Christian Education at the Crossroads Season Wrap-up

That's a wrap. Thanks so much for joining us for season one of With Faith in Mind as we explored "Christian Education at the Crossroads. Thank you for joining us and please reach out with your thoughts on Season One and what you'd like to see in season two. 

You can reach us at podcast@slbrownfoundation.org 

Learn more about Upper House at www.upperhouse.org, and check out our other podcast, UpWords, available on all major podcast platforms. 

With Faith in Mind is produced at Upper House in Madison, Wisconsin, and hosted by Director of University Engagement Dan Hummel and Executive Director John Terrill. Jesse Koopman is the Executive Producer. Upper House is an initiative of the Stephen & Laurel Brown Foundation.

Please reach out to us with comments or questions at podcast@slbrownfoundation.org. We'd love to hear from you. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Welcome to With Faith in Mind. My name is Jesse Koopman. I'm the producer of the podcast, and I'm excited here today to be with our co-hosts, Dan Hummel and John Turtle. And we are going to be wrapping up our season today. Season one was Christian Education at the Crossroads, and we had a lot of fun and learned a lot of stuff. And uh we are going to dig in today to kind of recap, bring you guys back all up to speed for those of you who maybe didn't catch every single episode along the way, or just want to get an overall view of what we explored and did and talk about maybe a little bit of the future of the podcast and what's going on at Upper House. So, with no further ado, John, Dan, welcome. And uh excited to get to chat with you guys a little bit today. Great to see you, Jesse.

SPEAKER_03 0:50

Yeah, good to be here with both of you.

SPEAKER_01 0:52

Um, so I want to start off with just a kind of a fun question. So let's share some of our favorite memories of the experience. It could be podcasting in general, it could be a specific guest, it could be uh a specific topic, it could be hanging out with me. I don't know. Uh whatever it may have been. Uh, but let's start off with some of your favorite moments of the first season. Uh John, let's kick it off.

SPEAKER_00 1:13

Well, Jesse, as we finish, I have to say that um, and our listeners um wouldn't know this uh by listening, although maybe they do, because they've noticed some trend lines in our own performance. But but for me, one of the real um joys has been to sit under your teaching. And uh, this is not a natural um forum for me. Uh and so Jesse has has really been a great coach to just help us get better at this format. So I have a lot of good memories, some painful memories. Uh because just like for the athletes out there that have had to watch tape of their performance, um, or musicians or whatever it is, uh, Jesse has that same teaching principle that he invites us to scroll back and to reflect on the good and the bad of each episode. So I've really appreciated that about your work. Well, thanks, John. I think a highlight for me um would be how complex. I think in in my mind, part of the joy of this has been to invite a lot of different perspectives uh to and to hear the complexity of of leaders uh and scholars uh that are wrestling with these issues real time and trying to make sense of all the change that's coming. And I think that's that's more of a collective memory, but um I think it's been helpful for me. It's it's actually made me feel a little less alone uh and fearful um as this this industry, uh the uh industry of of Christian education, and it is an industry at some level, it's it's really about formation, so it's more than an industry, but it is a it is an institution, a series or or uh a network of institutions that are try trying to affect change in the world. And there's a lot of complexity, and I think you as a leader within that segment, you can feel lost at times. And there's something wonderful about recognizing that you're not the only one that feels all the complexity. So that's probably a highlight for me is to sit with a lot of really seasoned people and to hear them talk about some of the key insights they have and how they're wrestling with these complex changes that are coming.

SPEAKER_01 3:19

Yeah, I've really loved that too. Uh and thanks for the kind words too, John. That's a lot to me. Uh, how about you, Dan? Any memories specifically stand out to you that it excited to you or you look back with a great fondness for?

SPEAKER_03 3:30

Yeah. Uh well, first I want to echo John and say it's been a pleasure working with you, Jesse. And I think uh beyond the the coaching, um, you know, being a producer for something like this requires a lot of uh flexibility, adaptability, um, a lot of rescheduling of particular interviews and all that kind of stuff. So uh that could be that could go a bunch of different ways. It was always uh a can-do attitude and a a sort of um adapt on the fly type uh attitude, which is great. Um I think back, I think of uh many listeners weren't able to join us, but I think of our launch party that we had. Oh, yeah. Uh, which is really fun just to see an you know an embodied community of people here in Madison who were interested in the topic, interested in what Upper House was doing. It was also in a very unique place. It was in a train car turned into a venue, a hosting venue, which was a really fun change just a couple blocks here from Upper House. Uh I think of a funny one was uh Tom Lynn, who uh is the president of InterVarsity. He was one of our guests, and he came actually into Upper House to be interviewed, and uh we offered him coffee uh at the at the front end and uh unfortunately gave him a curdled half and half. Uh the stitch uh uh he poured in, and if you know what that looks like, it just sort of all clumps up at the top. And Tom's such a kind person. He was and they're spooning it out, like he was gonna save this coffee. So uh we finally encouraged him to get a new cup, I believe. Although I don't actually remember, he might have actually drank it. I'm not sure. But um that was just funny. It was it was uh it was a good good little memory. And then I do think of there were a coup I I won't um list names, but there were a couple of guests that I had that we had to reschedule a number of times. So I just remember once actually getting on the Zoom call or getting them in the space, just having this relief like, ah, this one's actually going to happen, even if we've rescheduled four times over the last you know month or something for this. So it's always good when you can um, you know, sort of intend to have conversations and you actually get to have those conversations. And um I I really enjoyed, I can't think of a a sort of conversation that I didn't really come away and rich from, but it was particularly rewarding when it was a it was a hard catch uh based on usually a mix of my schedule and and the guest schedule as well.

SPEAKER_00 5:48

Yeah. And Jesse, it reminds me that your story about Tom, which I didn't know um because I wasn't a part of that interview, reminds me of the launch party and the mixing of the um the uh spices uh at the end that emptied out.

