In Trust Center
The In Trust Center podcast is hosted by Matt Hufman. Walk alongside theological school leaders and innovators as they explore issues relevant to North American seminaries, all while helping institutions live out their missions more intentionally. Find more at intrust.org/podcast.
In Trust Center
Ep. 91 - Coworkers in the vineyard: Adaptive change and the future of theological collaboration
What if collaboration wasn’t a tactic, but a way of being? In this episode, Greg Henson and Tony Blair of Kairos University discuss their recent article “Coworkers in the Vineyard: A Renewed Spirit of Collaboration Within Theological Education” about collaboration in theological education and challenge assumptions about competition, mission, and governance. Drawing on research and firsthand experience, they call for adaptive change, reimagine theological formation, and practice collaboration rooted in trust, not survival. With fresh insights on governance, institutional identity, and discipleship, this episode is a must for boards and executives rethinking what’s possible in today’s shifting landscape. You can find the full article here. It's in volume 24 (2025) of Christian Higher Education.
Hello, and welcome to the Intrus Center Podcast, where we connect with experts and innovators in theological education around topics important to theological school leaders. Thank you for joining us. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Good Governance Podcast. I'm Matt Huffman. I am joined today by some familiar voices in theological education who've been doing some great thinking about the future of education. With me today is uh Greg Henson, the president of Kairos University, who's certainly been an innovator in the field. Greg, welcome back to the podcast. Great to be here, Matt. And with him is uh Tony Blair, the president of Evangelical Seminary, one of the legacy partners of Kairos University and the lead faculty of doctoral programs. Tony, welcome to the program. Thanks, Matt. Glad to be here. Now we're gonna talk, at least we're gonna start talking about this article that uh you're both uh authors of with David Williams and Philip Thomas called Co-Workers in the Vineyard: A Renewed Spirit of Collaboration within Theological Education. It's in uh Christian higher education. I'm gonna put a link to it. It's open access. It's uh really truly a wonderful article. I mean, I think we could probably produce a series of conversations around this as you talk about collaboration in the field. And certainly this has been a hot topic in the field. Uh, the Pathways for Tomorrow initiative, uh, funded by Lily Endowment Inc., very generously funded, has been uh focusing on collaboration and partnerships. And in this article, um, you've all talked with lots of leaders, uh, significant number, um, and you have explored some of the ideas uh around partnerships and collaborations. Um, there's a great outline for this, and I'm gonna recommend that everybody read this uh and have the conversation because we'll we'll do a little more coverage of it. But you start by talking about understanding the background, kind of understanding the big pot we're in, the situation in history. Uh, Greg, let me turn to you first and let's just start. And Tony, you're free to add in. Let's set the table. What's the background to which we come into this?
SPEAKER_02:I think that's a great question, uh, Matt. And that's why we started the article that way. Is um it's important to understand the story you're in, right? We reference um McIntyre and some of his work around narrative and reason within traditions and right good important thing to do. And so I think as we were looking at that, the things that stood out to us is collaboration and partnership working together is actually something that theological education within ATS, anyway, has thought about for a long time. This isn't a new topic, right? It's been something that might, some might even say that's why it got started, why ATS got started in the first place was around collaboration and partnership. And there's been really good work done that's highlighting that. And then over the past, uh, you know, then there was the frameworks that were developed to talk about different types of partnerships. And then recently, as you said, with some additional funding and some encouragement around the topic of partnerships, we find ourselves with a renewed sense of the need for partnership and collaboration, that it's a continued, uh maybe renewed, yeah, renewed vision for the value of partnerships, depending on who you talk to. Uh, there'll be reasons to why, right? Some of it's well, it's institutional survival or it's mission or it's whatever. But what we are trying to do with the BRAC background is say collaboration is not new. It's just a renewed focus. Is that fair, Tony?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. It's not new. Um, ironically, it's often been given more attention, at least in terms of words than in reality. So one of the challenges I had to face when I became a seminary president was realizing that there was a highly, the most highly competitive environment that I had ever encountered as uh as an educational leader or even somebody who's been involved in other contexts. So, in the midst of all this verbiage about collaboration and some and some reality, but there was also this uh jockeying in a sense of a uh in a sense of a tight and limited market, and uh each of us wanted to get a little share of market share. And we brought, I think, some of that competitive spirit even into our collaboration. How can we together compete more effectively with others uh against others? And so there has been an opportunity perhaps to reimagine what collaboration could look like and what it could mean.
