With Faith in Mind
With Faith In Mind is intended for academically-minded, ecumenical Christians. Our goal is to engage listeners with a thoughtful and faith-informed perspective on important issues and big questions that our society faces. We do this by having real conversations with people who have great stories and expertise. In our first series, titled “Christian Education at the Crossroads," we’re interviewing top leaders and scholars in the Christian education space.
With Faith in Mind
Campus Ministries: Filling the Gap Between Church & University
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Tom Lin, President of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, joins Dan Hummel to talk about the role of campus ministries in the broader Christian education ecosystem.
Learn about Tom Lin & InterVarsity
Read Tom's book: Pursuing God's Call
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.
Hello and welcome back to With Faith in Mind. I'm Dan Hummel, today's host and the Director of University Engagement at Upper House. This episode is part of our series on Christian education at the crossroads, and we're welcoming Tom Lynn, the president of Interversity Christian Fellowship, to the show. Hi, Tom. Hi Dan. Good to be with you today. The topic on this episode is campus ministries and higher education. Here in Madison, we have headquartered one of the leading campus ministries in the world, Interversity Christian Fellowship. We're going to discuss with Tom the way campus ministries shape educational culture and how they serve a broader educational ecosystem that is global. So a little more about Tom. Tom Lynn is the president of Interversity Christian Fellowship, and he's been so since 2016. Before that, he served as an Interversity Campus Minister at Harvard University and Boston University. He also helped to establish an International Fellowship of Evangelical Students Movement in Mongolia, where he served as the country director. And Tom has a BA in economics from Harvard University and holds an MA in global leadership from Fuller Theological Seminary, where he now also serves on the board. That's at Fuller. So, Tom, uh excited to talk to you. I thought before getting into the sort of substance of what we wanted to talk about in relation to higher education, I wanted to get a sense of what it's like to work in Mongolia. Um what were the main differences or or main sort of uh challenges of start trying to start a movement in Mongolia?
SPEAKER_01Oh, there are there are a lot of differences. Uh I'll just say it was fun. It was definitely a lot of fun. Uh scary, but fun. Uh probably the primary difference is uh it was a country when we went in 2001, 2002, uh, where Christianity was brand new. So in 1989, there was zero or one recorded Christian in the whole country. So I don't know. Wow. I don't know how they figure out who the one person is, but somehow they figured out the one. The Bible was translated in the year 2000. So you're really dealing with trying to engage a society, a culture that has no Christian background at all and no believers, no church. And uh, and it was challenging trying to figure out you know our very American cultural methods. How do you uh disentangle that and share and embody the gospel uh without bringing that culture, right? So that that's the challenge for any missionary, but certainly we have that. So um, so yeah, it was it was challenging and and very uh difficult at the same you know, difficult, challenging, but fun, we say.
SPEAKER_00Is there anything you particularly miss about Mongolia? Like what's the thing that if you could just have right now um from that part of the world?
SPEAKER_01Uh well, we miss the countryside, so beautiful. If you've seen, you know, horses riding, it's kind of like you see in pictures or movies, perhaps. Beautiful countryside. Um, you know, it's still not very densely populated, you know, one of the areas of the world that's just not densely populated at all. So we love that open space. Uh, and actually we miss some of the foods there too. Um, so uh mutton is a food that they eat there, and you know, there's some tasty mutton dishes that we actually miss because we had it every day there.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, mutton. That uh that's a Seinfeld joke. I don't I don't know if we need to go into that, but there's a whole episode about mutton um being stuffed in people's coats. Uh uh very good. Well, one other th question I wanted to ask you uh before jumping in is you have a a degree in economics, and you're now leading an organization that has hundreds and hundreds of employees all across the world. I wonder just have you reflected on sort of what does an economics degree help you do in your leadership position at university?
