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. 99: Rethinking value: How theological schools can thrive in a changing world
In this episode, the Rev. Dr. David Rowe reflects on the sweeping changes affecting higher education and how these pressures are reshaping theological schools. Demographic decline, reduced church demand, and shrinking revenue streams have created intense competition among an oversupply of institutions. Rowe argues that schools must clarify their value proposition by understanding what students actually need and are willing to pay for. He highlights the importance of distinguishing between service, experience, and transformational educational models and aligning each with sustainable economics. He encourages boards to rethink mission, foster experimentation, and explore new audiences to meet today’s real ministry and societal needs.
You can find David Rowe at Windermere Consulting here.
Daniel O. Aleshire's book mentioned in the podcast is here.
Hello and welcome to the Interest 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, everybody. Welcome to the Good Governance Podcast. I'm Matt Huffman. I am joined today by a regular guest. I think you become a regular guest now, the Reverend Dr. Do I get a badge for that? We've had you on several times to talk about any number of things. Um, but what I'm wanting to talk today about is we're going to talk a little bit. You have been you've been talking about guiding sector transformation and new models of theological education, but you the you recently gave a presentation, and I I thought one of the things you talked about, which is incredibly valuable, is value proposition for schools. Because I think it right now we are in a time in higher education. Let's take let's let's pull the lens back from theological higher education and look at just higher education in China. The entire field is going through this transformation. Um, we've seen it, you know, five years ago. I remember it was on part of a call, they're talking about mergers and acquisitions in the Northeast, where there were all of these schools, you know, that had once filled a very important uh place. And now we're finding that with the advent of the internet, with the advent of uh different modalities of education that they didn't have a place anymore. So, I mean, right now, what what it seems to be, let's talk about the field as a whole. It seems to be there is a a just uh uh the supply, there's so much supply and not enough demand.
SPEAKER_00:That well, that's right. I mean that I mean I think that sums it up pretty well. Is you know, some of the things that um some of the factors that were in place that created so many different, you know, institutions across the country uh just aren't existing anymore. I mean, you could think about even just the advent of the interstate system as undermining why schools were built 150 miles apart that had roughly the same curriculum, the same facilities, the same mission, you know, but uh once the interstate was built, and then you know, once flying became ubiquitous, I mean, there were people became you know not locked into their regional best kept secret, right? They could shop around for another region's best kept secret. And and the differences between those two schools are you know uh probably not as great as we would like to think that they are. Uh and you know, the other the other thing that comes to mind as you're you're talking, Matt, is just that uh the demographic shifts, you know, there's so much explosion in higher education generally post-World War II with the GI Bill and the baby boom, both of those are gone. You know, we have a we have a second GI bill, but you know, the the fuel that that provided for the growth of higher education, the incentives to build and expand and grow higher education institutions, um, you know, the faucets just it's down to a trickle now. And, you know, in recent weeks and months, the the federal funding that even the large research institutions were counting on has been um kind of choked off. And Wall Street Journal chronicled this uh in an article last week about the University of Chicago. You know, uh most most of the time we're talking about new business models with liberal arts colleges and theological schools, but now the large research institutions are having to ask exactly the same questions that um this you know smaller regional uh sector has been asking for a long time.
SPEAKER_01:Well, that's one of the things, and I the tradition and what our traditional business models have been in higher education. You know, when you talk about a University of Chicago, you talk about the Ivy Leagues, there are certain things that you would expect. And of course, with big endowments and they're going to be fine, and then all of a sudden, the business model has changed with some of these research grants and the pressure from the federal government that now the field looks different.
SPEAKER_00:Right. Yeah, and and it all comes down to where the revenue's coming from, right? And we know when you have a revenue stream that you are counting on and you can no longer count on it, that makes you um that puts you in a position to make some really difficult choices. And you have, you know, large, prestigious AAU universities making difficult choices right now. And they they look a whole lot like what um private, small private colleges and mid-sized private colleges were doing, you know, in after in 2000, 2009, you know, 2010, 2022, you know, right. They just, you know, that every 10 years, you know, we we have this recurring um refrain, I think, where where there's consolidation or some sort of retrenchment going on with schools. And now it's now it's happening even at the larger institutions. But but to your point, it as different as these sectors might seem, the the common theme is that uh revenue streams that we could once count on are no longer there, whether that's net tuition revenue, or maybe it could be the fact that the stock market collapsed and your endowment um draw is not as large as it used to be, or now the research funding is is not a short bet from year to year, and the indirect that you are taking off of that for overhead costs um have evaporated.
