I find myself wanting to say some things to our presidential candidates. I offer this advice, of course, for what it’s worth, which, considering the price, isn't much.First, I want to say what our candidates surely know: We have some very real problems in our world, and those problems require strong leaders to step up in fresh new ways. There is a deep current of unease over our national decline, and people are yearning for intelligent discussion about real solutions to real problems. This is not just a political game we are in.People are out of jobs. And here’s what I worry about:

So many writers these days are talking about America as a nation in decline. I am one who happens to feel there are some dangerous signals of such decline. For all of my usual instincts toward optimism and hope and opportunity, I am troubled these days, fearful about the future.Most of our broader national discourse focuses on economic issues, and those are real. And the solutions proposed are almost always political, and those are necessary. But for me, the focus must eventually zero in on culture.

Great writing grows out of the specific content of a writer’s life. I believe the same could be said of leadership. The writer’s instincts are guided, in the best of writing, by the axiom that the more particular the story, the more universal the message.This is tricky business, to be sure, risky because the probing of individual content can slip easily into self-serving, and that cannot be the goal of writing or leadership. Knowing the difference—between genuine, authentic personal content, and self-absorbed, self-focused content—is, well, the art of writing, and the art of leadership.David Brooks makes this point so beautifully in "The Power Of The Particular,”one of his recent columns in The New York Times (June 25, 2012).

In the third and final part of President Philip Eaton's 2012 Commencement address at Seattle Pacific University, he explains, "Putting out into the deep calls us to a life of hope, even on the other side of darkness."

In part two of President Philip Eaton’s 2012 Commencement address at Seattle Pacific University, he encourages the new graduates to “stop fishing in the shallows.”

On June 9, 2012, SPU President Philip Eaton delivered the Commencement address at Seattle Pacific University’s 2012 Commencement. His Commencement address is being published here in three parts.

Along with two billion Christians around the globe, I enter this Holy Week reverently, expectant, full of awe and hope. This season in the life of Christians is charged with meaning and mystery. It is a poignant time, a time of immense curiosity, a time of profound sadness and expansive joy.

In his weekly column last week, David Brooks takes up the question of how, if at all, we can change our behavior. This is often a theme of Brooks, as it is with many writers of our day who feel something is out of whack and needs changing.

We are all yearning for good news these days: good news that our dismal economy has begun to bottom out, that once again we are creating new jobs; good news that Europe and America have begun to live within their means …

Last week I received a note from my dear friend, Professor Rick Steele, one of the stars on what has become such an extraordinary faculty of the School of Theology at Seattle Pacific University.

I am still fretting about the fact that we don’t read or watch the same things. The same books? Are you kidding? The same TV shows? Not likely.

Stephen Pinker, the Harvard professor who a few years ago famously and fiercely opposed anything having to do with “faith” in Harvard’s revision of its core curriculum, has written a new book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. The book has become much-quoted and much-reviewed and is worth our attention.

I have become subversive. I have begun to say Merry Christmas in downtown Seattle, on airplanes, in the grocery store. I have no need whatsoever to be offensive to my Jewish friends, to Muslims, or to the ardent secularists who seek to control our public language.

We live in a very splintered society. Call it the Starbucks’ world where everyone orders up exactly their own pleasure: “I’ll have a tall, no-whip mocha” or “give me a grande, whole-milk, no-foam latte.” It’s very cool, of course, but it is a whole new phenomenon that has sunk into our culture.

What follows is an excerpt from my opening convocation speech this fall at Seattle Pacific University called The Upside-Down University. I am talking here about the deeper contributions the Christian university can make for our time of disintegrating culture.

I have been speaking and thinking a lot lately about what kind of leadership we need in our world today. We live in turbulent, troubled times, and we are crying out for leaders to step up to the challenges we face — economic, social, cultural challenges — challenges that are perhaps unprecedented, at least in my lifetime.

This is the question the Psalmist asks. This is the question for all Christians in our post-Christian world. This is the question I ask myself all the time.

A couple of weekends ago, in Houston, Texas, a group of organizers staged a huge rally to pray for our nation. Governor Rick Perry of Texas, one of the organizers of the rally, called out the reasons, as he sees it, for prayer at this time.

“The world is falling apart, and our leaders are on vacation,” a friend of mine said with disgust and frustration. Financial and economic indicators plunged precipitously that day, and we were searching for answers. Where have all the leaders gone, we asked.

So many people lament these days about something missing in our culture, something lost, something perhaps never to be retrieved. We seem to be wandering around a bit bewildered.