Today marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of Cincinnati Bible Seminary.
In my decade of working for (what eventually was renamed) Cincinnati Christian University, I always anticipated the planning of the centennial celebration. In those darkest of days, the thought that my alma mater would turn 100 reminded me of those who struggled before me. It kept me going.
I couldn’t imagine that CCU wouldn’t survive long enough to commemorate the century.
Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “there can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.”
Perhaps you, like me, continue to have a CCU-shaped hole in your heart. Over the last decade, I’ve tried to write a book—a love letter if you will—detailing the demise of the institution. I’ve made about four or five different revisions based on my evolving feelings about what transpired. At the beginning of 2024, I made a goal to to wrap up this work in time for this anniversary. Due to family and life transitions. I just couldn’t deliver on it.
So even though this is far from complete, I want to offer five observations that might eventually lead to me finishing this project. The following takes aren’t intentionally provocative, but if they spark conversations among those who care, it’s a worthy endeavor.
Colleges will continue to close in the coming years
Higher education is in an interesting era. Colleges (especially state schools) continue to expand their regional campuses, accentuating their strong name brands while infiltrating new markets. Families are far more value conscience than they’ve ever been and it’s influencing their choices. As the father of a college student, I’ve heard countless stories where freshman accepted assignments to regional campuses in order to claim a spot at a “name brand” school. Much has been written about this from higher-ed experts but, in retrospect, even the best execution of CCU’s model wouldn’t have been enough to sustain it in the long haul.
CCU’s problem was always the P&L’s
The amount of debt held at the school’s closing was not the main issue; for an organization its size, the debt payment was somewhat manageable. The issue was right-sizing the financial strategy—considering expense allocation as it related to enrollment. As a small Christian college in an urban area, the school needed to execute flawlessly, maximizing both fundraising and revenue generating strategies. Christian higher education is a challenging business, exacerbated when grappling with city codes and income taxes for employees struggling to survive.
COVID would’ve killed CCU
Just three months after the final chapel service, the COVID-19 pandemic altered higher education across the world. Most likely, classes at CCU would’ve gone virtual in the middle of the Spring 2020 semester and, due to the aforementioned urban idiosyncrasies, might not have been permitted to open in Fall 2020. The margins were so thin at the time, the school would’ve had to have changed trajectory years ago to have survived the pandemic.
Athletics wasn’t the problem
There continues to be animosity among alumni who believe the school shouldn’t have invested in athletics. In the end, without adequate academic offerings, athletics was the only thing that continued to attract students to CCU. If you examine trends in higher-ed institutions, sports continues to be a primary recruiting strategy for small, private schools. To be clear, the influx of athletes presented a challenge for a community that was often skeptical of athletes. The inability to craft a discipleship strategy to empower student-athletes for ministry is why there’s a lingering belief that this was the problem.
Lack of theological faithfulness did not end CCU
More so than any other reason, CCU’s departure from biblical fidelity continues to be presented as the primary cause of its death. I suppose it only makes sense that those of us academically trained in biblical studies would seek to explain our alma mater’s demise in spiritual terms; our theological lenses influence how we Christians interpret modern events.
Additionally, if we can identify poor theology or an evil individual (or group of individuals) that led to the school’s closing, it makes accepting the tragedy so much easier: we can call out the sin, claim it was God’s judgement, and move on with our lives. Yet we too conveniently ascribe spiritual failure to Christian institutions that close. Claiming that a ministry dedicated to biblical truth “lost its way” is practically a self-fulfilling prophecy. In fact, I’d argue that part of CCU’s DNA was to overemphasize spirituality to explain situations.
This contention is one of the primary reasons I haven’t quite been able to finish this book. It’s painfully easy to identify the errors—in both wisdom and righteousness—committed by CCU leaders that contributed to the closing; yes, I’d even include myself in this accounting.
But to delineate God’s providence on CCU in this manner maligns the faithful and honorable servants who dedicated their lives to the betterment of the kingdom by serving at CCU. The school continues to live on in our hearts and minds because a cadre of mentors helped us better understand God’s working in our lives. Blaming the end on lack of righteousness is poor theology.
One hundred years was never realized. We should continue to lament that something quite terrible happened when CCU closed. But before ascribing it to a singular person or action, perhaps we need to create space to admit that, however special, it never was going to last forever.
In the words of George Harrison, “all things must pass away.”
All Things Must Pass Away