LCC International University is born into blessings out of the Soviet rubble.

This September, a record first-year class of 208 students enrolled at LCC International University in Klaipeda, Lithuania. This brings the current enrollment to 640 students representing 20 different countries.
Planting seeds: Steve Dintaman (right) talks with LCC International University students and a fellow faculty member on a ferry outside of Klaipéda, Lithuania. Photo by Ryan Miller.

LCC was founded in 1991 as the Soviet Union was crumbling. Believers from Lithuania and North America responded to an invitation from the newly formed Lithuanian government to start a Western-style Christian university. Though Mennonites were active in its beginnings and continue to serve in leadership and teaching roles, LCC is a cooperative enterprise that involves contributions from believers of many different churches.

LCC offers accredited bachelor’s degrees in business administration, English, theology and psychology and has a master’s level program in teaching English as a foreign language. About half our students come from Lithuania, with a growing number from Belarus, Ukraine, Russia and Moldova. There are also students from Africa, Albania and the central Asian republics. Most of the Lithuanians are Roman Catholic. There are also a large number of Russian Orthodox. About 20-25 percent of our students come from evangelical churches.
Interactive style: Steve Dintaman (left) talks with a group of students at LCC International University in Klaipéda, Lithuania. Photo by Ryan Miller.

While LCC is a Christian mission and requires students to take courses in Bible, theology and ethics, we do not require students to make a Christian confession in order to enter. Many of our students have little exposure to Christian faith. Some are indifferent or even hostile to religious beliefs.

The liberal arts model of education is not a part of most European universities. But what students notice most is the difference in how their instructors treat them.

One Ukrainian student remarked that she was surprised to find that professors actually talk to their students outside the classroom. We use an interactive style of teaching that encourages students to express their thoughts in class and we seek to model Christian community in our teaching and community life.

For many of our students the experience of this kind of community is something profoundly new.

You might say that this treatment, and the many learnings that result, are significant parts of our mission.

LCC transforms lives
The word transformation is overused today, but it’s what we deal in. Our mission statement says we seek to offer a Christian liberal arts education, “that transforms students for servant leadership.” These are not just words. It happens.

I see students transformed at LCC in four different ways.

1. Students who go through our program are changed.
I see students becoming more positive and hopeful. They learn to relate to people in a different way. They all have been exposed to people and a community that believes that a life of integrity is not inconsistent with being successful. Over four years of exposure, our students are thoroughly “salted” by the gospel; the leavening of Christian values and the fruit of the Spirit get mixed into how they operate as people. LCC seeks to model and teach concepts such as servant leadership, the importance of a life of active service, peacemaking, integrity and treating all people with respect.

In their time at LCC, students get to enjoy and taste the fruits of the gospel. These fruits in and of themselves energize and change students. Some students will seek out the root from which these fruits grow. Others will simply enjoy the fruits. We hear all the time from our graduates how much their time at LCC changed their personalities and the way they operate in the world.

2. Students who came as nominal believers become active participants in the lives of their churches.
In my Intro to Theology class (required of all third-year students), one of the key ideas I present is of church as a community of believers actively engaged in service in the world. I ask what the other people who are worshiping with them mean to their faith. I always get the same answer: “Absolutely nothing.” One student recently amplified that response: “They mean the same thing as the other people in the grocery store do.”

We teach and model the idea that community and service are integral dimensions of our worship of God. We do not seek to convert our students to our form of Christian faith. We are happy if Roman Catholics or Russian Orthodox become active members of their own fellowships. Once Roman Catholic and Russian Orthodox leaders found that we were not here to “steal sheep” but to encourage students in their walk with God, they became surprisingly supportive of our presence.

3. Students who come as believers leave with their faith commitments deepened and expanded.
In the classroom, I seek to demonstrate respect for each of the traditions I teach about. I encourage students to think critically about their churches and seek out the best in those traditions. It is gratifying to see Catholics and Baptists, Orthodox and Pentecostals learning about each other’s faith and forming friendships and fellowship that transcends these divides.
As an Anabaptist teaching in a setting where most of our students come from other traditions, I feel it is my calling to plant Anabaptist seeds about the church as community and the Christian life as a life of service and peacemaking into their understanding of the faith.

I want our students to leave LCC more aware of the needs of the world and of Christ’s call to peacemaking and service.

4. Some students become believers.
One North American who taught a summer term class at LCC lamented that he hadn’t done more to reach students for Christ. He thought he should have offered a Bible study. One of our graduates, now employed by LCC, said, “I have news for you—students wouldn’t come to your Bible study. Those of us who became believers during our time at LCC did so because of how our teachers treated us.”

While teaching about missions in a theology class, I once asked students if they thought LCC was a good example of Christian mission. One evangelical student said he thought not: We do not overtly try to convert students.

Another student, who had consistently given me a hard time in class, cut him off. “LCC is a perfect model of Christian mission,” he said. “We all know why you are here and what you stand for, but we also know we can take what we want and leave what we don’t want.”
Students who become believers while at LCC do so mostly because they have been drawn to the kind of life they see lived out among our faculty and Christian students.

Challenges remain
It is difficult for LCC to recruit and retain qualified, committed faculty. About a third of our faculty members are Lithuanians, many of them LCC grads. Most of the remainder are North American volunteers supported by mission agencies and other external means. This makes it hard to recruit qualified long-term teachers. Students appreciate the few of us who stay on throughout their four-year experience.

Our students also face a challenge in paying tuition. LCC’s tuition is modest by American standards, currently about $3,300 a year. But for many of our students that is a huge amount, so we offer generous financial support, most of it donated by North Americans, to enable our students to have this life-changing experience.

LCC is a model for a high-impact form of Christian mission. Where else could I as a missionary have a captive audience of several hundred young people, future leaders in various countries, who are required to take my Intro to Theology class in their third year and my Moral Philosophy class in their final semester? But what makes LCC truly effective as mission is that we not only get to teach the faith but we have the opportunity to model it by creating a Christian learning community where lives are changed.

Steve Dintaman teaches at LCC International University and works through Mennonite Mission Network.