SPEAKER_00:Well, let's talk a little bit about um, let me divert the conversation for a second, and let's talk a little bit about how you see the field, because you know, of course, Kairos has been um certainly an institution that's been studied in how you brought collaborative collaborated let me try this in English, how you have brought people together to collaborate. And this is this is um, I think a case study, you've grown it, you partnerships and through some very innovative things for this field. But let's talk about how you see the field right now, because for as long as I've been around theological education, even as long as I've been around higher education, which is more than a couple of years, uh, there's always been discussion about uh markets contracting, about forces, economic forces, um, and other spaces, you know, the the cost of running places with buildings, deferred maintenance, all those things that keep residents up at night. Um, so tell me how you see the field at this point. Because the need for collaboration at some point comes out. It's uh Tony, as you mentioned, I mean, we're all we all seem to be competing over what seems to be is a shrinking pie.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I the so I think the um in in terms of how we think about it at Kairos, uh maybe, and then how you know we think about the field in general, we actually kind of start with a a little bit of a different premise, which is to say uh we actually don't think we compete. Um, it's that um the way I would say it, we'll have doc we have documents in our you know, institutional documentation that talks about how um there is no competition in the kingdom of God. Uh so we are all participating in now your tradition, your theological tradition, your school might describe the mission of God or the the the realm of God or the kingdom of God or the tell us that you're gonna might you might describe it a little differently, but I think what we're trying to say is God is the one at work, uh, and we have the opportunity to participate in that work. And so in that premise, uh, we're not actually trying to compete as much as discern how do we walk and um how do we discern and do what God is inviting us to do within that community. I think there's also some interesting data out there that suggest it it may seem like there are fewer people who are wanting to uh pursue graduate theological degrees, but there's some interesting data that would say, oh, there's actually a lot of people who are interested in robust journeys of discipleship, perhaps more people than there were a few years ago and a few years before that. So there actually might be a larger pool. There just might not be the same number of people who want to pay$50,000 for a degree that takes five years and may or may not be connected to their local vocational context. That might be true. But how do we think more generatively about um the field of theological education? So we actually have a pretty optimistic view of the field of theological. We would say that the future is bright and that God has a lot in store for what um God is inviting us into. Uh, but so it doesn't tend to start with cart partnership or collab um competition for us. It tends to start with collaboration, which is to say God is doing stuff already. How do we collaborate with others to lean into that? Tony, correct me. Where am I where am I missing here?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I don't think we're we're we need to correct it. I think one of the things that's going to happen, we've talked about this in turn in Kairos quite a bit. This phrase theological education is going to be increasingly amorphous. We're going to have trouble defining it. We already do. A generation from now, we may not be able to. And part of it is that we have gotten overly narrow in our definition. We define theological education as preparation for ministry or for advanced uh academic careers, and therefore it's got to be at the graduate level. And it's and so, you know, part of I ironically, part of the result of collaborating in, like, say, for instance, an institution, uh group like ATS has been to define it in ways. And as Greg is saying, people are exploring this in all sorts of ways, even there's no academics, and we got all these Bible colleges out there, and they have their own association, they're doing it, and Christian liberal arts universities are doing this, and there's all these non-accredited schools, schools of ministry, things that churches and parachurches and denominations are doing, and there is all this stuff that is going on that is um that is kind of in this same rubric, and we just nobody is looking at it that broadly.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And what we're trying to do in Kairos is to look at it that broadly. Where is the Spirit of God working? What does this formation process look like? What does discipleship and preparation for whatever vocation looks like? And how can we contribute to that and be part of that and encourage others and work with others?
