EP. 98: Presence Over Politics with Dr. Blake Thompson

What if putting your phone down is the first step toward real reconciliation? In this episode, Dr. Blake Thompson, president of Mississippi College, joins us for a thoughtful conversation about faith, leadership, civil discourse, and the future of Mississippi.

From his steady journey of faith to his work shaping the next generation of leaders, Dr. Thompson reflects on the importance of being fully present, practicing meaningful conversation, and building communities grounded in Christian hope. Together, we explore why reconciliation and healthy dialogue require more than online opinions—they require relationships.

Special thanks to our sponsors: 

Nissan, St. Dominic's Hospital, Atmos Energy, Regions Foundation, Mississippi College, Anderson United Methodist Church, Grace Temple Church, Mississippi State University, Real Christian Foundation, Brown Missionary Baptist Church, Christian Life Church, Ms. Doris Powell, Mr. Robert Ward, and Ms. Ann Winters.

Transcript

Welcome And How To Support

SPEAKER_00 0:12

This is Living Reconciled, a podcast dedicated to giving our communities practical evidence of the gospel message by helping Christians learn how to live in the reconciliation that Jesus has already secured for us by living with grace across racial lines. Hey, thanks so much for joining us on episode 98 of Living Reconciled. I'm your host, Brian Crawford. Typically, my friend Nettie Winters would be joining us, but he is not with us today. But I got another good friend that I'm really, really excited to let you guys hear from today. Before I introduce him, I do want to give a quick shout out to our sponsors, folks like Nissan, St. Dominic Hospital, Atmos Energy Regents Foundation, Mississippi College, of who my guest is very familiar with, Anderson United Methodist Church, Grace Temple Church, Mississippi State University, folks like Real Christian Foundation, Brown Missionary Baptist Church, and even people like Miss Doris Powell, Mr. Robert Ward, Miss Ann Winners, Bellhaven University. So many interesting, incredible sponsors that are committed to the work of reconciliation. We want you to join that illustrious list. And you can do so by visiting missionmississippi.org. There is a button on the top right that says donate slash invest. We would love for you to donate into this work. And by so doing, and in so doing, you're not only supporting the work of Living Reconcile Podcast, but you're supporting the work of reconciliation through Mission Mississippi that's happening all over the state. So please join that group. We would also uh love for you to like, share, and subscribe to this podcast. You can do so very easy. You can visit any podcast app and search on Living Reconciled. And if you search on Living Reconciled, you'll find this episode where you can like, share, share this episode, but you can also subscribe to the podcast where we have episodes that we're releasing on a regular basis, exploring reconciliation through the lens of Mississippians all over this state and through the lens of vocation and faith. And so please like, share, and subscribe to this podcast, Living

Celebration Story And Unexpected Fire Alarm

SPEAKER_00 2:14

Reconcile. I want to introduce you to my guest today. He is a dear friend. He is an incredible leader, an incredible thinker, visionary, but most importantly, he's an incredible man of faith. And I can't wait for you to hear his story and his journey of faith. And that is none other than Dr. Blake Thompson. Sir, how are you doing today?

SPEAKER_01 2:33

I'm doing great, Brian. I'm so glad to join you and I'm so glad to be a part of all the good work that you're doing.

SPEAKER_00 2:39

I am glad that you are a part of the good work. I'm I'm so glad that Mississippi College is a part of the good work. Even while, before we even get into your story, I just want to plug the fact that for the second year in a row, uh Mississippi College is hosting our annual celebration on September the 24th, uh the Living Reconcile celebration that will be hosted in Anderson Hall. And last year was an incredible, incredible uh gathering. We and we anticipate that it's gonna be even better this year. And so thank you for your partnership, Dr. Thompson. We're incredibly appreciative of it.