SPEAKER_01 6:02

I went, Jesse, I wonder if you could tell that story. Oh gosh. Yeah. So we had this amazing catering from a local Thai restaurant here in Madison. Uh and uh at the end of the evening, uh we kind of dumped all the spice bowls that were meant to season our food into the trash, and it created like this unbelievable cacophony uh of odorous spices, and everybody that was sticking around to clean up was coughing wildly and sneezing like crazy for like the next half hour. Uh, it was quite something, but it was a lot of fun. We all laughed pretty hard about it when we weren't crying through the spices in the air.

SPEAKER_00 6:37

It truly emptied the train. It really did. I I I could not, I could not, and I have a pretty high tolerance. I could not take it. Yeah. I had to physically get off the train.

SPEAKER_01 6:48

It was really, really something.

unknown 6:50

Oh man.

SPEAKER_01 6:51

Oh man, but that was a really fun event. I look back on that with a lot of funness too. Yeah. Uh favorite memories for me. I mean, I think the the most filling thing I have as both a producer and a teacher uh and consultant is just watching teams grow and get better. Uh, watching the two of you really come into your own and grow and develop as as interviewers and as podcasters has been uh really my biggest highlight, but also just the quality of guests that you guys inspired through your conversation skills. Um, both in terms of who you chose to invite, uh, who you chose to um really bring into talk about specific issues and just the nature of your circles that accompanied that. Uh but yeah, watching you guys get to interact with them, develop a personal style in terms of your interview and and conversations has been really, really my biggest highlight. Uh beyond that, um, some of the guests were just a real hoot. Uh, and I I'm really, really thrilled to have gotten to meet some of these people that I never would have outside of having these conversations or being a part of this podcast. Yeah. That's great. Some of those people I now have relationships with. That's great.

SPEAKER_00 8:04

Yeah, that that's so good. And I there were so many uh so many experienced leaders. I we didn't do this, but it would be an interesting exercise to add up all the years of of leading within Christian education. And I mean hundreds. Hundreds of years like like and then some really dynamic younger voices, um, very seasoned, um, but younger chronologically, right? That it just gives you a lot, like it brings a lot of hope that we have so many um just wonderful young people stepping into positions of leadership that I think um, at least for me, feels really gratifying and and I feel hopeful that the church is in good hands.

SPEAKER_01 8:41

Yeah, I remember when Dan interviewed Sarah Solstice, um, the recent graduate uh from college. I I was just so impressed with her take on life, spirituality, spiritual formation, and education. Um I thought she was deeply insightful, well-spoken, and uh really courageous in the way that she presented her own take on things. And uh I I I loved seeing that. It gave me a lot of hope too. Uh likewise when we talked with Tia and Marcio Sierra, they're not the youngest people in the world, but they're my age-ish. Yeah, yeah. Uh I'm not gonna say how old that is, but we'll let people guess. We'll let our listeners guess. Um But yeah, just the way they talked about the generation they're working with in primary education, it was just so inspiring to hear about the effectiveness that they're having and the the passion and zeal that they bring to that role. Uh really excites me about the future.

unknown 9:35

Right.

SPEAKER_00 9:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:37

Uh talking about the future, that always makes me think about the past as well and where we've come from. And Dan, as a historian, you have a very unique perspective on almost everything that you tend to bring to every conversation you have. Uh for those of you who don't know, Dan, he's a uh historian through and through PhD here at UW. Uh, and literally, I can't remember a good conversation we've had that didn't involve some sort of historical perspective out of you, uh, whether that's how's the weather today or something about Christian formation. Um so I'm really curious to get uh perspective from you as a historian. When you take a look at uh the entire series, and we had historians on, we had um uh Andrew Turpin on. I know we had uh I can't remember his name. Talked about trained historians.

SPEAKER_03 10:23

Charlie Cotherman. Charlie Cotherman was on. Yeah, Gugstrong was on. Um Carl Johnson History.

SPEAKER_01 10:32

He's also a historian.

SPEAKER_03 10:33

As I I think I made this joke at the front end of the Carl Johnson interview, which is I found a few ways to sneak in a few extra historians. They're not necessarily talking about history, but we're getting more and more history PhDs on the on the series.

SPEAKER_01 10:45

Um as you think about uh the holistic sense of the podcast and the historical bent, I bet you've had a unique perspective on how things have gone from where we started in America in this to where we are today. Um can you talk a little bit about that historical perspective as far as what you've learned through the podcast about our history, as well as some of the things that you've maybe found wanting still that you would have wanted to understand more deeply or maybe want to look into more moving forward?

SPEAKER_03 11:18

Right. And there's always more questions uh when you do something like this. You dive deep and you realize just um how narrow the slice of of reality that you're actually grappling with.

SPEAKER_01 11:28

Yeah, I remember when we were first starting this whole conversation, I think we had 10 episodes planned. Yeah, right. We're now on 24 in the wrap-up, so Right.