SPEAKER_00:Well, I appreciate that attitude of openness to figuring out, you know, how you can cooperate uh rather than compete. But I want to talk a little bit about that because certainly for um a lot of schools, that's not the way any of us were trained. You know, we were trained to go find market share. Uh, as a former chief marketing and communication officer, I don't know how many conversations I had were, well, we've got all these wonderful things. Of course, you know, you've heard Chris Meinzer say things like, we've got everybody's got world-class faculty, you know, you've got top-notch resources, cutting-edge programs, right? And and if people would just know. So, you know, when you talk about collaboration, it it one of the things that you point out in this paper is mission. And and it let me read a piece of this. It says, in each case, mission was used as a reason for not partnering, even though it had previously been articulated as a primary reason to collaborate. Uh, and the emphasis is in there. Uh, schools tend to focus on their own uniqueness, which often creates barriers to collaboration. And later you quote uh ATS executive director uh Frank Yamata, uh, always who always thoughtful, uh say provided helpful insight into why this happens. He remarked He remarked, quote, schools tend to suffer from the unhelpful idea that we are independent agents in God's mission. Partnership approaches often begin to think about us or our institution rather than what God is doing in the world and how the spirit might be inviting one's community to participate. Um it's it's really a I think a wonderful framing of this. And one of the things that got me thinking about is there's a theological reflection, I think, that needs to be done. And and you both touched on this, but what is our mission really, rather than to promote the institution of the mission? Or the the the mission of the institution or the the continued life of the institution. So talk to me a little bit about this because we're in a a time where we're seeing declines in certain denominations, we're seeing all kinds of transitions. Um talk to me about collaborating when missions may be in conflict given theological traditions.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I think that's good. And the quote from Frank is I think really great. I think his phrase there is is spot on. And I think it gets back to what ends up happening is um that the institution, the mission, the unspoken mission of an institution often becomes survival of the institution. So it may have a phrase, a mission statement, or a call of developing leaders for the church, or you know, whatever the phrase might be. Uh but underneath of that, the actual thing that's driving it is well, we need to sustain this legal entity called ABC Seminary or whatever. And for us, I think it's it's reframing that as our job is not survival, our calling is stewardship. So we have been steward, been asked, been entrusted with resources, relationships, locations, person, and we're invited to steward that um in the ways that God is inviting us to. And sometimes that stewardship doesn't mean that we're gonna grow or that we're gonna get bigger, or in sometimes that stewardship. This is one of the things I loved about um Evangelical Seminary's board, when they began and then this conversation with Kairos as a legacy partner, their board uh said, we think the best way for Evangelical Seminary to pursue its mission is to do so in partnership with Kairos University, which is a different way of thinking about mission. The mission wasn't survive as a separate legal entity, the mission was lean into uh how we steward the resources and the opportunities and the the people that God has given us, right, Tony? I don't want to speak, you were you were there.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, we we had that very good open conversation with the board. What matters more, the mission or the container in which it is held? The mission. Does it matter what name is out front on the sign? No. Does it matter what our legal entity is? No. What matters is what God has given us to do and the way that we can do it. I I can give you a quick, very specific example of this, however, from my experience before I joined Kairos. The school I was leading here in Pennsylvania, we had a good youth ministry training program, and um and we were serving the people in our region fairly well. And then the local Bible college decided to start a master's degree in youth ministry leadership, and then the local Christian university decided to start their own program, and suddenly we had three of them that were trying to serve a fairly limited audience. We were competing with one another. None of those three programs survived. I went to the other schools and said, you know, there's some really good stuff going on here. I love what you guys are doing. In fact, in one case, it's probably better than what we're doing. How about if we just work together on it and we can create some kind of center for youth ministry training or something? And no, that was not possible. One one administrator even said, I can't, I can't go to our faculty and tell them that you guys could make this work or we could do it together and we can do it on your own. So the institutional pride in survival mattered more. Now, ironically, there was in that same region a parachurch organization actually doing this stuff and really well. But they were parachurch, they were not an academic, and they didn't know, couldn't award credits, they weren't accredited. The beautiful thing about Kairos is we would not feel the need to create a youth ministry training program. We would partner with those who are already doing it and find a way to honor that learning and then bring that learning forward and bring it in. There are ways to do that, does not have us having to recreate much less compete with somebody else in how we do it. And that spirit makes all the difference in the world.