SPEAKER_01 3:11

We were we were honored to host that last year. Last year's event was filled with um incredible moments, some surprises. Um I don't know if you want me to tell the story or feel free to dive in, dive in. We had a we had a remarkable evening in which Brian Crawford, as the leader of Mission Mississippi, commended all of us to put our cell phones down. And they had a had a a basket in the middle of the room with stickers where you could put a sticker on your cell phone and put it put it away. So it didn't distract from the um the evening. Brian, you gave an incredible talk about you know being focused and free of anxiety. Um and then about the time we got started, the fire alarm went off. And and I had to scramble to find my phone to call to find out what was going on, and was finally able to go up to the podium and and tell folks that it was not an actual fire. But, you know, that makes the event exciting, and you just never know what we're going to experience. And I'm convinced somehow God used it for his purpose. And I was glad we could do it then, and I'm glad we can do it again this coming year. I would invite everybody to come to our campus to enjoy it. You'll be coming to our campus to take part in an a living reconciled event that uh perhaps is among the most important things that we do. Uh we are celebrating, we're in the middle of celebrating a bicentennial, and this certainly is a worthy event for us to host during a big year on our campus.

SPEAKER_00 4:44

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And it and it was it was an incredible celebration last year. We anticipate it will be even better. Um, and and it won't be because we have fire alarms. I think I think that's we might. We may we may it feels like that's a once-in-a-lifetime uh moment where you have where you have fire alarms 10 minutes after you tell everybody to put their phones in their baskets, including the president of the university. So I I don't anticipate that happening again, but who knows? The Lord may surprise us. But but it was an incredible event. And I can't wait to hear you talk a little bit about uh this this bicentennial celebration and and all the all the beautiful things that God is doing through uh Mississippi

A Steady Faith Shaped By Community

SPEAKER_00 5:25

College. But before I before I lead you there, if you don't mind, talk to us a little bit about your journey, your story of faith. Uh tell tell us how you came to uh to faith in the Lord Jesus and talk a little bit about how you came to this place that you are today at Mississippi College.

SPEAKER_01 5:41

Well, uh I I'll I'll say that the Lord has had surprises for me all along the way. But I'm incredibly thankful and grateful for it. Ryan, it really starts in in small town Ryanzi, Mississippi. A couple of hundred people in the northeast corner of the state. And I think my my story is like so many others of faithful parents who led and discipled, even if I didn't realize what they were doing. We once hosted a guest on our campus, a very famous quarterback, actually, who said, I don't have a remarkable conversion story other than the fact that it's remarkable that our Savior has chosen us. And so I don't I I don't have any any story other than the fact that I went to church with my mom and dad every Sunday and my three brothers and my grandmother all in one vehicle, an Oldsmobile sedan. We certainly weren't all wearing seatbelts. And and I think my walk, right, is epitomized by people all along the way who encouraged me, who really pointed me toward Jesus until I figured out that that that was my path and that he had come to save me. And um, and it made all the difference in the world. I can think of revivals at Ryanzi Baptist Church, I can think of uh times at my grandmother's church across the street in Ryanzi. I can think of events on baseball fields where I feel like multiple times, right, I inched closer toward um toward my Savior. And I'm I'm so thankful that I was, I thought I was inching toward him. And in reality, he was coming to get me and coming to save me. And as I look back, it was all his doing. It was all his work instead of my own. I've joked over my life, I have been uh a whole bunch of different denominations. Even I I joke at one point in my life I I was a little bit of a seventh-day horizontalist, you know. I shouldn't have, but I laid on the couch on Sunday. And the amazing part of the story is that through all of it, and I really do have this view that that there's one church, and through all of it, God has been faithful and has has brought me to Him. And I'm um and my response is to just be thankful. And and then as I heard at a funeral not too long ago, is right, is to is to point other uh beggars toward where the food is. And that's that's how I would I would describe my walk and my journey.

SPEAKER_00 8:16

That's that that's incredible, Dr. Thompson, include including that that tidbit that you highlighted about, you know, there were there were no like, you know, earth-shattering moments, so to speak, or you know, no horror stories of doom turning to bloom. You know, it was it was just this steady progression of God making himself known to you. And that and that's reassuring because there's so many times where people are kind of wrestling with stories of faith and testimony. I've heard people say this even at you know, putting on my pastoral hat. I've heard people say, Well, I don't have, you know, one of these kind of bang whiz testimonies. And and and I tell people all the time, you don't you don't need one. The the greatest testimony you have is that Christ saw you and saved you. And all the other pieces are just icing on the cake, you know. But that but that's the miracle that Christ saw you and saved you, you know. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 9:08

And yeah, the earth shattering happened about 2,000 years ago, right? Exactly. The most remarkable event in history happened, and all we really do is point toward it. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 9:20

It's nothing we did, we point toward it. Absolutely, absolutely.

