Dr. Stuart (Doc) Ryder

We are His Legacies

A Reflection on Doc Ryder and the Judson Community

Stuart Ryder loved the Judson community.  He loved it so much he lived on campus for almost thirty-five years.  He easily attended the most games, events, concerts, performances, chapels, and lectures in our history.  His life as a single man gave him greater flexibility in his schedule.  Though Doc was introverted, opinionated, and often cantankerous, he loved the diversity and fluidity of intimacy and inclusion while still maintaining privacy and space.  When I am ready for his ashes to leave my house, they will be spread where the old willow tree used to be between Wilson Hall and the Campus Apartments.  Even in death, Doc chose the Judson community.

 Why did a Masters of Divinity and PhD in Linguistics Yale graduate choose an unaccredited evangelical Christian college for the heart and soul of his career?  And why did he choose a year at the historically black Bishop College in Marshall, Texas before he came to Judson?  Or even prior to that, the two-year Associate Pastor positon in Buffalo, NY – where he confessed almost every responsibility was uncomfortable for him.  Why does such a brilliant man seemingly make multiple “less than intelligent” career decisions?  And furthermore, why does an academic who never played on a single athletic team devote thousands of hours with student athletes through coaching, training, and academic support? 

 Stuart was raised in Ossining, New York, 40 miles due north of New York City upon the Hudson River.  He was a first born prodigy with two younger sisters, a doting mother, and a distant father.  He never fit in at his local public school and was moved to a prep boarding school after 5th grade.  He excelled in the classroom, in positions with student government, and in theater. After graduation, Yale was the obvious choice to continue his education.  While a freshman at Yale, his academic arrogance was received with condemnation.  He was ostracized, bullied, ridiculed, and harassed.  A senior student athlete named Gil befriended Doc and mentored the immature intellectual on social belonging and relational community.  Doc never forgot Gil’s gift of love and sacrifice and repaid him by mentoring hundreds of Judson student athletes.

 Stuart was a New York intellectual protestant who invested in a Midwest evangelical college.  He was a staunch democrat amidst mostly republicans.  He was single, eccentric, and liberal and surrounded himself with mostly married conservatives.  He took his cat on a walk with a leash.  He dressed in an orange one-piece jump suit for Halloween every year. He traveled with the athletic teams all over the United States and there were very few students or coaches on those buses who wanted to discuss literature or linguistics.  He taught the “Seniors” Sunday school at First Presbyterian Church for so long, he eventually became a senior himself.   Community to Doc was not about similarities and comfortability, it was about diversity and learning.  He told me many times Judson was more interesting than Yale, not in academic achievement or intellectual exploration, but in relationship variabilities and willingness to love. 

 How do we view and use the Judson community on campus the way Doc did?  How can we emulate Doc’s commitment to the Judson community?  The primary way is full immersion.  Working at a small Christian University is different than working at a large state school.  We actually know our student’s names.  We know about their passions and extra-curricular activities.  After four or five years we often know about their families, friendships, romances, dreams, goals, and vulnerabilities.  We must be willing to invest our heart and soul in the students alongside our dedication to our discipline and pedagogy.  We may not live on campus or even live close, but we still can be intentional about attending games, events, performances, chapels, and lectures; and when feasible and reasonable, bring our spouses and children also.

 A second way to emulate Doc in community is to intentionally connect with uncomfortable circumstances and conversations.  Doc loved our diversity in the Judson community.  The diversity of our disciplines.  The diversity of our faith traditions, doctrines, polity, and practice.  The diversity of our ethnicities, cultures, customs, communication, and the mutual submission to the Spirit to be the Body of Christ because of these differences.  Doc often asked me what I thought about a Judson Church right on campus.  A church that bridged all the vast variables of worship, teaching, ordinances, liturgy, and prayer.  He longed for Heaven for this very reason.  It is so easy to get in the habit of only connecting and communicating with our department, our faculty, our friends. Walk over to another building.  Ask a fellow professor about their hobbies.  Build a relationship with our custodial staff.  Talk to the students’ no one else does. 

 A third way to emulate Doc in community is to believe in the best of Judson.  Doc lived through Judson in the 1960’s and 1970’s when it looked like we would have to close our doors multiple times.  Rather than sinking into despondency, fear, or dread, Doc and the other group of “all in” professors upped their commitment, their investment, their contributions – financially and professionally – and their faith.  Their mindset was rooted in tremendous faith in the Lord and His Ordained University along the Fox River.  This faith included a trust in the board and administration even when he disagreed with decisions, strategies, or initiatives.  Doc practiced a detailed daily prayer discipline that included praying for every President in Judson’s history every single day.  Other administrators, professors, staff, and coaches were on a rotational basis.  He told me, “It was hard to be bitter, angry, or even overly annoyed with someone you prayed for regularly.” 

 Doc believed every major new initiative that brought new groups of people to the Judson community was fantastic.  In the last twenty-five years, the additions of the adult degree programs, the architecture department, the various new athletic teams and new majors, the master’s and doctoral programs, the RISE program, the football team; all of these excited him even when he was concerned about academic infrastructure, staffing, budgetary stress, and distribution of resources. Believing in the best about our school, our administration, our faculty and staff, and even in our students is a powerful encouragement to the community.  It’s also how our Lord believes in us. 

 1st Timothy 4:10, “For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.”

 Elliott Anderson,
Pastor of Faculty and Staff