011.

Here is our prayer for all of Bear Creek Church’s graduates:

Lord of heaven and earth, we thank you for the wonders of your creation, and for the minds with which you have blessed us for its examination, to the end that you be seen by all men and women to be as magnificent and fierce and gracious as you are.  We thank you for these graduates, who have applied themselves to a course of study to that great, life-redeeming end, and pray that the fruit of their labor will indeed result in the heightening of their delight in you for the application of their academic labor to your praise and honor. If this achievement is a stepping stone to the next credential, we ask that you would bless their future endeavor, and that as intensely as they humbly give themselves to new studies that these would serve always to elevate their understanding of you and trust in Christ Jesus, and never to relegate their relationship with you to a status subservient to any other discipline or field or pursuit or fancy or whim because of pride or arrogance.  Give great wisdom to the graduates of Bear Creek Church, that they prove to be capable and eager witnesses to you and the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ in the area of their endeavor, that you be honored above all people or things.  In the name of Jesus,  Amen.

Congratulations to all of you!

Pastor Dale, for Bear Creek Church’s Elders