00;00;04;23 - 00;00;22;05

Speaker 1

Hello and welcome back to. With Faith in Mind, I'm Dan Hummel, today's host and the director of Universe Engagement at Upper House. This episode is part of our series on Christian education at the Crossroads. And we're welcoming Tomlin, the president of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship for the show. Adam.

00;00;22;08 - 00;00;23;09

Speaker 2

Hey, Dan.

00;00;23;12 - 00;00;45;11

Speaker 1

Good to be with you today. The topic on this episode is Campus Ministries and Higher Education. Here in Madison, we have headquartered one of the leading campus ministries in the world, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. We're going to discuss with Tom the way campus Ministries shape educational culture and how they serve a broader educational ecosystem that is global. So a little more about Tom.

00;00;45;13 - 00;01;13;12

Speaker 1

Tom Lynn is the president of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, and he's been so since 2016. Before that, he served as an InterVarsity campus minister at Harvard University and Boston University. He also helped to establish an international fellowship of Evangelical Students movement in Mongolia, where he served as the country director. And Tom has a B.A. in economics from Harvard University and holds an M.A. in Global Leadership from Fuller Theological Seminary, where he now also serves on the board.

00;01;13;17 - 00;01;35;24

Speaker 1

That's at Fuller. So, Tom, excited to talk to you. I thought before getting into the sort of substance of what we wanted to talk about in relation to higher education, I want to get a sense of what it's like to work in Mongolia. What were the main differences or or main sort of challenges of trying to start a movement in Mongolia?

00;01;35;27 - 00;01;56;26

Speaker 2

Oh, there are there are a lot of differences. I'll just say it was fun. It was definitely a lot of fun. Scary, but fun. Probably the primary difference is it was a country when we went in 2001, 2000 to where Christianity was brand new. So in 1989, there was zero or one recorded Christian in the whole country. So I don't know.

00;01;57;03 - 00;02;25;13

Speaker 2

I don't know how they figure out who the one person is, but somehow they figured out the one. The Bible was translated in the year 2000, so. So you're really dealing with trying to engage the society, a culture that has no Christian background at all and no believers, no church. And and it was challenging trying to figure out, you know, our very American cultural methods, how do you disentangle that and share and embody the gospel without bringing that culture right?

00;02;25;13 - 00;02;36;02

Speaker 2

So that's the challenge for any missionary. But certainly we had that. So. So, yeah, it was it was challenging and very difficult at the same, you know, difficult, challenging but fun.

00;02;36;06 - 00;02;44;23

Speaker 1

We say, is there anything you particularly miss about Mongolia? Like, what's the thing that if you could just have right now from that part of the world?

00;02;44;25 - 00;03;04;17

Speaker 2

Well, we miss the countryside. So beautiful. If you see, you know, horses riding, it's kind of like you see in pictures or movies perhaps. Beautiful countryside. You know, it's still not very densely populated. You know, one of the areas of the world that is not densely populated at all. So we love that open space and actually a miss some of the foods there, too.

00;03;04;19 - 00;03;12;15

Speaker 2

So mutton is a food that they eat there. And, you know, there's some tasty mutton dishes that we actually miss because we had it every day there.

00;03;12;19 - 00;03;34;08

Speaker 1

Yeah, Mutton, that that's a Seinfeld joke. I don't know if you need to go into that, but there's a whole episode about mutton being stuffed in people's coats. Very good. Well, one other question I want to ask you before jumping in is, is you have a degree in economics and you're now leading an organization that has hundreds and hundreds of employees all across the world.

00;03;34;13 - 00;03;42;10

Speaker 1

I wonder, just have you reflected on sort of what is an economics degree help you do in your leadership position at university?

00;03;42;12 - 00;04;02;20

Speaker 2

Yeah, you know, it's a great question. I get asked it once in a while. You know, when I was younger, I probably probably would have said nothing, you know? Or my parents would say, You're throwing away your economics degree and doing this ministry thing, or what is this thing you're doing? You know, if they even understood it. But but actually, there's a lot of things, I think economics thinking in terms of systems.

00;04;02;22 - 00;04;31;04

Speaker 2

So, you know, you learn in macro and micro, does things operate as a system, You think about efficiencies. So operational efficiencies. I love looking for efficiencies and things, cost benefit analysis. There's so many practical concepts in economics that I apply in organizational leadership, organizational effectiveness strategy every day. So so actually a lot of things, it's just perhaps, you know, I'm not focused on the economy.

00;04;31;04 - 00;04;33;00

Speaker 2

I'm focusing on an organization.

00;04;33;04 - 00;04;50;04

Speaker 1

Yeah, well, that leads us into the first question I want to ask, which was how did you develop a sense of calling as a leader? Was that something that goes back to when you were a culture maybe earlier, or is that something that sort of emerged over time as an adult?

00;04;50;06 - 00;05;11;09

Speaker 2

Yeah, I mean, I think as a as a student, it probably started as a college student. My calling at the time was the invitation that I learned and received from Jesus was to be a servant. So it was about, you know, we talked about servant leadership. It was really mostly the serving portion. I never imagined that I would be a leader of an institution in the future.

00;05;11;11 - 00;05;49;17

Speaker 2

So during my college years, served as much as I could served Stewart Fellow students, I served people I knew and people I didn't know. I served the campus. I tried to love my university well, sacrificed for it, tried to be generous towards it, and all of those things. And it wasn't until later that I began to probably experience more of what leadership's like and started kind of reflecting, Hey, I kind of enjoy this, and maybe this is part of who God has prepared me to be, or the ways that He's gifted me or perhaps equipped me to continue leading.

00;05;49;17 - 00;05;58;07

Speaker 2

And so I led more and more, and that led to other assignments and other assignments. And eventually that's probably how I ended up doing what I'm doing today.

00;05;58;09 - 00;06;02;27

Speaker 1

Well, what does a lead a president of a major campus ministry do on.

00;06;02;27 - 00;06;03;17

Speaker 2

A.

00;06;03;20 - 00;06;06;28

Speaker 1

A daily or weekly basis? What's what's the schedule look like?

00;06;07;00 - 00;06;40;21

Speaker 2

Well, there's definitely not any week. That's the same as another. But the way that I describe it to people is a campus ministry like ours. It's it can be described in three different ways. And that kind of three different parts of my job. So one is it is a large organization or institution. So I'm an organizational leader. I, I deal with, you know, operations, legal finance facilities, you know, people training, development, all, all the things that an organization, you know, vision strategy boards, that kind of thing.

