I remember my first day as a Hyles Anderson College student. I drove myself from Alabama to enroll on the Tuesday after Labor Day in 1976. I was excited. It was my first foray into a world that would not include my parents and the home in which I had been raised. I would never return to that home.
After getting through the long lines of enrollment that day, they got us situated in our dorm rooms. For me that was in Crete, Illinois, about 20 miles from the main campus and somewhat of a disappointment for me. It was the first and only year such measures would need to be taken to accommodate all of the male students. In 1976, no male students lived on the main campus. I wanted to be nearer the campus. I wanted to experience everything that HAC had to offer. I was not wrong in thinking that the Balmoral Inn bunch would be a bit isolated from the main campus and the Baptist City group. But I ended up having a lot of memorable times at Balmoral.
That evening Bro. Hyles came and spoke to us in the old (original) chapel. He exhorted us to get our dictionaries and cut out the words “quit” and “compromise.” He said he had never changed his beliefs through the years and that he never would. The chapel – and mostly the male students – hooped and hollered. I don’t remember if I did. Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t.
It was a school that was primarily for “preacher boys.” Even though I was not one, the male enrollment was probably 95% “ministerial students.” We were going to go out from the college after out training and we were going to “save America.” That was the message I heard from the pulpit and the college for the next four years. It was all about saving America. There was only a casual interest in missions or music. Missionaries, while thought to be admired, were a bit of an anomaly in those times at Hyles Anderson. The harvest field was the United States – the world could wait, because if we lost America, there wasn’t going to be a “world” as we knew it, to save. Music was viewed as window dressing for the preached Word. Preaching was where it was at.
That was fifty years ago. FIFTY! I can’t believe that I’ve lived this long and am still around to witness the evolution that has taken place on the very real estate that I once walked on for four years.
We all know the story, of Jack Hyles dying in 2001 and his son in law taking over. We know his sad and tragic demise of 2012. And now the school probably fights a war to survive on many fronts most every year. In many ways I don’t know how the doors have remained open to this day.
I have changed through the years. I love the Lord and His grace has been more sufficient for me as the years go by. But I don’t look the same as I did fifty years ago. I have a lot of gray hair, which is slightly longer than it was then. I have whiskers and wrinkles and my bones ache a lot. I don’t even go to a Baptist church anymore, much less wear a tie to church. Yes, things change and they have changed at Hyles Anderson College, even if the founder said he never would change. And frankly, I have no problem with that. Things DO change.
I can’t help but have a curiosity about my old school and even though I have graduated at other colleges since I graduated from there, Hyles Anderson, like an old girlfriend, was my first. I returned for my first and only visit about three months after Bro. Hyles’ death in 2001. I doubt I’ll ever put eyes on the campus again. Maybe, some day, but I doubt it.
I follow the school on Facebook and on the surface, it appears that it is about a fourth the size it was when I was there. I look into the face of the students and they seem like nice kids who weren’t even alive when I visited the campus in 2001 and that makes me feel old. I am “for” them! They could be at the state college of their choice, including the one I subsequently graduated from. They could be spending their Saturdays at frat parties, helping to empty a keg of beer, smoking a little weed, getting a tattoo and listening to Kendrick Lamar. But they are in Crown Point, getting ready to visit a bus route on Saturday and that’s time better spent in my humble opinion.
It looks like music and drama has become a big deal. I looked at photos of their chorus and orchestra and it appears that over a third of the students are involved. That’s a big change from when I was there. It doesn’t seem as though there are any married or older students there now and there were a bunch in 1980. Today’s students look innocent and I wonder what kind of eighteen-year-old is interested in such a school in 2026. But I wish them the best in life. I hope that each one develops the coping tools they will need to survive in such a mean world – a world that I will not live to see. Most of all, I hope they can sort through the dysfunction of all of mankind to fall in love with Jesus and hang on to His changeless grace, for they will endure times, when they will realize that He is all they have and He is all they need.
You can criticize the college and its leadership if you want and they probably deserve some criticism, but I’m just not ready to criticize 18 and 19 year olds who are mostly trying to chart some kind of course through life and maybe, fifty years from now, they will look back and say, as I do, “I wish I hadn’t gone. I think my time could have been spent better elsewhere, doing other things, but I wasn’t ready for the life that I would eventually live, and those years at Hyles Anderson were necessary for me to gain the perspective of what it was going to take for me to live my best life for Him.”