SPEAKER_03 11:36

And we definitely cut things, you know, cut cut off conversations that we could have had um just due to this thing growing so much. Uh yeah, from a historical perspective, I mean, I think one of the things that uh comes across, at least for me from my perspective, is just how interesting and how different the histories of the different types of institutions we're talking about are. So we had Andrea on to talk about like the long American history, at least, of colleges and universities and the tradition of moral education that goes back hundreds of years. On the flip side, we had Charlie talk about the Christian Study Center model, which I mean he he dated to basically the 1960s and 70s. And it it's a it emerged as a response to particular problems in those decades and then has developed since then into what we know today as the Christian Study Center movement. And so you can tell those two stories almost without reference to each other if you wanted to. But I think one of the powerful things we did in the series is try to bring these things together under a shared curiosity about the the nature and the history and then the future of Christian education. I also really recognized, you know, one of the last uh running, we we did the interview middle through, but last running was Danny Wasserman at um Lumin Christie, a Catholic study center type organization down in in Chicago. And it just struck me that there's a whole history, I mean, a massive history, possibly bigger than the Protestant you know, uh version of this history, of Catholic education. Not just higher education, all types of you know, secondary education, everything. And you know, we just basically glanced off that. We mentioned it in a few different um passing ways, and and that's not to diminish what we did, but just to recognize just how vast you spend your whole life, you know, sort of pondering Christian education. Um one last thing I'll say about just as a historian is and this is what historians tend to say, so I'm not saying anything new here, but just how distinctive a lot of the questions, problems, and then answers are to Christian education within a broadly American context. We talked about to a few people who were dealing with uh educate Christian education outside of the US, and it was interesting because they have much different experiences. In fact, sometimes it's almost the reverse situation. We talk a lot about decline in Christian educ uh particularly higher education in the US, whereas in other parts of the globe, Christian education is booming. It's never seen so much growth. And as a historian, that just makes me realize how much context matters, how much particular localities, particular communities develop their institutions and their answers to deep questions like what does it mean to be educated? Uh, in response to those immediate contexts. And it let me appreciate um everything from listening to people who were outside of the US and and trying to understand what was needed there, to people like uh Tiffany Malloy, who is a pastor here in Madison, thinking about formation and education very specifically to her tradition and and the people in Madison that attend her church. So um, as a historian, I just appreciate that. I I love the diversity, I love the way um you can enter into what seem to be very general conversations and they get very specific very quickly. And I'll say just Jesse, the second part of that is you asked about things that were missing. Or um I think the one that I just I'm I'm really curious in, and it's been driving some of my reading the last uh few months, actually, is this question of Catholic uh education or the Catholic intellectual tradition, which is how Danny talked about what they were tapping into. And I find it fascinating, one because it's so old and and there's such a continuity with voices, and we talked about this with Danny going back centuries and centuries. Um and is also global. So there are you know Catholic education, you might just assume U.S. Catholic education, but that looks different than um education in other parts of the globe. And so I've I've been interested more and more in just sort of exploring that tradition and particularly exploring its philosophies of education in every really ever since talking to Danny.

SPEAKER_01 15:47

That's awesome. Uh John, so we talked about one of Dan's favorite subjects or subsets of study is that's history. I know one of yours is institutions. Uh I would love to get your take on some of the more profound or interesting or just enjoyable things that you learned around the notions of institutions and leadership. I can know leadership and institutions both kind of go hand in hand for you. Um as there's something that you're just both incredibly passionate about. Uh so what are some of your observations there?

SPEAKER_00 16:16

Yeah, well, I think Dan uh made a couple important points. One is that the trend lines uh in North America look a little different than trend lines in other parts of the world. Uh and and we could think about um uh parts of I mean j I'll just the world versus North America and maybe maybe Europe. Um uh and so y we could single out regions of the globe, but those trend lines would be very different and you'd have to really think about them almost country by country um to to really understand them. From an institutional perspective, I think there's a couple of things, maybe two or three things that are really in play here that make this interesting. One is at least in North America or the United States for the time being, college uh enrollment has probably reached its peak. So it is a model that's under strain. You think about most industries um and most industries think about growing and expanding market share. And c uh colleges and universities in the United States could do that, and North America could do that, but they'll have to think creatively about how to do that, right? So a lot of emphasis on first generation students and expanding the market for those who are considering a college degree. Um I think there is another uh b mega trend that's in play, and that is lots of people questioning the role of a college degree. Um and I think some of that questioning's been healthy. I think um for those who are trying to um source equipment or buy a car or build a home or buy a home, you see in kind of a clear way the strain on the traits um and the skilled trades. And so I think we need to get more creative about supporting young people and and others who are uh maybe college degrees not a good option for them, not because they don't have capacity or capability, but because they're really gifted in some other field, some and they have other interests. And I think we've really diminished uh the trades and we've chipped away at that over time, and I see you know a lot of new emphasis on helping students um begin to move in that direction again um with with celebration, you know, that it doesn't it's not a second class ticket, it can be a first class ticket. Um and so that's really important. I think but that's a really important trend line that I think is a part of this. And then I I think the the just the business model for higher education, um earned income models, tuition, um, you know, where do where do where does the income come from? I mean, this complicates everything. Uh in what ways can universities and colleges expand um to draw um greater revenue sources to to really you know fund the the work that they they they want to do. Um so those are some the some kind of themes that are that that stand out over over the time uh of our podcast. From a leadership perspective, um in Christian education, I I think it's just really important for um leaders, and we heard this in so many cases, leaders really uh asking the fundamental question of what kind of transformation do we want to see. I think ultimately a lot of the way we manage change and adapt to change is to to go back to the deepest questions. And I think for a lot of these institutions, it really starts with what is the m mission of our institution. And I think if you're leading in primary and secondary Christian education, you'll ask maybe that same question, but you'll respond a little differently. You'll think about the involvement of parents and community maybe a little differently than you will if you're asking that question from a higher education perspective. If you're in the church, you'll uh you can ask that question, but you you might respond to that question in a different way. So there's a lot of overlapping concerns that I think um all of us uh leading and thinking about Christian education uh face, but there are I think nuanced ways that we would consider that as well.

SPEAKER_01 20:29

Yeah, excellent. Thank you. And you you mentioned themes. I want to kind of go there next and just talk about some of the broader themes that we've seen as we've uh looked at it as a whole. Um I'm gonna kick off with one word here, and that's ecosystem. I can't remember how many, but I I'd say easily more than half of people unsolicitedly mentioned the word ecosystem when they talked about uh higher education or Christian education abroad or formation. Whenever we talked about these, almost unquestionably, people would talk about it as what they are doing fits into a broader ecosystem. Um and I'd love to just get your guys' take on how you experienced that and what that meant to you to talk about it from that perspective.

