The president of Geneva College, Dr. Calvin Troup, delivered the following address to first-year students completing their initial semester at the college in December 2016.

Most likely, you have heard and learned much as a group since you started here a few months ago. You’ve come to realize that we emphasize a number of core concepts to you, because they are essential to what we believe. By design, professors will emphasize them repeatedly in classes because they reflect the core of a Geneva College education. All academics, athletics, and activities reflect to some degree the core concepts of this Reformed Presbyterian institution. As first-year students, you are being initiated into these core concepts.

First-year students experience initiation into many ways of thinking and acting here. You go through rigorous academic programs, taking your first tests and making it through finals week. You learn to integrate your faith into learning in a variety of different ways. There are some things you may have learned in your first year that I want to highlight today.

First of all, education here is vocational. You will hear the term vocation over and over for a number of reasons. Vocation sounds like an abstract word, but it’s not.

Vocation means calling, and when there is calling, there is always a person who is doing the calling. This call is not coming out of the mists from an unknown and unidentified voice or under other mysterious circumstances. We know whose voice calls. We can personally know who is calling. Christ is calling.

Christ is calling me. Christ is calling you. Christ is calling us.

We are people who are called, and it’s not because we are Christians. Christ is calling everyone, whether you claim to be a believer or not. Christ is calling because Christ is the creator. He made us in God’s image.

He has claims on our lives because we aren’t our own; we were made by Him, and we were bought at a dear, dear price by Him on the cross. He shed His blood for us, and He calls us to live our lives for His purpose.

At Geneva College, our first educational purpose is to learn how to listen to the call together. We all have to listen. Not all of us listen as well as we would like to, but we are working on it, trying to become better listeners together.

Jesus Christ is calling us collectively and He is calling you personally. We need to respond to His call. Vocation means being a responsive person: responding to God’s call on our lives for His purposes and for the purposes of others. It does not mean finding out what we want to do with our lives.

Discerning His call, knowing it is His voice, and listening to His voice are all crucial to what human life is all about, and it is how we can honor God with our lives.

A second word I want to highlight for you is one you will hear a lot at Geneva: integration. We talk about integration of faith and learning and integration of faith and life.

Meaningful integration happens when we have heard and then start to respond to Christ’s call on our lives. Integration means understanding what our presuppositions are, asking ourselves, What is the basis of how to learn, what to learn about, and how to apply it? One of the reasons you received a Bible from us is that we want to ask and answer questions together: What does the Scripture—the Word of Christ—teach us about this? Where are we to start? What are the starting points from the Scripture?

I should be able to ask you questions like these: How should we approach our work? What does the Bible say about how we should approach our work? You may not know the answer to these questions about work, but the best answers start in the Scriptures.

Work was created by God for human beings before the fall. Work is a good thing. Work is something God intended for us to do.

Toil, on the other hand, is a bad thing. Toil comes after the fall. Toil is work that does not stay done. An example of toil today is balancing your checkbook. But work is good because we were created and made to work.

There are many things we have to learn about work, many of which are in the Scriptures and many of which are not in the Scriptures. If you read The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt, for example, it will teach you a lot about work, and you will learn more about work than you may even want to know.

With integration, we start with presuppositions from Scripture, and then we look at the whole counsel of God. We don’t look for a verse just to force it into a paper we’re writing for a class. That’s not integration; that’s proof texting. What we want to do is look at the whole of Scripture, ask ourselves what it says about work, and use that to guide us as we work.

The third thing I want to highlight is service. We learn, listen, respond, and work to develop a heart and mind that’s informed by Christ and His Word because we’re called to serve. We are all called to serve, but we’re not all called to serve in the same way.

During your time at Geneva College you have gained knowledge. What is the point of this knowledge, and how are you to use it?

You’re gaining knowledge so that you can use it to serve the people that God is going to put in your life over the course of your time on this earth. After you finish school and for all the years after, you should always have a thought in the back of your minds about the people God is calling you to serve.

You have to be able to see the faces of the people you’re going to serve. You don’t yet know who that’s going to be, but that does not matter. What is meaningful is that you begin to live with the idea that God is calling you to serve real, live people who come into your lives and to serve them at the level of their need. These will be real people with real needs, and God’s vocation for you is service to them.

I didn’t know when I graduated from Geneva College that I was going to be serving you, but I am delighted to serve you. I’m glad you’re here. Right now, I’m an old dog on my last legs, and you’ll be some of the last people I serve even if I live for 30 more years. Everything I’ve studied and learned, which God has given to me, I owe to you. And you’re going to owe it to others. We are not born for our own, sad selves; we are born for service to others.

Many of the students who have been through Geneva College have a family or will have a family someday. Obviously, it is important for them to learn so that they can serve them. They will also be part of church families. They will be part of communities, and they will be leaders and employees in workplaces. The fields are ripe with people God wants you to serve.

As you complete your first semester of college, you may be wondering: What’s a Geneva education about? What’s the point of the exams, the classes, and finals week? The point is that what you’ve learned is valuable outside of the Geneva context. This new knowledge is most valuable outside of the Geneva context—outside of the school context. You will need it where you are going once you leave here and begin to make your God-ordained impact in the world.

You’ve got to be able to hear Christ, His call, and His claims on your life. You’ve got to be able to respond to the call, not just because you are a human being who needs to be saved, but because you and I are students who need to learn from the Master.

You need to learn how to respond in an integrational manner. You have to understand that your lives, your mind, and your heart are grounded in Christ’s Word. Then you have to see how to use this foundation in the world. You need to use it to serve others in the calling with the people God has given you to serve.

That is why we are here. It’s a small part, but it’s at the center of what we do. I am thankful you’re here. It has been a better year because you were here this fall. I hope you hear the voice calling you. I pray you respond and live by integrating faith and life. If you do, I know you will find your vocation in faithful and fruitful service to God and to neighbor.