From Pharmacy To National Leadership Work

SPEAKER_00 9:24

Tell me about your journey to MC and and you know, I got a sneaky suspicion that when when you were trying to figure all this stuff out on a baseball field that you didn't say one day I'm gonna be the president of Mississippi.

SPEAKER_01 9:35

No, no, I had no idea. Um to be honest with you, right, right. I went I went I went to pharmacy school. Now, a lot of the reason I went to pharmacy school was because the young lady I was pursuing at the time was in pharmacy school, and I'm so thankful to say that the guys ordered my steps. She's my wife now. Praise God. I was in my last year of pharmacy school and I proposed, and before she answered me, she said, Are you gonna actually graduate? And I was able to affirm that I was. So she then affirmed that she would marry me. And we've we've had a just a wonderful winding path from there to MC. We started our married lives together. Um, I was in graduate school and she was working to put me through graduate school. That ultimately led to working in Washington, D.C. My first uh, my first real job from outside of the university in graduate school was working for Senator Cochran on Capitol Hill, helping him represent the state of Mississippi and had a great time there and learned some incredible lessons and got to meet incredible people, people who are mentors even to today. My first boss in Senator Cochrane's office was Dr. Keenum, uh, who is the president of Mississippi. Yeah. I think he knew he was going to be president. We worked together to support the work of Senator Cochrane. And then I eventually moved over and worked on the Appropriations Committee where I got to know people from all across the country and the world. When it came time uh to leave Washington, D.C., I joined a nonprofit organization called Battel. Battel is the world's largest nonprofit research and development organization. They run national laboratories, they manage large research and development contracts for the federal government. They really partner with companies to do innovation and create discoveries and inventions for the betterment of mankind, as it says in their founding documents. It happens to be located in Columbus, Ohio. So I moved, moved away from Washington, D.C. And my first assignment with Battel was at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Um I'm gonna take a quick sidetrack here. Lord weaves all this together. I was at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the kind of the late 2000s, and just this past weekend on our campus, we had our commencement ceremony, and our commencement speaker was a 93-year-old retired physicist from Vanderbilt University who was on the Oak Ridge National Laboratory campus the same time I was, and he was discovering a new element on the periodic table of elements, and our paths crossed. We didn't know each other back then, but at commencement um this past week, we put together that that our paths were uh interwoven on the Oak Ridge campus um 20 something um years ago. So that was that was my first foray into um the national lab in the research world, um, and I enjoyed it immensely, and then ultimately moved to the Battel Home Office in Columbus, Ohio, which sits um right on the adjacent to the campus of Ohio State University, just a massive complex of research and development and university life. We raised our children in Columbus, Ohio. We were part of um part of a small church plant on the Ohio State campus. We think we were the first church plant on the Ohio State campus, and now there are a dozen of them. It was a formative experience in our understanding of the role of the church. And I had the the good fortune to to work with people at Ohio State who were supportive of me in doing that. And I worked with a couple of amazing presidents that I got to see and know up close. One of them told me, said, said, you'll be a college president someday. And I don't think I believed it. I had a little bit of a certainly a non-traditional path toward um coming back into higher education. And then um a little over eight years ago, um, I was able to call him the morning that I was gonna be announced as president of uh Mississippi College and told him, I said, you know, you told me years ago that I'm gonna be a college president and uh we're gonna announce it today. He paused for a moment and he said, What took you so long? And I I thought I yeah, I thought it was a great moment, a full circle moment. And so I I I'm from Mississippi, I love the state of Mississippi. Didn't know that if I'd ever get the chance to come home. Yeah. Um we were content with where we were in Columbus, and we were doing really I was having fun and and doing the work that I was was given to do at at both Battel and then at Ohio State, and then the door opened, and a friend of a friend called and said, Hey, have you ever thought about coming home? And I describe

