This episode of the Practicing the Art of Faithful Presence podcast features host David Wright, president of Indiana Wesleyan University, as its guest. Scott Todd, executive director of marketing communication at IWU, serves as the episode’s host, and helps listeners gain valuable insight into David’s life, mission, and purpose. In his role as president of IWU, David has the privilege of spending a lot of time with both people of faith and unbelievers. He has noticed that many unbelievers don’t even know any Christians in the public sphere, and this realization sparked Practicing the Art of Faithful Presence, which aims to help Christians share their stories about how their faith impacts their work in the world.

David was born in Manila, the capital of the Philippines, where he lived with his family until he was 15. David’s parents moved to the Philippines as missionaries in 1951, and David spent his formative years watching his parents work at a Bible college campus on the island of Luzon. David had no personal knowledge of the United States until 1970, when he and his family moved to Marion, Indiana, and David enrolled at Marion High School. Following high school graduation, David attended IWU (then Marion College), where he met his now-wife Helen. The pair met attending church revivals together, and spent years abroad doing missionary work in Haiti and England post-graduation. David and Helen now have two daughters and four grandchildren.

 

While a student at IWU, David never expected that he would eventually become the president of the institution. He planned to become a pilot, until he took the intro to Bible course at IWU with Dr. David Thompson. In that class, God began opening his heart to study the Bible, and David decided that he would like to teach Bible one day. After graduating with his Christian Ministries major and spending a few years abroad, David was recruited to run the masters program for ministers at IWU, which eventually became Wesley Seminary. Besides three years that David spent in California, he has been working for IWU since 1994. David’s dream job at IWU was the provost position, and once he had secured it, he thought he would retire in that position. However, when IWU’s president decided to retire and David was chosen as the replacement, David decided to do the job “with all of his heart.” The hardest part of the job, David says, is the weight of the responsibility of this wonderful place that serves 14,000 students and 2,500 employees. However, there are so many joys that come with the presidential position; David loves the students, the faculty, and the staff, and loves to see God working in their lives. It is one of his greatest joys to watch alumni go out into the world and see their lives be testimonies to the power of God.

 

While the post-COVID world looks bleak for higher education, David is not pessimistic about the future. He states that IWU has responded to the challenge magnificently, and that challenges like these are when we do our best work. He highlights three challenges that will face IWU: 1) the changing sense of the value of a college education in the world, 2) the economic challenges in the US, and 3) the challenge of staying faithful to the mission of and God’s purpose for IWU. IWU’s goal is to provide students with a Christ-centered foundation on which to live their lives. David believes that to fully understand God’s world, you must experience the “tapestry of culture and people that God has created.” David is committed to the belief that you must be exposed to the people and the thinking of many different cultures; every belief isn’t right, but every belief is valuable. To end the episode, David shares a passage from the Bible that has been a “touchstone” for his life ever since God gave it to him: Isaiah 41:9-10, which says, “I took you from the ends of the earth, from its farthest corners I called you. I said, ‘You are my servant’; I have chosen you and have n