SPEAKER_01Uh yeah, you know, a great question. I I get asked it once in a while. You know, when I was younger, I probably probably would have said nothing, you know. Uh or my parents would say, you're throwing away your economics degree and doing this ministry thing, or what is this thing you're doing, you know, if they even understood it. Um but but actually there's a lot of things. I think economics, um, thinking in terms of systems. So, you know, you learn in macro and micro, just things operate as a system. You you think about efficiency, so operational efficiencies. Uh I I love looking for efficiencies and things, um, cost benefit analysis. There's so many practical concepts in economics that I apply in organizational leadership, organizational effectiveness, strategy every day. So, so actually a lot of things. It's just perhaps um, you know, I'm not focused on the economy, I'm focusing on an organization.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, that that leads us into uh sort of the first question I wanted to ask, which was how did you develop uh a sense of calling as a leader? Uh was that something that goes back to when you were uh college students, maybe earlier, or is that something that sort of emerged over time as an adult?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, I I think uh as a as a student, it probably started as a college student. Uh my calling at the time was, or the invitation that I learned and and received from Jesus was to be a servant. So it was about, you know, we talked about servant leadership. It was really mostly the serving portion. I never imagined that I would be a leader of an institution in the future. Um so uh during my college years, served as much as I could, served student fellow students, I served people I knew and people I didn't know. I served the campus, I tried to love my university well, um, sacrificed for it, uh, tried to be generous uh towards it, you know, all of those things. And it wasn't until later that um I began to probably experience more of what leadership's like and started kind of uh reflecting, hey, I kind of enjoy this, and maybe this is part of who God has prepared me to be or the way ways that He's gifted me or perhaps equipped me to continue leading, and so I led more and more, and that led to other assignments and other assignments, and eventually that's probably how I ended up doing what I'm doing today.
SPEAKER_00Well, what does a lead a president of a major campus ministry do on a daily or weekly basis? What's what's the schedule look like?
SPEAKER_01Uh well, there's definitely not any week that's the same as another, but uh the the way that I describe it to people is um a campus ministry like ours is it's it it can be described in three different ways, and that kind of are three different parts of my job. So one is it is a large organization or institution. So I'm an organizational leader. I I deal with you know operations, legal, finance, facilities, you know, uh people, uh training, development, all the things that an organization, you know, vision, strategy, boards, that kind of thing. Um we're also so institution organization. We're also a movement. So uh, you know, at the very grassroots level, whether it's at Harvard or Boston University or University of Wisconsin, we're a movement on campus. We, you know, we're uh uh gathering people constantly, you know, sharing the gospel, leading them towards Christ, on mission together. It doesn't feel like an organization. We're we're like a movement. And uh and we we like to be that. It's kind of resembling. I think about some of the most inspiring mission movements around the world. That's we would love to be more and more lean into a movement. So I'm a movement leader in that sense, right? And the third aspect is uh fellowship. So we are fellowship, intervarsity Christian fellowship. So um that you can think of more like a we're parachurch, but a church-like body, right? A body of believers together, having fellowship together, growing together, nurturing each other in faith. So I do have a pastoral job in that. So I try to care for people as a president. So, so all of those things, you know, I'm trying to lead with vision strategy, um, kind of a missionary mentality each day when I go to work, and then I'm trying to be pastoral and caring for people both who are remotely working for us or uh in the office. And uh, and it's a lot of fun, you know, and we we've got 1,500 employees, uh, but thousands of more volunteers and tens of thousands of students. Uh so uh it's it's a lot of fun, and no week is like another week. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So do you see any tension between two of those identities? I just think of like that that sort of saying, um, which I might get in trouble for uh for for repeating because it's sort of dismissive, but like most denominations sort of emerge out of revival movements and then they become sort of bureaucratized and um and sort of lose the fire of the of the revival that started them. So I I hear sort of an organization and then a movement, and it's like, ooh, those are those are sort of going at different speeds with different objectives. Do you feel that tension in inner varsity?
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah, I think I do feel that tension, and it's a good tension. So I think you you need both to press against each other. Again, uh in our size, you don't want a diffused movement. Movement sounds great, but if you're 1,500 people going all the different directions, that's not great either. So, and uh the advantage of the organizational side is you can have efficiencies, right? You can do a training that's not just tailored towards 10 people, but actually a thousand people can appreciate it and be developed. So, so there's that. But then just like the example you shared, there is the danger we always have to watch out for is we don't exist yet as a as an organization for ourselves. We're a movement for others, right? So um sometimes when we get tempted to be too bureaucratic, we gotta step back. Wait a second, what is this about? Like, let's press into the movement side of who we are, you know, and kind of release people to, you know, for lack of a better word, you know, go crazy for Jesus or whatever, whatever you might want to say, right? So so there is that kind of balance that I think intention is a good thing.