Coming Home To Lead A Christian Campus

SPEAKER_01 14:39

it as the door was just kind of cracked open. Right. A thin little slice of light was coming through the door, and and as I started to walk toward that door, uh it just opened wide. And it was not, yeah, uh not my doing. I really do believe this is where where I was called to be and what I was called to do. And we have appreciated the opportunity and enjoyed the chance to come home and and be a part of an incredible institution to really come back to some of our roots, both in in Mississippi, but also in the in the Baptist Church. And as a Baptist institution, um, I'm incredibly thankful to that they have welcomed me back after roaming around this country to to do this work that that we're supported by our churches across the state in doing. We get to see, I really do get to see young people come and become transformed by the education that we provide them. And we continue to transform our institution and try to make it and mold it and shape it into a uh a place that changes uh young people for the better and exposes them to both rigorous academic pursuit, but also wraps around them uh a truth and a beauty that we're created uh uh in this world for a purpose and that God creates us and gives us a calling, and and we kind of help maybe we help them uh discern a little bit, uh maybe in the same way my story is, right? Help them inch toward what it is that God is calling them to do. And I think that really is at the heart of who we are as as an institution. And I'm I'm thankful to be here. Never would have planned it and imagined it. Never, I don't think I ever visited the campus before I was considering uh this as a job opportunity, but um, but I'm incredibly thankful for it.

SPEAKER_00 16:38

And that's an amazing story. Um and and it's a long and winding story, but well, I mean, isn't that oftentimes the way the Lord does it? I can I can certainly attest that that that you know, if you were to ask me, Yeah. You don't have to go very far back for me that to ask me if you, you know, did you think that you would be sitting in the seat that you're sitting in? I I would tell you no. And that, like I said, if you would ask me five years ago, if I was would be sitting in this seat today, I would say no. And so it's interesting how the Lord just enter the story narrative that He that He's shaping for us and putting us in places and spaces, meeting people, rubbing shoulders for reasons that we don't know at the time, but then they all kind of come full circle and wrap the story together into this very neat, uh, neat uh thing that we get a chance to behold. I want to I want to start appealing a little bit more uh of the layers back on that story, but but I heard you say something that really provoked some thought in me. So I want to I want to ask you to explore it a little bit more. You said you love Mississippi, right? And and the reason why that that's that that that resonates with me is because oftentimes when we think about our state, it's it's typically we we are painting with the brush that that that that exposes some of the things that maybe aren't exciting, right? And some of the challenges that we're faced with. You know, you have an interesting vantage point being a president of a Mississippi University and seeing the students, seeing the potential, seeing, seeing, seeing the peaks and what's possible here in the state. What gets

Why Mississippi’s Young Leaders Give Hope

SPEAKER_00 18:12

you excited about the state? What are what are some things that you're seeing as it relates to our young people, as it relates to just momentum and movement and industry? What are some of the things that get you excited about Mississippi right now in general?

SPEAKER_01 18:25

So, you know, it's it's interesting. If you go out to a um youth league soccer game, a soccer match, you can, you know, if you have a really good eye for for talent, you can tell which of those young kids grow up to be soccer players. And I think I have the opportunity to do that on our campus. Yeah, and I get to see some soccer players, but what I really get to see are are young people come on with with talents, with abilities, with leadership skills, and and if you stand back and watch closely, you get to see the next governor of the state of Mississippi, right? You get to see the next CEO leading a multinational corporation, you get to see the next pastor that is that is planting churches across the state. You have to look for it and see it in them. But but when you start noticing it, you see it all over the place. I love doing that. And and then right, I see my role and our role is in encouraging them and and shaping them and and kind of nurturing them to go and do that work. And and I love to do that. It's why I get up every morning and and I I do I spend a lot of time with our students, and and some of it is is on a golf cart, some of it is uh, you know, walking across campus, some of it is having a meal at at the local waffle house. But as I as I see them and interact with them, they give me great optimism about the future of our state. They are who we are going to count on. And and they are why I'm optimistic about our future. And and you know, Brian, they have they have a different perspective on the world than we do. They they have conversations in ways that we perhaps haven't learned to have. They do live and see the world through a different lens than we do. And I mean, and and it encourages me. And I get to s stand in the back of the room sometimes and hear them have conversations, including on race and issues of the day, that they talk about it differently than we do. And in many ways, they don't shy away from some of those difficult conversations. They're willing to have them, and perhaps they don't have some of the baggage that we have from previous generations to deal with. Um, I will have to say, as I've traveled around the country, as I've interacted with students at different campuses, ours are as good and talented and capable of anybody in this world. And so I I feel optimistic about the fact that that they will go out and Brian, they'll take our roles someday. Absolutely. We'll do them better than we do them. And and I'm I'm proud of them and I'm thankful for them.

