In a previous article I posed the question, Is NIU Fundamental? While the article
went on to lay out some activities at NIU that I believe exposed the drift away
from fundamentalism and into evangelicalism, now we have NIU making its own
statement as to where they are in this spectrum. Howard Patz (son of Paul Patz
founder of Northland camp and the college/university) is stepping down from the
chairmanship of the board of directors and the mantle has been offered to
Daniel Patz a grandson of the founder, alumnus of NIU, and pastor of an
Evangelical Free Church in America (EFCA) which is part of the NAE (National
Association of Evangelicals). Daniel Patz is clearly a self-identified
Evangelical and he’s been offered the chairmanship of the board of NIU. Would a
fundamentalist institution of higher learning extend the offer of chairmanship
of the board of directors to an evangelical? Answer: No!
NIU also has dropped their current statement of
faith and adopted the New Hampshire Confession of Faith of 1853. While they
state that this adoption is provisionally pending a review, they have noted, “Our
president, the Board of Directors, and our Bible faculty have all signed the
New Hampshire Confession in support of what it affirms.” One must ask the
question, why did they drop their existing statement of faith? One conjecture
would be that they needed to bring their statement of faith into line with
their new practice and rather than doing the obvious and remove portions of
their current statement they instead adopt a new one, provisionally, of course,
and thus, rather quickly and quietly have eliminated those portions which
needed to be “adjusted.” Now as they adopt, change, revise this new confession
of faith, they will have their “doctrine” in line with their new found
“practice.” Their now “old” statement of faith put them squarely violating
their own statements. Something had to be done, they couldn’t just continue to
ignore their own statement, too many of us have called them out on this. But I
digress somewhat.
Should we be surprised by the events of the past two
weeks? In one sense, yes. On April 29th the board had a meeting in
which Matt Olson was called in and for all intents and purposes was fired. He
was given notice that his termination as president was effective graduation
day, May 11th. Matt Olson was given the nod to make his termination
known to the school on the following Monday in chapel. He did so in a gracious
manner. Now move forward one week from that chapel announcement and according
to Daniel Patz on his facebook page, the Patz family was meeting on Monday, May
6th at 7pm and he was requesting prayer for that meeting. Two days
later on May 8th another board meeting takes place. While the events
of this board meeting aren’t very public at this point, it is quite clear that
there was a power struggle within the board and the Patz family board members
made their desires known. It is known that four non-Patz family board members
resigned at the May 8th meeting. It looks like this restructured
board then voted to reinstate Matt Olson as president to which he accepted and
this was announced the following day in chapel along with the announcement that
Howard Patz was stepping down as chairman and the offer of the chairmanship was
being extended to Daniel Patz who has yet to give his official acceptance. Here
is a link to NIU’s May 11th announcement about the May 8th
board meeting (found here).
Notice nothing was said of the resignation of 4 board members even though they
apologize for their lack of communication in the past they continue with a lack
of communication about what took place. Another point of a lack of
communication is the financial concerns which were mentioned which caused Matt
Olson to be released at the April 25th board meeting. What about
those financial concerns? Did they disappear over the course of a week and a
half, so that Matt Olson could be re-hired? It is rumored about that the
endowment that the Patz family set up for NIU is depleted. NIU has been running in
the red and seemingly relying on the principal of that endowment rather than
just the interest. I understand, this is a bit of speculation on my part,
because there has been a lack of communication on the part of NIU concerning
their financial viability, so much for transparency.
Matt Olson a while ago in one of his articles
mentioned “transparency.” The goings on at NIU have been anything but
“transparent.” Instead, some secrecy, some cover up has been the modus operandi
of NIU. A rock band is initiated in January of this year but is not made public
until April 2nd only to be removed from the home page of NIU’s
website two days later and left buried within their website pages. This begs
the question, why wait some three months before announcing this recruiting
tool? This same band was on stage with Big Daddy Weave in concerts in Oshkosh,
and Wausau, WI in February. At the Oshkosh event some 40 students from NIU and
Matt Olson were present “recruiting” for NIU. As the presence of the students
and Matt Olson became public knowledge,
no mention of the band was given and NIU quickly downplayed their presence by
insisting they just had a booth there for recruiting and Matt Olson just
happened to be given the opportunity to speak to the crowd. Instead, this event
was put on by Lamplight Productions which has strong ties to NIU and NIU’s own
band was part of the event. The band was never mentioned in all this kerfuffle
back in February, so much for “transparency.”
Then there’s the NIU chapel speaker, Guy Conn,
pastor of Fox River Christian Church, and the video link of his church service which
initially was open for public viewing and then suddenly that one video (link here) became members only accessible and
cannot be found on the church’s webpage for sermons (link here)
hmmm…
“Transparency” and “stonewalling” are not synonyms.
Instead, they are more like antonyms, yet Matt Olson and crew would try to have
us believe that they are synonyms by the actions that they have taken this past
semester with the direction change that has been going on for quite some time
at NIU. Even with the change Matt Olson and even Les Ollila initially told us
that there were no changes going on at NIU. I am thankful that that “no change
change” has been dropped. That makes for a little glimmer of transparency along
the lines of being, say, translucent instead of stonewalling. But in the end,
the change that has been ongoing has brought NIU clearly, squarely into
full-orbed evangelicalism and away from any version or strain of
fundamentalism.
Where does this leave us? As fundamentalists, with
one less college to send our young people to for higher education; for
evangelicals, it gives them a college in the north woods of WI, where they use
a dog sled team to take you from Green Bay to Dunbar. Surely there will be
standing room only for young people flocking to NIU to enjoy their winters
instead of the balmier places available say, in Illinois, Ohio, or California.
The future looks bleak for a once fine institution. This is tragic.
Just today, May 13th, Matt Olson at his blog writes
and notes that four board members stepped resigned at the May 8th
board meeting (link here).
In this article, Matt Olson says nothing of the Patz family of the evening of
May 6th two days prior to the board meeting in question. Matt Olson
states,
On the evening of May 8, the chairman of the board,
Howard Patz, clarified for the rest of the board the history of Northland, as
well as the direction he believed it should now take. After some discussion,
four members of the board graciously and respectfully resigned. Nothing was
forced, and it was a grace-filled meeting.
Right, the Patz family meets one week after Matt
Olson publicly announces his termination and two days after the family meeting
the board meets, Howard Patz reviews the history of NIU and four board members
(all non-Patz family members) resigned. All this after constantly being
reminded this past year or so by Matt Olson at his blog and NIU’s vidcasts that
he and the Patz family are together with what Matt Olson is doing.