SPEAKER_03 21:13

Yeah, it the ecosystem language helped me, for one, make sense of the whole in a way that I hadn't before sort of using that metaphor. So understanding that at least how I think of the ecosystem, that there's these different institutions that almost assume that there are other institutions doing other work that they're contributing to the larger educational mission. And so you have the church or churches who have a certain type of education they want to advance. They can't do everything, they can't, you know, train people in trades or anything like that. So they're assuming that there's a school system, a primary school system, a secondary, uh post secondary school system, and that there's certain types of education happening there, there's certain types of formation happening there, and there's also a parachurch uh institutional system. We talked Talk to Tom Linovin or Arsty, among others, about that. Christian study centers fit into that as well. And we, I just to make it about uh study centers for something, we assume that there's this broader ecosystem that we fit into as well. And I think for many people that helped them, particularly the leaders, situate their mission within a broader mission of the church or of education. And so it it in some ways gave clear lanes for different types of people to do different types of education, but it seemed to also give meaning as a whole to understand that individuals will be coming through this ecosystem over their whole lives, starting possibly with primary education and then going up to adult education or you know, continuing education at least. And, you know, one little thing that I just read this weekend that fits into this a little is there was a new study out. There's always these studies about uh church attendance, dechurching. That's a new term that there's a new book out called The Great Dechurching, um, that actually made the claim that most um most people by the age of 18 have decided whether or not they're going to be a sort of be part of a religious community or not. And uh and this goes against maybe other wisdom that says college is really important to this. And we've actually justified uh work we've done here is saying, you know, the 18 to 22-year-old period, they're everyone's exploring ideas, all that kind of stuff. And it's interesting, I mean, there's debates about this, but really there's a there's a way where you can think about this in an ecosystem sense, which is there's a there's a process of formation, there are very key moments in it, and possibly a lot of those key moments are in actually pre-college age. Um, and and that makes me value in a way that maybe I I wouldn't otherwise the roles of primary and secondary in church education, and not laying it all at the feet of Christian colleges or ministries at universities to be the thing that will shape a young person's life. To understand, people are coming in by the age of 18 with a lot of um developed opinions, even possibly decisions being made that are gonna be relatively permanent sociologically speaking.

SPEAKER_02 24:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:05

Um, and that's all ecosystem thinking. That's thinking that lets you see the whole instead of just the parts.

SPEAKER_01 24:10

You know, as you were saying that, it brought up together uh another episode idea for me that we're not gonna add in. But uh, if I would have thought about this years uh years ago, uh, it feels like years ago. Uh months ago, when we were first pitching ideas, I would have uh added, but I don't think we ever talked about was the role of parenting in Christian formation and how important and vital that is. And we really didn't get a chance to cover that much at all.

SPEAKER_00 24:30

Aaron Powell And I I just learned a new term about that. There are Christian schools, these are primary uh secondary schools that uh in an association called the Covenant Christian School Um Guild. And it's it's interesting, it's it's where one at least one of the parents um needs to be a professing person of faith so that they're actively involved in the formation component outside of the school. So, you know, uh again a a commitment to whole life discipleship and all arenas of life and schools trying to find ways to extend and partner with family units so that what they're doing in the classroom is reinforced at home. So lots of and I don't know how long that's been around. Maybe it's uh something that's been around a long time, but it's a new term for me and um again a creative way to to to reinforce, I think, some of the transformation that these institutions are trying to trying to achieve.

SPEAKER_01 25:32

Yeah, that's awesome. I love well, so talking about this ecosystem concept, one of the things that I loved hearing from about from so many people is that uh so many different elements of the ecosystem have value. And it's it's not always about a right or a wrong choice, it's about alignment of value. Um so there are so many ways to do Christian formation or education well and not just good, but like really excellently. And there's no right model for any one person. Um so it's it's all about exploring the ecosystem, knowing what's available to you.

SPEAKER_00 26:07

I'd like to add one more thing about what Dan said. Uh Dan's done a really nice job of helping us think about the larger Christian formation ecosystem that includes schools, colleges, churches, the whole universe of what we might consider in that in that world. I also think we can think about the ecosystem as an organization. And it's really important, I think, for, and we heard this over and over again, and I think we're also seeing this breakdown, but to to to care for the health of the organizational ecosystem so that we're honoring all the components and how the components contribute. Um I think of this this Greek word that shows up lots and lots of times in the New Testament, oikos, household. It's the root word of ecumenism, um, a a shared kind of unity in the faith, ecology. We're talking about ecosystem, this idea that God's world is interrelated, the natural world, an economy, where there's really healthy um sharing of resources. Yeah. And so oikos is a really key word, and I think when we think about Christian education, we need to attend to the health of the organizational ecosystem. And we see this breakdown, I'll use the example of higher ed. Um there's a lot of um fraying of the liberal arts, the humanities. Um there's a lot of um, you know, departments are viewed as revenue centers, and some of that from a budgetary perspective makes sense. I think we have to prove our case in the world that there is a viable market for the thing that we're offering. But but but it's not uh it's not a healthy ecosystem view. Just because there's not like off the charts demand for a particular major within the humanities doesn't mean we should stop offering it. And and so I think this idea of attending to the well-being of our organizations, there'll be some it's it's you know, it it likens back to the teaching around the body, the body of Christ, right? That we all have value, some have more visible roles, some have less visible roles roles, but if there is a part of the body that's not functioning well, you know it and you have to attend to it, right? And I think the same applies uh in this organizational ecosystem. And we heard this from leaders.

SPEAKER_01 28:41

Yeah, I was gonna say I can remember at least three people that specifically talked about the product of Christian formation education is not profit or continuation, it's formation. Right. And we need to look at this ecosystem as serving that goal of being formative and educating and producing people of good integrity, life, and knowledge, not making a profit or growth or all these other things that we talk about with shareholders and boards and all these things. But it's it's a hard objective to hold on to because it's not concrete. There's no numbers that we can build around it. It's qualitative more than quantitative.

