October 21, 2005

The dedication of the Psalm Center was one of the most significant events on campus since Corban College moved to Salem in 1969, President Reno Hoff said.

The central location of the Psalm Center speaks to the importance of worship on the campus, the president said. He spoke of the “active agenda by some to remove all aspects of God from the fabric of our society” in the United States.

“As a Christian college, we are in the forefront in this battle of the minds,” the president said to the 130 or more people gathered at the Psalm Center Friday, Oct. 14, for the building’s formal dedication and consecration. “We are teaching students to relate every academic discipline to God’s truth and His self-revelation in Scriptures, while detecting and critiquing nonbiblical worldview assumptions.

“There is a distinctly Christian view of what life is all about, the nature of humankind, about what our purposes ought to be, and about where we are headed eternally,” Dr. Hoff said.

The formal evening’s program included dinner, video presentation, forward-looking talk by Dr. Hoff, dedicatory prayer by Herb Anderson, Corban’s oldest professor, and the reading of Psalm 111, 112 and 113, the favorite psalms of the building’s anonymous major donor.

“Chapel services and concerts have been part of the college since its inception,” intoned the narrator on a six-minute video written and directed by Steve Hunt, Corban’s vice president for marketing. Historical photographs blended with taped interviews of people such as Distinguished Professor Richard L. Caulkins, who has watched the college evolve since he arrived in 1953, and Anne Jeffers, assistant professor of ministries, who has been part of the Salem campus since 1971.

“When I first came to the college, we were trying to be everything we ultimately have become,” Dr. Caulkins said. “We have stayed committed to the vital center amidst the changes. … I think one way to praise God is with the beauty of the building in which we worship.”

The special evening also included the premiere performance by Corban’s choir and orchestra of Psalms of Dedication, a new composition written for the occasion by Associate Professor of Music John Bartsch.

“I started writing this last fall,” Bartsch said. “It has given me an even greater admiration for the majesty of God.”

The music soared in the direction of the 48-foot, hemlock-framed, acoustically-designed ceiling of the Psalm Center.

“It put your mind into a state of serene peacefulness,” said John Scott, assistant professor of history, who attended the dedication with his wife, SuEllen. “You felt like you were riding a wave of beautiful, meditative music, just like the psalms, and therefore it was appropriate to why we gathered.”

Guests included local and state political and business leaders and campus officials as well as representatives from foundations and charitable trusts that contributed to the cost of the $3.7 million, Northwest-style structure. Other guests included those who had a part in the planning, design, construction and presentation of the building.

“In all my years I’ve never been in a building called the Psalm Center, and here we are,” said Anderson, 89. “Bless the Lord.”

The evening accomplished its purpose, Professor Scott said. “It provided a worshipful consecration of the building into God’s hands, that it might be blessed in all its purposes in the years to come.”

An antiphonal choir and brass stationed in the upper rows of the Psalm Center’s fixed 300 seats joined with guests seated at tables in the center of the auditorium and, on stage, the choir and orchestra, in a closing hymn: All Children of Our God and King.

“We are preparing students to consider their lives a ministry in whichever of our 45 majors they focus on,” President Hoff had said in his prepared remarks. “We want them to make a difference in the world for Jesus Christ and change the mindset of our society from an anti-God agenda to one that is for God. Thank you for coming this evening and partnering with us in this great endeavor of preparing minds for the Lord’s service.”

-- By Karen L. Willoughby