00;06;40;23 - 00;07;11;26

Speaker 2

We're also so institution organization, we're also a movement. So, you know, at the very grassroots level, whether it's at Harvard or Boston University or University of Wisconsin, where a movement on campus, we you know, we're gathering people constantly, you know, sharing the gospel, leading them towards Christ on mission together. It doesn't feel like an organization where we're like a movement and and we like to be that.

00;07;11;26 - 00;07;31;14

Speaker 2

It's kind of resembling, I think, about some of the most inspiring mission movements around the world that's we would love to be more and more lean into a movement. So I'm a movement leader in that sense, right? The third aspect is fellowship. So we are a fellowship, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, so that you can think of more like a we're para church, but a church like body, right?

00;07;31;14 - 00;07;59;05

Speaker 2

A body of believers together, having fellowship together, growing together and nurturing each other and faith. So I do have a pastoral job in that. So I try to care for people as the president. So so all of those things, you know, I'm trying to lead with vision strategy, kind of a missionary mentality each day when I go to work and then I'm trying to be pastoral and caring for people, both who are remotely working for us or in the office.

00;07;59;05 - 00;08;13;21

Speaker 2

And then it's a lot of fun, you know, And we've got 1500 employees, but thousands of more volunteers and tens of thousands of students. So it's a lot of fun. And no week is like another week. Yeah.

00;08;13;22 - 00;08;35;04

Speaker 1

So do you see any tension between two of those identities? I just think of like that, that sort of saying which I might get in trouble for, for, for repeating because it's sort of dismissive, but like most denominations sort of emerge out of revival movements and then they become sort of bureaucratized and and sort of lose the fire of the of the revival that started them.

00;08;35;04 - 00;08;43;15

Speaker 1

So I hear sort of an organization and then a movement and it's like, ooh, those are those are sort of going at different speeds with different objectives. Do you feel that tension? And in InterVarsity?

00;08;43;16 - 00;09;03;12

Speaker 2

Oh yeah, I think I do feel that tension and it's a good tension. So I think you need both to press against each other again in our size. You don't want a diffused movement. Movement sounds great, but if you're 1500 people going all the different directions, that's not great either. So and the advantage of the organizational side is you can have efficiencies, right?

00;09;03;12 - 00;09;22;14

Speaker 2

You can do a training that's not just tailored towards ten people, but actually a thousand people can appreciate it and be developed. So so there's that. But then just like the example you shared, there is the danger we always have to watch out for is we don't exist as a as an organization for ourselves. We're a movement for others, right?

00;09;22;14 - 00;09;38;06

Speaker 2

So sometimes when we get tempted to be too bureaucratic, we've got to step back. Wait a second. What is this about? Like, let's present to the movement side of who we are, you know, and kind of release people to, you know, for lack of a better word, you know, go crazy for Jesus or whatever you might want to say.

00;09;38;06 - 00;09;42;27

Speaker 2

Right? So so there is that kind of balance that I think intention is a good thing.

00;09;43;00 - 00;10;04;19

Speaker 1

Hmm. Well, speaking of movements, I wonder if you could just give us a sense of InterVarsity history, where it comes from and from your mind as the leader of how you would period eyes or break up the history of InterVarsity over its over its history. Yeah. This is a historian in asking the questions. I'm asking very historian's question.

00;10;04;20 - 00;10;30;23

Speaker 2

Yeah maybe I'll I'll share broadly and then you can ask me specific questions that we have. I mean we trace their roots back to 1877, a group of Cambridge University students in in the UK, right in England that started gathering together a student initiated group that prayed together, study the Bible together and share the gospel. And then it proliferated, actually grew.

00;10;30;23 - 00;10;57;20

Speaker 2

Many more groups started in England, then it reached other countries in the world, eventually making its way to Canada and then the Canadian sending a group to the US to start in the 1940s. And so we're an old organization in that sense. But what's fascinating is those roots we trace ourselves back to are the same. They're the same building blocks today we have students who are primarily about students and faculty.

00;10;57;20 - 00;11;19;15

Speaker 2

We say now students who gather together to pray the study the Bible and to share the gospel. Of course, many things are different about how we do that and the context we're in today. So I could go more in detail of what's been in between that perhaps. But that's that's the arc from beginning to where we are now.

00;11;19;15 - 00;11;20;09

Speaker 2

I say briefly.

00;11;20;10 - 00;11;46;21

Speaker 1

Yeah. And it's pretty interesting. I'm someone who's been interested in just sort of the history of the different campus ministries and in particular the United States. And I think university stands out a bit uniquely in in it being founded somewhere else besides the United States. A lot of the other campus ministries were founded by Americans for the for the U.S. As you mentioned originally, British sort of movement that then goes global.

00;11;46;23 - 00;11;53;01

Speaker 1

Do you think what do you trace is sort of the unique contribution of InterVarsity in relation to that history?

00;11;53;03 - 00;12;13;14

Speaker 2

Yeah, I think it does. You know, as if you study organizations, how it's founded often shapes the DNA and cultural organization. And so that is true for us. So I think even in later we can talk about a few interested how how that affects us as a global movement. And because of the way we were founded, we're not it's not an American enterprise.

00;12;13;14 - 00;12;40;19

Speaker 2

I decided to become global. Yeah, it was actually a global movement that in America came in later, you know, in that it was founded so I think our founding, because of the way that we started, you have a we have a less corporate mindset. Again, it wasn't started by an American with an American vision, and it was spread from another country saying, hey, there's need in the U.S., let's go at it.

00;12;40;19 - 00;13;06;01

Speaker 2

And what we need to do, it is very grassroots. And because it started that way, we continue to have a very grass roots mentality, a decentralized mentality. So that's important that organizations fairly decentralized, we value indigenous. And in this case I'll use that word indigenous as locally led movements or chapters. And so because of our founding, again, it wasn't founded as a centralized movement.

00;13;06;01 - 00;13;22;17

Speaker 2

One person said, We're going to start this national organization. It was more organic. That day is continues today, where our chapters across the country are locally led and generally can shape their priorities at a very decentralized local level.

00;13;22;19 - 00;13;44;08

Speaker 1

One other distinctive that I know I've appreciate for InterVarsity is the really emphasis on the life of the mind or sort of a deep engagement with academic disciplines and with the not just the sort of student culture on the campus, but the sort of academic conversations on campus. What one do you agree with that? I hope you do.

00;13;44;08 - 00;13;49;00

Speaker 1

And if so, where do you think that comes from or what's the what's the logic behind engaging on that?