SPEAKER_00Well, speaking of of movements, uh, I wonder if you could just give us a sense of intervarsity's history, where it comes from, and from your mind as as the leader, sort of how you would periodize or break up the history of intervarsity um over its over its history. Yeah, this is a historian asking the question, so I'm asking a very historian's question.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I'll I'll maybe I'll I'll share broadly and then you can ask me specific questions if you have. I mean, we we trace our roots back to uh 1877, a group of Cambridge University students in uh in the UK, right, in England, that um started gathering together, a student-initiated group that uh prayed together, uh studied the Bible together, and shared the gospel. And then it proliferated. Actually, grew many more groups started in England. Uh, then it reached other countries in the world, eventually making its way to Canada, and then the Canadians sending a group to the U.S. to start in the 1940s. And so we're an old organization in that sense. Uh but what's fascinating is those roots we trace ourselves back to are the same, they're the same building blocks today. We have students, we're primarily about students and faculty, we say now, students who uh gather together to pray, to study the Bible, and to share the gospel. Of course, many things are different about how we do that and the context we're in today. So um I could go more in detail of of what's been in between that perhaps, but that's that's the arc from beginning to where we are now, I'll say briefly.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and i it's pretty interesting. Um I'm someone who's uh been interested in just sort of the history of the different campus ministries in in particular the United States. And I think Intervarsity stands out a bit uniquely in uh in it being founded somewhere else besides the United States. A lot of the other campus ministries were founded by Americans for for the US. Um as you mentioned, originally British sort of movement that then goes global. Do you think what what do you trace as sort of the unique contribution of InnerVarsity in relation to that history?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think it does one, you know, as if if you study organizations, how it's founded often shapes the DNA and culture of the organization. And so that is true for us. So I think um uh even in later we can talk about if you're interested, how how that affects us as a global movement. And because of the way we were founded, we're not, it's not an American enterprise that decided to become global. Um it was actually a global movement that uh in America came in later, you know, in that and was founded. Um so I think our our founding, because of the way that we started, um you have a uh we have a less corporate mindset. Again, it wasn't started by uh an American with an American vision, it was spread from another country saying, hey, there's need in the US, let's go at it, and what do we need to do? It is very grassroots. And because it started that way, we continue to have a very grassroots mentality, a decentralized mentality. So that's important that our organization is fairly decentralized. We value indigenous, and in this case, I'll use that word indigenous as locally led movements or chapters. And so um, because of our founding, again, it wasn't founded as a centralized movement. One person said, We're gonna start this national organization. It was more organic. That DNA continues today, where our chapters across the country are locally led and generally um can shape their priorities at a very decentralized local level.
SPEAKER_00One other distinctive that I know um I've appreciated for nerve varsity is the really emphasis on the life of the mind or sort of a deep engagement with academic disciplines and with the uh not just the the sort of student culture on the campus, but the sort of academic conversations on campus. Um, do you agree with that? I hope you do. And if so, where do you think that comes from? Or sort of what's the what's the logic behind engaging on that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think uh certainly discipleship of the mind is one of our core values, and people do uh know University for that. Uh I'll share you know, probably two contributing factors to that. Um, one is that even today, so since our founding, we remain solely focused on the university mission field. So uh as a campus ministry, we've not branched out into children's ministry. We've not branched out into general uh adult professional ministry or something like that. So we maintain that focus on academic fields, you might say, right? Undergraduates, graduates, PhD students, faculty. So that contributes certainly, the discipleship of the mind. Uh the other is we have a wonderful publishing press. So Innovarcy Press, certainly as a publisher, also well known for discipleship of the mind. And uh, you know, what a wonderful um brand association, IVP, Innervarcy Press, and Innovars Christian Fellowship. So that I think that helps us as a ministry.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, you mentioned the focus on the university. So give us a sense. Why do you, why is Intervarsity, maybe you, why do you think the in the university is such an important mission field?
SPEAKER_01Oh, it's uh it's so strategic. I'd say if if I were someone who was looking at uh hundreds of different mission opportunities and looking for the highest leverage point, if I, you know, if I liked all mission fields equally, what's the most strategic? Uh I'm slightly biased, but I would say the university, right? Because you're producing tomorrow's future leaders. Um you're hitting uh students or young adults at a time when they're making decisions about their life. Uh you're hitting them at a time when for the first time they're making their faith their own for their traditional student, right? A traditional student who, even if they grew up in the church, or if they didn't, they're now at a place where they're adults living on their own in some cases, um, or at least going to school on their own, and uh they're grappling with life's questions in a way they never had had to before. And so they're making life decisions, so strategic from that end. So uh yeah, shaping their priorities and values for the rest of their lives and open to learning. So open to spiritual learning. And so what more strategic time that you can hit students? And uh uh the United Nations general secretary, former general secretary Charles Malek used to always say, you know, if you change the university, you change the world. And that's what we believe, and so that's why we focus on the university.
