A Word from ...

THE UNIVERSITY PROVOST

Dear Pepperdine Community:

"The Pepperdine Voyage" may be a new term for you, but I hope very soon that it will hold great meaning, for our University family is being presented a truly remarkable opportunity to go on a collective journey that may permanently change the University and its students. I urge you to take the trip with us.

Thanks to the great foresight and generosity of the Lilly Endowment, one of the great foundations of our land, our institution has been granted remarkable resources to help us fulfill our central mission—to educate students for lives of purpose, service, and leadership.

Happily, the Lilly Endowment decided that Pepperdine was worthy of this wonderful experiment, which we are calling "The Pepperdine Voyage." We use this title as a shorthand description of a rich panorama of new programs and opportunities (outlined on this website) designed to help us go deep spiritually, to help us discern the unique gifts that God has given us, to develop our talents in a supportive environment, and to help each participant find his or her unique mission in life.

"Vocation," simply put, is answering the strong inner urge—embedded in every human heart—to serve a world in need, whether through a "secular" occupation, full-time ministry, volunteer service, an avocation, or one's leisure. In brief, vocation is answering the Creator's call to serve a needy world with the energy, passion, and talents which have been given to us. To paraphrase the words of our founder, George Pepperdine, vocation is giving freely because we have freely received.

My prayer for all students, professors, and staff members at this University is that they will first get familiar with the Voyage project and then prayerfully join their friends on this happy journey—envisioning new horizons and discovering new possibilities that they may not yet have imagined.

Through the Pepperdine Voyage splendid new worlds lie ahead for us all.

Sincerely,

Darryl Tippens
Provost
Pepperdine University

UNIVERSITY CHAPLAIN

It is with great anticipation that we at Pepperdine University embark on a journey made possible by a grant from the Lilly Endowment. We call that journey, "The Pepperdine Voyage: Nurturing Lives of Purpose, Service, and Leadership."

It is a journey we will take together: faculty, staff, administration, and students. Some of us will seek afresh, and some of us for the very first time, God's calling for our lives. We will find ways to identify the gifts with which God has equipped us for lives of service, and we will discover who God has called us to be on the Pepperdine campus and in the world.

This project has the potential not only to change each of us but to change our campus culture as well, for it will inform the ways we teach and lead and serve each other. It also has the potential to change the world into which we send our students, for students prepared to die to self and live for others will transform the world in radical and far-reaching ways.

D'Esta Love
University Chaplain, 2002-2007