00;13;49;01 - 00;14;20;09

Speaker 2

Yeah, I think certainly discipleship of the mind is one of our core values. And people do know InterVarsity for that ultimate, you know, probably two contributing factors to that. One is that even today, so since our founding, we remain solely focused on the university mission field. So as a campus ministry, we've not branched out into children's ministry, we've not branched out into general adult professional ministry or something like that.

00;14;20;12 - 00;14;46;12

Speaker 2

So we maintain that focus on academic fields, you might say, right? Undergraduates, graduates, students, faculty. So that contributes certainly the discipleship of the mind. The other is we have a wonderful publishing press, the InterVarsity Press, certainly as a publisher, also well known for Discipleship of the Mind and you know what a wonderful brand association, IVP, InterVarsity Press and a vast Christian fellowship.

00;14;46;12 - 00;14;48;08

Speaker 2

So that I think that helps us as a ministry.

00;14;48;13 - 00;15;01;18

Speaker 1

Yeah, Well, you mentioned the focus on the university, so give us a sense why do you was InterVarsity maybe you why do you think the in the university is such an important mission field.

00;15;01;21 - 00;15;33;02

Speaker 2

Oh it's it's so strategic I'd say if, if I were someone who was looking at hundreds of different mission opportunities and looking for the highest leverage point, if I you know if I liked our mission feels equally. What's the most strategic? I'm slightly biased, but I would say the university, right. Because you're producing tomorrow's future leaders. You're hitting students or young adults at a time when they're making decisions about their life.

00;15;33;04 - 00;15;50;10

Speaker 2

You're hitting them at a time when for the first time they're making their faith their own, for their traditional student, Right? A traditional student who, even if they grew up in the church or if they didn't, they're now at a place where they're adults living on their own in some cases. Or are these going to school on their own?

00;15;50;13 - 00;16;20;03

Speaker 2

And they're grappling with life's questions in a way they never had had to before. And so they're making life decisions so strategic from that end. So, yeah, shaping their priorities and values for the rest of their lives and open to learning. So open to spiritual learning. And so what more strategic time that you can hit students and the United Nations General secretary, former General Secretary Charles May, like you said, always say if you change the university, you change the world.

00;16;20;03 - 00;16;25;09

Speaker 2

And that's what we believe. And so that's why we focus on the university. Mm hmm.

00;16;25;11 - 00;16;49;29

Speaker 1

I like that quote as well from Malik. How does InterVarsity think about their relationship, its relationship to the university as an institution? I think a lot of outside observers, maybe Christian observers, would say, like, why deal with universities? They're places where students go to lose their faith or, you know, some maybe that's an extreme statement, but I've certainly heard it in our work in Upper House.

00;16;50;01 - 00;16;54;22

Speaker 1

How do you understand InterVarsity sort of relating to universities as institutions?

00;16;54;24 - 00;17;33;11

Speaker 2

Yeah, we do. We view universities positively. I think we always we want a good relationship with the university, not just pragmatically, pragmatically, not because, you know, we want rooms or access or something like that because we do believe part of our role is to see the university renewed. To the best way to illustrate this is probably an analogy that one of our staff used years ago that I that really helps me think about this, which is as a ministry, we're not trying to it's a if a pond is the university, we're not trying to take the fish out of the pond.

00;17;33;13 - 00;17;54;19

Speaker 2

We're not trying to we're actually trying to help cultivate a healthier pond or ecosystem there so the fish can thrive, right? So when when the pond if the pond becomes toxic or there are issues that we want it to become healthy so we care about, we're not trying to just take the fish outright, right? We care about the whole we care about the whole pond, not just the fish in the pond.

00;17;54;26 - 00;18;03;06

Speaker 2

We care about the whole pond, which is the university. So So if the university thrives, we believe that university students thrive, too. And that's what we want to see.

00;18;03;08 - 00;18;17;05

Speaker 1

Yeah, that connects to that. The the strategic nature of universities in our broader, I guess, Western culture or something where they are sort of where a lot of culture is formed a lot of knowledge is created and disseminated.

00;18;17;07 - 00;18;17;23

Speaker 2

That's right.

00;18;17;25 - 00;18;18;03

Speaker 1

Yeah.

00;18;18;07 - 00;18;19;09

Speaker 2

Yeah, that's right.

00;18;19;11 - 00;18;52;15

Speaker 1

Very interesting. So we're we're our series is called Christian Education at the Crossroads. And when we talk about the crossroads, we're looking at changes or challenges in Christian education as a whole. So not just higher education, but the whole. To use the same metaphor, we've been using the whole ecosystem of education. So what are some of the areas where there is a gap, where there is a need for a new way of thinking or new approach within the broader church?

00;18;52;17 - 00;19;28;06

Speaker 2

It's a tough conundrum we're in because the this generation is more or less attracted to gravitate towards entertainment, tried to things that are lighter versus serious and heavy. They have enough anxiety, right. And they're trying to take care of themselves. Right. And yet at the same time, we do, I think, sense there is a need to for a more serious, robust faith or to teach more clear theology or to clarify things that the Bible says.

00;19;28;06 - 00;19;52;23

Speaker 2

So that church is not just about entertainment. So there is a it's an interesting conundrum and challenge we're in. I think that's that's part of the wrestling here. I think the other thing that comes to mind for me is the word I've been honing in on post-COVID quite a bit is lack of fundamentals. So the fundamentals, I think across the board in every sector is missing.

00;19;52;23 - 00;20;16;01

Speaker 2

And I'll give you another fun anecdote of a different my other daughter, she got her driver's license during my older daughter during COVID. She did not have to take the exam. She did not take the driver's test. She didn't go. And nobody saw how she drives. Wisconsin gave her a license without seeing her drive. Do I think she's missing some fundamentals?

00;20;16;03 - 00;20;41;14

Speaker 2

Yes, I do. I do not think she knows how to park a car. And yet her parents let her get the license. I talked about professors at UW, a friend here at University of Wisconsin. You know, I know this is not uncommon in incoming freshmen who are in his basic math class. I don't know if it's calculus or the freshman math class are significantly below standard.

00;20;41;19 - 00;21;05;09

Speaker 2

And they're just they don't know what they should know. And I think what's happened the last few years is we've missed fundamentals. The fundamental and I think same thing in the church. The church has missed fundamentals. I would say in the church, probably not only because of COVID, but I think we've been it's probably been a longer season where the church has been distracted by different things, whether it's entertainment or a variety of other issues or whatnot.