SPEAKER_01:Well, let's talk, let's narrow the focus down into theological higher education. It it when I survey the field, I see that you know, even 50 years ago, um, there was an interstate, but uh the the number of students looked different, the denominational issues looked different, the people uh going to church, uh, et cetera, et cetera. So there might have been a northeast regional, you know, seminary for the denomination, might have been a western um, you know, something now in the western states. So there were regional ones. Now those schools seem to be again fighting for students, fighting for donors, um, looking at the demographics in their own church. Talk to me a little bit about what you're seeing in terms of just the field of what maybe we used to consider or would have considered if we were looking at a long-range plan. You go, well, you know, we're we're gonna have so many students now we don't have those, or or we didn't have competition that we do now. Talk to me a little bit about the pressures you're seeing in the field.
SPEAKER_00:Well, to I mean, to your point about oversupply, I mean, I I I believe you know, ATS could verify this. Chris Meinzer could chime in with the exact number, I'm sure. But I think that the number of uh seminarians is roughly the same today as it was about 20 years ago. And you know, I think we probably have a field of maybe about 20% more theological schools, you know. So we're growing, we're growing the supply, you know, even though you know we've seen some closures and mergers and things like that, there's still other schools popping up, and uh the uh you know we we're spreading the the number of folks just kind of in the system across more institutions, and so that you know that math doesn't work very well. And then, you know, if you I in some ways I kind of liken this to the history, the schismatic history of the church, you know, we we the the divisions that we have at different points in our in our history seem really, really important at the point of the division, and then later the the uh the significance of the of the divisiveness is kind of lost, you know, uh that are coming in. So the the the distinctions that were important between one seminary from a theological tradition and another seminary from a theological tradition might not be as as significant today as they were when those when that seminary split into two or that denomination split into two and formed two different theological schools.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I think that's a great point. I mean, I see schools in the mainline tradition um becoming less reliant, like churches in the mainline tradition, ordaining students from a multiple of schools that they might not have.
SPEAKER_00:Right. Well, and see, and some of this comes from the the influence of accreditation too, right? So you've got you've got a a standard for graduate theological education that's common across all ATS accredited schools. And so, you know, if you go to an ATS accredited school, whether you're Methodist, Baptist, uh, you know, Pentecostal, you're you're gonna be guaranteed some of the same types of resources, the same sort of curriculum. That's gonna have a different theological lens for sure, but in terms of the the uh you know the the there's a great deal of commonality of experience from school to school, which we which we we love from a quality, you know, assurance standpoint, right? And and and so that you can you know that you're actually going to a school that is is put put together a a solid and thoughtful academic program that is is recognized by its peers, but it really decreases the differentiation, right? There's we've there's an influence there that causes a standardization, right? So standardization is on the one hand good, and on the other hand, is is that is also could be thought of as de differentiation, right? There's there's sure there's fewer and fewer significant differences among the various expressions of theological education.
SPEAKER_01:Well, certainly in the in the Protestant side of theological higher education, right? If if you are mainline, there's a number of places you can get in in mainline denominations that may take that because you have an accredited degree. Same in the evangelical church, right? So for schools now looking, it's not like you have to go to XYZ seminary because XYZ denomination is only going to accept it from that. There seems to be in the church itself, the the end user of our product, there seems to be less less differentiation in in that regard.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and that's probably a 20-year-old problem, right? You know, that that's that's kind of been going on for a couple of decades. But the the latest challenge is those churches you described may or may not be requiring an MDV. Right. Right. Or a master's degree at all. Or a master's degree at all. And and it's not, it's it's not um the necessarily kind of anything anti-intellectual or anything against the the quality of the degrees that people earn in these schools, but it might just be uh trying to figure out what a a congregation whose membership is is declining can afford. And they might not be able to afford to, you know, a pastor that that has that sort of educational experience.
SPEAKER_01:So let's talk about this. In in again, you you spoke recently at an event or was that, and you talked about the value proposition. I mean, every school, every business has a value proposition. Right. If I go to lunch at a restaurant, you know, that there's a value proposition, whether it's it's what I'm paying for, whether it's quality, whether it's nostalgia of me going to the same restaurant I went to with my parents. Um, and I say that because there's those things come up in theological education. So when you talk about value proposition, first tell me, what do you mean by that?