SPEAKER_00:Well, there's a there's a framework or a mind, you know, set a sense of mentality that I think has to shift. I mean, you you all talk in this paper a little bit about the difference between you don't go into the necessarily difference, but you talk about the adaptive fixes versus technical fixes. Um, and you mention um there this is I think really notable that that you quote that uh some ATS data that says that over 96% of the funded projects are focused in the this is in the pathways for tomorrow initiative. We're focused on program development of some kind, and that 95% of the projects are categorized as partnerships or networks or leveraging programmatic initiatives, where these seem to be, and you mentioned this throughout the paper, the idea of technical fixes rather than adaptive fixes. And and on this podcast, you know, we've had some conversations about adaptive leadership and all, but uh talk to me a little bit about it because sometimes I think that it seems that we say, and and Tony, to your story about the youth ministry, we all we all do the same thing. Yeah, and then and then it ends up going nowhere. There are these essentially technical fixes, not essentially, there are technical fixes, new programmatic offerings, the other guys are doing it, we'll do it, we'll grow the pie that way, rather than an adaptive approach, which takes, I think, a whole new way of thinking.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and I have gotten there, and this is this is where this is where Greg is brilliant. I'll shut up and let him talk. But I'll tell you, you know, I'm just the same as everybody else. We're gonna we're gonna develop the new program, we're gonna impact the market in some way. And if we collaborate, it's gonna be able to get get the market back or get a bigger share of it. Greg flipped the switch for for me and so many others in in re-reimagining that. Oh, shut up, Greg.
SPEAKER_02:You're good, Tony. I mean, the the the way I talk about it is technical fixes are seductive because it's easy to make quick progress, right? So if we do this, make this thing just a little bit better, you can see, and there's actually data that supports that. Like Noel Levitz actually has some stuff back in the day around if you change this with enrollment, you can see these changes really fast. Right. And the challenge is with it with the technical fixes it it underlying assumption is what you're doing is the right thing. You just need to do it a little better. And um, Roger Martin, in his book, A New Way to Think, which is primarily about different ways of imagining stuff in Fortune 500 companies. So a lot of the chapters may not actually be helpful, but in the introduction of his book, he actually outlines his this idea of models, is what he calls them. I wouldn't use the word models, but he does. And it's this in the in the way we do things, uh, prevailing models have so much power and and so much impact in the way our imagination works. And so when the prevailing model doesn't work, rather than questioning the model or the assumptions of the model, our assumptions, we just didn't apply the model correctly. So we just need to apply that model better. And when you take that, plus Hyfitt stuff on technical and adaptive leadership, I mean, it's just so easy to do technical stuff. And that's usually what ends up in pro like in the business world, they talk about it as product development or product innovation. Right. For us, that's going to be programs, that's gonna be faculty sharing, that's gonna be technical things around that. And a lot of the research and innovation theory would suggest that doesn't actually work. Not even in the business world. Product innovation tends not to have lasting impact in organizations. And so adaptive leadership or adaptive change is like inviting this recognition that maybe, maybe what we're doing is the problem. Like maybe the problem is our underlying assumptions about how this should work or what the structure should be. And it's also kind of having the humility to say we don't actually have the answers. So one I've one of the things I love about HyFIT stuff is it adaptive leadership assumes that you don't have the information that you need. So it begins by saying we we do need to reimagine and rethink from the background, not just change some stuff. And I think the the thing that's most telling in the the article we wrote is if you take and we looked, right, all the studies and all the conversations and all the stuff we did, a lot of the energy has