Jun. 12, 2024 SHARE: “Stewart Morris often reminded me of the importance of the University Preamble to our Articles of Incorporation and how significant it is for enabling HCU to maintain our faithfulness to Christ. That insight was one of the inspirations for the additional documents – in these troubled days – that the Board recently adopted to lay out Christian Worldview and Ten Core Convictions. And of course, the ten pillars, placed on the campus many decades ago through the foresight and generosity of Joella and Stewart Morris, became the visual and symbolic basis of our vision and Strategic Plan.” Identifying dreams and goals and determining how to accomplish them are significant activities for all of us. We sometimes do this planning intuitively and informally; however, the more formal processes of envisioning and strategic planning are central aspirations for organizations and useful for even families and individuals. Contrary to what is sometimes thought, these processes are not just business practices. Instead, they reflect the work of God, given that God is clearly represented in Scripture as having plans for his creation and a central strategy through Christ for implementing those merciful and redemptive plans (Ephesians 1:1-10). Over the last nearly two decades at Houston Christian University, we have gone through envisioning and strategic planning exercises—we titled these The Ten Pillars—and have used these processes to give not only long-range focus to our work but also purpose and direction to our daily tasks. We started with a mission statement that points to the Lordship of Jesus Christ over all our operations for the sake of the learning experiences of our students. We then set ourselves the task of envisioning what the University could look like at the end of a 10-year period if we focused our efforts and sought the Lord’s will for the kind of university we should be, all the while setting high standards for ourselves. In recent years, with the pace of cultural and moral change raging through our world, we have also endeavored to remain committed to our Christian identity. In that regard, as a Christian university, we strive to be faithful to the moral, spiritual, and academic practices that have historically characterized a university in its search for truth. Those commitments have led us to define as clearly as possible our Christian worldview and the core convictions that animate and drive us. Therefore, we have not only a mission statement but other normative documents, including the University’s Preamble (our confession of faith), “Scripture and a Christian Worldview,” and “Ten Core Convictions.” From these foundational statements, reflective of our beliefs and convictions, we have endeavored to set lofty aspirations that will carry us through the year 2030. But it’s not enough just to aspire: we must seek to implement our dreams and visions. We thus have a strategic plan, a plan that indicates the specific tasks, priorities, goals, costs, personnel, and timelines relative to each aspiration. These aspirations and the specific plans related to them have been in the making for several years, starting in fact before the pandemic years of 2019–2020. What we are presenting here is an annual report for 2023—the first in a series of annual reports to be given in the coming years—regarding our Institutional Strategic Plan. It corresponds to the overall vision document (The Ten Pillars 2030) that was adopted by the HCU Board of Trustees as a product of the entire University family and represents the progress we have made on an annual basis in implementing our strategic priorities. None of these aspirations would be possible if not for the sure evidence throughout our history of the Lord’s gracious hand upon us. In that regard, we must especially mention the way the Lord has worked through our friends and alumni to bring us to this point in time. And it is exciting to see that, by the end of this academic year, we will have some 26,000 graduates of the University. Many thanks to all those faculty, staff, students, alumni, foundations, and friends who have made it possible for us to reach this significant milestone. —Robert B. Sloan
