Brother Tim and Sally Erdel Faith­fully Serve Bethel Com­mu­nity

MISHAWAKA—Tim Erdel, Ph.D., and Sally Erdel, M.S., have faith­fully served the Bethel com­mu­nity for over 25 years. Brother Tim serves as a pro­fes­sor of re­li­gion and phi­los­o­phy, archivist and the­o­log­i­cal li­brar­ian, and Sally serves as an as­so­ci­ate pro­fes­sor of nurs­ing. Tim has been em­ployed by Bethel for nearly 28 years and Sally for nearly 27.  

The Erdels met at Fort Wayne Bible Col­lege. Sally had grown up as a far­m­girl in Illi­nois and had been in­ter­ested in nurs­ing for sev­eral years, but de­cided she wanted to pur­sue some Bible train­ing be­fore earn­ing her nurs­ing de­gree. Af­ter Sally com­pleted an as­so­ci­ate de­gree at Fort Wayne Bible Col­lege, she earned her Diploma in Nurs­ing at West Sub­ur­ban Hos­pi­tal School of Nurs­ing and her Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence in Nurs­ing at Uni­ver­sity of Illi­nois. She then mar­ried Brother Tim be­fore fin­ish­ing her ed­u­ca­tion with a Mas­ter of Sci­ence, also from Uni­ver­sity of Illi­nois.  

Brother Tim earned a bach­e­lor's de­gree from Fort Wayne Bible Col­lege in pre-sem­i­nary stud­ies, a Mas­ter of Di­vin­ity and Mas­ter of The­ol­ogy from Trin­ity Evan­gel­i­cal Di­vin­ity School, a li­brary de­gree from Uni­ver­sity of Chicago, and Mas­ter of Arts and Doc­tor of Phi­los­o­phy from Uni­ver­sity of Illi­nois at Ur­bana-Cham­paign. 

Brother Tim’s ini­tial pri­mary in­ter­ests were in lit­er­a­ture and his­tory, but he was in­ter­ested in phi­los­o­phy for apolo­getic pur­poses while in high school and as his in­ter­est in that area grew, he de­cided he wanted to fur­ther philo­soph­i­cal de­vel­op­ment on an aca­d­e­mic level, which is why he chose to study for his doc­tor­ate in phi­los­o­phy. 

“At one point I kind of thought to my­self, ‘I prob­a­bly need the most guid­ance in phi­los­o­phy,’” Brother Tim said. “The other two I could prob­a­bly pick up quite a bit on my own, but in phi­los­o­phy I was help­less on my own.” 

Sal­ly’s in­ter­est in nurs­ing was nur­tured early on as she helped her fa­ther care for farm an­i­mals and wit­nessed her sis­ter’s strug­gle with po­lio. One of her ear­li­est ex­po­sures to hos­pi­tals came when she was in high school and a class­mate died in a mo­tor­cy­cle ac­ci­dent and his younger brother spent a cou­ple of weeks in a burn unit be­fore also pass­ing away. 

“All of us in the youth group were asked to go and sit with him at var­i­ous times, just to pro­vide sup­port and to give the par­ents a chance to rest,” Sally said. “I don’t think that would hap­pen to­day in a burn unit, but it was true back then.”  

Brother Tim comes from a fam­ily where four gen­er­a­tions have been in­volved in mis­sions, and he grew up as a mis­sion­ary kid in Ecuador, where he ac­cepted Christ’s sal­va­tion and made his first pub­lic pro­fes­sion at five years old. 

When Sally was nine years old, one of her Sun­day School teach­ers di­rectly asked her if she had ever asked Je­sus to save her, and Sally re­al­ized she had not. She spoke to her mother about it and asked the Lord to save her later that week. 

The Erdels served as mis­sion­ar­ies in Ja­maica for a time but chose to re­turn to the United States af­ter re­al­iz­ing the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem in Ja­maica would not work well for their chil­dren, and in their pur­suit of God’s will they were led to em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties at Bethel, where they have been ever since.  

Both ex­pressed a deep grat­i­tude to be work­ing to­gether for the same in­sti­tu­tion, though they work in dif­fer­ent de­part­ments. They did have an op­por­tu­nity to lead a task force trip to­gether to the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic in 2007, which is one of their fa­vorite mem­o­ries from their time at Bethel. 

“It was a re­ally big group, every­body was great, they were won­der­ful,” Sally said. “It was a fun time.” 

Brother Tim’s early in­ter­ac­tions with Bethel stretch back to his col­lege days and in­volved a bas­ket­ball ri­valry be­tween Fort Wayne Bible Col­lege and Bethel. 

“One of my jokes is I played four years at Bethel, but not for Bethel,” Brother Tim said. “I have nine cham­pi­onship tro­phies that are all tro­phies from my col­lege years, and two of them were won here at Bethel, at Bethel’s ex­pense.” 

Both have served in sev­eral ar­eas out­side of Bethel as well. Sally worked for many years with the Ac­cred­i­ta­tion Com­mis­sion for Ed­u­ca­tion in Nurs­ing, serv­ing as a site vis­i­tor for 18 years and as a mem­ber on the na­tional re­view panel for over 10 years. 

“That was very help­ful for me as a nurse and as an ed­u­ca­tor, and I think it helped our pro­gram to have that ex­po­sure,” Sally said. “I learned a lot and tried to share it back here.” 

Brother Tim said one of the things about his ca­reer that has brought him the most plea­sure is see­ing his stu­dents do well.  

“Whether go­ing into min­istry, or mis­sions, or go­ing on for Ph.D.’s, or what­ever—a wide range of ac­com­plish­ments by for­mer stu­dents is the most sat­is­fy­ing thing,” Brother Tim said. 

As the Erdels looked back on their own years spent in sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion, they of­fered some ad­vice to stu­dents they wished some­one had told them. 

“Learn to lis­ten bet­ter,” Brother Tim said. “It’s hard to re­ally hear the other per­son some­times, I was­n’t prob­a­bly the best com­mu­ni­ca­tor for a long time, maybe I’m still not. But re­ally hear­ing where some­one else is com­ing from and em­pathiz­ing with them is im­por­tant.” 

Sally en­cour­aged stu­dents to re­mem­ber to ex­press their grat­i­tude. 

“Don’t for­get to say thank you when some­one helps you,” Sally said. “Also, just be or­ga­nized. Do the read­ing . . . just fol­low­ing through and tak­ing ini­tia­tive to solve your prob­lems and get help.” 

All three of the Erdels’ chil­dren grad­u­ated from Bethel and have since mar­ried, and now the Erdels’ are blessed with three grand­chil­dren as well.