The Shurtleff Fund [An FYI to UABCers]

UABCers would be interested to know that the legacy of Shurtleff College, which was a huge part of the life of our church for decades, continues to advance the name of Jesus in the environment of higher education...and your pastor gets to be part of it.


On Monday I drove up to Springfield for a meeting of the Board of Directors of something called the Shurtleff Fund. This Fund is a non-prof effort made possible by the sale of Shurtleff College to SIU back in 1957. Every year we give money from the Fund's interest income to various campus ministries in our Region and to two Regional scholarship programs.

Unfortunately, we're never able to give anyone as much as they'd like of course, and this year the decision-making was compounded by the investment performance of our economy this past year. Still, it is good to be able to give significant amounts of money to several groups, including the Baptist Student Foundation at UofI where Alison and I met and the Shurtleff Campus Ministry at SIU-Edwardsville where my friend and UABC's own Rob Kirbach is the University Chaplain.


I realize that not a few in our church family are acquainted with our connections to our denomination or know much about what it means to say we're "American Baptists." So I hope that this helps connect a dot or two.