00;21;05;09 - 00;21;30;08

Speaker 2

And so so I think a big key for the future is what does it mean to invest in the fundamentals for churches? It's not the smoke and mirrors, not the like super crazy, innovative ideas, although innovation is great, but what does the fundamentals look like? The basics. And it might be unsexy, not, you know, not, you know, world changing in the sense that, wow, I've never heard of this idea.

00;21;30;08 - 00;21;44;04

Speaker 2

But fundamentals like getting your daughter to drive and park a car, I mean, so I think we've missed that. And and I think in every sector, including the church, investing in the fundamentals is key.

00;21;44;07 - 00;22;06;21

Speaker 1

So, Tom, on something like the fundamentals in the church, uh, what is was InterVarsity trying to do to sort of shore up the fundamentals? I can think immediately of you talking about the importance of Bible study and the importance of being familiar with the the word of God. How do you think about that? How do you think about shoring up the fundamentals, as you say?

00;22;06;23 - 00;22;31;29

Speaker 2

Yeah, we we are we're investing in going back to 1877, how our movement began in Cambridge, England. I mean, we're investing. What does it mean to pray? How do you pray? How do you do Bible study? What does the Bible say? How do you share the gospel to Gen Z? Your fellow students? And so we're training, we're developing students in these basics.

00;22;31;29 - 00;22;51;04

Speaker 2

And I think you might say basics, right? And again, because we're coming out of a COVID season, we don't assume that they know. We don't assume that a Christian student knows how to pray. We don't assume a Christian student has ever studied the Bible before or knows how to study the Bible. And we don't assume they even know what the gospel is.

00;22;51;04 - 00;23;16;13

Speaker 2

And so we don't assume and I don't assume students don't know how to how to have a conversation with each other. You know, recently I talked to a 22 year old, actually someone who just graduated. We were talking about outreach. And I said something like, okay, so, you know, so when you go to why don't you go to campus and spend the day there reaching students?

00;23;16;13 - 00;23;35;12

Speaker 2

And the person said, What do I do when I go on campus? I don't understand what do I do when I get there? And so I don't assume anymore someone knows how to talk to a student to engage on campus, that they know what to do with their time. I just don't assume so. Teaching the fundamentals, I think, is a big part.

00;23;35;14 - 00;23;36;16

Speaker 2

Hmm.

00;23;36;19 - 00;23;55;15

Speaker 1

I wondered if you could talk about getting on this ecosystem sort of metaphor. What is InterVarsity sort of theory of change? Like what? How do you approach wanting to move that, improve that ecosystem, improve that pond? What do you see as are the primary ways of doing that?

00;23;55;17 - 00;24;13;17

Speaker 2

Yeah, I think there's well, there's two ways I would say there things InterVarsity does. So it's our theory of change. If we go with the panel. Yeah, I think there are some external factors that certainly would would help us. They do impact our ministry that perhaps we're not in full control of. So I could speak to that as well.

00;24;13;17 - 00;24;43;17

Speaker 2

But but in terms of InterVarsity theory of change, I think the simplest way to put it is engaging people in the scriptures, in community. So that's when we see transformation happen. When students gather as a community engaging the scriptures. So we spent a lot of time teaching students to study the Bible. And because we believe when they engage with the Word of God, their lives are transformed.

00;24;43;17 - 00;25;06;19

Speaker 2

They form convictions. That leads to a changed life, and that doesn't happen in isolation. So it happens. Part of why we emphasize doing it in community is we believe in the life and life discipleship of how when we live together, which you can do on campus, right? Even in commuter schools, there's there's an opportunity to be a community embodied community together when there's life on life relationship that also transforms your life.

00;25;06;19 - 00;25;15;29

Speaker 2

So those two things together bring about the change and transformation. And students live spiritually that we long for.

00;25;16;02 - 00;25;35;18

Speaker 1

You mentioned commuter schools, and it just made me think about one of the things we're talking about Christian education at the crossroads. And there's so much change happening in higher education. I think of one of my sisters. The primary way she went to college was at a community college, which she had to drive to and, you know, didn't live there.

00;25;35;20 - 00;25;41;10

Speaker 1

How do those types of communities fit into your ministry and how you're thinking about things on campus?

00;25;41;17 - 00;26;03;10

Speaker 2

Yeah, it does require different strategies. I would say our values are still the same. We still believe that giving a student at a community college in embodied community experience around the scriptures is still the way that their life is going to changed. There are some nuances in the way the strategy plays out, So, you know, we wouldn't expect them to have a full weekend free.

00;26;03;12 - 00;26;23;23

Speaker 2

You know, for example, if we want to do a long weekend retreat or something, we might shoot for half a day on a Saturday instead, to have a transformative event, let's say, or what time Bible studies take place or what where a community gathering takes place. Those would all change with community colleges, but I think the values are the same.

00;26;23;23 - 00;26;30;11

Speaker 2

It's just how it's played out. It's different. Certainly there are challenges, there are different challenges in the community college space.

00;26;30;13 - 00;26;44;00

Speaker 1

Does InterVarsity see over time? Has there been a an emphasis on sort of the traditional UW Madison type campus versus a community college? Yeah. What's sort of the thinking about? Yeah, about that.

00;26;44;07 - 00;27;15;10

Speaker 2

Great question. Actually, we've had a slight shift in recent years, probably traditionally for a long time. You know, we certainly favored, if not officially, unofficially favored or biased towards the four year residential schools. Yeah, you could say it's easier to do ministry. There is more familiar, you know, students are more available. But in recent years, I think our hearts have been broken for less traditional schools because those are typically the places where there is no Christian community, where there's no other campus ministry.

00;27;15;10 - 00;27;35;15

Speaker 2

Actually, we've been surprised when we researched, we researched about 2500 schools with over a thousand students, 1300 of them. More than half had no campus ministry. Some would be like, there is no way that. How can that be? Actually, if you look at they're actually schools that a lot of people might not have heard of or there are certain community colleges.

00;27;35;17 - 00;28;02;09

Speaker 2

And then you begin to think, Oh, I can see why there's no other ministry here. There's no ministry here. It's it's hard. And so we've shifted that way. And, you know, a lot of these schools are also Hispanic serving institutions or tribal native institutions. They're places that we value as InterVarsity, but they're not traditional college ministry. And so we've had to learn how to do it differently in those places.

00;28;02;10 - 00;28;03;25

Speaker 2

Mm hmm.

00;28;03;27 - 00;28;16;03

Speaker 1

The time you talked about some of the factors under university's control to try to effect change, you also mentioned external factors. Are things sort of outside your control? Yeah. Talk to me about that. What are some of those?

