1997 President Jim Bond elected General Superintendent of the Church of the Nazarene; Nicholson Commons opens on campus.

At a Nazarene leadership conference six years ago, Jim Bond ruined his chances for ever becoming a general superintendent.

"That's what everyone was saying," said Clarence Kinzler, district superintendent of Northern California and chairman of the board of trustees at PLNC. 'This was a classic staging point for him if he had said the right things. It could have propelled him into the General's spot in the 1993 General Assembly."

Instead, Kinzler said, "Jim was a prophet to us. He told the truth."

Bond talked about issues. Problems. Hard questions. Said it was time to stop pretending that problems didn't exist in the denomination, in families, in colleges, in churches. "Everybody at the conference wanted a camp-meeting, feel-good revival," said one leader at the meeting, who asked not to be identified. "Boy, were they surprised." Some leaders actually went to Bond and told him he had missed an opportunity for positioning himself for General.

"But it was vintage Jim," Kinzler said. "He did what needed to be done." Some delegates at the 1993 General Assembly voted for Bond, but his numbers wavered and his name evaporated from the ballot.

"This denomination has a history of people getting close to being elected, then not getting it," Bond said.

At this summer's Assembly, though, the delegates' votes rose, fell, then jumped, vaulting him into the highest elected position in the worldwide denomination.

"When the numbers fell, I was filled with a tremendous peace," Bond said later. "Then when they went back up, I wasn't even looking at the tallies on the screen. I was writing a note to myself." But the person next to him suddenly grabbed Bond and said, "Congratulations, General!" It had been nearly 50 years since assembly delegates had elected someone directly from California-O.J. Nease, also from Pasadena College in 1948.

"I looked up at the screen, saw the numbers, and was filled with that same peace," Bond said.

Peace is perhaps the best word that fits Jim Bond.

Vic Heasley, a PLNC chemistry professor, recalls a rancorous faculty meeting when Bond was then an assistant to President Bill Draper.

"He hadn't been an administrator very long, and later I asked him what he thought about the issues and the emotion in the meeting," Heasley said. Bond just smiled, and told Heasley, "I'm not all shook up about it."

"I thought at the time: This guy would make a great college president," Heasley said. That period in the college's life was full of conflict among the faculty, administrators and trustees. So when Bond was made president in 1983, questions regarding his leadership style swirled around campus as the faculty prepared to meet with him at the autumn faculty workshop.

"I'll never forget that first meeting," said Ron Kirkemo, a PLNC political science professor. When it came time for the new president to speak to the faculty, he took off his suit jacket and laid it aside.

"He said, 'I want you to know that I am not afraid of you, I am not afraid that the faculty will ruin this college, and we will find a Christian way to deal with conflict on this campus.'

"It was a very moving experience for us," Kirkemo said.

"Eventually there were no more major issues that divided us."

The same peace that covered Bond during the fluctuating votes at General Assembly and during the potentially explosive faculty meetings has been with him during other seemingly contradictory situations.

As a former pastor, missionary, college president and now, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune, the Nazarene equivalent of a Cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church, he maintains he would have been just as happy with his life as a potato farmer in Colorado. "I wouldn't describe it as a tension between farming and ministry," he said. "But I would have been all right with either. I'm a pretty simple guy."

A sermon by Francis Schaeffer helped him understand these leanings that seemed to be opposite of where he kept finding himself. In the sermon, titled No Little People, No Little Places, Schaeffer tells of an incident in the life of the early Church, where Barnabas felt that Paul was the man of the hour. The problem was that no one knew where Paul had gone. Eventually they found him back in Tarsus, his own little place.

"Paul was not up there nominating himself," Schaeffer wrote. "He was back in Tarsus, even out of communication...Paul, the man of leadership for the whole Gentile world, was perfectly willing to be in Tarsus until God said to him, 'This is the moment.'" And then Schaeffer used a word in that sermon that still brings an emotional response from Bond, more than 20 years after first reading the sermon.

The word: Extrude.

Schaeffer wrote: "To be extruded is to be forced out under pressure into a desired shape...This is the way of the Christian: he should choose the lesser place until God extrudes him into a position of more responsibility and authority."

Bond said, tears filling his eyes: "That is exactly how I have felt during most of my life." Extruded into the presidency at PLNC, Bond's early priority was to affect the spiritual life on the campus. "I felt compelled in this area," he said.

Kirkemo, who also wrote the college's history in the book, For Zion's Sake, said that one of Bond's greatest contributions as president was his institutionalizing the Spiritual Development component.

"His presidency will be remembered for that," Kirkemo said.

Bond hired Norm Shoemaker to develop this spiritual dimension of the campus. The two had known one another since the 1950s, and they shared a common view of ministry to young people.