SPEAKER_00:Well, see, this is a question that I don't think we've had to ask, you know, as acutely in the over the decades, because because we've had there was more demand for for the MDiv educated pastors and more demand for uh this this quality of of education that's accredited by ATS at different seminaries for different denominations. But but now that now that the competition is a little bit sharper, I think we have to ask some questions that typically our sector hasn't had to ask before. And these are questions that businesses have have had to ask forever, right? Right. It's just now now we're seeing that our our educational model and our mission is being compromised by challenges with um funding and and revenue, and and our expenses are growing while our revenues are decreasing. So we have to figure out well, so what how how do we correct that? And um, you know, if we take a page out of business, you know, you can you could look at a very simple model of, you know, a very simple diagram what a business model looks like. I borrow one that came out of the Harvard Business Review in 2008. Uh Clayton Christensen, many listeners will recognize that name, was one of the authors of this article, but they have just four quadrants that in this little model. It's value proposition, key resources, revenue formula, and core processes. I've I've translated the the terms to make a little bit more sense to higher ed, but in that the very first thing they talk about is the value proposition. And the value when I when I speak about that, what I'm what I'm saying is we as a sector have to start asking a harder question than we've had to ask before. And it's what does the market value and that we can offer? And when I I say that in in some ways it might sound obvious, but really in higher ed for most of my career, we've thought about what we value that we should try to persuade the market to value as well, right? And so often our conversations about marketing or recruitment have started internally and maybe used a megaphone to try to explain to the world why what we offer is valuable. Right. Uh we need to we need to shift the the senses around as to speaking, we need to listen to the market and find out what it is that the market is seeking, what the market's demanding, and what the market is looking for. And and in here we actually have to ask uh an even harder nose business question is like uh what what are people willing to pay for? And so you've got to actually demonstrate economic value. And so what you you need that economic you need to be able to demonstrate economic value to a marketplace to get some sort of cash through the door.
SPEAKER_01:And and and so that's what I mean by value proposition is so let me stop you there because I want to go back to to where you started about what the market, and and we don't talk about this in the church, right? But really what the but we should. I mean we should.
SPEAKER_00:I don't know, but we're we're transgressing here a little bit.
SPEAKER_01:So so right. The the we don't talk about mammon, even though mammon is is but you gotta pay the bills somehow. Um and so so in that though, I I think let's talk a little bit about how the market has shifted, because maybe 50, 60 years ago, and in Dan Aylshire's uh book and the theological education between the time series, I thought did a wonderful job of talking about how uh and I I'll post some links in the chat or in the the on intrust.org slash podcast for some links because one Dan wrote a wonderful piece for us for Intrust magazine, in which he talked about how there was a shift of there was a profession. So we expected the pastor, right? If you're in a Catholic church, you expect the priest to be educated, right? In in the Protestant church, we expected uh certainly the pastor to have an advanced degree to be a professional, right? But that's changed in the last 50 years, it's changed in the last 20 years.
SPEAKER_00:It it has, and the um you know I I think I think the there's a latent expectation that that still is true, but the the market or at least the employment market for pastors is not necessarily keep keeping up with that expectation financially. So they're not able to necessarily hire an MDiv educated pastor. And so if you don't have that draw on the back end of the MDiv experience, then it's really hard to convince somebody to choose this as a profession. Um or you know, unless it's a bi-vocational profession or a second career or something like that, it's just really hard to make that case that that the theological education has economic value to the person that you're trying to recruit.
SPEAKER_01:Because so, so the market here, I mean, one is we're talking about students, and then we're talking about the market of the church of of where they're going to. I mean, as you said, I mean, for years, higher education, you got to have a degree, you got to have maybe a master's degree or a doctorate to do certain things. And the world is shifted in any number of fields, not just theological higher education, right? Right.
SPEAKER_00:And I mean, and I don't want to give short shrift a call and vocation, right? I mean, we certainly that's that's at the heart of all of this, but um calls seem to come in various forms, and and and and so if if you if you're called to be um a pastor and you're called to susport support a family, you know, then you know you need to figure out how you're gonna do both. And and that sometimes those things don't live together as easily as maybe they once did in the past.
