FOR GREATER PURPOSE
Purpose is at the heart of human aspiration. It propels us through difficulty as we pursue our grandest goals. It draws us beyond comfort toward calling and transforms ambition into service. It motivates us to look beyond our own gain and instead act for the greater good—to contribute to something larger and more lasting than ourselves. It is the North Star that guides people and organizations alike.
IT IS AN IDEA THAT HAS GUIDED PEPPERDINE FROM THE VERY BEGINNING.
Ephesians 2:10 suggests that our purpose is not something we must define alone— and neither is it a subjective pursuit shaped by personal experience and ambition. Instead, true purpose is, in fact, revealed: “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” Purpose is not a possession to be grasped, but a gift to be received. We each have been given a divinely planned path in which we get to walk.
This deeper understanding of purpose is what religious scholars call “vocation”—a term that belies something deeper than the limited definition of a “job” or a professional role. Vocation stems from the Latin vocare— “to call”—suggesting that every person, made uniquely in the image of God, has been summoned to a unique and vital calling.
Theologian Frederick Buechner puts it this way: “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” Not merely a set of tasks or a professional path, a person’s calling in life is a purpose that only he or she can fulfill—a calling to live with integrity, to engage with the world meaningfully, and to contribute to the flourishing of others in ways only he or she can.
At Pepperdine we believe education itself is a sacred calling. Our calling as an institution is to educate students for greater purpose. The educational endeavor is something more significant than mere knowledge acquisition or career preparedness—though both are certainly important. A Pepperdine education prepares you to discover your God-given purpose—and equips you to fulfill it.
The greater purpose of education is not simply information but transformation—the shaping of character, the cultivation of wisdom, and the formation of the whole person for a life of service and leadership. To live and learn for greater purpose is to see our gifts as given for the good of others and to learn to inhabit our place in God’s unfolding narrative.
This is the spirit of Pepperdine: a community drawn together by faith, animated by purpose, and sent forth into the world to freely give what we have freely received.