SPEAKER_00 29:19

Yeah. And at the end of the day, you have to have a functioning bottom line. Yeah, you know, the the profit or uh, you know, being positive net, net positive at the end of an academic year or fiscal year, it's really important. It's like oxygen oxygenated blood in your body. This is not my metaphor, but most people, you know, profit is like that. Or a positive bottom line, you don't get up every day thinking about your blood, but you need your blood to survive, right? And so there need to be healthy models that create long-term sustainability, but that honor the whole integrity of the institution and can train people across all of these categories. And I think that applies for flagship, non-religious institutions, public institutions, but it also applies to Christian colleges, um, and even primary and secondary schools. They're under strain and have to make these tough budget decisions as well. So I wanted to I wanted to raise that because I think there is this meta and um whether there a meso and a meta dimension to this idea of ecosystem.

SPEAKER_03 30:32

Yeah, and the meta, I just was thinking of the conversation with Shirley Hugstra, the president of the uh consortium of Christian colleges and universities, who's thinking about this thing on a really meta level because she's right. Hundreds of um colleges and universities are members in her organization. And this is precisely the tension I think that she's trying to, among many other things, trying to deal with, which is there's a demand question and then there's a mission question, and they don't always overlap entirely. So how do you how do you not give in one way or the other? How do you not sort of put your head in the sand and say, well, this is what we're gonna do no matter what the demand is, and and then the bottom line falls out? Or how or the opposite would be chasing whatever the demand is without any attendant attention to your mission. And she she maybe this is one of the ones you were thinking of, Jesse, who had formation at the front of how she was talking about Christian education. But hearing her talk about the not just the economic uh demands on higher education, but even the legal um challenges in some parts of the country, uh, that seemed to me to be the tension that she, you know, why she's in the position she is, but the one that she probably wakes up with every morning is is how to how to balance those things.

SPEAKER_00 31:43

Yeah, and I think leaders have to have uh uh a compelling argument that holds both of those in value. I mean, most of the people, the students who attend, the parents uh who are helping students make decisions about um enrolling, are not thinking about the bottom line. Like I really want to send my kid to the most efficient and economically viable. I mean, they might be they're looking at tuition and all that kind of stuff, but they're thinking about transformation. They're thinking about training and and um and formation really at the at the core. And faculty and other stakeholders, other people that are that make a university or or a church or a high school or middle school go are thinking about something other than the bottom line most. And and yet that bottom line is really important. And there's a lot of strain on that bottom line right now.

SPEAKER_01 32:33

So one of the things we've heard a lot of people talking about is the demographic cliff, and it's been a recurring theme we've heard over and over again. And I wanted to explore it from uh the question point to both of you of what do you see as the the crux of that problem? And then what were some of the great ways you heard that people are doing their best to address it? So one of the other objectives we had, uh what I haven't we got at the first objective yet. Uh one of the objectives we had in uh getting into this is addressing some of the concerns that are the crossroads of Christian education and providing some solutions to it. So, what are some of the unique or exciting or interesting ways that you guys heard people talking about how they're addressing the demographic cliff?

SPEAKER_03 33:20

Well, one thing that uh I knew and go I knew going in, but it was reaffirmed was the demographic cliff is not just a Christian higher education issue. It's across all of U.S. higher education. The sense that in I think it's 2025, 2026, basically because of the birth rates of college age, you know, as people age into college age, the number of people attending college is never gonna get bigger. It's actually gonna get smaller over the next decades. And that's really problematic in an industry that has basically built itself to grow and grow and having to readjust to a shrinking market. We're here in Wisconsin. Um, this is an ongoing conversation with the public university system. UW Madison is the flagship, they're gonna be just fine, but there are over a dozen other schools in Wisconsin that are really thinking about this demographic cliff uh day in and day out. So that's one thing is that this isn't a uniquely Christian problem. But there are interesting ways. I think the the most interesting conversation I had on that front was with Shirley Hugstra, who's thinking about this at a very sort of top level, meta-level for the entire industry. And uh, we got into a few specific examples, but really thinking about how are Christian colleges trying to attract different types of students than they had traditionally, uh including students outside for particular colleges outside of the religious tradition that they were founded as, which is a can be a very dramatic development, which is if you were always meant to serve Methodist students from the Midwest, and then suddenly you're trying to attract first generation immigrant students from across the entire country, that's a big, that's a big shift. And uh, but she she described a couple colleges and universities that are at least trying to do that as a way to reimagine it. And I thought that was an interesting way to both to live missionally for most of these institutions, which do have a mission of trying to reach more and more people, trying to while also trying to address a very real sort of economic or demographic uh reality. Um those are those are interesting ones. There were other, you know, ways that people have tried to adapt, including, you know, building nursing programs or building business schools, whatever is the sort of most popular um majors. Many of these schools, uh Christian schools, were not, were sort of founded as liberal arts colleges or even Bible institutes with very specific missions. And over the last you know, few generations have had to really reimagine themselves in the modern university setting. So that's been another way some colleges and universities have tried to address it is by moving toward popular majors and popular fields. And I think that's been more of a controversial move in the sense that there have been a lot of critiques of that as um not fulfilling the original mission of those institutions.

