By Chris Moon
Two weeks after announcing its upcoming closure, Lincoln Christian University is working out the details for its existing students and employees.
The university will shut its doors on May 31, 2024. Its seminary programs will be acquired by Ozark Christian College.
LCU has suffered from years of budget shortfalls. A last-ditch effort to save the college—by dropping most of its undergraduate programs, selling off a portion of its campus, and moving heavily into online and hybrid programs—didn’t yield the hoped-for enrollment bump.
Now, the university is looking toward the future for its 183 students and 29 full-time employees.
On the student side, LCU President Silas McCormick said he held an in-person meeting attended by 20 to 25 students at Lincoln’s campus. He laid out the future of the 79-year-old institution in Lincoln, Ill.
The students were “obviously sad and disappointed,” he said. But they were “incredibly gracious.”
“I mean incredibly gracious,” McCormick said.
Several of them, he said, offered impromptu thanks to the LCU leadership for their efforts to make sure the university finished well.
“The students have been amazing, at least the ones I’ve interacted with,” McCormick said.
STUDENTS ON THE MOVE
McCormick said he had not yet heard of any students who did not want to shift over with the seminary to Ozark Christian College. But it’s early.
“We’ll probably have a better idea in the coming weeks,” he said.
OCC in Joplin, Mo., will adopt the Lincoln name as it assumes control of the seminary. The seminary will be known as Lincoln Seminary at Ozark Christian College. Lincoln’s $3.8 million student scholarship endowment also will be passed along to Ozark.
The plan is for Lincoln students in certain master’s level programs to be able to continue their programs at OCC with “zero loss” of credit hours and no increase in tuition. Those include the Master of Divinity degree, and Master of Arts in Biblical Studies, Bible and Theology, and Ministry.
The plan still needs approval by accreditors.
All degrees will have a fully online option, meaning students won’t have to relocate to finish their programs.
McCormick said the move to OCC likely gives students a greater sense of financial security; he said he doesn’t anticipate much attrition in those majors.
There will be some attrition, however.
OCC will not offer some of the master’s-level programs Lincoln has offered—like its master’s degree programs in counseling, organizational leadership, and theology. Students in those programs likely will have to finish their degrees somewhere else, unless they can find ways to fit into an existing OCC program.
LCU currently has 183 students. Eighty of those will graduate by May 2024, before the merger with Ozark.
McCormick said he anticipates somewhere between a third to a half of the remaining students to become OCC students.
For the others, LCU is working up transfer partnerships with other universities. That would enable students to finish their programs at other institutions with minimal disruption.
McCormick said at least a dozen colleges already have reached out. Colleges are hungry for new students.
“There’s at least one [email] . . . every day,” he said. “Some are just sending us signed documents. Everybody needs students.”
‘SUCH A BIG PART OF OUR LIVES’
Fortunately for Emma Kindred, she won’t have to worry about transfer agreements.
Kindred is a senior at LCU this year, double-majoring in youth and family ministry and in worship ministry. She originally planned to graduate in December 2024 but has increased her course load now that LCU is closing.
She will graduate in May 2024 instead. Kindred said she wants to graduate from Lincoln.
“LCU is such a big part of our lives,” she said.
Kindred came to LCU three years ago after feeling called to ministry during a year at a community college. Kindred grew up in Atlanta, Ill.—just 20 minutes from Lincoln. Her home church is nearby Eastview Christian Church in Normal, Ill.
She had long been familiar with LCU. Kindred said she received a scholarship from Lincoln, which she credits as a “God story.”
The student body generally has been mourning the loss of the school, Kindred said. She said students have been understanding about the reasons for the school’s closure.
“I definitely was very sad to hear the news because of how much LCU has meant to me and how much kingdom work was done here,” she said.
Kindred said she hopes to attend seminary in the future, but she’s not sure whether that will be at the new Lincoln Seminary at Ozark Christian College or elsewhere.
John Lamb also is nearing completion of his undergraduate degree at Lincoln. But he said he won’t finish until after LCU closes.
Lamb, a preaching ministry major, said he is waiting to see what transfer partnerships LCU is able to put together.
Lamb first came to campus just before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. He watched as enrollment and campus life slowly eroded, first because of the pandemic and then because of LCU’s major program changes in 2022.
Only a few dozen students are left on campus. The rest study remotely.
Lamb said the university has tried to maintain as vibrant a campus life as possible. There’s still a Thursday evening chapel “gathering” that most of the students still attend, he said. Most of the students know each other very well by now.
“I’ve still really enjoyed the community that is here,” Lamb said. “I’m going to be sad to see it end.”
Lamb said he remembers talking to an administrator early on during his time at Lincoln. The administrator noted the school’s struggles to maintain its enrollment levels.
“I connected the dots right then,” Lamb said.
Still, he said he thinks the administration did all it could to save the university.
“I don’t feel like they mismanaged anything,” he said.
EMPLOYEES ALSO ON THE MOVE
Meanwhile, McCormick said Ozark Christian College has made contact with some employees at Lincoln.
He said it’s not clear how many LCU employees will be offered jobs in Joplin.
“We anticipate some of our employees will probably retire,” he said.
LCU already had trimmed its workforce back in May 2022, when many of its financial struggles came to a head. McCormick said all of those former employees “landed fairly well,” many of them getting jobs with pay increases.
“We’re hopeful that happens again,” he said.
McCormick said LCU wanted to give employees as much notice as possible before the university’s closure. It even has told employees that if they find new work before LCU closes, they can move on even before their contracts are up.
“We don’t expect them to ride it out to the end if they have the ability to find what’s next,” McCormick said.
It is not known whether the university will be able to offer severance packages to its employees who are let go. By the end of the school year, LCU still will have $2.6 million in debt that it will need to retire.
The college currently has enough funding to finish out the year, McCormick said. But that could change if a large number of students transfer out at the end of this semester or if LCU experiences a substantial drop in giving.
McCormick said the school is hopeful it will be able to offer severance packages.
“It’s an ongoing topic of discussion about what we might be able to do,” he said.
Chris Moon is a pastor and writer living in Redstone, Colorado.
I thank God for what LCC and LCS have meant to me. I moved to Ancona, IL, a little town, north of Lincoln in ’59 so that I could continue my graduate studies at Lincoln. Under such men as Enos Dowling, Joh Rallys, S. Edward Tesh and others, I enrolled in the Masters program with emphasis in Semitic Language and Literature. In ’61 I received my Masters and began teaching at OCC in ’62. Without my LCS degree, I don’t believe I would have received the call from Ozark. My heart breaks as our schools close, and I anticipate what God has for the future of preacher education in our churches.