SPEAKER_00 21:20

Absolutely. Absolutely. When you think about, you mentioned the fact that they aren't shying away from the difficult conversations around race, around politics, around culture, around the things that uh so easily can divide us in this day and

Civil Discourse Starts With Presence

SPEAKER_00 21:35

age. Talk to me a little bit about the state of play as it relates to civil discourse right now. What do you what do you find, what do you find challenging and and and possible opportunities for growth in your space? And what do you find encouraging about where we are today as it relates to how people can agree to disagree?

SPEAKER_01 21:54

Yeah, you know, you know, civil discourse, having conversations, it really does. It does have to happen in real time as a I described as a body contact sport. You do have to be together to do that. And some of it can be done over right online and with technology, but there's no substitute for sitting down across the table from someone and having a conversation. One of my favorite little books that I've given to a bunch of people is a little book called A Meal with Jesus. And in it, it simply goes through the gospel and it talks about all the meals that Jesus shared with people. And the intimacy that came with that, the the revelation that came through that. There's something about actually being with people. And at her funeral, he eulogized her. And he said, and I'll always remember, it was just a striking moment. He said, Mary may not have responded to your text message immediately. She may not have gotten to your email in any kind of timely manner. But when Mary was with you, she was completely with you. When she was sitting there, you were the most important person to her. And it just struck me that that perhaps is at the core of how we live reconciled with people is to actually be with them. And I think it's why it's so important what you did at Living Reconciled last year, where you made us put our phones in that basket and put a sticker on them and and and dismiss them from our mind. Yeah. So important. The the ability to simply sit across from someone engage and have a conversation with them is becoming a lost heart. And I do hope we are encouraging our students to do that. I do hope we're um creating an environment where they see the beauty and the value in doing that. And I do have faith in them that if they engage in that way, um they're going to reconcile and deal with and solve the issues, the most pressing issues that we face today.

SPEAKER_00 24:37

Yeah. Dr. Thomas Homay, what you what you're highlighting is something that is very much a necessity, I feel like, for the moment that we're in, um is for us to reassess what it means to be fully present and to move at the pace of connection and at the pace of presence. It's been shared, been shared with me on several occasions. Um a question was asked, what is the pace of God? And uh an old wise preacher, wiser than me, said three miles an hour. And what he was describing was Jesus, while he was incarnate, everywhere he went, he walked. And there was always enough time for relationship and connection, and that what you do not see when you read the gospels is a God in a hurry. You see a you see the God of the universe constantly leaving room for connection, constantly leaving room to be fully present in the moment and with the people that he's engaging, constantly leaving room for interruption. Here's this woman with the issue of blood, here's this woman at the Samaritan well, Jacob's well in Samaria. Here's all these moments of interruption. Nicodemus shows up in the middle of the night, you know, all these moments where you have these places and spaces for interruption. And when we think about what does it mean to image God as image bearers, I think it has to include that too. And oftentimes I think in our uh in our desire and our and our ambition, which, you know, that's not to say that the ambition is selfish, oftentimes it's very, it's it's very well-placed ambition that we want to see the world uh reached and touched and won for Jesus and lives transformed and changed, and people served and helped. And so a lot of times it's a good ambition, but oftentimes in the midst of that ambition, we can allow some of those very necessary things like presence and pace to leak into unhealthy, healthy space. And so, and so I think what you're describing is very much tied to civil discourse because you know, I'm sure my our podcast listeners have heard me say this before, but there's this great quote from John Ortberg where he says, Love and hurry are fundamentally incompatible, you know, and so because love requires time, and time is the one thing to hurry people don't have. And so you have to you have to be able to slow down in order for us to meet one another, right?

SPEAKER_01 27:01

Yes, yes. And and you know, I I I had a I have a quote from a perhaps less famous theologian, but one on our campus who's who said to me, at some point we were talking about the time I spend with our students. And he said, you know, he said, I've always thought the way you spell love is T I E. Yes. I think that's what you're you're pointing at, right? It does take time, and we have to make time to do the work. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 27:27

Yes.