been put towards technical fixes. You know, 100% of the of the collaborations that we studied started with, well, we want to do this for financial stability. And you know, 96% of them, like you said, are wanting stuff related to program development. So the problem is money or more students. We need more, we need to fix our finances and we need more students. And the way we're gonna do that is by developing new programs. Uh, and if you look at the data for ATS over the past 20 years, we've had the exact opposite happen. So we've invested all this time and money in saving money and developing new programs. And over that period of time, we actually spend more money now per student and have fewer students. And so it's it's we're just trying to maybe say to our, and this was true for Sioux Hall Simon. Like when we did this hard look at ourselves 12 years ago, this is what we found, which is like, oh my gosh, we've spent a whole lot of time working on these two things. And as a result, we're worse off financially and we have fewer students. Maybe we need to go a little deeper in thinking about it. And when we do that, I think collaboration becomes a pathway to say, oh, maybe, maybe instead of collaboration as something that allows us to do technical programmatic changes, maybe collaboration is just a fundamental way of being. Maybe it's it's it's what it part of what it means to be a theological school is to collaborate. That's um, it's kind of a shift from collaboration as a a tool to collaboration as a way of being.
SPEAKER_01:And after all, isn't that a missional principle, an ecclesiological principle? We we live and serve and work and worship in community. Why why would we learn differently?
SPEAKER_00:Well, we we talked about the mission. I mean, one of the one of the things again, and I've heard this recently where people talk about, you know, if everybody has world-class faculty and everybody has cutting edge programs, what different what makes you different? And so you become more unique based on your theology, your approach, you know, we're the only you know, fill-in-the-blank seminary. Um, so some of that I think is is we break ourselves down into the uniqueness, and then nobody else can do what we do, right? I mean, that's one of the questions you often talk about in your mission. What makes you so special? Why do you exist? So collaboration in some ways, I think the missional part, it would seem to me, then makes it uh not maybe not divisive, but a point of, well, why am I gonna collaborate with you guys? I mean, I've got my own God-given mission.
SPEAKER_01:It's the same challenge faced by the churches that someone have formed us. Right. Why is this church sitting across the street from that church? What is a unique mission here? And if we don't have a unique mission, or even if we do, why is it that we have two separate entities and two communities and cannot find a way to serve to serve that that town or something together?
SPEAKER_02:What I mean, go ahead, go ahead, Matt.
SPEAKER_00:Go ahead, Greg.
SPEAKER_02:I was gonna say, like, I think it's I think it's helpful to have the conversations about, you know, what is God inviting us to do, what is our mission, whatever phrase we use the phrase kingdom calling, like what is it that God's I think those are helpful conversations, but they can become unhelpful if they um begin to create an idol out of the institution. If it if if we begin to see the institution and the even the institution's mission as the thing that matters, um that that that can become idolatrous. And so then collaboration as a way of being maybe is more saying is it that I need to be differentiated, or is it that I need to reimagine our way of being to participate as part of the body of Christ with other people, which might mean significant changes, so that might mean governance looks different, that might mean the way faculty structures look different. It might there's a lot of things that might have to change for us to live into that. And I'm not saying what we're doing is the right thing to do, I'm just saying that collaboration as a technical fix assumes that we don't need to change anything else. And it might the data might suggest at least we need to talk about it. I'm not, I'm not hear me clearly. I'm the first to say that what we're doing, I'm not saying everybody should do that. I'm not saying we figured it out. There's really good work being done by a lot of people all across ATS. Um, I'm simply saying, and and we are in this article, maybe we should talk about it.
