John Driver of Goshen will be honored today with the 2012 Culture for Service Award at a special Goshen College homecoming convocation. The award is given annually to Goshen College graduates who have made lifelong commitments to service.

Driver, who currently lives at Greencroft in Goshen, spent more than 50 years living in Spanish-speaking settings and working as a missionary, theologian, teacher and pastor.

After graduating from Goshen College in 1950, Driver attended Mennonite Biblical Seminary in 1951. In 1967, he moved to Uruguay to work as academic dean and professor of church history and New Testament studies at the Inter-Mennonite Seminary in Montevideo.

He continued church-related work in Spain from 1974 to the early 1980s.

Driver and his wife, Bonny, retired in Goshen in 1989, but he continued to teach at Goshen College’s Hispanic Ministry Program from 1994-2003.

A prolific writer, Driver recently wrote “Life Together in the Spirit: A Radical Spirituality for the Twenty-First Century,” available in both English and Spanish.

“No other individual is a more widely recognized or respected voice for Anabaptist-Mennonite thought in Central or South America,” said John D. Roth, professor of history at Goshen College, in 2011.

The Goshen College Alumni Board selected Driver to receive the award because he “demonstrates compassionate peacemaking in many ways as he thinks about cultural and theological issues and promotes justice for ‘the least of these.’”

Rebecca Kreider Pries, of Cambridge, Mass., will also receive a Culture for Service Award for her work with juvenile and domestic violence in Boston. After graduating from Goshen College in 1966, Pries founded Adolescent Consultation Services, Inc., a non-profit mental health and social services agency where she continues to serve as executive director.

Other alumni award recipients are Grant Rissler ’99, of Richmond, Va., Keith Springer ’69 of Fisher, Ill., and Sue Roth ’66 of Stryker, Ohio.

The alumni awards will be presented today at 10 a.m. in the Goshen College Church-Chapel, followed by a reception in the church Fellowship Hall at 10:45 a.m. Both events are free and open to the public.

Homecoming weekend will also feature an evening of jazz and swing with Goshen College’s Lavendar Jazz Band at First Friday in downtown Goshen, a music gala featuring Goshen College’s choirs and orchestra, and a celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Record, the school newspaper. “Mr. Maurizio,” winner of the 2012 Peace Play Contest, will be performed three times over the weekend.

Other activities include class reunions, department receptions and open houses, sporting events and an art exhibit and reception. More than 300 guests are expected to be on campus for the festivities.