President Fant Emphasizes Transformational Leadership During Annual Convocation
Posted on: August 26, 2025
“You cannot be a ‘transformational leader’ unless you have been transformed by Christ.”
North Greenville University President Dr. Gene C. Fant, Jr. opened the academic year with that challenge for students, faculty, and staff during the university’s annual convocation ceremony on the morning of Aug. 25.
“We can teach you all kinds of things, but in the end, if we do not emphasize that your relationship with Christ is what drives your outcomes, we have failed to make a difference in your lives,” he said.
President Fant used his convocation address to highlight passages in Genesis 1 & 2 and in Romans 12, defining NGU’s mission statement and what it means to become a transformational leader.
“The phrase transformational leadership at North Greenville is deeply rooted in Romans 12:2, which says, ‘Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God,’” President Fant said. “Paul is saying ‘don’t be schematized by the pagans and become one of them, but instead, let your mind be made new by God and his word and the pursuit of his will.”
He went on to describe how God offers transformation for those who are in Christ.
“In the opening of Genesis, God transforms the world from something chaotic and void and formless, into the highly structured and organized world we recognize,” President Fant said. “When the Spirit of God comes in contact with us, we are transformed and made alive. A fully operating understanding of the universe requires wearing a set of lenses that are focused on Christ as foundational to knowledge because Christ is the source of all knowledge.”
President Fant challenged students, faculty, and staff to measure their outcomes in relation to the work Christ is doing and has accomplished in their lives.
“If we start with outcomes, which is the great temptation of higher education, we are seduced by an old challenge to Christianity, which is emphasizing our works, our actions, and our compliance with rules rather than the work of Christ himself,” he said. “We can accumulate degrees, credentials, accomplishments, and recognitions. We think about our obituaries and how long they’ll be. We can become puffed up and quite obnoxious in our self-recognition. I’ve seen these things too often in my career in the classroom because it’s rooted in an awareness that I’ve seen these things in my own heart, my own mind, and my own life.”
The remedy for this pursuit of self-recognition, President Fant said, is acknowledgement that all our accomplishments come from the Lord.
“When we are arrogant, especially as intellectuals, we focus on our self-perceived outcomes and not on the input of the one who positioned us to do these things,” he said. “Anything we do, anything we accomplish is out of an overflow of what God is doing in us.”
Citing Ephesians 2, President Fant encouraged the NGU community to put off their old way of life in pursuit of true transformation.
“We believe that when you leave this campus, you’ll be a transformational leader,” President Fant said. “A university education will make you a leader globally, but a North Greenville University education will make you a transformational leader.”