SPEAKER_01 36:03

And I think that's a fair critique. But I also part of me, and this is something that we also noticed, I think, is a recurring theme, is uh it things have to evolve. Um we can't stay stagnant in old models that are no longer working. So, and I think part of the thing for that personally is that everybody in every role in the greater ecosphere of humanity, we all have roles to fill in jobs and all these capacities. We all need Christian formation. So if we're a nursing student and we want to have our faith life edified at the same time as getting our nursing degree, I think that's a beautiful option for the their, but that yeah, their mission may have to change a little bit along the way. And I think that's a real struggle and that's something that people are gonna deal with. Um, my favorite response to this, and not the best response, but my favorite one, uh, was Garwood Anderson's. Um he talked about uh Noshoda House, uh his institution that he he works with. Um uh he talked about uh McDonald's versus the brew pub uh model uh and uh how Noshoda House is dedicated to staying small and providing a truly unique experience that's and completely enveloped in community and doing community life together in ministry and everything that goes on in the university, they try to do together in a community way. Um, and in that they provide this special unique experience that's premium as opposed to cookie cutter and expected and and all something. So that's a unique, different experience. So it's it's more in demand. Um so I think then there's I think it's cool that there's again, we talk about there's more than one way to skin a cat in this ecosystem. So I think it's cool that we see multiple institutions taking different pathways to meeting the needs of the day.

SPEAKER_00 37:44

Yeah, and I think uh one of the pressures around this demographic cliff, and a lot of this was really helpful for me as well, it really the demographic cliff started, you have to go upstream, and it started around the Great Recession. So the birth rates declined in around 2008 significantly because of all of the economic turmoil. And so those those babies um are now starting, you know, in the mid 2020s are gonna start matriculating into college, and that birth rate has stayed low. So the number of students is is just gonna be smaller. Um same time, um, there's more competition internationally for um higher ed. You know, other countries are stepping forward with higher ed options, both both Christian and otherwise. And so it used to be that America, uh North America was in a unique position. That is not the case. Um it's still it's still a competitive advantage, something that we do offer, and we have real strength there, but there are other countries that have really stepped in and are filling that gap in some ways. So I think that's interesting how how universities are gonna, colleges are gonna respond uh on that front. Um and then I think the other thing is these Christian colleges are located within a particular context, a city, a state, a region of the country, and Michael Lindsay and others spoke to this. Um, and they're gonna have to make decisions about how they adapt from a theological perspective or not adapt. Um do they broaden their student body, do they broaden or loosen requirements for faculty? Um there are some loss, real losses with that um if you're trying to stay true to your sort of deep Christian moorings, um, but there are gains too because you begin to attract a broader student base, maybe faculty base. So I think there are gonna probably be new designations for Christian colleges, and I think this is already happening that are um you know holding to some Christian moorings and want to be serious about that, but are opening up in some ways, and there will be others that will that will be um have a little tighter understanding of of how of what that should look like. And um I think there's room for all of that. Um I think it's gonna be really important that colleges and universities get really clear about that, particularly in the Christian college world, so that students and parents have a real clear sense of what what it is that they're gonna get. But a lot of this is really changing radically, and I think surely um I didn't I wasn't at point on that interview, but I know the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities is really trying to wrestle with this because a lot of their member institutions are feeling this in in very challenging ways. I mean, if you're a a Christian college located in central Indiana, it's going to be different than what you experience culturally than in Boston, Massachusetts, or in Seattle, Washington. So um all of these factors come together and contribute to how these institutions are responding.

SPEAKER_01 41:03

I love that. So we've talked about two of the big themes that we've seen reoccurring, and we've talked a little bit about some of the objectives that we set out for. Um I want to talk about one of the other objectives we had, and that's providing uh resources for people and answers to questions. We've done a good job of discussing some of those and exploring the ecosystem through the episodes, and I want to rehash all of that. I'd like to ask you guys, what are some of the questions that still remain for you? So as we've gone through this, we talked about it earlier. We didn't get in every single episode we wanted to do, but what are some of the questions that as much as we have covered and as much as uh we've learned through all this, what are there some questions that really remain for you?

SPEAKER_03 41:42

Yeah, I I have a lot of questions that relate, which relate to the future, which I I admit no one can really say with certainty what it'll be, but uh there were a lot of questions that emerged as we were talking to the current leaders about their strategies, their thoughts, and their anticipating of what's coming next that just made me really curious. And I mean, only time will tell with some of this stuff, but I was interested in in some of the, I guess you call it the fate of, but the the future of some of these organizational models or types and the traditional, or it's not that traditional, but the established four-year Christian college. I do wonder what the what the future of that model will be. I don't know if any new ones will be founded or um how the ones that exist uh will survive. I definitely think they'll be different. Uh we get a clear sense that the economics that built those are going to be different going forward. Um I I had a lot of questions about and this is one we didn't get to explore as much. Was we we talked about a few parachurch type ministries or para-university, university um study centers, but I think there's a lot more out there that we just didn't, you know, didn't get to. Um, or even different types of different models of doing those very things, of having a building next to a big university or of being a campus ministry. I think there's a lot of interesting, historically speaking, ways that Christians have gone about that type of work that we were just not able to capture in in what we were doing. And finally, I'm I'm interested in a in more of a metaway on maybe you could call it the curriculum of Christian education, but um I didn't get a sense, and part of it was because of this ecosystem approach that that I really enjoyed. I didn't get a sense of like what's at the core of Christian education? Like if you were to just take all of this together, the church, the parachurch, the secondary, the higher education, yeah, what's at the core of that? And I don't even know who could answer that. I mean, that you'd have to have a very special person to do that. Um, but we we we are grouping it all under Christian education. And I don't know if I could articulate I could articulate some things. You know, it's it's it has it's rooted in the Christian tradition. There's something about formation. Um but uh maybe and maybe that's an unanswerable question. But something I'd love to explore more is just sort of what's at the core of whatever. means to be a Christian educator or to be a Christian student. And I think we got a lot of interesting answers, but um I you know a final answer is yet to be determined on that, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 44:11

Yeah, it'd be an interesting experiment to to take the core curriculum from all the Christian colleges and universities. Um seminaries, what are what are their core courses for their degrees? What are Christian high schools and you know middle school, primary schools doing and see what you know where the overlap, how b how much of the Venn diagram overlaps.