00;28;16;05 - 00;28;44;26

Speaker 2

Yeah, it's. It's the fact that we're a part of a wider ecosystem. So we'll just say we, you know, we would call ourselves, you know, a Christian campus ministry or someone label that evangelical right? We're part of a bigger evangelical ecosystem, right? And so what happens in the ecosystem affects us all. So even if InterVarsity was not the instigator or wasn't the primary mover on that, and so there are things like how the church is doing, Is the church healthy?

00;28;44;26 - 00;29;11;27

Speaker 2

Is it not healthy? What's going on in the church today? Those things affect the university because we're depending on and you look at our downstream in the in the sense that, you know, we're receiving youth that have had some youth experiences in the church, but Gen Z, the most unchurched generation ever. Right. So their lack of spiritual engagement or church experience that affects us, that's downstream.

00;29;11;27 - 00;29;39;25

Speaker 2

We're downstream. So we're receiving that. What other Christian institutions do, if they do something that's not great and it gets some bad PR, it actually affects us too, because we're lumped in the same ecosystem. So those things affect us. And then maybe last thing I'll share that has to do with the universities directly as campus access. So yeah, sometimes there are religious liberty issues that pop up on university campuses and so that's sometimes out of our control.

00;29;39;25 - 00;29;52;06

Speaker 2

And so if we're if a university administration has a certain policy that they create and that doesn't allow certain Christian groups on campus, we can't be on that campus. And so that affects us, too. Yeah.

00;29;52;08 - 00;30;23;07

Speaker 1

I want to push into that a little more and and just get a sense from you. You mentioned, you know, students that are coming in to college are formed by their church life, you know, the 15 years before that, 18 years before that, also that the reputation of the church in the society affects your work. If you can identify sort of what's the biggest challenge there right now, what is what are you having to what's what's dripping into the pond that you're having to sort of sift out or something?

00;30;23;09 - 00;30;57;02

Speaker 2

Well, yeah, that's that's a big question. I think depending on your church, for example, the the polarization we're seeing in society. Right. So whatever side polarizing force that you're on, wherever you're your church comes from, we receive those folks. So that affects us. I think what's chipping in is, you know, things that are the gospel that's intertwined with culture or politics or Christian nationalism or, you know, or whatever, you know, you get a variety of things.

00;30;57;04 - 00;31;24;09

Speaker 2

We often half jokingly say, you know, it's much easier working with non-Christian students who have no faith background because they have no baggage. They're not carrying any baggage. In fact, they're coming so open minded, open hearted that it's actually wonderful working with those kind of students. Whereas sometimes when you have Christian students that come from certain church backgrounds or from struggling churches, they're bringing some baggage that you have to engage with and help them reflect, do some self-reflection.

00;31;24;09 - 00;31;31;08

Speaker 2

Okay. What actually what does the Bible really say about this? And what did your church say? Maybe they're not the same thing. And so. So you have some of that.

00;31;31;10 - 00;32;08;05

Speaker 1

Yeah. That resonates so much with the work we do here at Upper House. And I think, you know, one of the things and I think it's across the board, I wouldn't identify with any particular Protestant tradition or anything, but just the and I felt this as a student as well some years ago coming in with a pretty traditional white evangelical upbringing is just a lack of ability to read the Bible in a way that took the Bible seriously on its own terms, as opposed to sort of engaging in a lot of other debates that the Bible is conscripted into.

00;32;08;10 - 00;32;25;21

Speaker 1

The way I see this now, too, where students are Christian students even are sort of embarrassed to read the Bible, or at least they're fearful about what are the implications, particularly of of problematic texts and how to make sense of them and how to fit them into the values that they've been brought up with in other parts of their life.

00;32;25;23 - 00;32;45;04

Speaker 1

So I don't know what that was all maybe that's biblical literacy or so I don't know. That feels a little too thin of a category. But yeah, that seems to be a one that we, we, we deal with a lot here and are trying to think about how do you just you know, in some ways I wish people Christians were getting that much earlier than when they were at college because there's so many other things that they're trying to grapple with.

00;32;45;04 - 00;32;50;21

Speaker 1

But it seems like sort of a basic ability, maybe ability is not the right word, but basic confidence in the Bible.

00;32;50;23 - 00;32;51;11

Speaker 2

Yeah.

00;32;51;14 - 00;33;01;04

Speaker 1

As the received word of God and that, you know, it it it's a really interesting text. It's not just sort of this beautiful text that you have to confront because you're a Christian or something like that.

00;33;01;05 - 00;33;30;03

Speaker 2

Yeah, I think biblical illiteracy is a huge issue. Again, what I what I look at and have hope for is when you look at there's been studies shown around non-Christian students, people with no faith background in their engagement with the Bible, the American Bible study just came out with a survey really fascinating. They surveyed people without faith, background, Gen Z types, and they found that two thirds of the people they surveyed are curious about reading the Bible.

00;33;30;03 - 00;33;45;19

Speaker 2

They're curious. They want to learn. They want to read the Bible. They're curious. One third are very or extremely curious about the Bible. So, you know, it gives me a lot of hope. And it probably comes from a fact if they have no faith background, they're they're just really curious about what this Bible is. You know?

00;33;45;22 - 00;34;07;01

Speaker 1

Yeah, fascinating. Yeah. It's a that's another thing I learned through Campus Ministries and elsewhere is how interesting. I mean, I'm sure some people are curious about the Bible because of its claim and Christians claim that it's the word of God. It's also just an amazing piece of literature that is very based on the themes and on the construction.

00;34;07;01 - 00;34;22;29

Speaker 1

Very intricate. Obviously it's classic in world literature, but I think that that for me, particularly as a Christian growing up, I never got that part of what the Bible is. I got it as sort of a source of truth, a rule book, maybe in some cases a sort of claim on science and other things. I never got that.

00;34;22;29 - 00;34;37;03

Speaker 1

It was like a really good he's a literature and that a lot of the theology can be expressed through the stories, through understanding the original languages, all those types of things that a university is a very good place to be exposed to some of that.

00;34;37;03 - 00;34;39;05

Speaker 2

So yeah, that's right.

00;34;39;07 - 00;34;45;01

Speaker 1

Yeah. Anyway, that's, that's a there's a lot, there's a lot that is confronting students these days.

00;34;45;04 - 00;34;45;11

Speaker 2

Yeah.

00;34;45;16 - 00;35;16;00

Speaker 1

One other question on this before moving to sort of the last thing I want to talk about, you know, InterVarsity is one of many campus ministries, Upper house as a one that's local here at UW Madison, but there are other very large national ministries. How do you relate to those ministries? I know it's not like other broad traditions, like maybe the Catholic Church, which has a pretty central hierarchy and everyone's sort of coordinating and that's not the evangelical world.

