Good Neighbor Podcast: Auburn and Opelika

Ep. #66: Cultivating Leaders at Christ Our Redeemer Seminary

• Susannah Hodges at Village Centre Press

Share episode

Curious about how a new seminary is reshaping the landscape of theological education? Meet Hoffman Ryan from Christ, our Redeemer Seminary in Auburn, as he unpacks the inspiring journey of this innovative institution. Founded through a unique partnership between local churches in Opelika and Auburn, this seminary is committed to training leaders for global missions. Hoffman shares how his transformative experiences with Campus Crusade for Christ in China ignited his passion for leadership development in today's intricate and often divided world. Listen to Hoffman's insights on the power of in-person education and the profound impact of community in a post-COVID era.

Hoffman also challenges common misconceptions about seminary education, emphasizing its relevance beyond traditional pastoral roles. Discover how this seminary is opening doors for women both as students and educators and why character formation is as crucial as academic rigor. Tune in for a conversation that explores faith, unity, and the rich potential within the Auburn community, offering valuable lessons for anyone interested in the transformative power of theological education.

Speaker 1:

This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Susanna Hodges.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast. With me today is Hoffman Ryan, and he is with the Christ, our Redeemer Seminary in Auburn. Welcome, hoffman, it's a pleasure to have you with me today.

Speaker 3:

Thank you, susanna, it's great to be here.

Speaker 2:

Tell me a little bit about Christ, our Redeemer, seminary. I've done a little bit of research on it and it's relatively new, so I'm excited. Tell me about how this got started.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, sure, we began three and a half years ago, in 2021, as a partnership of local churches here in Opelika and Auburn and with a view to and a dedication to train leaders for God's global mission, and we provide accredited graduate theological education for people that are coming up from our community and we try to root the education process in the life of the local church. We launched with our first group of students. We had 11 students who began a three-year Master's of Divinity degree in 2021, and they just graduated so our inaugural class. They just graduated this past May, which was a big milestone for us, and recently we started a two semester certificate degree that hits a much broader audience. We hope to start some future degrees like an MA in faith and work and biblical counseling, some other things, in the future. So we're growing and it's been a good ride so far.

Speaker 2:

So tell me, are there any other seminaries in our area, or is this like a new one for our area?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, well, yes and no. There are some programs that are kind of various ways, extension programs of seminaries outside of Auburn, some online, some hybrid, where they go and travel back and forth. But this has been the first seminary that's ever existed of Auburn, for Auburn and Opelika.

Speaker 2:

Yep, well, that's. That's very good, because I think most people have to like travel to or do online school, so this is a great opportunity to have that. I don't know, I think in classroom experience in school is important.

Speaker 1:

We all tried online during the.

Speaker 2:

You know COVID, and it's just difficult to do things online, isn't it?

Speaker 3:

Yes, it is yeah, no, we believe that. You know, learning and transformation happens best when it's highly relational and so being face-to-face, being with a peer of co-learners you know, co-journers together with this learning journey, and with the professors and teachers and pastors that are face-to-face and hearing their not just their content of their teaching but the content of their lives, and that putting them in a relational environment promotes learning and transformation much better.

Speaker 2:

I think it really does make a difference. So tell me a little bit about yourself. How did you get into? How did this get started? How did you decide, hey, we might want to do something like that? What's your journey into the seminary?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, thanks for asking. So I come from Alabama, from a good Christian home with great parents, grew up in church like so many people you know in the South, came to Auburn as a student, but it was really there, my sophomore year, that my faith in Christ really took root in a transformative way. And then by the end of my college time here, I learned about places in the world that had never heard of Jesus Christ and it just kind of stunned me and shocked me, and the Lord used that to call me into vocational ministry and I went with Campus Crusade for Christ to China for eight years, lived in China, met my wife there and then, after that 2010, we moved back to Auburn and that experience marked my life. My 19 years with with Camps Crusade was most of that was involved either directly or indirectly in China and during that experience I had learned there were about a growing conviction that ministry in the 21st century is difficult, is complex.

