Redux: Nyack Has Taught Me One Final Lesson

A repost from my old blog one year from the closing of my alma mater, Nyack College. I've added a few additional reflections.

Thanks for reading! I’ve recently moved my blog here to Substack. This is a repost from my old blog reflecting on the closing of my Alma Mater, Nyack College. I’ve added some additional reflections one year later at the end.

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My Alma Mater, Alliance University, or Nyack College as I knew it, announced it would be permanently closing this past week. There has been an outpouring of grief, anger, sadness, “good riddance” and fear among other emotions, as people have shared stories of the past or concerns about their future. I feel sad too. The loss is real. But I realized that the loss of Nyack (as I called it) feels like an opportunity for my former college to teach me one final lesson.

If I learned anything at Nyack it was that I cannot move forward in my life without dealing with the losses of my life.

Yes, there were opportunities to learn about listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit, and opportunities to experience deep and profound moments in the presence of Jesus, to lead, preach and study scripture effectively, but perhaps more than anything, my time there taught me that I won’t experience the fullness of life in Jesus if I do not grieve the losses of my life.

I am forever indebted to Ron Walborn’s teaching on this in Personal Spiritual Formation (PSF). I’m indebted to Tim Binkele and Jonathan Thornton, my spiritual directors from that class who gave me space and permission to grieve. I’m indebted to not just the class that taught me this, but the culture of spiritual formation at the institution led by Wanda Walborn and Kelvin Walker. It was a complete and total way of life; to be ok processing grief and loss. To recognize it was normal, and that feeling sad was ok. (Which is great, because Grammarly is literally telling me right now that the tone of what I’m writing sounds too gloomy!)

Grieving brought with it messy tears and snot. Aching, screaming to God about stuff that I’d never cried about. It created space for the Holy Spirit to be present and comfort me in a way I never had experienced before. And at the end of the day when I got the loss out, it gave me space to experience the love of God in my life that I never knew existed in all my years growing up in church! It gave me a greater capacity to worship freely without reservation because grieving gave me space to feel again.

The thing is, grieving didn’t make me powerless, it made me human. It made me more empathetic with others experiencing grief. It taught me how to hold space for others to grieve and be able to grieve with them in the presence of Jesus. It gave me permission as a pastor to not have all the answers when things were hard and difficult in people’s lives. It has given my wife and me tools to teach our children how to grieve in ways I could not have imagined learning at their age. These lessons have been a gift.

And now here comes my alma mater to teach one final lesson…

Now with the news of Alliance University closing, I’m forced to deal with a loss I have not really considered. What do you do when the place that taught you all this doesn’t exist anymore? I need to explain this briefly. Nyack (AU) wasn’t just my college, it was the first place I found a sense of home.

Nyack was the first place in my life where I had a deep connection and sense of belonging to the physical geography AND the people. I moved around so much growing up, (I had moved on average every 2 years by the time I was 18) that none of my friends pre-college stuck. I have one friend from the university I transferred from who I still keep in touch with, but this is truly the first place where I have friendships that are still intact and active. I resided in the area for a little more than 10 years after I graduated and only moved a short distance away to New Jersey about 4 years ago to plant another church.

My wife is from the town of Nyack, her parents still live there. I have a deep connection to that place in ways I had never experienced prior to that in my life. When I think about “home” I often think of the hillside. And while it has been a few years since the institution existed there, the idea that the school still existed somewhere felt somewhat comforting I suppose.

But now the time has come for my home to provide me with one final lesson: learning to grieve the loss of home. If I don’t learn this lesson, I won’t be effective in making a new home. Home for my family yes, but also to the family of Jesus, His Church. If I don’t learn how to say goodbye to home, how can I go somewhere else to provide a space for others to finally call home? People, like me, who’ve been longing for space and permission to grieve. Space to be listened to, space to go deep in God so they can live in all the fullness Jesus has for them. Space to believe that they finally belong.

So I will do my best to learn one final lesson from the place that taught me so much. I don’t think I’m done with the grieving process, it is just starting, but I think writing this helped.

Thank you, Nyack.

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In the year since I wrote this, I’ve learned it is hard to practice grieving well, especially as a pastor. I often find myself attending to other people’s pain and problems that I gladly enter, yet, while encouraging others to grieve and process, I find it hard to take one’s own advice. It is challenging to slow down and reflect while the urgencies of life are pressing upon us with its demands. No matter the difficulty, making space to lament and grieve is worth every ounce of effort and as I’ve done the hard work of letting go of the old, I’ve had the joyful opportunity to embrace the new.

Somewhat coincidentally, but perhaps Divinely appointed, the news of Nyack’s closing coincided with the beginning of my graduate studies at Northern Seminary. I’ve been thankful to receive so much newness and life through classmates and professors. I could not have received this last year with so much joy if I had not intentionally let go of the old.

If you attended Nyack and read this post last year, or you just stumbled across it for the first time, I hope you permit yourself to grieve the seasons of your life. To lament what has gone wrong so you can make space for what God is setting right.