Yes, things change.
After getting through the long lines of enrollment that day, they got us situated in our dorm rooms. For me that was in Crete, Illinois, about 20 miles from the main campus and somewhat of a disappointment for me. It was the first and only year such measures would need to be taken to accommodate all of the male students. In 1976, no male students lived on the main campus. I wanted to be nearer the campus. I wanted to experience everything that HAC had to offer. I was not wrong in thinking that the Balmoral Inn bunch would be a bit isolated from the main campus and the Baptist City group. But I ended up having a lot of memorable times at Balmoral.
That evening Bro. Hyles came and spoke to us in the old (original) chapel. He exhorted us to get our dictionaries and cut out the words “quit” and “compromise.” He said he had never changed his beliefs through the years and that he never would. The chapel – and mostly the male students – hooped and hollered. I don’t remember if I did. Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t.
It was a school that was primarily for “preacher boys.” Even though I was not one, the male enrollment was probably 95% “ministerial students.” We were going to go out from the college after out training and we were going to “save America.” That was the message I heard from the pulpit and the college for the next four years. It was all about saving America. There was only a casual interest in missions or music. Missionaries, while thought to be admired, were a bit of an anomaly in those times at Hyles Anderson. The harvest field was the United States – the world could wait, because if we lost America, there wasn’t going to be a “world” as we knew it, to save. Music was viewed as window dressing for the preached Word. Preaching was where it was at.
That was fifty years ago. FIFTY! I can’t believe that I’ve lived this long and am still around to witness the evolution that has taken place on the very real estate that I once walked on for four years.
We all know the story, of Jack Hyles dying in 2001 and his son in law taking over. We know his sad and tragic demise of 2012. And now the school probably fights a war to survive on many fronts most every year. In many ways I don’t know how the doors have remained open to this day.
I have changed through the years. I love the Lord and His grace has been more sufficient for me as the years go by. But I don’t look the same as I did fifty years ago. I have a lot of gray hair, which is slightly longer than it was then. I have whiskers and wrinkles and my bones ache a lot. I don’t even go to a Baptist church anymore, much less wear a tie to church. Yes, things change and they have changed at Hyles Anderson College, even if the founder said he never would change. And frankly, I have no problem with that. Things DO change.
I can’t help but have a curiosity about my old school and even though I have graduated at other colleges since I graduated from there, Hyles Anderson, like an old girlfriend, was my first. I returned for my first and only visit about three months after Bro. Hyles’ death in 2001. I doubt I’ll ever put eyes on the campus again. Maybe, some day, but I doubt it.
I follow the school on Facebook and on the surface, it appears that it is about a fourth the size it was when I was there. I look into the face of the students and they seem like nice kids who weren’t even alive when I visited the campus in 2001 and that makes me feel old. I am “for” them! They could be at the state college of their choice, including the one I subsequently graduated from. They could be spending their Saturdays at frat parties, helping to empty a keg of beer, smoking a little weed, getting a tattoo and listening to Kendrick Lamar. But they are in Crown Point, getting ready to visit a bus route on Saturday and that’s time better spent in my humble opinion.
It looks like music and drama has become a big deal. I looked at photos of their chorus and orchestra and it appears that over a third of the students are involved. That’s a big change from when I was there. It doesn’t seem as though there are any married or older students there now and there were a bunch in 1980. Today’s students look innocent and I wonder what kind of eighteen-year-old is interested in such a school in 2026. But I wish them the best in life. I hope that each one develops the coping tools they will need to survive in such a mean world – a world that I will not live to see. Most of all, I hope they can sort through the dysfunction of all of mankind to fall in love with Jesus and hang on to His changeless grace, for they will endure times, when they will realize that He is all they have and He is all they need.
You can criticize the college and its leadership if you want and they probably deserve some criticism, but I’m just not ready to criticize 18 and 19 year olds who are mostly trying to chart some kind of course through life and maybe, fifty years from now, they will look back and say, as I do, “I wish I hadn’t gone. I think my time could have been spent better elsewhere, doing other things, but I wasn’t ready for the life that I would eventually live, and those years at Hyles Anderson were necessary for me to gain the perspective of what it was going to take for me to live my best life for Him.”
Yes, things change.