STUDENT LIFE I INTERNATIONAL I SOCIAL CLUBS I ACADEMICS I PEOPLE I LEADERSHIP I ATHLETICS I ORGANIZATIONS 'COMING BACK FROM KENYA' We moved back to Memphis to my home church with the idea that we would work with them for a couple of years, and they would send us to Africa. And then [on] January 31, 1984, we got on a plane and went to Kenya in East Africa. We were one of five couples on a mission ream. Our youngest [daughter], Jessica, was four months old and our oldest was two years and four months old when we went. When we had been there for one month, the first two couples came home, and it was traumatic; it was a great difficulty. One of the couples came home and got a divorce. It was just a shocking experience in our lives. And Kenya for us just never got easier. And at about the 14-month mark we went our to western Kenya to see this 'older missionary couple,' and I think they were 36 years old, bur they were like the sages in Africa because we were 26 years old. But we went out there to talk with them; 'Do we need to go somewhere else in Kenya or do we need to go home.' They talked with us and prayed with us and listened to us all weekend. And then they went for a walk on Sunday afternoon, and they came back and they said, 'We think you have a ministry in the states.' And so that was the beginning of coming back from Kenya. And that was a really difficult thing. And it probably-just emotionally, spiritually, and all --- probably was something I was still getting over three years later. Ann and Bruce McLartyand their children, Charity andJessica, participate in an Easter Egg hunt on April22, 1984, in Kenya. OnJanuary 31, 1984, the McLartyfamily flew to Kenya, East Africa, with five other couples on a mission team, but 14 months later, after several other couples on their team had already come home, they returned home, following the advice ofan older missionary couple to find their ministry in the states. I photo courtesy of Bruce McLarty COLLEGE CALLED When we came back, we seeded in Cookeville, Tennessee, and I was the preacher for the College Side Church of Christ, which was right across the street from Tennessee Tech University.... I preached there for six years, and our girls started school there. They kind of grew up --- we kind of grew up all there. Six years seemed like a long time and a long tenure, you know. We would tell people when they would ask us, 'You know, such and such church is looking for a preacher. Are you going co interview or have they talked to you?' And we would say, 'We feel very purposeful here. We feel God's opened a great door for us here. We enjoy it. Our family is very settled. Now if the College Church in Searcy, Arkansas, called.' ... And then we would kind of laugh like, 'that's never going to happen,' you know, bur Ann and I had been deeply touched by ch ministry ofJim Woodruff preaching at the College Church when we were students here. I came home from an elders' meeting one night in Cookeville, and it was about midnight and Ann said, 'well, we got a call.' Mike Cope had announced his departure here, and Ray Muncy --- that's the rheone that the clock in front of the Student Center is named after --- was the chairman of the search committee. So he called Ann and asked to speak to me. .. . When I got in [from a late-night elders' meeting] I called him, and they set up the interview. I came and interviewed with College Church and things happened very quickly. By the end ofJuly they had hired me and my first Sunday at College Church was the first Sunday after classes started in the fall of '91. I was 34 years old at the time. And we starred life over here in Searcy, Arkansas. I preached at the College Church for a total of 14 years, so that six years in Cookeville didn't look so long after 14 years of all that. THROWN INTO THE DEEP END ACROSS THE STREET During that time I was very much preaching to Harding people --- so many of the professors and administrators and a lot of the students. I'd go to chapel three or four days a week. Part of my morning was to walk over and be in chapel, and just kind of keep in touch with what's going on. After 14 years, it was in January of 2005, right before students came back from the Christmas break, Dr. Burks invited me to lunch one day. He told me about this new position he was opening at Harding, and it was going to be vice president for spiritual life. He [encouraged] me to interview for the job. I had not thought of doing anything but preaching for the College Church for the whole time I had been here, and so I prayerfully considered that possibility. I interviewed for the job and was offered the job. I went that summer with the Harding University in Greece program. [Ann and I] both caught in that program, and then my first day coming back was when school started in August. And I remember all char summer I'd wake up at four in the morning, eyes wide open, and think, 'What have I done?' You know, I loved my life and what have I done? I've ruined it. A piece of me still misses what I did at the College Church because I loved every year more than the year before. It was really a great thing, but I felt that coming to Harding, it would give me a place at the table as the future of the university I love so much was being hammered out. So I came across and was dean of the College of Bible and vice president, and it was really just a phenomenal opportunity for me because being dean of Bible put me right into the middle of all of the academic gears of the university. And so I saw just how majors develop and how programs start and just academic affairs how everything is connected with everything else.. .. It took me two years to take a single class and move from a 200 level to a 300 level. I will never forget the day they showed me the piece of paper that had blanks on the back of it for 13 signatures that I had to get. All of these people had to agree to this before we can move this thing forward through academic affairs. It was an incredible experience. You know, it was the equivalent of being thrown into the deep end of the pool to see if you can swim. On Mondays I was always at the cabinet table where the cabinet would have lunch with Dr. Burks, and I would hear all these administrators report our. I would hear advancement and admissions and athletics and student life and IS&T and just all of these folks. So that was an education in the administration of it all. EMBRACING THE DOCTORAL MISSION When I interviewed for the job, Dr. Burks had asked me, 'Would you be willing to work on your doctorate?' My master's degree was the old master of theology degree at HST, which was a 90 hour master's degree, and Dr. Burks never made his peace with that degree because he said '90 hours after a bachelor's degree you should be Dr. Somebody.' And so when the time came I asked Dr. Burks. I said, What do you want me to get? ... and he said, 'An accredited degree that makes you a doccor: So I began looking at doctor of ministry because that's what my whole life had been prepared for up to that point. I ended up going to the school in Ann's hometown in Ohio --- Ashland, Ohio. I kept looking at the program, and I thought, 'This fits me. This is what I want,' ... but I didn't want to tell anybody until I was pretty certain because I thought, 'If I tell Ann and then I don't [go there], she'll be disappointed. And if I tell Ann's family and I don't go, they'll kick me out of the family.' So I didn't want to tell anybody until I was certain, [but] I interviewed there and was accepted into the program. When I got ready for dissertation, they let me use stuff that was what I needed to study for this place. My literature review of my dissertation was about how faith-based schools rend almost inevitably to walk away from their faith, given enough time and, ironically, often become an enemy of the faith chat founded them. So, with that in mind, in a doctor of ministry dissertation, you get to that point, and then you step our of your dissertation and create something that addresses the challenge you have seen. So if this is what happens, how do we keep this from happening at Harding University? I created a curriculum called 'Embracing the Mission.' It's made to reach first-year university faculty at Harding who we are, where we came from, why it's so important that we be who we are and that we teach Christianly at this place and that we not lose our soul and become just another private institution of higher education. The world's got more than enough of those... .. When I finished all chat, I was able to immediately use chat. And one of my favorite things to this day is that every August I spend about eight hours with the new faculty coming in to start at Harding, and I teach them that stuff. So I get to tell them the Harding scary and the Harding stories ... [about] the people that brought us here, and the people that built this place. That brings us to the interview for the presidency. 190
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