Speaker 3:

We live in a hyper pluralized world. We live in a hyper polarized world and in the West and really in some ways this applies all across the world we live in a post what they call post-Christian context, where people know just enough about Christianity to inoculate them to it as if to a virus. And so increasingly in the West and throughout the world, people know just enough to say, nah, I know that I'm not interested. And so in this environment, ministry is complex, it's not easy, and perhaps it's more complex than ever in the history of the church, and so it begs the need for highly trained leaders who could then equip Christians in their congregation and ministries to communicate the gospel well and clearly and winsomely to a really complex environment. And so that was a growing conviction.

Speaker 3:

It was like this one stream, but then it joined up with another stream that was developing in my life about the unity of the people of God, that Jesus died and rose again to bring down the barriers that sin causes between people and to unite to himself one people of God, one family, one church, one body of Christ. And when we honor that unity, just as Jesus prayed in John 17, it has a missional impact. He prays that we would be one, even as he's in the Father and the Father's in him and he's in us. We would be one so that the world would know that the Father sent the Son. So when we honor the blood-bought unity that Jesus has accomplished. It bears witness to a watching and divided world, as one person said recently that I heard that. What does a divided church have to offer a divided world?

Speaker 3:

Not much, but when we come together because of our common faith in Jesus Christ under his lordship, it says to a divided world hey, there might be divisions out there, but in Christ there can be true peace and harmony. So that conviction was growing and it became this second tributary, flowing into what eventuated and started the seminary. A third was once moving back to Auburn. I noticed that there was a clear marks of grace upon this city that you know God is at work everywhere, but in Auburn, opelika, perhaps, in a special way that there were, there was elements of unity here.

Speaker 3:

There are multiple prayer gatherings where pastors, leaders, are coming together across denominations, across theological traditions, and they're recognizing in the other that, though we may differ on some points, I know that you love Jesus and I love Jesus and we're on the same team. I saw pockets of this all across.

Speaker 2:

I did notice on your website the local church partnerships are also very diverse. So you have, you know. Your partners here, you know, have a sense of unity as well.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, that's right. So that was just something that I noticed, didn't know what to do with, but I noticed it when my wife and I first moved back to the States. And another thing was there's a there's a fervor in the city for for ministry, for missions, for telling people about Jesus, both here and to the nations. And then the third thing I noticed that there's a history of people coming here and God changing their lives and working in their life in some significant way and then calling them into some kind of vocational ministry, whether it's pastor, church planter, missionary, campus ministry, chaplaincy, something like that. That. My story, as I shared a little bit earlier, what happened to me, has happened many, many, many, many, many times over the history of this community and in fact I did a little historical digging and it actually goes, I think, all the way back to at least on the Auburn side.

Speaker 3:

Auburn's founding Judge John Harper was a Methodist.

Speaker 3:

He moved from Georgia into Auburn to found the city of Auburn and it's in the historical record that his founding vision was that it would become a center for education and Christian mission and I have to believe that if that was really his vision for the city, that there were a lot of prayers went into that, absolutely yes, striving in that direction.

Speaker 3:

And so I have to think that this vision and these prayers are kind of poured into the concrete of Auburn's foundation. And of course we see education-wise where that's come, and not just university but the schools here and whatnot. But I think we also see it in this work of God of changing people's lives here and then calling them to participate in leadership roles in his mission in the world, and so I think it's part of this, the story of Auburn, that maybe most people here don't recognize, but so that was another tributary that kind of flowed into this thing is that reflected on, you know, the complexity and difficulty of ministry in the 21st century, the need for training, the power of unity and the witness that that bears, as well as these marks of grace in Auburn.

Speaker 3:

I started to just ponder, hey what story is God unfolding here, that we could steward this legacy into the next season. And then you know, you raised the question earlier has there ever been a seminary in Auburn? And you know, essentially no. So that's where that idea germinated, you know, in my soul. I said well, hey, what if there could be? What if we could train the leaders that were coming up from here, and I think if we collaborate we can do it. And so that idea just caught traction and here we are.