SPEAKER_01:So the the value proposition of the market we're talking about, what is it, as you say, what is it students are paying us to do? Right.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so so I think that's what we have to ask right now is what what are what are they really looking for when they they come to us? And I think that you know, often I make the mistake, and I think other people, you know, are you know honestly say the same thing too? We talk about the business model for theological education. And it'd be good if we could identify, you know, at least the core business model for any one particular institution. But increasingly, we we actually have schools that have multiple business models to support the mission, right? And again, I don't want people to misread what we're saying here. We're not saying that we need to supplant the idea of mission with the idea of business in the same way that a for-profit institution or for-profit organization might look for, you know, just money wherever money is. We're looking for money to support the mission, right? We've got to have some sort of way to keep this going. And so uh you've seen you've seen schools shift and experiment with, well, maybe part of the value proposition is what is convenience, or uh me being able to do this on my own time, me be able to do this asynchronously uh online. And so you see a shift toward maybe more hybrid models or more online or remote learning models, or maybe even just learning centers and regional hub models where we're bringing the educational experience to the student and convenience becomes part of the business model. Uh, we you know, we we've got a in a traditional seminary, we have we have this idea of you know, you come to to this kind of semi-cloistered, beautiful campus with an arcade somewhere that you can walk through and a and surely there's a boulder somewhere in the middle of the quad that you can sit on and strum your guitar, you know, and and um you know, you have lunch with the professors, you know, right, and things like that. And and that's been kind of the traditional business models that that traditional seminary experience in our in our language has been one of transformation. That you know, when you when you come here as a layperson, you will leave qualified to be clergy. And and that there's a there's a actual way to to move through uh this process in a way that gets you to a different outcome than than the way you were when you you started here. The these three uh types of business models, I think, um, are worth distinguishing and pulling apart. And I I use a a framework that was uh explained very well in a book called The Experience Economy by Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore. And they what I just described, they would say there was a there's a service business model, there's an experience business model, and there's a transformation business model. And I think all three of those have a place in theological education. But what happens is we end up trying to offer transformation at a service price, right? And so we want to stuff all of the great things that makes our seminary great into an online or a remote model, and it it's it's just not there. It's the difference between going to a large department store and shopping on Amazon, you know. And you know, you can't, there's there's some parts of the experience that are just not going to be there, but you can get it delivered tomorrow, right?
unknown:Right.
SPEAKER_00:You don't have to sit in traffic to get to it. And so I but I we I think we have to now begin to differentiate what it is that we're doing and actually test to see if there's a market for what we're offering. So it is there is there a market for this service business model, is there a market for this experience business model? Is there a market for the transformation? Now, all of these have some element of transformation in them, but um Joe Pine, one of those two co-authors, is is um uh just wrote another book. It's gonna be launched in February of 2026, and I encourage everybody to pick it up. It's called the Transformation Economy. And he's actually looking at what it takes to make a business offering truly transformational. And we're we're the we're the uh originators of this, right? We we own this market, theological education owns this market of transformation, but we but we're not thinking it through in quite as uh intentional, disciplined and methodical way as what Joe Pine would suggest that we need to think it through. And if we actually did put all of the elements in place, they're they're there, they're within theological education, but put them in place in a very methodical way and thought about that transformation business model in an intentional way and differentiated it from the service business model that we might also be offering, then we can actually create different price points. Okay, and because we're actually creating different types of value. I think there are people who still want that campus experience, but also want that to be able to explain their aspirations to a coach or a guide, to somebody who can help them really kind of move into this, have a deeper, more personal and professional transformation. But that's a different value. It's a it's a different economic value and it's a different cost structure, right?
SPEAKER_01:So, yeah, I mean, what I hear you saying is the mark one, the market's changed. Market's changed. I mean, you can, but we're still selling at you know, so if we're going online and and the seminary moves online, and people are getting a different experience, right? We haven't necessarily, I mean, price is a question here at at what the value is for the consumer as well as what it is for us, uh, to to provide that. And and the other thing I hear you saying is you're talking about, you know, what if somebody wants a certificate? I mean, we are as as theological schools, right? We we are trained to hire education, graduate level um work, but that may not be the calling anymore. It may not be the market, right?
SPEAKER_00:And and and we've we've seen this change over time in in in other industries, and we um, you know, we we know Target today, right? Well, you know, Target's parent was a department store, right? Right. And and uh, but Target had to compete within a different marketplace, and and then it had to differentiate itself from Kmart and Walmart and other, you know, so how did it come the high-end discount? You know what? Whoever thought you could put high-ended discount in the same sentence, right? The high-end discount store. Um, but uh, you know, there are a number of um you know, companies that have created offshoots, and the offshoots have actually overtaken the the original business model. And so I think that's why, you know, I'm glad to see in theological education a good deal of experimentation out there with different levels of this business model, right? And and so that there are there are people who um, you know, can only afford in terms of time and money, you know, they might really want that full-blown transformational experience, you know, on campus, you know, dedicated 24-7 to this professional development enterprise, but their their lives and their livelihoods don't allow them to do that. So does that mean that we shouldn't give them any of what we have to offer? Or, you know, perhaps perhaps there's we could find the right amount given in the right modality to that particular audience uh so that they can actually benefit from it. But if if we're if we're not clear about differentiating this service model from this transformational business model, then then we end up um over-serving a market that we can't charge enough to to cover our costs.
