On Aug. 30, Judson College in Marion will celebrate the 100th anniversary of one of its most beloved traditions. Rose Sunday, a campus-wide tradition begun in 1915, will honor the legacy of the college’s founders with a procession to Siloam Baptist Church, Marion, for a special worship service.
Rose Sunday’s ceremonies commemorate the historic ties between Judson and Siloam, whose members were instrumental in founding the college in 1838. These Alabama Baptists, honored on Rose Sunday as visionary “builders,” were missions-minded champions of service who desired to educate a new generation of leaders who would change the world by serving God and others. In addition to founding two institutions of higher education in Marion, Siloam hosted the organizational meeting of the Home Mission Board (now the North American Mission Board) in 1845.
These men and women named their first college after Ann Hasseltine Judson, a woman whose name had become synonymous with service in the 1800s. America’s first female foreign missionary, Ann Judson spent her life serving the people of Burma (now Myanmar) with her husband, Adoniram, as a translator, itinerant evangelist and teacher for girls. She was celebrated throughout the 19th century in novels, essays and sketches as a woman who unflinchingly followed God’s personal call toward “the greater good.”
For Judson College’s first celebration of Founders’ Day in 1901, Marion poet John Trotwood Moore memorialized the founders’ work with a poem called “The Builders.” Moore likened the college’s founders to architects and laborers and their college to a grand building with “pillars deep in earth,” which they built for “the unborn century.”
Moore was careful to note that these men and women built their college in service of something much greater than their own renown: the glory of God and “the brotherhood of man.” Judson’s founders invested their lives and fortunes in their college because they believed their young people, like Ann Judson, had both the potential and the responsibility to change the world. Their practice of trusting in and modeling their lives after the generosity and faithfulness of God yielded a vision that, according to Moore, would “[stand] the weight of time.”
Following the call
Judson College is still building upon that heritage of missions and service years later. Because of its dedication to preparing students academically and spiritually for lives of purpose, the college has become a nationally recognized leader in community engagement.
Earlier this year, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching renewed Judson’s Community Engagement Classification, a distinction awarded to only 5 percent of colleges and universities in the nation. Judson is 1 of only 4 colleges in the state — and the only private college in Alabama — to hold the classification.
Remaining true to the founders’ mission of providing education that empowers service to God and others, Judson encourages each of its students to combine her academic pursuits, her unique skills and talents and her desire to make a difference in ways that allow her to follow her calling in whatever discipline or career she chooses.
One recent accomplishment demonstrates how a Judson education, saturated with academic service-learning initiatives and missions opportunities, prepares students for success. After months of study, one-on-one tutoring sessions with faculty members and hours of hands-on clinical experience in nearby communities, each of the Judson nursing students who attempted the National Council Licensure Examination for registered nurses for the first time this spring received passing scores on the exam.
While a Judson education proves its value in preparing students for living purposefully in their future careers, it also equips them to “love their neighbors” through service opportunities during their college years.
From the time they arrive on campus each fall, students join Judson’s ongoing commitment to service in its own Perry County and the surrounding area. For each of the past eight years, more than 80 percent of Judson students voluntarily participated in community service, working alongside faculty and staff members to meet the needs of their neighbors in tangible ways.
Though Judson’s commitment to service begins in rural Alabama, it doesn’t stop there. While a group of students and staff members engaged their neighbors in Perry County over Christmas break 2014, others traveled to China and Ethiopia to minister to their global neighbors.
This summer, Judson students serving as summer missionaries took part in children’s ministry, English as a Second Language outreach to internationals, housing repair and renovation, resort ministry, inner-city outreach and intensive discipleship training across the Southeast. Recent graduates have built intentional relationships in China, are teaching in Myanmar and are engaged in community development work in Washington. Other graduates are currently preparing to begin assignments with Teach for America, minister to Muslim women in New York City and participate in church planting efforts in Miami, Florida.
Building for the future
As it has for the past 100 years, Rose Sunday reminds the Judson community that there is no greater or more lasting legacy to leave behind than lives of service to God and to their neighbors — and to the “unborn century.” It was that kind of legacy, left by Ann Judson, that influenced the founders of Judson College and continues to inspire faculty, staff, students and alumnae today.
Then let us build, and, building, know that grand as is our own, The tower of our age will be the next one’s paving stone.Yet he who builds right earnestly, by faith through many years, Will rear a structure that will last — builds better than he knows.
(Final lines of “The Builders.” The full version can be found at www.judson.edu/builders.)
(Judson)
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