Download the original letter here:
To: Pastors in Mississippi
From: Roger Parrott, President
Re: Free tuition scholarship for your son or daughter
These two years of ministry during Covid have been tough for you. When your congregation needed you most, you've had to cope with limits to activity that we could never have imagined. And I'm sure it has taken an emotional toll on you and your family as well.
The Lord has prompted me to think creatively about how we could help lift the burden for some pastors across our state.
God has blessed Belhaven University during the pandemic with record enrollment and giving. So we want to do something bold to help you in your recovery from Covid.
If you have a college-age son or daughter ready to enroll in college this coming academic year or the following year (2022-23 or 2023-24), we want to provide a full-tuition scholarship for them - either freshman or transfer student. This is a value of $28,000 a year - so if your child is a freshman and will study with us for four years, that's a gift totaling $112,000.
In normal times we cannot do this for pastors. But the world has never seen a time like this, and Belhaven University is taking this bold step to help you and your family as you help Mississippi recover from this intense time.
There are some details for how this will work.
A full-tuition scholarship is for pastors' children enrolling full-time in our traditional academic program on campus no later than January 2024. This scholarship is not available for our online undergraduate, master, or doctoral degree programs.
We will help you apply for grants they might be eligible to receive from the federal or state government. Although, after those grants are awarded, Belhaven University will cover the balance of their total tuition. All you'll need to pay is their fees, books, room, and board - and there may even be subsidized federal loans available for those costs.
We will require your son or daughter to live on campus because we want their influence to enrich our student body. After their 21st birthday, they may live off-campus, although $3,500 will be deducted from this scholarship if they do so.
This full-tuition scholarship for your son or daughter even gets better with two unique offerings we are providing for all our traditional students at Belhaven.
We advise our freshmen students to consider pursuing a double major to become more broadly prepared for their career. To encourage students to take on this extra work, we provide the 5th year tuition-free if their double major pushes into five years of study.
Because of the toughness of dealing with Covid, we provide our students with a tuition-free online master's degree after completing their undergraduate degree. Even students transferring for the second two years (minimum of 60 hours) of their undergraduate degree may receive this tuition-free master degree. This is a $15,000 to $25,000 value.
If you put all this together, it seems almost too good to be true. Your son or daughter will receive (1) up to four years full-tuition scholarship, (2) fifth-year tuition-free if they are completing a double major, and (3) a free online master degree.
I just released a new book titled: Opportunity Leadership: Stop Planning and Start Leading, in which I remind leaders that God brings unexpected opportunities we can't plan or expect. This free tuition gift is one of those opportunities if you have a college-age son or daughter, and I pray it will be a life-changing blessing to your family.
If you don't have a child ready for college in the next two years, we will have generous academic and need-based scholarships available when their time comes to enroll at Belhaven University.
If you would like to discuss this scholarship, please call or email Suzanne Sullivan, Associate Vice President for Enrollment. She can answer questions, arrange a campus tour, and start the enrollment process ssullivan@belhaven.edu 601-968-5940. And of course, you're more than welcome to contact me if l can be of help.
I am thankful for all you're doing to bring the love and hope of Christ to the state of Mississippi.
Serving Him always,
Roger Parrott
P.S. We are sending this letter to every pastor in Mississippi. But if you have a colleague we've missed, please let us know. We want to include all pastors, military/hospital chaplains that minister in Mississippi, and missionaries supported by Mississippi congregations.