00;35;16;00 - 00;35;29;24

Speaker 1

I know it's a much different the sort of deal centered world, but yeah, how do you relate to these other ministries that are doing pretty similar work, but maybe each has their own lives and are many of the same campuses at the same time?

00;35;29;26 - 00;36;03;12

Speaker 2

Yeah, we're great question. We're in an we're probably in a season where we're seeing significant partnership and that's in collaboration, which is beautiful to see. So while we are the largest or one of the largest, we partner with peer ministries across the board, whatever size, regional, whatever their focus. And a big part of it is because we launched this initiative in partnership with CRU, another campus ministry that is called Every Campus.

00;36;03;12 - 00;36;32;28

Speaker 2

We too have a common goal certainly helps. So versus without a common goal, you're sort of like, well, you just play nice with each other because you should be nice know. But now we have a common missional goal, which is, as I was sharing before, a lot of campuses have no ministry at all, so why should we spend all their time trying to figure out how we're supposed to work together as 20 different campus ministries and on campus when those ten campuses over there have nothing going on?

00;36;33;01 - 00;37;01;12

Speaker 2

So it's led to a level of coordination, prayer together, relationship together, collaboration that's been really encouraging. So we formed the every Campus coalition. And in fact, just recently there was a meeting of there's about 100 partners now, 100 different organizations that are part of it, wanting to see, you know, revival happen on college campuses and more campuses have some sort of Christian community.

00;37;01;12 - 00;37;03;28

Speaker 2

And so it's just wonderful to see.

00;37;04;01 - 00;37;10;14

Speaker 1

I imagine, is that collaboration to the level of sharing sort of data and contacts or is it is still sort of.

00;37;10;17 - 00;37;26;21

Speaker 2

Is actually it is at the level we started with prayer. So we thought, you know, part of my my thing was people can't argue with prayer. So, you know, like, well, you can we pray together? Yes, we can pray together, you know, But we are at the level we're sharing data. We're sharing where are we at? What campuses are you working on?

00;37;26;21 - 00;37;54;28

Speaker 2

What are your priorities? Who's there? You know, And then we're actually starting to follow up together soon on on places where if someone wants to start something or somebody has a question about a campus where there's no work, we're doing follow up together as well. So there's there is more sharing. And certainly we're sharing resources, too. So when you start talking about spending money that you know, you put dollars behind, it also means something significant rather than just paying lip service to partnership.

00;37;55;04 - 00;38;11;11

Speaker 1

Right. Yeah. I want to get your take quickly on the Asbury Revival. I think that did it. I think that's what most people are calling it now. Yeah. Yeah. What does InterVarsity make of that? How do you think about those types of really interesting developments?

00;38;11;14 - 00;38;46;22

Speaker 2

Yeah, well, I mean, yeah, of course. Asbury Revival happened at a Christian college that we don't work at. We don't really work at many Christian colleges. There's a few we're at, but generally we're at what you would call secular universities and colleges. We're encouraged. I mean, I think overall, whether we would label it a revival or not, you know, we do see as students repenting before the word confessing sin, I mean, humbling themselves and truly longing for God and all that comes with it.

00;38;46;22 - 00;39;15;16

Speaker 2

I mean, there there's stories of not just a longing for God, but wanting to follow God to a cost of commitment where it actually would cost them something. And I think we will see movements that come out of Asbury or graduates that do world impacting things that including changing the world for the better or related to reviving certain sectors of society.

00;39;15;18 - 00;39;39;06

Speaker 2

Justice work through change and transformation in our society, as well as the internal change that I think spiritual change that we would expect from a revival like that. So I think that's coming. But to me, the most encouraging thing is seeing a generation get down on their knees, repenting before the Lord confessing humbling themselves and saying, We need you, God, because we know things are screwed up.

00;39;39;08 - 00;39;54;14

Speaker 2

That's I mean, in a nutshell, that's my assessment, is why did it happen? How I, I don't know all the factors, but I do know this generation recognized that something's wrong with the world and something's wrong with themselves. You know, it's broken and they're seeking out it.

00;39;54;17 - 00;40;15;09

Speaker 1

Yeah. And on the wrong with with themselves. The confessing part. One thing I know is I tuned in, you know, you could sort of tune in online and just sort of see it. And a lot of the student like one of the consistent things that the students brought up was feelings of anxiety. Yes. Which I just it seemed interesting as a sort of maybe a generational thing.

00;40;15;09 - 00;40;27;04

Speaker 1

I think we all have anxiety to certain extent, but it seemed like a consistent repentance is is, is or request from God was like, take our anxiety. What do you make of that and what do you make of anxiety there?

00;40;27;06 - 00;41;07;17

Speaker 2

It's it's the number one challenge confronting this generation of students by far mental health and anxiety. I mean, it's it's affecting every college student, grad student that's out there. You know, I think college administrators could speak of this better than I can. But, you know, they're not staffed enough all to deal with the demand that students have for mental health services and yeah, and it's the characteristic of this generation and it's that it's it's hard and it's combined with isolation, sense of being alone.

00;41;07;17 - 00;41;33;21

Speaker 2

It just it's a very challenge, a big challenge for this generation. I think there are ways that the gospel can speak into it. I think there's ways that there's good news that maybe we don't need to fear or we don't need to, that Jesus and the Gospel can address some things that might otherwise feed into our anxiety. But it's still a challenge.

00;41;33;21 - 00;41;43;08

Speaker 2

Of course, you know, there are so many committed followers of Jesus that significantly struggle with that and that that is the big challenge of our day.

00;41;43;11 - 00;41;59;05

Speaker 1

Do you have any thoughts? I'm asking you play sort of armchair social critic here, but any thoughts on why, like, you know, there's the arguing about technology and the role that smartphones and other things play. Isolation, I think are sort of these breaking down of of community. Yeah. What do you think is contributing to it?

00;41;59;08 - 00;42;17;09

Speaker 2

Yeah I mean I have my personal thoughts. I mean, I do think I think there is sides of technology. Technology can be used for good or bad, but there are certainly sides of technology that do it. You trace, you know, the invention of the iPhone and with, you know, do you know, do you do a correlation with mental health and anxiety?

00;42;17;09 - 00;42;41;24

Speaker 2

Certainly there are some things that could be said there. What I usually say to this is I just say share an anecdote about my daughter. So I've got a 16 year old daughter who who desperately wants to put down her phone. She's choosing a summer camp this summer at Wheaton College for she wants to go there for a month because they don't allow phones there.

