Gideon Strauss

Carol Veldman Rudie, Jim Skilen

In addition to the book of remembrances presented by Harold Heie, the CPJ trustees also gave Jim a “book-clock” to help him keep track of time as he writes his next several books.

Mark Davies, John Hulst, Rockne McCarthy, Case Hoogendoorn

While he was being honored for his service to CPJ, Jim also honored people present at the celebration who had been involved with CPJ from the very beginning: Mark Davies, John Hulst, Rockne McCarthy, and Case Hoogendoorn. The camaraderie between these stalwarts of a public justice-oriented approach to politics is encouraging as we look forward to encouraging a next generation towards graceful citizenship.

Norm Steen

Norm Steen, Gideon Strauss

Pastor Norm Steen of the Washington DC Christian Reformed Church, Jim and Doreen Skillen’s home congregation, closed the evening in prayer.

We celebrated Jim Skillen’s leadership of the Center over the past 28 years last week at an event attended from far and wide. For a wonderful picture of Jim and Doreen at the podium, see the main page for the event.

Jerry Herbert

Jerry Herbert, a sometime CPJ trustee presently working at Nyack College in Washington DC, emceed the evening’s program with wit and verve.

Priscilla Gault

Priscilla Gault and her husband have been friends of Jim and Doreen Skillen from their school years. As I listened to her reminisce about the headlines Jim made over the years I prayed that my own children, now college age, would have friendships like these, stretching over the decades.

Case Hoogendoorn

Case Hoogendoorn is another friend of Jim who has supported the Center for the length of its existence. (I am personally grateful to Case for his wise counsel since I started thinking about CPJ as a potential place to work. Angela and I are growing fond of people like Case and CPJ board chair Harold Heie, who are not only stalwart supporters of CPJ, but admirable for their kindness… and their humor!)

Gideon Strauss, Alvin Taveras

Alvin Taveras is a new CPJ friend - this past summer he interned with Jim Skillen and took part in our Civitas summer school. Two other 2009 Civitas participants drove down from Princeton and Philadelphia with Alvin for the Kuyper Lecture, Drew Harmon and Philip Ney - I’ll have to see if I can track down photos of them at the event.

Art Simon, Jim Skillen

Art Simon, founder and president emeritus of Bread for the World, has been a friend of Jim’s and of the Center’s for a long time. I remember reading him on poverty and hunger, and the call to Christians to address these blights, as a freshly converted believer in my teens. It is such a privilege that the Center enjoys the encouragement and support of pioneers like the Rev. Simon.

Gideon Strauss, John Hulst

If Alvin Taveras represents the newest friends of CPJ, John Hulst represents those who have been our friends since the very beginning. President emeritus of Dordt College, Dr. Hulst was not only involved in CPJ’s predecessor organizations, he continues to be involved, and next week will be my host at a CPJ event in Pella, Iowa! (In this picture I think I was saying something about the great hopes I have for CPJ, even though it is by every organizational measure mustard-seed-tiny for now.)

Nyack College’s Institute for Public Service & Policy Development co-hosted this year’s Kuyper Lecture with us.

Richard Gathro, Clarke Cochran, Jim Skillen

Nyack’s Dean in DC, Richard Gathro, was a generous and hospitable host. I look forward to future collaborations with the Dr. Gathro and the Institute.

Charity Haubrich, Jacqueline Scott

I was surprised and delighted to find a friend, Charity Haubrich, working for Dr. Gathro and helping with the Kuyper Lecture logistics.

Dr. Clarke Cochran did a marvelous job of this year’s Kuyper Lecture, explaining the entanglement of cultural forces, institutional contingencies, and health care expectations that has brought about the current crisis in American health care.

My beloved wife, Angela, accompanied me to the lecture, and if you look at the sidebar to our Kuyper Lecture page, three pictures down, you’ll see her between me and John Hulst (one of the founding fathers of CPJ).

I am visiting Dordt College in Sioux Center, Iowa, and enjoying it immensely. As I talk with students, faculty, and staff, I am realizing that students who graduate from Dordt enjoy a significant advantage: yes, Dordt is far from the culture making hubs of the world, but here in this greenhouse environment students enjoy a community in which their character is being formed as citizens of the kingdom of God, so that when they are transplanted out into the post-college world they have strong roots and can flourish. At Dordt students breath the atmosphere of the Spirit, are rooted in the soil of the people of God, are watered with the gospel.

No wonder, really, that the Center for Public Justice has its historical roots in the same Siouxland countryside as does Dordt. And no wonder that CPJ and Dordt share a vision of equipping the people of God to be citizens of the kingdom of heaven … and therefore graceful citizens of this American republic, seeking the common good because of our knowledge of God’s common grace.

Yesterday I enjoyed giving an address on “Silly walks need no justification” (Monty Python meets Hans Rookmaaker), engaging two of Dr. Don King’s politics classes in conversation, having lunch and dinner (a very fine dinner!) with students, faculty and staff, and giving a public lecture (with several long-time CPJ suppporters and the chair of our board, Harold Heie, in the audience) on “Graceful citizenship.”

Today I have wall-to-wall appointments for conversation with individual Dordt people, as well as a radio interview with President Carl Zylstra and a conversation with Jason Lief and Barb Hoekstra’s Gen 300 capstone class.

I am beginning to wonder how to track down the Dordt diaspora of students across America, and how to connect the gifts they have received on this campus with the needs of people elsewhere seeking to live as citizens of the kingdom of God, but lacking a similarly deep learning … ?

Today is the first of two full days of serious preparation for the big change in October when I come to work for the Center for Public Justice full-time. This period of transition has been astonishingly busy, and I expect the next two months to get only busier.

My focus today is on the governance of the Center itself: the work of our board, and my relation to our board. I will review the board’s current governance policies and some correspondence about possible changes to those policies, consider some key ideas from Fredric Laughlin and Robert Andringa’s Good Governance for Nonprofits and Richard Chait et al.’s Governance as Leadership, and prepare for my first meeting as president with the board in late October.

Alvin Taveras is an MDiv student at Westminster Theological Seminary

Andrew Harmon is an MDiv student at Princeton Theological Seminary

Alvin and Andrew are the charming, funny, studious summer interns at the Center this summer, and participants in this week’s Civitas seminar.

A sky worthy of a 17th century Dutch landscape painter

The view toward the Capitol from the roof of the Dellenback Center was spectacular earlier this week. And the  informal evening conversations were enlivening: stem cell research, taxation, apologetics, the church, raising children, education policy and educational decisions by parents … and that just for a start!

The view from the roof toward the Capitol

The Civitas Seminar is taking place at the Dellenback Center, the facility in Washington DC of the American Studies Program (ASP) of the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities. The Dellenback Center has a great rooftop deck — a wonderful place to have long conversations about big questions deep into the night. (I am fond of the ASP partly because my dear friend Steven Garber once taught in it, and refers to it in his wonderful book, The fabric of faithfulness.)