Reconciliation Mission Name Change And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 27:28

Talk to us a little bit about reconciliation from your lane. How do you see the the particular assignment and vocation that the Lord has assigned you to? How do you see it as an opportunity to bring people together across difference and divides?

SPEAKER_01 27:44

Yeah, you know, I think I think it is at the heart of what we are called to do as Christians. And I think it, in my view, is the only lasting, durable reason for us to reconcile. He has reconciled a world to himself. He has reconciled us to him, and we're called to do the same. It really does, right? The longer I serve as president of this institution, the more changes we make at our institution, the more we refine and think about who we are as an institution, the Christian mission, the being on a mission from him to serve him and his purposes is at the center of everything we do, right? You you know this, we we are as part of our bicentennial, we are changing our name from Mississippi College, which we've had for a long time. Yeah, yeah, to Mississippi Christian University. Yeah. And I tell folks that is because the Christian mission is at the center of what we do. And now it's at the center of our name. It is just clearly articulated as who we are. And I do think that that Christian mission, that Christian set of values should lead us toward reconciliation. It should give us hope, right? It's it's the thing we have. Uh, David Brooks has written about Christian colleges and Christian schools. That hope of reconciliation is the thing we offer the world, that other institutions just can't quite offer in the same way. We have a hope, a hope that many times the world doesn't understand. We have a hope of doing reconciliation work, of finding our calling in Christ in a way that other institutions can offer. It is the distinctive of institutions like ours. And it should always be at the center of what we do. And for that reason, I'm glad that, right, I'm glad our name points toward that mission and reminds us of that mission, or clearly articulates it to people who don't know us and allows us a chance then to step into that process of getting to know and reconciling with those who we need to reconcile with.

SPEAKER_00 30:00

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, I'm incredibly excited about the future. I'm incredibly excited for the state, all the things that you guys are doing, and how that relates to the state and the future of our state. So we're incredibly excited, and and again, we're incredibly appreciative of the partnership that we have with you guys. Let me let me round let me round the turn here and and give you an opportunity as we're kind of wrapping up to just talk to a little talk to us a little bit about what what's got you excited right now uh in your in your world and mission, uh not Mission Mississippi, but Mississippi College, Mississippi Christian University. What's excited about Bicentennial? Uh what's got you excited just in general? Talk to us a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_01 30:39

Um so I'll answer that in two ways. First, I'll I'll say that I'm incredibly excited about the future of our institution, right? I've been talking about a 200-year legacy of doing this work, yeah. Both academically rigorous study and and a commitment to Christ, but but I'm excited about turning the page to the next 200 years and looking forward to the next 200 years. Gosh, it has quite a you feel quite a burden when you start thinking about what will a place look like 200 years from now, and how do we create and set on a path toward that future. But Brian, let me also say, as excited as I am about Mississippi College's future as Mississippi Christian University, I'm equally as excited about the future of the state of Mississippi. Um I'm actually bullish on where we are and where we are headed as a state. And then not for any single reason, right? I could go through economic factors that are coming in play. Investments that are being made in the state of Mississippi, their state's leadership deserves all kinds of credit for, that that are that are counted now in the billions of dollars range. We're talking about significant investments in data and data science that are coming to Mississippi, in part because of the of the cost of living, in part because of the some of the infrastructure that has been put in place over several decades that perhaps we didn't even realize were important pieces of infrastructure be put in place. I'm excited about the prospects for our state economically, culturally. I do believe in the way Mississippi is being led. I do believe we have a set of values as a community and as a state that are unique, that are special, that also perhaps are infused with a hope from our faith that other places don't have. I'm excited about just the communities that I live in here. I live in a small college town called Clinton, Mississippi, where we are doing things in a larger and more exciting way than perhaps we've ever done in the history of our small town. Uh I also live in a community, a metropolitan area of Jackson, Mississippi, which I'm excited about as well. We have a law school downtown in Jackson, just steps away from the state capitol and Supreme Court. And we have we are in the process of a complete renovation of that facility. We are a partner in the revitalization of Jackson. And and I'm excited about the direction that that our capital city is headed in. A living and growing up. If you want to come solve pressing healthcare issues, this is where you come to do that. If you want to teach children who need great teachers, this is where you come to do it. If you want to be inspired to write the next great novel or or craft the great next great piece of art, like hanging on the wall behind me from a Mississippi College grad, Bill Dunlap, there's no better place to be inspired to do that than the state of Mississippi. There's no better place uh to build a business to and go down the list of of all the things that God calls us to do. Um, there's no better place to do that than here. And um, I'm thankful to be to be here doing that work.