00;42;41;26 - 00;42;57;25

Speaker 2

And I told her, I said, you know, I could take away your phone right now. You don't have to go to the camp. She said, No, no, no. She said, Dad, you don't understand. When all my friends are on their phone, then I have to be on my phone. I just can't, you know? But I want to be in a place where one else has their phone.

00;42;57;27 - 00;43;17;16

Speaker 2

Now, this is completely self initiated by her, so it tells me she knows that the phone is not healthy for her. It is creating more anxiety for her and she can't put it down. But she knows that something's wrong, you know? And so so I do think there's there's some tie there. And then of the pandemic and isolation did not help things.

00;43;17;16 - 00;43;35;18

Speaker 2

I think that that that didn't cause what we're seeing today. But it certainly didn't help and, you know, likely made things worse because of the increased isolation we saw. And now, you know, people are perhaps, you know, engaging even less with each other in person. And so that adds to the challenge.

00;43;35;26 - 00;43;56;06

Speaker 1

Yeah. You know, I, I teach a I was teaching in the class here at UW just last week. And, you know, there's a historian's question to ask a class. But, you know, every generation has like that event that sort of defines a generation. For me, I was 14 when 911 happened. That was sort of the defining moment. Of course, we're very recent.

00;43;56;10 - 00;44;23;04

Speaker 1

We're recently off of COVID, so maybe this is biased, but I asked a group of students, or what's that defining event? And I actually expected that a lot of them to say like 2016 election, because that's a very common one on here. But they all said COVID. And, you know, that's maybe instinctual, but they all they all explained it in very distinct sort of ways, all about breaking of of basically friendships, social bonds, missing out on graduations from high school or whatever.

00;44;23;04 - 00;44;33;27

Speaker 1

And like these these key events. So anyway, I do think that that's certainly a defining mark of that generation of sort of the students that are now undergrads in college.

00;44;33;28 - 00;44;34;23

Speaker 2

Yeah.

00;44;34;25 - 00;44;39;17

Speaker 1

And I don't think we even really totally understand it yet exactly what the extent of the the break is.

00;44;39;19 - 00;45;02;09

Speaker 2

But yes, right. Yeah. The studies keep showing I mean, these studies keep coming out as alarming. I think the NIH had one around teenage girls and half of them have 50% or some figure like that struggle with severe depression or suicide or I mean, it's just. Yeah, every year, just each each year in this in this season, we're seeing, I think, harder and harder heartbreaking news, I think.

00;45;02;12 - 00;45;13;15

Speaker 1

Is there anything as the leader of an organization that, you know, is trying to minister to these students, is there anything you're thinking about doing differently in the next season to sort of like hit that head on?

00;45;13;17 - 00;45;42;24

Speaker 2

Yeah, there's a variety of things, but I'll just share. One of them is I'm a big believer of bringing students away to unplug experiences off of campus. That's very interesting. As a ministry, we highly value ministry on campus. That's that's why we exist. Everything happens on campus, in your dorms and everything. But in this season, we're investing more in how do we bring students off campus to retreat centers?

00;45;43;00 - 00;46;14;03

Speaker 2

Nature. If it is in a hotel in a city, because you're an urban area that's hard to get, that's fine. But a third space, that's not your university where you can unplug more or create rules to unplug, be in an embodied community where you're together with students. That, I think is one way that both from an overall health standpoint, maybe that to help people be more healthy holistically, but from a spiritual engagement point, you're taking them away from distraction as well so they can more engage spiritually.

00;46;14;03 - 00;46;24;25

Speaker 2

So so that's an example of one that we think we need to do with Gen Z. We've always done camps and things like this, but to invest even more with this generation there. Hmm.

00;46;24;27 - 00;46;48;02

Speaker 1

Well, that gets us to our my last big question, which is about scale. So I'm really fascinated by InterVarsity and I'm thinking of sort of doing these these sort of retreats like all across the country. Right? You Wouldn't just do it in one spot. InterVarsity is such a large organization. You mentioned 1500 or so employees, tens of thousands of people who sort of are coming in and out of InterVarsity programing.

00;46;48;05 - 00;46;59;27

Speaker 1

There's got to be some blessings to to that scale, but there's also got to be some challenges to it. So if you could just yeah, from from the leaders perspective, sort of what's the blessing and what's the challenge of such a large organization?

00;47;00;02 - 00;47;27;20

Speaker 2

Yeah, great question. I mean, yeah, there are a lot of benefits that come with scale. I think we're, you know, in every state, in almost every locality you can think of. And so so that's wonderful. The breadth of our ministry everywhere, you know, our sister movements are in 170 countries. So we've got movements around the world, even though in of our of us is not running them, we we identify with sister movement.

00;47;27;20 - 00;47;55;19

Speaker 2

So to be part of a big fellowship is wonderful. You I feel richly blessed to be part of a big fellowship where I can interact with brothers and sisters in almost anywhere around the world right now that hold and carry very similar values. So there's so there's blessings there. The scale allows us, as I mentioned before, to do a lot of things efficiently so we can do a training or a a tool that we create for a campus.

00;47;55;22 - 00;48;18;11

Speaker 2

And it doesn't get used in one campus. It gets used at 700 campuses, right? So so that that scale is really, really helpful. A lot of internal learning. So you can have we have a lot of wonderful leaders in our movement. And so we learn from each other and the richness of learning from each other and not being alone in isolation.

00;48;18;11 - 00;48;45;29

Speaker 2

If you were with a smaller organization, some of the downsides we are slower because we're big, you know, we're slower. We, you know, one size doesn't fit all, even though where we have scale, it's sort of because we're big. We're also very diverse. So we have a lot of different kinds of ministries. We've got campuses where we focus on athletes and some where we have a lot of Greek students, fraternity, sorority students.

00;48;45;29 - 00;49;16;00

Speaker 2

We've got ones that are a lot of engineering. We've got community colleges, you've got students so and so. You can imagine, while scale is great, not always just one tool work for everybody. So because of that, we're creating multiple versions of tools then right where we have a high value for contextualization. So where we're changing and tweaking everything to fit all the different exceptions in our movement.

00;49;16;00 - 00;49;36;12

Speaker 2

So so we've got that. Yeah, and we're slow, as I mentioned, that's so big decisions, you know, because I'm trying to or my leadership team is trying to represent the whole it takes a while to, to get the buy in from the whole to try to roll something out Organization wide is not that easy because again, we're we're big, we're wide, we're diverse.

