Convocation Address: "The Real World"

Sept. 10, 2026

Good morning, everyone. It's wonderful to be with you. It's my custom at convocation to speak to you, students. So, here we go.
 
There are phrases that make me wince, mostly because I've heard them too many times in my lifetime: Number one, annually and right about this week in early September: "The Seattle Mariners have been officially eliminated from the playoff race." And in a weak division! Number two: "Actually, Scott, it's not me. It's you." Number 3, and my topic today, something adult family and friends might say to you at a backyard barbecue and with a snarky tone: "Enjoy these college years, because soon enough, you'll have to enter the 'Real World.'"
 
Here's why I'm not a fan of that "Real World" lingo: it's dismissive. It frames your experience at Whitworth as life in some pleasant, untroubled, insulated bubble. It implies that right now, you're sitting in a waiting room, and then, once you graduate, your actual life, your real life, will finally begin. No one has license to define the Real World for you.
 
That's why I also loathe the term "Pinecone Curtain." I didn't like it as a student, and I like it less now. It's a term I'd like to retire from campus. As if everything happening inside this community for students is somehow a simulation; some fake environment detached from real decisions, real relationships, real challenges and struggles. "We'll shelter you for a few years, and then, off you go into that Real World." That's not what we're about. And I know that's not why you chose to attend here, either.
 
Now, I get it, and I agree. Some things will change after you receive your diploma. The structure of your life will shift. At some point, you'll probably have to deal with a home mortgage. You'll pay a higher level of taxes. Many of you will step into the responsibilities of marriage and parenting. You will have bosses, performance reviews, and 401(k) plans. You will have to mow a lawn and fix a leaky faucet. Yes, certain things will be different.
 
But structural shifts do not define whether a world is real or not.
 
You are not in a waiting room. You are all making plans and decisions, forging friendships, carrying hurts and anxieties. This is not a dress rehearsal. In almost all ways, you are living in the real world right now. Yes, with our support and encouragement and counsel, but real stuff, right now.
 
When we buy into the lie that college isn't the real world, you might cruise through these years with what theologian Eugene Peterson called the tourist mind. The tourist just skims the surface of the experience; takes in a little bit here, a little bit there. If you treat your college years like a touristy trip, you just might put your faith, your character, and your relationships on pause. You might tell yourself, "I'll start taking those things seriously down the road when it really matters."
 
Instead, Peterson says, treat these years as a pilgrim would, like a person who lives with direction and a destination, someone attentive to the things that will lead to a flourishing life. 
 
Our texts from Scripture today are instructive and, students, a compliment to you.
 
Here's the text: Joseph and Mary make a 3-day round trip from Nazareth to Jerusalem for the Passover Festival. They're on their way home when they realize Jesus isn't with them. "I thought you had him." "I thought you had him." It takes them 3 days to find Jesus. Side note: Oh, man, can we agree that this is NOT an emergency response call Mary and Joseph would ever want to make: "Jerusalem 911, what is your emergency?" "Well, uh, um, we lost the Son of God!"
 
Jesus is 12 years old. He's on the brink of what would be considered manhood in first-century Judaism. There's an expectation of him to know the Torah, to live the commandments. And here he is, in the temple, engaging with Jewish scholars with depth and insight. Jesus is described as someone listening and asking questions. And the rabbis were amazed by him. Jesus didn't wait until his 30th birthday to engage in his calling. He clearly didn't think of those years as a waiting room for his future ministry. He participated, in his youth, with his heart and mind.
 
The Apostle Paul trusted Timothy, his young disciple, with the task of helping grow the church. What a great line from Paul to Timothy: "Don't let anyone look down on you because you are young." But then, and it's a key "then," Paul lays some responsibility on Timothy. Pretty much, if you want to be regarded and trusted, you'll earn that authority through who you are, through speaking words of encouragement and truth, through good conduct. Paul didn't hold back this Real World assignment from Timothy until he had figured out life. As a young person, Timothy was entrusted with the good news of the gospel and the advance of the church.
 
Students, you get to live a lot of the real world right now, right here. And I want you to hear that as an encouragement. I want that to land on you as to how we think of you. This is a time of:
 
Real Relationships: The friendships you form; the heartbreaks you navigate; the ways you work to reconcile and restore; how you purposefully notice other people in the dining hall; the efforts to learn to love your neighbor even when you agree on almost nothing. Those experiences today will help you to be contributors in conference rooms and boardrooms.
 
Real Engagement: With concepts and ideas that stretch you. About public policy issues you'll tackle in Dr. Hershey's political science classes that make you think deeply. We need citizens and people of faith who can look an opposing viewpoint in the eye, seek first to understand it, and respond with both intellectual rigor and Christ-like charity.
 
Real Suffering and Real Resilience: Each of these things just may creep into your life here—anxiety about the future, disappointments, uncertainties, loneliness and grief. Just because you have a student ID doesn't make them any less real. And through them, when things don't go your way, resilience is being built into your very fiber. Now or later, on a team or in a residence hall lounge, you just may be that person of empathy and counsel because of what you've been through.
 
Real Formation: Character and virtues are not light switches you flip at the age of 22. Those are muscles. Something you grow and build. Your coursework and teams and jobs and leadership opportunities are there to help nurture your character development and moral formation. Your business school classes will connect every industry subdivision with the practices and exercises of virtues. Good businesses require good people, informed and shaped here and now at 300 W. Hawthorne Road.
 
Real Faith
This season is one to anchor your soul. And I mean more than that time in Dr. Leim's Matthew's Gospel class—that instance that landed like a spiritual moment, and you said to yourself, "You know, for today's commitment to spiritual growth, I'm gonna count it." Dig into Scripture. Pray, and pray honestly, especially when you are filled with doubt. Our God resides in the present moment. 

Conclusion
The artist Makoto Fujimura uses the metaphor of an estuary to describe cultural spaces. An estuary is where fresh water mixes with salt water. Because of that unique mixing, estuaries produce the most abundant and amazingly diverse ecosystems on the planet—like the Hudson River, Chesapeake Bay, or Tokyo Bay. The environments are delicate and nurturing. And yet, they are crucial habitats that strengthen creatures to eventually thrive in the wider, wilder ocean ecosystem.
 
Your years at Whitworth will be something like an estuary. Somewhat protected, yes, but never isolated; a place where fresh and salt water meet, where strength is formed for life beyond these banks. Here, now, you are learning to live with differences and responsibilities, to tend friendships, to work through conflict, and to listen for a calling that is larger than yourself.
 
Now, it's true you will eventually move from this specific environment into another. What lies ahead will be wider, less structured, and will ask more of you. But you will not step into that future empty-handed. You will carry with you a formation shaped by study, community, and grace.
 
The question is not whether your life will then become "real," but which habits, virtues, beliefs, loves, and loyalties you will carry with you from this estuary into the deeper water—and how you will, there, live them out.
 
My encouragement: step into the reality of the life God has given you today. Don't settle for tourism. Engage the hard ideas, love the person who thinks differently, guard your character, and anchor your soul in Christ. 
 
We believe in you, we are walking with you, and we cannot wait to see how God uses you—not just in the future, but today. Because, you are not just preparing for the real world. You are living it. Now. Amen.