SPEAKER_03 44:33

Right.

SPEAKER_00 44:33

I I'm assuming there is a a lot of overlap. Right. And that might give you a good start. Right. And we could probably guess what some of those topics would be. But the approach on how you teach that and how you how you deliver is really unique. We didn't even get into technology related issues. I mean those are huge at the meta level quest meta level question um that has really changed um and I think COVID had a big big big hand in that as well. I think for me um and it really coincides with what Dan shared, what are what's the nature of partnerships and unions going forward? I think Dan was speaking to this but is there because you have this this static market or this this shrinking pool of potential students unless we find creative ways to open up pathways, new pathways for non-traditional students and others from different parts of the world and I'm speaking now from a North American mostly US perspective. What are ways that institutions can partner together um to deliver a real value added Christian education experience and not have uh and not have to do it in a way that requires as much um physical and economic capital.

SPEAKER_01 45:55

Yeah I love that.

SPEAKER_00 45:57

So we're learning about some new models. One of the interviews we could have had that we didn't but it's come up in our work here at Upper House is a really a really unique partnership between Manhattan Christian college and Kansas State where Manhattan Christian college has a long tradition in Manhattan Kansas and K-State has kind of grown up all around them and surrounded them. And students um can get degrees from both institutions. A lot of students will start at Manhattan Christian college and then transfer to K-State. It's a very open relationship you know where there's a lot of mutual partnership across the board. And so that's an interesting model. I wasn't aware of that. And there are other models out there as well. That's one that that has come to my mind or my knowledge in the last few weeks. So just how are our how are institutions going to partner going forward? And will there be creative aggregations that we can't even see today that um and guilds that form that five, ten years from now are really vibrant and offering something that's really in many ways new and different.

SPEAKER_01 47:10

Yeah I love that and I think that's really cool. And it does excite me that people are pursuing constantly new avenues of of how to do this right and do it better and how to grow and change. I want to take now about five, ten minutes just to talk about us. I want to talk about Upper House and maybe study centers at large as well and talk about what our role is. Since this is who we are, Upper House is a Christian study center located in Madison, Wisconsin on the UW campus and we are passionate about our role in the ecosystem. I want to allow us a moment to share about what we're doing here, what we're passionate about and why we exist. So uh John, I mean you are executive director I'll get I'll let you lead off with this but um tell us about what you learned about our role maybe in the broader ecosystem and tell us a little bit about what you're excited about as far as how we fit into the broader structure of Christian formation education.

SPEAKER_00 48:07

Yeah that's a that's a really good question. I think we I think this has clip been a clarifying experience for us. I think there were a number of things that have happened over the last six months that have helped us clarify our own sense of mission. But certainly this podcast um forced us to get in and have conversations and think about the broader system wide change that's coming and has come and will come. So it never stops yeah it never stops. So I think you know our role is to just push boundaries in a lot of ways. I mean that's that we are nimble in a way that some institutions aren't we have a shorter history we we do have physical property but not in the way that most traditional Christian colleges have. So um we we can make turns a little bit more easily um we've thought a lot about our distribution channels so uh that that's probably a new step for us. We've we've done a lot of careful thinking over our nine eight eight or nine years of what are our pathways to invite people into this work, who are our key audiences in a university community and we've we've really worked hard on that. But I think the future of our project is really around channels in some ways and this is partially coming out of COVID and just innovation I think that's that's that we've had a chance of leading but also r responding to in the larger um ecosystem. So we're thinking about this Lumen Center as a way to to initiate new forms of scholarship and gathering scholars in ways that really do contribute to the life of the church and um m scholars in the Christian colleges and universities have been doing this for a long time but there are lots of amazing colleagues that are positioned in non-religious institutions. And so part of the role of the Lumen Center is to to to encourage those scholars to ask some of the questions that other scholars that are in theologically based institutions maybe get to ask more naturally. And then bridging those those communities in ways that don't always naturally happen. So the Lumen Center is a about a lot more than that, but that's something that that we're thinking about. Upper House Academy is a way for us to lean into continuing education, adult education and we're really pursuing this question of what would it like for what would it be like for Christian study centers like Upper House and other partner institutions to come alongside a public non-religious institution, it could be a private institution or public and and offer courses that are meaningful within the curriculum of the larger university curriculum where students could could earn academic credit. So could you offer Christian hi uh hist Christian history or courses on the Pauline epistles or uh a Christian philosophy or whatever it is that I think could be really important um make important contributions to the larger academic um universe within a particular college or university. Could you offer that and and and offer it for credit in a way that really does add value to the larger university. So those are two of the five channels that we're thinking about here. There are others but those are two newer channels that I think open up lots of possibilities for us.

SPEAKER_01 51:33

I know I would have loved to take in a Christian thought or Christian philosophy course in college and Dan I I wouldn't be surprised if you had a thought or two on a Christian history class. Sure uh it would be really cool to take those as part of your institutional um scholastic work without necessarily being like get it in your program or at your institution. I think it's a really cool idea. And I know Dan, this is kind of your baby in some ways too are there anything you want to add to what John said about the Lumen Center?