Speaker 2:

I love it. It's such a great story and so excited that you've got it off the ground and you had your first students here. But tell me a little bit about I mean, you've been doing this for a while, you've been in the ministry for a while what are some misconceptions that people have about seminary education in general, or maybe specifically about the Christ Our Redeemer, seminary education in general, or maybe specifically about the Christ Our Redeemer seminary?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, that's such a great question. So, you know, depends on who you're talking to. But seminary for a lot of people they think, well, it's for pastors, it's a pastor's training, you know, program so that they can preach, they can go fill a pulpit somewhere and lead local churches. And while it does do that, that is one of the aspects of what seminary aims to do, it's not the whole of it.

Speaker 3:

Seminary at its best really encompasses a broader scope of people that God is calling into either vocational ministry or perhaps bivocational or even non vocational leadership within God's church. That it can equip people for a wide, much wider variety of roles. And it's really that's based on an assumption that in God's kingdom and God's family every Christian, every man, woman and child even has a role to play, and those roles may change over different seasons of life. Nevertheless, everyone has a role to play and a significant part of the leader's role is to equip Christians for their roles. And so seminary is really about training for a wider variety of roles so that they can go and then equip others. And I would say another kind of going from that misconception if it's just for pastors and a lot of people think, well, it's just for men. Well, that's just not true. I say every man, woman and child has a role to play.

Speaker 2:

That's right yeah.

Speaker 3:

So we have women who teach in the seminary, we have women who are students in the seminary, and then women who are students in the seminary, and then there's historical reasons for this as well. But a lot of people think it's just about knowledge, it's just about learning this body of knowledge we call doctrine, and it's just passing that body of knowledge on. And while seminary does transfer a lot of knowledge of the Bible and theology and church history and ministry and whatnot, it's not just about knowledge. As a matter of fact, knowledge itself has its terminus, its focus, its purpose, its aim is love. It's to become like Christ in loving God and loving others.

Speaker 3:

Paul said to Timothy the aim of our charge is love. And he said in 1 Corinthians like you know, you can have all the knowledge in the world and you can even speak with the eloquence of angels, and it's nothing without love. So knowledge has a purpose that we know God more, so that we might love him more and become more like him, which is to be loving. So seminary training, then, is about training men and women who are Christ-like in the way that they love others. That brings a very different perspective to the whole training process. We're aimed at the heart, not just the mind.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. You do need that aspect in a ministry and, as Christians ourselves, that is, love your neighbor is definitely one of those things that we have to have in our heart at all times.

Speaker 3:

That's right. Yeah, so it's about character formation, not just gaining knowledge. Yep.

Speaker 2:

Well, tell me about you personally, Hoffman. What do you do for fun when you're not working on your seminary here?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, well, I would say first of all, I love being with my family, with my wife. I have three beautiful daughters. They're 13, 11 and eight years old, and they're the best children in the world, I think, in my opinion, and I'm so blessed to have them and then just have their extended family. So our family time, my wife and I you know both being missionaries that's in our past we love to travel, whether that's on mission somewhere or just, you know, vacation somewhere, and we love to bring our kids along in that, to see the world. We spent time as a family in Japan and China and other places. Sports wise, I like sports, but I like Brazilian jujitsu here.

Speaker 2:

Oh fun.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, fun, fun sport for me and growing up in the South and Alabama, of course I like hunting, fishing, those kinds of things. Oh yeah you can't.