SPEAKER_01:Sometimes I mean I mean, I heard a uh president of a school say, you know, he's like, hey, we we tried this uh this program, it was great. We said we were gonna get students, we got students, we just didn't get enough. You know, it's the old business thing. You need enough of students at the right price, or you need enough buyers at the right price to cover the cost.
SPEAKER_00:Right. Yeah, and that's so that's in the the third quadrant of that model that talked about was the revenue formula. Do you have enough people willing to pay you enough to cover your costs? And and the we and we skipped over an important piece, and that's key resources, which is where a lot of your costs are. And so the traditional way of thinking about strategy in higher education is to start with our resources. What do we have? And then how do we try to convert that into something that we want to convince the market that they want, right? So, you know, we've got lemonade, and and so we're gonna have a lemon lemonade stand, but it's 30 degrees outside. Right. Right, right. Okay. So you know 30 Fahrenheit for a 30 Fahrenheit, yeah, yeah. For you the can our Canadian friends. So you know, it's it's it's it's chilly outside, and we're trying to sell lemonade. You know, maybe we could take the same table, the same tablecloth, the same business model, but just substitute hot chocolate, right? And sell hot chocolate or coffee. And um, you know, for us to insist that we are gonna be a lemonade stand because we have lemons and water, and uh then we're gonna go out and try to tell the market that they they want lemonade when they're when they're bundled up in shoveling snow, you know. Maybe if you're shoveling snow, you might want lemonade.
SPEAKER_01:But well, let me I mean let me interject there because I remember I did a story years ago in uh in timber country where there was uh uh timber turns uh there were there were setbacks and turndows in in the economy and federal regulation. And there was a company that made these big heavy metal parts for you know the equipment to move locks. And they had a renaissance when they said, you know, I went into CEO's office and he said, he goes, We we had to ask ourselves, what are we in the business of doing? He said it's not just we're in the metal build bending business. And so he said, you know, we so they the all of a sudden their minds opened up and they said, We can do this with lots of other industries. And they had this business renaissance. So first thing I'm hearing you say is is take a look at uh, you know, who pays for us what we do, you know, what are the resources we have to do it, and then you know, what's the market look like? But the the real question I think behind the value proposition is uh what is it we do? I mean, if it's theological education, then the question is is as you say, is it lemonade, is it hot chocolate, is it is it a Master's degree, a PhD, a certificate. Right.
SPEAKER_00:It could be a certificate, yeah. I mean, it could be a certificate or it could be a full, you know, and part of this transformation. So, I mean, we there's been a lot of focus, and I think rightfully so, on on moving or what I would call kind of the experience business offering, right? The traditional campus experience, residential experience to online. Okay. And I think, you know, and and you're and you're seeing that's gonna start sorting out in terms of people that are winning in that, some people that aren't able to do do so well. But but that doesn't mean we also we we have to abandon the the transformational business model, but we need to understand that those are two different, have two different economic values out there, right? And and so you gotta offer different things. And I and to your point about the the you know, the the parable from real life that you shared, it you know, is that you've you've got to ask um, what's our mission? And our mission has got to be rooted at some point or another in an honest assessment of what the need is, right? The the boards particularly, I I like to say boards are heirs of the founders. Boards are heirs of the founders, and so they really have to think about every day would we found if this institution didn't exist, would we found it today? Would we, you know, wow, that's a big question. Yeah, it's a really big question, right? Because at some point somebody said it's gonna be a lot of work to put this thing in place, but if we don't, then the world's gonna suffer because there will be no, you know, educated clergy people west of the Mississippi, right? And so somebody said that you know, there's a big need out there, we we're gonna have to solve that. If we're if we've reversed that equation and we say we've got a solution, you know, now bring me your need, then then then we're then we're we're we've kind of got that backwards. And so we need to start asking what is what is the real need out there and how can we meet it? And I'd say if you really can't identify the need, then you then you're gonna have a hard time identifying your mission. Um if we if we confuse mission with the methods and the means that we've developed over the last 150 years, we think that's our mission. That's not our mission, that's the way we met the mission, right? Um then then we're we're simply trying to figure out how to sustain what we've become good at, you know, whether the market needs it or not.