SPEAKER_00 34:40

Dr. Blake, we are grateful that you are here uh doing that work. And our open art prayers that you would continue uh by God's grace, by his blessing, uh by his power to continue to do that work. And so thank you. Yeah, I'm thankful.

SPEAKER_01 34:55

I'm thankful for the work you're doing. I'm thankful for the work Mission Mississippi is doing. Brian, it is it is the most important work we do. And I'm incredibly grateful and stand here as a as a partner, a bit, a role player in what you're doing with this incredible organization. Really, you're thinking about the next generation of Mission Mississippi as well. I'm thankful and grateful and honored to simply be a partner to you as you do that. So I hope this is not our last um podcast together. Um I hope this is the start of even more work that we have to do, good work that we have to do together.

SPEAKER_00 35:32

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I'll just go ahead and say that you hit the nail on the head. One of the reasons why a Mississippi College is such a strategic focal point for us to host our annual conferences, annual celebration, is because we believe that this work only goes as far as the next generation takes it. And so our desire is to be fully invested, which is why, even, you know, thanks to the generous donations and contributions of sponsors, you know, students get a chance to uh have take part in this celebration free of charge, free of cost of tickets, uh, because we want to get students in the room. Uh, we believe that our investment in them is going to be returned 30, 60, 100fold back to our state, uh, according to God's blessing. So you're you're you're absolutely right. We are thinking about the next generation of reconcilers, and and we we're so grateful that we have a partnership in Mississippi College to help us do that. So thank so thank you again. Thank you again.

SPEAKER_01 36:27

You're welcome, and I can't wait to see where it goes. Who knows? Who knows in our next podcast what we'll be talking about that we haven't even dreamed of yet.

SPEAKER_00 36:36

Absolutely, absolutely. It's probably go it probably goes without saying, but for those who do not know, tell people how they can keep up with what's going on at Mississippi College.

SPEAKER_01 36:48

So, so yeah, come I would invite all of them to come join us in our bicentennial. We have events going on all across the year. We have a special bicentennial gala that we will host on September 29th. So just a week or so after Brian, you're on campus. Absolutely. We will actually host a special guest to who will help us to celebrate and and enjoy our bicentennial. Um, that guy's name is Nate Bergazzi, and he is coming to our campus as a special guest at our bicentennial gala, and um it will be a time for us to celebrate and and spend time together and laugh and smile and enjoy each other's presence. So I'd invite everybody to come be a part of that and and many of the other things that we have going on on our campus during this bicentennial year.

SPEAKER_00 37:43

Fantastic, fantastic. Excited to do it, excited to get a chance to um see Nate Burgazzi as well in September. And and thank you again for uh for visiting, not visiting our podcast, but visiting with us on this podcast and sharing a little bit about your life, your your faith, um, and and and your journey towards president of Mississippi College. Uh, ladies and gentlemen, we are grateful for our guests, uh Dr. Blake Thompson today on uh this episode of Living Reconciled. And if you would like to again hear more of these episodes of Mississippians exploring life, faith, uh, reconciliation, real easy to do. Go to any podcast app, search for Living Reconciled. That will get you to Living Reconciled by Mission Mississippi. And we would love for you to not only subscribe, but we would love for you to share, love for you to like our episodes because that gives us an opportunity to get more visibility whenever you like it. And again, if you would like to contribute to the work of reconciliation financially that's taking place in Mississippi, you can do so by visiting missionmississippi.org. Again, that's missionmississippi.org. Click on the donate tab uh on the top right, and you two will be taking part in sowing seed in this incredible work. Um, again, this is Brian Crawford with my really good friend, Dr. Blake Thompson, signing off saying God bless. Thank you, Brian. Thanks for joining Living Reconciled. If you would like more information on how you can be a part of the ongoing work of helping Christians learn how to live in the reconciliation that Jesus has already secured, please visit us online at missionmississippi.org or call us at 601-353-6477. Thanks again for listening.