"It’s fairly consistent in my travels to see Dordt graduates, whether from a recent class or from the earliest days of Dordt, being culture-shapers in the communities to which God has called them."
Two days before I penned these words, we celebrated the 2025 commencement ceremonies at Dordt for the 70th time in our history.
This year, 467 diplomas were awarded including associate’s, bachelor’s, and master’s degrees. The two services were worshipful times of celebration and praise to God for His work in the lives of His servants.
In the days following the ceremonies, I had the privilege of welcoming 60 people from the class of 1975 back to campus (see photo below). About 148 students from the class of 1975 graduated when Dordt’s enrollment was just below 1,000 total students, while this upcoming fall it’s likely that Dordt will eclipse 2,000 total students. During the 50th Class Reunion, I read through a booklet with biographical information about each graduate; I enjoyed reading about God’s work in their lives in the 50 years since they packed up and left this campus on the prairie.
These two experiences over a seven-day period had me reflecting back on 2 Corinthians 2:14-17 and imagining each of Dordt’s living alumni (we think the number is now nearly 24,000) as an individual bowl of incense. When Barb and I have the privilege of having every “about to be graduated” student to our home for a meal during their last semester, I always use that metaphor to challenge and encourage them as they leave the campus and move forward into the world for Christ. I tell them, “Your neighborhood and workplace need to smell different after you’ve been there for a while…when a Dordt graduate shows up, the aroma of Jesus should permeate the space!”
It’s fairly consistent in my travels to see Dordt graduates, whether from a recent class or from the earliest days of Dordt, being culture-shapers in the communities to which God has called them. It seems to me that Dordt people have been trained and are motivated to be active agents for Christ in the world and that their lives just give off a sweet fragrance of Jesus as they inhabit their various callings for Him.
In The Voice of Dordt University, you’ll read several fragrant stories of how Dordt continues, by God’s grace, to be an aromatic outpost of equipping image bearers of the Risen Christ to waft around that fragrance so others will not only be blessed, but also perhaps be attracted by that smell—and seek to live that way too.
“Investigation always interested me because I like problem-solving. It was like trying to put a puzzle together and all the clues were pieces. Once we had all the pieces, we could begin to tell the story of what really happened,” Craig Kootstra says.
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