SPEAKER_00:Well, let's and let's you brought up governance. Let's let's talk about that because I think one of the things that often keeps us maybe even from having the conversation is the structures we create or the structures we use. And as you know, if if you come up through a theological school and and maybe you go to two or three to get your terminal, finally get the terminal degree and up teaching, you go through administration, and and what do you know? You know the forms. We know the forms that accreditors look for, we know the forms that legal bodies expect. You know, you have a board, we talk about shared governance a lot. And and I'll note this this is out of the um I found you're you had a section on governance, and I think this is worth a conversation for any board listening, any executive leader is you mentioned this. It's a well, not stated overtly, the operational assumption is that a given segment has the resources, skills, understanding, and imagination to make decisions apart from the wider group. So in in let me explain that, it you know, faculty has its role, uh, the board has its role, administration has its role, and they tend to operate independently. You describe interviews where people where there's an office manager who becomes a valuable voice in the process. Um, now again, it's it's for some of us who have been staff at at higher education, and the staff's never rarely part of that conversation. So let's talk about governance because it it seemed like, and and I'll note that in your your paper, there's a there are these little sections or some broader sections, but there's a whole lot more behind it. The incredibly thoughtful things that could you know uh go into much deeper conversation. But here I wonder, I mean, is is there a conversation to have about shared governance, how it's pursued, uh, how board work is done? Um, is this one of those things that we need either an adaptive fix on?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, great question. I think the um the short answer to that would be yes. But I think what you're what you're touching on, Matt, I think is the integrated nature of all of this stuff. Um so to think about collaboration as collective participation in the mission of God might require us to think differently about what theological education is. Um so we talk a little bit about how it's at its core, it's a journey of discipleship that may or may not end in a degree. Um it might, and if it does, that's great. But that may or may not actually be the tellos or the goal for every person who starts, right? So you're probably gonna have to think a little bit about that. You're probably gonna have to think a little bit about governance, you're probably gonna think about your structures and your financial models, like all of that stuff is gonna probably end up to the conversation. But the governance one, I think, uh, and I've said this to Amy um a few times, that that that might be where it begins, because there's some really embedded assumptions about how governance works. And to be clear, shared governance is important, and the board and the faculty and the staff should all be involved in conversations, and that's all true. But a lot of times that ends up getting structured more as what I call competitive. So it becomes a competition over power and resources. Uh, Dan Ailshire said it once years ago. He said sometimes that um governance becomes about power or control and who has it versus instead of mission fulfillment. And we took that as a school when he said that years ago, and we actually developed a kind of board um driven conversation around that very phrase for about three years about well, how do we, what would it mean to structure governance around mission fulfillment instead of power and control on who has it? And it was a very generative conversation, and it eventually led to, yeah, we still have those pieces, but how do we embed practices that encourage collaboration and trust across those communities? So we ended up internally, we call it trust-based collaborative governance. Uh, but in technical accreditation terms, it's still shared governance, it's just practiced maybe a little bit differently. But Tony, as you've come into this, what have you noticed in the terms of how governance works and what it might look like?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, there were some things that we were wanting to do at Evangelical. They're headed in this direction. And I I saw that uh Kairos was being uh pursuing this a little bit more passionately and um intentionally. One of the things that's bothered me, for instance, is the um I'm trying to be want to be careful how I say this here. I don't want this to be overly critical to my colleagues, but there is often a um among those of us who are faculty, since I'm one of those in the number of you know, often. And people associate a certain arrogance with our role. We are the experts in the room, and then we tell the staff what to do and we complain about the administration when they don't live up to our ideals. And we have no idea what the board is up to, but wish they didn't exist. But at least we got to have our voice there so we can counter the voice of the administration. And uh to have uh to break down those barriers, to honor each other's expertise, but not have to be in competition with one another is a remarkable um um intention. And uh to so we won't go into Kairos and hey, everybody's invited to the board meeting. Everybody's invited. There were no faculty meetings separate, and that might be for a program for specific functional reason, but the faculty and the staff all meet together, and we do so without titles. That's why titles don't matter a whole lot to kairos because he took when I came in, I remember this conversation with Greg, and I wonder what am I going to be doing? He says, You're gonna do what Tony does. That's gonna be your job description. You do what Tony does, and some of what I do as faculty, some of what I do as staff, some of what I do as administration into in the traditional terms, I can easily move among those roles because those boundaries uh don't don't matter, uh at least not as much.