SPEAKER_03 51:59

Yeah so the Lumen Center is this new initiative that we'll be launching next year. And um it it comes out of a lot of different conversations and planning for for really years now but I think this series of conversations on the podcast really helps sharpen um some of the sense of why it's needed and also how it um and and also to not get you know too too proud of ourselves on on coming up and people are coming up with very innovative things all the time where we're we're doing our own work but we're not special in that in that way. But um one of the one of the ways you can talk about research uh which is really what the Lumen Center is going to be about it's going to be about producing ideas, getting ideas out there, ideas that integrate a Christian perspective or Christian uh themes with the most uh sort of mainstream academic conversations happening at a place like like UW There's a couple different ways to talk about what that means uh in terms of a developed a development of a new type of uh organization to do the scholarship in one is from the Christian study center perspective which is that Christian study centers have a certain history some of that history actually is rooted in places like Regent College in Vancouver which is a college it it has faculty that produce books and other things. Most Christian study centers don't do that right now just because of the vagaries of of the history and most campus ministries uh if we're talking about the broad sort of Protestant world most campus ministries that's not their focus. So there's a sort there's a story to tell about what we're doing that is trying to meet or trying to not meet but exceed or chart new territory within what it means to be a Christian study center, what it means to be a campus ministry. There's another way you could tell the story, which is that um for all of the innovation and good work that we've been talking about, the Christian higher education world is shrinking or it's it's collapsing even within the time that we started this series to now there have been a number of very high profile closures of Christian colleges around the country and and there's this demographic cliff that's you know coming. And and so there's a there's a bigger question. Most of the Christian scholarship scholarship produced by Christians comes out of that world. Most most people who do that teach at Christian universities or at seminaries and as those are shrinking there's a bigger question of where's that where's the support, the institutional support going to come from for the next generation of Christian scholarship? And that's where the Lumen Center is going to be one small answer, but but hopefully a positive contribution to trying to answer that in a much different context than 20, 30, 40 years ago.

SPEAKER_00 54:41

Dan I wonder I it I've heard you talk on this a number of times and I maybe it would be helpful for our listeners for you to talk about how a whole generation of historians has been influenced by a couple of Christian historians. Right.

SPEAKER_03 54:54

Could do you feel comfortable sharing actually I mean we interviewed Andrea Turpin who is a historian at Baylor who was a student of George Marsden who was a professor of history, a well-known author of history, of historical books on American religious history, who basically taught from the 1970s to the 2010s. Marsden was part of a whole well not a whole a cluster of historians uh that were all confessing Christians and also doing the some of the most innovative work in their field at the same time. And they opened up uh real institutional pathways for Christian grad students to then enter the field of American religious history where today there's a ton of it's not even remarkable to be a Christian in that field and that was different before uh people like uh Marsden and another one is Mark Knoll uh came on the scene. But also opened up the imagination for people like me who was a grad student in the you know late uh 2000s uh wondering what I would do with my Christian faith as I was sort of investigating different parts of history. And I remember as a grad student coming across people like George Marsden and their books and and realizing oh in the acknowledgments or in the foreword, this author is saying they're a Christian and they actually come to these questions because they're in part driven by their faith commitments and really opening up my imagination like, oh, people can do this. Like this isn't something that would be necessarily shunned in my field. And and those two scholars Mark Knoll and George Marson and a bunch of others um uh really changed the field of American religious history. Now some of it's interesting because we're now sort of a generation later and some of even their students are critiquing them on sort of historical grounds for the way they did that history. But I think that's all part of the you know the just the academic process. But it's it's sort of uh it's hard to ignore the fact that just a few people who were Christian in a certain field really did open up the field in very interesting ways for a lot more Christians to enter the field. So we're not going to try to engineer that necessarily at the Lumen Center. I don't think you can even engineer stuff like that that there's so much that goes into changes in an academic subfield. But there's certainly an argument to be made that that we want to make that getting more Christians involved in the practice of scholarship, getting more Christians engaged with the very particular questions of a certain discipline can only enhance the opportunities for people today and then people down the line a generation from now to really see that they have a place in these fields and that Christians are welcome at the table just like anyone else should be.

SPEAKER_01 57:38

Well I love it. And I'm very excited to see what comes of this I think it'll be a really, really exciting time for Upper House, for the Limit Center and hopefully for the broader Christian scholarship community. So with that I'm gonna call a wrap on season one of With Faith in mind and we're gonna end up here just talking about what's coming next. Number one, before we get to anything with potential season two or anything like that, I want to make sure everybody knows that we have another podcast. In fact we just did an episode on our their podcast which is called Upwards that easily could have fit into this. We interviewed John Dahl who's been a ministry leader uh here at UW through university for a long time.

SPEAKER_00 58:19

Uh like 300 years or something.

SPEAKER_01 58:22

Maybe a little longer maybe uh no not quite. But uh uh John is a remarkable individual and he's been very active in our community as well as the UW campus for um many, many years. And he gave us a great interview about what it's like to function as a ministry leader on a campus ministry, primarily working with grad students, but all over campus. And uh please please check it out. If you've enjoyed with Faith in mind I guarantee you you're gonna love that episode.

SPEAKER_00 58:48

Yeah and I and John we kid him uh because he is um he's someone well last year I committed to get into every building on campus and it took me I don't know six or nine months and uh some buildings I literally just walked in and then just immediately turned around and walked out. Um but I got into every building on a place on a campus like this it's it's a big chore. But it was great to actually physically put my eyes on well has been here so long he's been in every lab he's been in every broom closet and he's been in every classroom of every building so we like to kid him about that. But he has an amazing legacy here and really knows this place in inside and out.

SPEAKER_01 59:26

Indeed. And uh so while you're checking that out and you are missing us because we are not doing a season two immediately here, uh please do write us. We would love to hear from our audience for those of you who have enjoyed it give us your feedback for those of us who didn't enjoy it or thought there was something missing we want to hear that feedback too uh for those of you who really want to hear a season two and have ideas for what we should be doing uh we'd love to hear from you. So please email us at podcast at slbrownfoundation.org. Uh we do read those emails we might not respond to every single one that we get but we do read every single one we get and we are eager to hear your feedback and and uh know that you've been enjoying or have criticisms that we can learn from. So thank you all so much for being a part of the process and of our learning as well as hopefully the engagement our interviewees and and guests have had uh it has been a truly wonderful experience from the bottom of all three of our hearts. Uh thanks for joining us for the series and we hope to hear you on upwards or hear from you on upwards and uh hopefully season two at some point.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:27

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