Campus Currents

Building and Embracing the Community of Believers

It is clear to anyone who knows Alden Thompson that he loves Walla Walla College, and he loves the Seventh-day Adventist Church, said Ken Wiggins, professor of mathematics, as he introduced Thompson as the 2003 Distinguished Faculty Lecturer in November.

“He has devoted his career to building community within the Adventist church. He prods us to embrace diversity within a context of honest faith. He has a lot of energy—seemingly boundless energy,” said Wiggins. “If this surprises you, you probably haven’t read his 40-page résumé.”

Thompson himself cites a variant of a well-known phrase to sum up his approach to his work: “Anything worth doing is worth overdoing.” He revels in going to excess if it involves theology and the church. What drives him is a desire to shape the church in such a way that every person can find a common hope. His goal is for the church to have room for diverse temperaments, where people treat one another as Jesus did.

Thompson illustrated his motivations and addressed the challenges to community in the modern age in his lecture, “Driven Away From the Presence of the Lord: The Longing for Community.” The honor of Distinguished Faculty Lecturer is awarded to a faculty member each year in recognition of his or her outstanding academic scholarship and service to the college.

Thompson’s lecture discussed opportunities for Adventism to provide an inclusive community. He offered the challenge of his vision for the Adventist community, which includes being counter-cultural in a new and startling way, by modeling how a diverse group can come together in love and learn to live with differences. As he writes in one of his published articles “Conversations with the Other Side,” “That which holds us together is much more precious than that which separates us.”

In his lecture, Thompson also addressed the importance of community to the life and maintenance of faith: “When I am surrounded by people I know and trust, people who share my convictions and hopes, that’s when I sense that I am really in the presence of the Lord. And I believe that most of us hardly get enough of that kind of reassurance.”
If Thompson believes that some things are worth overdoing, he also sometimes upsets his more idealistic students with quite a different proverb, surprisingly, out of Germany: “One must have the courage to be mediocre.”

“I’ve probably spent all my life trying to sort out how human beings can keep their ideals without being crushed by them,” says Thompson. He cites a quote from a German-American, Carl Shurz, as one that he finds helpful: “Ideals are like stars. You will not succeed in touching them with your hands. But, like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you can choose them as your guides. And following them, you reach your destiny.”

Life is lived, he believes, within a three-point tension: the call to do things right, the urge to overdo that which we love, and the all-too-frequent need to choose mediocrity.

Thompson has taught at WWC since 1970, serving as a professor as well as vice president for academic administration for four years. He has also served as associate pastor and pastor of churches in Redlands, Calif., and Fontana, Calif.

Thompson graduated from WWC in 1965 with majors in theology and biblical languages. He earned a master’s degree in biblical and systematic theology from Andrews University in 1966 and a bachelor of divinity, also from Andrews University, in 1967. He received a doctoral degree in biblical and Judaic studies from the University of Edinburgh in 1975.

Thompson is the author of four books, the best known of which are Who’s Afraid of the Old Testament God? and Inspiration: Hard Questions, Honest Answers.

When Thompson isn’t teaching or writing, he enjoys working in his garden, though he admits he is greatly relieved when the first killing frost puts an end to it for the season. He also enjoys racquetball, which he started playing in the 1970s with colleagues from the School of Theology. This group held competitions sometimes referred to by others as “Holy Wars,” says Wiggins.

Thompson’s family includes his wife, Wanda, and two daughters, Karin Wehtje and Krista Smith.  W

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