SPEAKER_00:So I go and I go to all the board meetings, and you go to all the board meetings. I appreciate that. Again, there's a there's a paradigm shift for folks there. There's a that's that's an adaptive way of thinking. Um is as we start to wrap up here, I want to speak, but I'd like you to ask us to speak directly to what do you think leaders of schools, whether they be boards or executive leaders, you know, uh, ought to be thinking about this article. What do you want them to do with it? What do you want to tell them about the the things that you put out here? Greg, let's start with you.
SPEAKER_02:I think I'd probably say a few things. One is, uh maybe the first and most important is it's one of several really great articles. So the the journal that this is a part of, the special edition that Stan edited for everybody, Debbie Jinn and others have good stuff in there. Chris and others, like I'm not gonna be able to get all the authors by title off the top of my head, but there's really good stuff. Uh, so my first thing would be for the boards like read, read, read all of them. There's a lot of good stuff there, right? For this article in particular, I think it's meant to spark a conversation. It's not in anything that we write or produce, we we try to very humbly start by saying we're not saying we have it right or that we have all the answers, or that what we're doing is what everybody should be doing. We we don't we genuinely don't think that. But we do think there's some data in here that's worth talking about. And so the the key one, the two data tables in there, I think are helpful to point out. Like we've spent a lot of time and energy over the past number of years focusing on sustainability and program development. And we don't seem to have a lot to show for it as an industry. So what do we do with that? Um, I that's probably the question is what are we what does your institution want to think about related to that? What is God inviting you to do? So it's more of an invitation to conversation and discernment than it is uh anything else. What about you, Tony?
SPEAKER_01:I would add the word, it's a invitation to reimagine. I was profoundly influenced by Walter Brugeman's book and the prophetic imagination, like you know, 40 years ago and since we use the imagination metaphor in our doctoral programs uh very intentionally. Try to uh one of the things that we are that we think the spirit of God is doing is to provoke our imaginations. One of the things that Greg Henson does in his leadership at Kairos is to provoke our imaginations to help us see more broadly. It doesn't mean that we've got we're seeing everything clearly or rightly, but I would suspect that is the predominant invitation for this generation in theological education to be willing to be to reimagine, to see more broadly. It's not just about us, it's about everything else that is going on and where the spirit of God is moving in this and how we get to participate in it, perhaps in new and exciting ways, perhaps in ways that we're not going to work. But let's let's let's open our minds, our hearts, our spirits to see what is possible instead of just assuming that what has been.
SPEAKER_00:Those are those are good words to start to to sum up. Any last thoughts? Anything I didn't ask, Greg, that you would uh say that that somebody should hear?
SPEAKER_02:I don't think so. I think you do a lot of good work on this podcast, Matt. So uh maybe the last word is listen to what you the interviews you're having with people.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I appreciate that. Tony, any final words to add?
SPEAKER_01:Thank you for provoking the conversation and continuing the conversation. Yes. Um, and like I said, we're we're only two voices, and um, there's many more out there. Let's continue the conversation.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I'm gonna ask our leaders to take a look on the on the website, intrust.org slash podcast. On that page, you will find a hyperlink to this article. You'll also find a link to the journal uh that has, as Greg noted, several other thoughtful uh pieces about theological higher education. I invite you to all join that. So my thanks today, Greg Henson, president of Kairos University. Greg, thanks for being here.
SPEAKER_02:Great to be here.
SPEAKER_00:And Tony Blair, the president, uh legacy president of Evangelical uh seminary. Thank you as well. You're quite welcome. Thanks, gentlemen. Thank you. Thank you for listening to the Intrust Center's Good Governance Podcast. For more information about this podcast, other episodes, and additional resources, visit intrust.org.