Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
WINONA LAKE - Butch Shook was Grace College’s first-ever admissions counselor.
He and his wife, Sandy, were two of the significant contributors to Grace being able to build and renovate a new welcome center at Westminster Hall.
Friday, on homecoming weekend, Grace College and Grace Theological Seminary celebrated the Butch and Sandy Shook Welcome Center with a ceremony that included speeches, photos, food and a ribbon-cutting with the Kosciusko Chamber of Commerce.
Prior to the renovation, the space was primarily for conferences for external and internal use. It had a couple banquet rooms and a lobby, along with the museum.
“It still has that purpose. It’s just that the lobby has been significantly upgraded and the one banquet room - the Rainbow Room, which is often the one people associate with (Evangelist) Billy Graham and the launch of his crusades through an all-night prayer meeting - has been preserved and we’ve elevated even the recognition of that significance of that room historically,” Grace President Dr. Drew Flamm said in an interview before the ceremony.
The other banquet room was turned into office space for enrollment management.
“And now this has become a welcome center, meaning if you’re coming to Grace for homecoming this weekend, you would come to the welcome center to start your weekend here. If you’re visiting Grace as a prospective student, this is where you would start your journey of learning more about Grace,” Flamm stated.
In the past, Grace had an admissions area in Mount Memorial Hall, but it didn’t have the ambience the space at Westminster Hall has always had with its beautiful outdoors and entrance, closeness to the lake, easy access to The Village at Winona and “a space that just welcomes you in,” he said. Where the admissions office used to be in Mount Memorial was turned into space for the School of Arts and Humanities.
“Mount Memorial has now become an academic building exclusively with three of our schools housed in that building,” Flamm said. The first floor now has the art gallery on it.
The Westminster building hadn’t been renovated in more than 25 years. Now, the carpet, the pictures on the wall and everything else has been refreshed and updated.
“Certainly, we’ve rebranded in the last year so it’s allowed us to really - you can look around this room and just see Grace etched into the windows and the colors, and it screams, ‘I’m at Grace College!’” Flamm pointed out.
This school year, Grace has had the exact same number of incoming students as last year, but a record number of freshmen, as well as a record number overall of undergraduate and seminary students, including online, dual enrollment and undergrads at other Grace sites.
Flamm hopes the new welcome center will help continue Grace’s growing trend.
“The nice things about the welcome center, one, it allows us to host more visitors so we can have a lot more prospective students visit. And one thing we know, and our community is a big part of this, is when someone comes to visit Grace College, they are very likely to want to come to college here because they see our campus and they see our community and the place where we’re located, so to be able to have space where we can have more prospective students and families come visit us, is going to be significant in us hopefully continuing to grow,” he stated.
Kicking off the ceremony, John Sloat, Grace’s vice president of advancement, said, “We are deeply grateful to the donors, to the supporters, for all of you that have served as admissions counselors or that have worked in this office. You all have had a piece of building this. But we are deeply grateful to Butch and Sandy for their generosity, their vision and their love for Grace. Their investment in this project will be a lasting legacy, welcoming generations of Lancers to a place where they can begin to imagine their own journey of faith and learning.”
Flamm said, “We want to honor Christ through this space, and when you come to Grace we want you to know what we’re all about, and the Shook Welcome Center makes it possible.”
He recalled meeting Butch for breakfast in Miami and telling him about an opportunity to create the Butch and Sandy Shook Welcome Center, and they quickly jumped on that. Many other donors came alongside, and Flamm said it was in really quick order. Over $2 million was raised for the space to come to fruition.
“Butch and Sandy, your love for this community and your passion to see Christ lifted high have inspired us all, and you’ve faithfully invested in creating a place - along with many other donors - where lives will be touched for generations and visitors will be able to sense that God is doing a great work here at Grace College and in Winona Lake,” he said.
Flamm then read a statement Grace recently received from Franklin Graham, the son of Billy Graham.
Franklin said, “In 1944, the Winona Lake Bible Conference Center held formation meetings of a new ministry to young people called Youth For Christ. My father, Billy Graham, would be named the first full-time staff evangelist for this organization. In 1949, in the Rainbow Room, attendees to a Youth For Christ convention held an all-night prayer gathering, including a call to prayer for my father just prior to the beginning of his Los Angeles crusade. Those L.A. meetings propelled him into national prominence, a springboard for his preaching and evangelistic ministry around the world.
“On this occasion, we know with thankful hearts the generosity of Butch and Sandy Shook and other donors who have made possible the renovation of the new welcome center, including that same Rainbow Room. We’re also grateful for Grace College’s continuing efforts to train students with Christ-centered education that equips young men and women for lives of ministry and service that can have a great spiritual impact on our world, all for the glory of God.”
After a prayer from Flamm, Dr. Mark Pohl, Grace vice president of enrollment management, shared the history and vision of the building. He said back in 2019, he began dreaming about admissions moving to Westminster Hall, but that dream wasn’t realized until Butch and Sandy Shook gave it some life. Pohl also thanked the other donors, the welcome center task force, the admissions team and his wife, Vanessa.
“Today we don’t just dedicate a building, we dedicate a space for God to work, a place where students and guests will encounter the love of Christ, and for some that may be the very first time they encounter that love,” Pohl said.
Butch, a 1972 Grace College graduate, then spoke, introducing his wife and three children. He recounted his time at Grace and his life thereafter, including Ron Henry hiring him as an admissions and retention counselor at Grace.
“Ron, I thank you to that day, and I thank you for the big check because I made $6,350 that first year,” Butch said, drawing laughs.
In his concluding remarks, he said he and Sandy were honored to be able to contribute to the welcome center.
“The welcome center means a lot to me because admissions and retention were near and dear to me, so I really appreciate what Mark does with his team,” Butch said, asking for a round of applause for Pohl and his team for having record enrollments in the last five years. “My problem was I was the only admissions and retention office. Enrollment probably went down as well,” he said, generating more laughs.
After Butch’s comments, Flamm told everyone that Butch served on Grace’s board of trustees for many years, as well as served on the presidential search committee. Friday afternoon, the board of trustees unanimously selected Butch to continue as a trustee emeritus, a title very few who have served on the board are given.
“We want to say congratulations and thank you, and you are now trustee emeritus,” Flamm stated.
