Dr. Drew Flamm started in his role as Grace College’s seventh president on July 1. Photo provided.

By Leah Sander
InkFreeNews

WINONA LAKE — The bookshelves in Dr. Drew Flamm’s office reveal some aspects about him.

There are coffee mugs which bear witness to his love of the beverage and books by the Christian leader John Maxwell, whose organization, Maximum Impact, Flamm worked for shortly after college. There’s even the neatness of the shelves, which Flamm attributes to his wife, Stephanie, noting how she keeps his life and the lives of their three sons together.

There’s also a framed reference to Hebrews 13:7, which Flamm said is linked to Stephanie’s grandfather.

“(That) is something that we always say about him,” said Flamm. “He’s a patriarch of her family and became a mentor to me as well.”

It reads: “Remember your leaders. Consider their lives. Imitate their faith.”

That’s advice Flamm is taking to heart as he continues with his first year of being Grace College and Seminary’s president. He started in that role on July 1 and will be inaugurated as the institution’s seventh president on Friday, Nov. 4.

The public is welcome to attend the ceremony, which starts at 10:30 a.m. at the Manahan Orthopaedic Capital Center at Grace, 610 Wooster Road, Winona Lake.

At age 40, Flamm is the youngest president in Grace’s 70-plus year history. But that’s not stopping him from continuing the college’s legacy, through in part relying on the leadership advice of others.

“One of the things that I’m very thankful for is a legacy of leadership at Grace,” he said, mentioning former presidents and other leaders who are helping guide him. “There are many people in the community that have been mentors and examples to me, that again as a younger leader, that has been so valuable … and I could name all sorts of people in our community who have in one way or another impacted me and built into me and invested in me.”

The investment into Flamm’s life by Christian leaders began at a young age with his parents. Flamm noted his mother was a teacher and his father an administrator at Emmanuel Christian School in Toledo, Ohio, where he attended high school. The family moved there from Waterloo, Iowa.

He referenced how their work in Christian education has influenced him being in that field himself. That includes the “love for people” he saw in them.

“That’s why they were in education just because they loved students. They loved making a difference in their lives,” he said, noting how involved his parents were in attending extracurricular events at Emmanuel. “So (as a family) we were just immersed in that community and I mean what an amazing way to grow up, and so even for my kids to be able to be immersed in the community like this is just there’s so much value, love for education, love for people in a community where we’re going to care for one another.”

Flamm then attended Cedarville University in Ohio, “a Christ-centered institution, very similar to Grace in many ways,” he said.

There, further groundwork would be laid for his future in Christian leadership, with him gaining a bachelor’s degree in comprehensive communication and minoring in business and Bible, though Flamm said he was unsure at first of his major upon entering Cedarville.

He noted he tried a variety of activities at first, including everything from sports to music.

Those resulted in some failed attempts, but Flamm said he then “found student leadership.” He was elected student body president his senior year.

That leadership role also introduced him to Stephanie, who was vice president under him.

“So that really grew and deepened our love for higher education and Christ-centered higher education as we got to really know the institution more through those student leadership experiences,” he said.

Following graduation, Flamm had an internship in Atlanta, Ga., with Dr. Tim Elmore’s Growing Leaders.

“It was a leadership development group,” he said. “That ended up turning into a job with … Maximum Impact … We put on leadership conferences.”

“I was essentially an administrative assistant,” explained Flamm. “I would say that was another time of kind of like my freshman year of college of figuring out what I want to do with my life. What does God have for me? And I’m in Atlanta and I didn’t know anybody and I’m making new friends and just sort of exploring adulthood.”

After a year in Atlanta, Flamm returned to his alma mater, working in the alumni office while Stephanie worked in admissions. There, he discovered a passion for fundraising, deeming it a “great mix of business and ministry.”

“Fundraising has to do with numbers and how much money have you raised and marketing, all those business functions, but ultimately right it’s a ministry both to the donors and it’s connecting donors’ passions with the needs of the institution,” he said. “And so I found, ‘Wow, I really fit this fundraising thing well,’ and so that’s what I did then.”

With Stephanie and him after their marriage seeking to begin their family through adoption, Flamm opted to take a fundraising position at Manchester University in North Manchester. It was close to Stephanie’s family in Bremen.

With Flamm taking that job, he and Stephanie moved to Winona Lake to the house where they reside today, bringing home their oldest son, Jadon, now 11, shortly thereafter.

The couple now has two other sons: Rihaan, 8, and Bennett, 7.

Flamm’s “dream job,” as vice president of advancement at Grace, then opened up.

“It changed a little bit over time,” he said of his previous Grace role. “My last title was executive vice president, so I added some things like marketing and enrollment and strategic planning.”

Over the years, Flamm also earned a master’s degree in communication and leadership studies from Gonzaga University and his doctorate in educational leadership from Indiana State University, which also prepared him for being Grace’s president.

In his new role, Flamm said his goal is to keep the institution Christ-centered, referring to the college’s historical mission of “To know Christ and to make Him known.”

“When Dr. Alva J. McClain brought the seminary here in 1939 and incorporated in the state of Indiana, this was the mission statement he gave Grace Seminary at the time,” he said. “And there’s a rock (on Grace’s campus) that most mornings, including this morning, I walk by and it’s got that imprinted on it.”

“It’s a reminder to me of like what are we here for? And that mission has not changed,” he continued. “We have a different mission statement, but that mission is really the vision I have for who we are and what we do.”

“We’re here to know Christ and to make Him known and we get to know Christ through studying His word and His world and we make Him known by growing in character, competence and being prepared to go serve and make a difference in the world whether we’re doing business or education or ministry … or whatever it is, that is the ultimate goal,” he said.

Flamm said he also wants to connect with students as president, noting his age is a benefit in that regard as he’s not much older than most of them.

He also talked about his own faith in God affecting him as a leader and in his personal life.

“As a Christ-centered institution, we want our students to know that their faith isn’t something they just get in chapel or they just get in a Bible class, but that it should impact everything we do all the time,” he said. “Whether you’re on a sports field or whatever career path you take, we want our students to be the best nurses who are also followers of Christ, the best teachers who are also followers of Christ, the best businesswomen and men who are also followers of Christ and so that’s what I want to make an effort to do in my own life.”

“My faith isn’t something I put on in the car on the way to work … but it’s something that I embrace and want to live out everyday and for me that means some disciplines like devotions in the morning, family devotions in the morning with my family,” he added. “It’s engagement in a local church. It’s a small group of believers that we meet with on a weekly basis just to build into one another and have that community.”

Grace College will mark its 75th anniversary next year, and Flamm said leading the institution into another 75 years means standing by the college’s historical mission of: “To know Christ and to make Him known” and building relationships between students, staff and the greater community outside the school.

“Just continuing to fan those flames, that’s what’s really brought us here to this point, that’s what’s been our secret sauce and so I just want to continue to add fuel to that,” he said.