Speaker 2:

You got to do that Absolutely Well. Part of the reason I do this podcast is to encourage other people in their thoughts of starting a business or going into entrepreneurship or doing what you've done starting a seminary here in Auburn. But you know people need to understand that it's not without challenges but it's worth doing it. So what are some of the challenges that you've experienced whether it's personal or in the forming of your seminary that you had to overcome that made you a stronger person and your business is stronger, or the seminary stronger?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, well, we could go in a lot of different directions here, but I think at the core of it, at least in my experience, and I think this is true to God's purpose in our lives but it's character formation is becoming like. Christ is giving up on our selfish ways, our selfish ambitions, pride, fear, insecurity, those kinds of things that he's about the heart. You know, man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart. And character formation is a painful process at times. He puts us in a crucible of refinement where there's heat, there's fire, and he melts away the dross in our character and it brings us to a place of humility, or even humiliation at time and failure. And I would say the crucible that he's used most in my life and I think this is the whole purpose of it is marriage, and we've had plenty of struggles and most of that is due to my own sins and failures and foolishness. And through that process and through my wife's response of grace and covenant faithfulness in that marriage, he's grown us, he's grown me significantly.

Speaker 3:

Sometimes my wife will say I've been married to five different people and they've all been Hoffman, because he's changing over time and praise God for that. And so marriage and parenting have been the most refining, crucible processes in my life. And again, just to reiterate, character within the church and leaders among the church is critical. It's the whole ballgame. You can teach and preach what you know, but you only reproduce who you are. And when those are not consistent the world can tell eventually. And there's plenty of stories of high profile Christian leaders who fall into this or that egregious sin and it brings shame on the name of Christ in the world, it damages our witness to the world when Christians fail to keep growing in Christlike character. And so I would say, but that doesn't just apply to life in the church or life in ministry.

Speaker 2:

It's everywhere, it's anything.

Speaker 3:

That's right. It's life period, whether you're a business owner or a stay-at-home mom or whatever Christ-likeness is our goal.

Speaker 2:

That's right, so important.

Speaker 3:

Yep.

Speaker 2:

Well, what's one thing you wish? Listeners and the people in Auburn in this area knew about the seminary that they may not realize.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, first of all that we're here. You know we made t-shirts not too long ago that says, yes, there's a seminary in Auburn. Because when we get into conversations with folks they would say, oh, I didn't know there's a seminary here. Well, yes, there is one. And so just first of all, that we're here and they're ready and willing to serve the church and the community of Oak Lake and Auburn and they're ready and willing to serve the church and the community of Oak Lake and Auburn.

Speaker 3:

I'll say I mentioned this a little earlier we don't just offer the MDiv program, which that is more of a vocational track degree. It's a three-year degree, but we also are beginning to offer a variety of programs and the first one we launched in this stream is the certificate program. So it's two semesters college student. You know it meets, it can intersect with a lot of people and that's there to help people understand what is God's mission in the world and what's our role in it.

Speaker 3:

And I would say we do some other services as well for the community. We do research on the changing nature of Auburn, opelika and the implications that it has for the church. We publish that in a variety of ways. We do quarterly seminars that are open to anybody on various topics like biblical counseling or global missions or different things we have once a quarter, I would say. Another thing is that if you have some event that you would like a speaker for, I'd love for folks to know that myself or one of our staff would love to come speak and share about how we're serving our community. Yeah, so those would be some things that we'd love for more folks to know.

Speaker 2:

Awesome. So when you're looking at, you know finding information about your seminar and getting more involved. How would people get in touch or learn more?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, well, the easiest way is just Google. If you Google Seminary Auburn, we're the first thing that comes up, and so our website. We have a podcast that we do. We have a blog, we post articles. Of course, instagram, facebook we have a new YouTube channel that we're working on, and then we also do an annual banquet at the end of February. This year it's going to be February 28th and it's not a fundraiser. That's what we have to tell people. This banquet is not a fundraiser. It's a celebration banquet and we do some giveaways, we have some great music and it's a time to just hear about what the church in Auburn, opelika, is doing to this collaborative effort and how God is using it. So we welcome if folks want to come check that out. You can find that on our website.

Speaker 2:

Perfect Well. Thank you so much, Hoffman, for for being with me today. I've really enjoyed learning more about you and about the seminary. Thank you so much for joiningary. Thank you so much for joining me. Thank you, Susanna, it's a pleasure.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast, auburn. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnpauburncom. That's gnpauburncom, or call 334-429-7404.