SPEAKER_01:So let's talk about this as we start to wrap up, as we're coming against time. I I think that if I'm a board member right now or a president, you know, president comes in, the board has said to to her or to him, hey, here's our mission, right? And the president's getting rolling, or a board member comes in. Maybe they're both graduates of the school. And when they graduated, it was a they were strumming the guitar, right? Yeah. Um, the the the field looked different, but now you hear this and you say, Do we really know what our value proposition is? Do we really know what what our mission is? So as again, as we start to wrap up here, give me some sense of what you want to tell a border president right now, how they start this conversation, because these are big questions. They're great questions, but they're big questions.
SPEAKER_00:Well, if we you know, we want to we want to think about mission is enduring, but if we think about uh seminary that was founded uh before the civil war, or a seminary that was founded near the you know the origins of the nation, where you know the mission is not the same, right? You know, we like we like to think about you know our mission is as just never changing, you know, we may change, but our mission doesn't change. Well, no, that's not true. I mean, we've we've the mission has has evolved and adapted to different moments and has actually helped put push history along, right? And and help and help change the way the world is is functioning. And if we if you have a board with people from multiple decades sitting on it, they each are interpreting the mission as what it was, you know, when they were a student there. Right. And and each of those, if you really got granular, they would actually have different expressions of what that was because they were different. And now you have to think what so how do you how do you benefit draw on that past and read that into the future and and really figure out how you meet this moment? And and it comes back to what's what's the world's need that we can meet, you know, within theological education. And I I believe there's a lots of places that the theological education can meet the world's needs right now. We've you know, if we don't when when have we ever needed more, you know, people who can reflect um ethically on decisions, policy, would be able to incorporate their faith into their professions, you know, find meaning in life, uh, counter technological advances with moral reasoning. I mean, what or or temper technological advances with moral reasoning? You know, theological education has a lot to offer besides the professional preparation that we've we've come to know and love. Um, and so if we just kind of mine that and think about what the worlds need right now, is I think not only will we find multiple expressions of mission that can differentiate one seminary from another, I also think that we'll find different ways to build different kinds of business models that can support and sustain that well into the future.
SPEAKER_01:Other quite other things that you would encourage a board to do at this point to think about to start this conversation?
SPEAKER_00:I would encourage boards to think about creating kind of a Skunkworks or innovation lab, some some sort of uh place where experimentation is encouraged as opposed to uh feels too risky. Sometimes this can be in the continuing education area or in a professional development mode where you're not actually, you know, seeking academic credit for particular types of educational experiences. You're not kind of bumping into accreditation standards yet. You you just want to see if there's a market for this, you know. Do hospice nurses need uh pastoral care training from a seminary? Do um yeah, mid-career lawyers need to think about how to integrate ethics with uh profession? You know, uh, is there something do pastors need to understand how AI is gonna transform worship? You know, but just experiment with that because because our processes for bringing them online in the main academic offerings are rightfully um lengthy and and and and and and well vetted, but but we we have to we have to just test a little bit more with market research, you know, honest to goodness, market research, and with um actually um putting an offering out there at least at a minimal scale, just to see if if there's an audience that's willing to pay for that. And if you find that there is and it's consistent with your mission, then you can begin to scale it up and bring it back online and mainline it and go through the processes of you know getting the academic credit awarded and bringing it into a, you know, if it's a new certificate or degree program, making sure that you follow all the steps for accreditation as well. But but encourage experimentation and innovation in a way where where risk and failure are rewarded as opposed to discouraged.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I really appreciate this, David, because I think this is a time, as you say, that theological education and what it offers is is needed as much as ever in society. And the ways we think creatively and schools do that, I think is is part of the future of what could come.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. And we've got creative folks, we've got people with integrity, we've got people with vision, and um that that's what the world needs right now.
SPEAKER_01:I'm gonna put lots of links on the it in the podcast page, intrust.org slash podcast. Uh, David, the Reverend Dr. David Rowe, uh, who has been a president, who has been through this, who has helped schools figure out missions first as a president and as a leader and as a consultant. Um, president of the Windmere Group Consulting Group. Uh David, I'm going to put your contact information as well. Always a pleasure to have you on the program. Thanks, Matt. I'm looking for my badge. All right. You'll get a badge next time, guaranteed. All right. Take care. 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.