Soon chapel took on a different purpose. Mission trips into urban San Diego and Tijuana became a more regular part of student life. Eventually PLNC students began going in groups internationally. During Christmas, Easter and summer breaks many students now routinely spend what used to be their vacations in service to others around the world. "He had a strong commitment to see young people deployed from PLNC into the world as influencers and missionaries," said Shoemaker. The "Point Loma Model" of short-term mission trips has since been duplicated by other Christian colleges around the country. "The college is perceived to have a greater sense of vital Christianity," Shoemaker said. Another priority for Bond as president was to develop the physical component of the campus. A lengthy battle with the city of San Diego eventually resulted in the college's favor, allowing it to aggressively pursue its Master Plan. Within a few years the Ryan Library expanded, the Cooper Music Center was built, Nicholson Student Commons was started, and several existing buildings were refurbished. It is a remarkably different-looking campus than what existed when Bond first became president.

"But those are the things you can see by just driving through campus," Bond said. "I'm more interested in the things you can't see.

Academic quality is one of those things. Dorothy Dykman, a business professor emeritus who taught at Pasadena College and then PLNC under presidents Purkiser, DeLong, Finch, Brown, Draper and Bond, said Bond was a good president.

"In comparison to some of them, he was a very good president," she said. But the school became a better academic institution under Bond for one reason, according to Dykman. "He trusted the faculty," she said. "He realized that they were professional people and let them be professionals."

Vic Heasley agrees that it was Bond's trust that allowed academic programs to bloom. "The best teachers are the kind who can get students to think and do things outside of class, when the teachers aren't even part of it," he said. "Bond is like that. He made us feel good about ourselves, and we did our work better."

Margaret Stevenson, a nursing professor and dean of professional studies, said that academic excellence jumped because morale was high.

"You can be a lot more productive when you aren't wasting your energy fighting with the administration," she said. "He trusted us, even when he disagreed with us."

Heasley remembers recently being on the committee looking for a new vice president for academic affairs, to replace the retiring Val Christensen.

"We recommended Patrick Allen, and noted that while this candidate, on the one hand, was the most exciting, he would also be the most difficult for the president to control," Heasley said. "It shows what great personal security Bond has. He hired Allen." That personal security may be one of Bond's greatest attributes, according to those close to him, but it was developed through difficult experiences.

"He experienced exceptional achievement as a basketball player, but at the same time had some pretty severe reversals," said Shoemaker, "to the extent that others with similar talent have become cynical and removed themselves from places of influence.

"Jim, though, maintained integrity and good faith, and a centeredness on God. That's been very instructive for me. A life lesson."

Those reversals, Kinzler said, are part of the reason Bond is not intimidated by strong people.

"The Lord taught him his boundaries," Kinzler said. "He learned from experience that other people's strength make you strong. Strong people make you happy."

Kinzler said that "The Bond Years" at PLNC will be remembered as a period when the institution reached levels of excellence never before seen.

"And that pursuit of excellence included everyone," he said. Shoemaker said that these years moved PLNC to "a level of quality that surpasses anything I thought I'd see in my lifetime."

But Sharon Irwin, associate dean of students for academic advising, says his legacy will be more personal in nature.

"From the groundskeeper to the vice presidents-they will all remember him for his character," she said. "He was so consistently genuine that it was mind-boggling. If he said he would do something, you knew he would do it."

Which, apparently, is what made him attractive as a general superintendent. Paul Cunningham, a general superintendent elected in the 1993 assembly, said that, over the years, a persona has developed around Jim Bond.

"He is an example of a classic Christian leader," Cunningham said. "He has a Christ-like manner, a spirit of humility, a keen mind, is everyone's friend, and has shown a continuity of good judgment and stability.

"But we also believe there is a divine side to this," Cunningham continued, "when the Holy Spirit moves on people's hearts and says, 'The time is now.'

As a general superintendent, Bond said he will carry a very strong academic agenda to the office.

"This is both an exciting time for Nazarene higher education because of wonderful things happening around the world, and a challenging time where we will need to make difficult choices about resources," he said. "I even joked to the other college presidents after the election, 'Forget all those things I've said about general superintendents over the years.' "But I owe a great debt of gratitude to our educational institutions, and I want to make them stronger."

Reflecting on his years as PLNC president, he saw that, in addition to the buildings and obvious growth and improvements, something else has happened.

"I have always believed that if a person stayed in a leadership position long enough, the place would take on the persona of the leader," he said. "I want to believe that this place has taken on my values, my way of doing things, my treatment of others." Kirkemo said that history will bear out Bond's understanding.

"Anybody can build a building," Kirkemo said. "Bond's greatest contribution was that he let us become a great college. Only he could have created the atmosphere and culture we now have."


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