00;49;36;18 - 00;50;04;22

Speaker 2

So, yeah, so I think those are those are some of the challenges and we have to always be aware of mission creep. So, you know, when you're big and you have a lot of people, nothing bad, just people have different things they want to do and you can end up going in different directions if you're not watching carefully around, okay, is everything we're doing with our purpose, our mission, what God is calling to us as a ministry.

00;50;04;24 - 00;50;06;25

Speaker 2

So, so those kinds of things. So yeah.

00;50;06;25 - 00;50;24;02

Speaker 1

Yeah. And so different from on both the benefits and the challenges for many of the other people we've interviewed who are, you know, running things very large like, like a university or a nonprofit, but but not as large as InterVarsity.

00;50;24;02 - 00;50;44;11

Speaker 2

So one of the things I enjoy is, you know, well, that's a fun thing is because we do have a lot of boots on the ground. I often say so some ministries are really great content producers, but They have no boots on the ground. So when we can partner with them, they often look to partner with us because they're looking for boots on the ground.

00;50;44;11 - 00;51;07;16

Speaker 2

We can provide that and then that that's one of the fun things is we can test things out sometimes because we got a lot of boots on the ground to test. And then I'll just say personally, as leader, I can always find encouraging stories because because we've got a thousand chapters around the country and there's always something fun and amazing happening somewhere and right.

00;51;07;20 - 00;51;20;03

Speaker 2

And I can often find encouragement from there. Now, of course, there's a flipside. There's usually a problem somewhere around the country because with a thousand places, there's bound to be some problem somewhere. So but anyways, it is a lot of fun.

00;51;20;04 - 00;51;45;08

Speaker 1

Yeah, well, let's end on this question. I wonder from your perspective, what's what's the main thing or one thing that you're looking at in higher education as a whole, maybe this secular higher education world that InterVarsity largely serves? What's the thing that you are looking for in in that sort of ecosystem in this next season.

00;51;45;10 - 00;52;31;01

Speaker 2

As it pertains to the university? Yeah. Was there. Yeah. I mean, I think it's hard to narrow down to one. I think from a college and university standpoint. I think one of my concerns that I see and challenges in the university world that maybe a campus ministry like ours can address is I'll just put it as a decline in investment in soft skills or areas like the liberal arts or even say, you know, not for bad reason, but generally I think universities and colleges and Gen Z in general is is gravitating towards the pragmatic.

00;52;31;03 - 00;52;53;08

Speaker 2

We're in a time when this generation's concerned about jobs are they're going to they're going to be able to survive in the big bad world fear. Right. And so there's a gravitation so the pragmatic I think people are doing things that are I would say they're getting tracked earlier to certain pre-professional routes. And so there's less of the exploration of ideas.

00;52;53;10 - 00;53;13;11

Speaker 2

And then I think in the process, we gradually lose soft skills. So emotional intelligence, cultural intelligence, how do you solve conflict? How do you relate to people? How do you start a conversation? I mean, there's a lot of these things that are important to the fabric of our society, but I think the investment in those are going down.

00;53;13;13 - 00;53;45;01

Speaker 2

And you can understand because a financial models and other economic models why colleges and universities need to do what they're doing. But in the end, I am worried about the long term effects of that. So for a group like university, we actually get asked sometimes like, So what are you all doing about polarization in our society? Or how are you what are you doing about helping students engage in tough issues, in conflict and in arguments, healthy arguments, you know, and because I think they see that colleges and universities aren't doing that, you know, they're not preparing students for that.

00;53;45;01 - 00;54;08;27

Speaker 2

So so it does provide an interesting opportunity for us to engage in that. And as we train students, because we do train students how to lead and serve, you know, how would you love someone that you have a conflict with? How do you reconcile with somebody they you're in conflict with? You know, how do we give you some soft skills to lead?

00;54;08;27 - 00;54;10;28

Speaker 2

Well, so so we're doing those kinds of things.

00;54;11;03 - 00;54;42;00

Speaker 1

You know, it just to bring this full circle that seems like one way that campus ministries, that Christian ministries of all types can serve the university is if students are learning these in the sort of formal curriculum of the university or the the or the sort of formal part of being in the university, or they can get them from these ministries, that that's not the primary goal of these ministries, but in some ways it's integral to the gospel and to our Christian values of humility and dialog and other things.

00;54;42;00 - 00;54;43;25

Speaker 2

So it is it is.

00;54;43;26 - 00;54;52;10

Speaker 1

So there's a sort of an opening there. Even even if it's an absence, there's an opening to fill a need in many of these universities that isn't being met right now.

00;54;52;12 - 00;55;16;05

Speaker 2

Have a great story from probably several years ago. But one of the University of California schools, they were dealing with some racial tensions on campus and the head administrator I don't know if it's from the president's office or a dean's office, they actually called the university students in to the office, the university leaders into the office saying you're the most diverse group on campus.

00;55;16;08 - 00;55;45;06

Speaker 2

You're the largest group on campus, too. You must know something about race relations. And how do you how do you do it? How do you relate together as such a diverse group? And will you help us? Will you give us some advice? And I just found that so striking because that university administration looking towards this Christian group for answers to their most pressing problems on their campus and we like that actually, that demonstrates some of what we talked about, this partnership with the university.

00;55;45;08 - 00;55;56;11

Speaker 2

We're for the university, not against it. And we want our students to be salt and white servant leaders to their university. So so those are that that may be a good illustration of this.

00;55;56;11 - 00;56;16;24

Speaker 1

Oh, definitely. And that that's such a vision of of kingdom ethics or what what the Kingdom of God is called to do right is to, is to show a different type of loyalty, a different type of unity around Jesus, as opposed to other things. So thank you, Tom. Thank you for the conversation and great to hear from you.

00;56;16;26 - 00;56;18;19

Speaker 2

Great to be here. Thanks.

00;56;18;22 - 00;56;48;02

Speaker 1

Thanks for joining us. If you've enjoyed today's podcast, be sure to subscribe and give us a rating on your favorite podcast app. Also, be sure to check out our upcoming events on Opera House dot org and our other podcast Upwards, where we dig deeper into the topics our in-house guests are passionate about. With Faith in Mind is supported by the Stephen and Laurel Brown Foundation is produced at Upper House in Madison, Wisconsin, hosted by Dan Hummel and John Terrell, our executive producer and editor is Jesse Koopman.

00;56;48;05 - 00;56;52;10

Speaker 1

Please follow us on social media with the handle at Upper House, UW.