SPEAKER_00Um I like that quote as well from Alec. Uh how does InterVarsity think about their relationship, its relationship to the university as an institution? I think a lot of outside observers, maybe Christian observers, would say, like, why deal with universities? They're places where students go to lose their faith, or something, you know, some maybe that's an extreme statement, but I've certainly heard it in our work at Upper House. Um, how do you understand university sort of relating to universities as institutions?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we we do uh we view universities positively. I think we always we want uh a good relationship with the university, not just pragmatically, pragmatically, not because you know we want rooms or access or something like that. Uh because we do believe part of our role is to see the university renewed too. Um the the best way to illustrate this is probably an analogy that uh one of our staff used years ago that I that really helps me think about this, which is um as a ministry, we're not trying to if if if the if a pond is the university, we're not trying to um take the fish out of the pond. We're not trying to, we're actually trying to help cultivate a healthier pond or ecosystem there so the fish can thrive, right? Um so when tox when the pond be if the pond becomes toxic or there are issues that we we want it to become healthy, so we care about. We're not trying to just take the fish out, right? Right. Uh we care about the whole we care about the whole pond, not just the fish in the pond, we care about the whole pond, which is the university. So um so if the university thrives, we believe that university students thrive too, and that's what we want to see.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and that connects to that the the strategic nature of universities in our broader, I guess, uh Western culture or something where they are sort of where a lot of culture is formed, a lot of knowledge is created and disseminated. That's right. Um very interesting. Um so we're we're our series is called Christian Education at the Crossroads. And when we talk about the crossroads, we're looking at changes or challenges in Christian education as a whole. So not just higher education, but the whole uh to use the same metaphor we've been using, the whole ecosystem of uh education. So what are some of the areas where there is a gap, where uh there is a need for a new way of thinking or a new approach within the broader church?
SPEAKER_01It it's a tough conundrum we're in because the this generation is uh more or less attracted to gravitate towards entertainment, right? To uh uh things that are lighter versus serious and heavy. They have enough anxiety, right? And they're trying to take care of themselves, right? And yet at the same time, we do, I think, sense there is a a need to for a more serious, robust faith, or to teach more clear theology or to clarify uh things that the Bible says so that church is not just about entertainment. So there is the it's an interesting conundrum and challenge we're in. I think that's that's part of the wrestling here. Um I think uh the other thing that comes to mind for me is the word I've been honing in on post-COVID quite a bit is lack of fundamentals. So the fundamentals, I think, across the board in every sector is missing. And I'll I'll give you uh another fun anecdote of a different uh my other daughter. Uh she got her driver's license during my older daughter during COVID. She did not have to take the exam. She did not take the driver's test. She didn't go in, nobody saw how she drives. Wisconsin gave her a license without seeing her drive. Do I think she's missing some fundamentals? Yes, I do. I do not think she knows how to park a car, and yet her parents let her get the license. Um I talked to math professors at UW, a friend here at the University of Wisconsin. You know, I know this is not uncommon. Incoming freshmen who are in his basic math class, I don't know if it's calculus or the freshman math class, are significantly below standard. And they're just, they don't know what they should know. And I think what's happened in the last few years is we've missed fundamentals. The fundamental, and I think the same thing in the church. The church has missed fundamentals. I would say in the church, probably not only because of COVID. I think we've been it's probably been a longer season where the church has been distracted by different things, whether it's entertainment or a variety of other issues or whatnot. And so um so I think a big key for the future is what does it mean to invest in the fundamentals? For churches, it's not the smoke and mirrors, not the like super crazy innovative ideas, although innovation is great. What does the fundamentals look like? The basics. And it might be unsexy, not you know, not you know, um world-changing in the sense that wow, I've never heard of this idea, but fundamentals like getting your daughter to drive and park a car. I mean, so I think we've missed that. And and I think in every sector, including the church, investing in the fundamentals is is key.
SPEAKER_00So, Tom, on something like the fundamentals um in the church, uh what is what is in a varsity trying to do to to sort of shore up the fundamentals? I can think immediately of you talking about the importance of Bible study and the importance of being sort of familiar with. With the the Word of God. How do you think about that? How do you think about shoring up the fundamentals, as you say?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we we are we're investing in going back to 1877, uh how our movement began in Cambridge, England. I mean, we're investing. What does it mean to pray? How do you pray? How do you do Bible study? What does the Bible say? How do you share the gospel to Gen Z, your fellow students? And so we're training, we're developing students in these basics, and I think you might say basics, right? Uh and again, because we're coming out of a COVID season, we don't assume that they know. We don't assume that a Christian student knows how to pray. We don't assume a Christian student has ever studied the Bible before or knows how to study the Bible, and we don't assume they even know what the gospel is. And so we don't assume, and I uh I don't assume students don't know how to how to have a conversation with each other. You know, uh recently I talked to uh a 22-year-old actually, someone who just graduated. We were talking about outreach, and I said something like, okay, so you know, uh so when you go to camp, why don't you go to campus and spend, you know, uh the day there reaching students? And the person said, What do I do when I go on campus? I don't understand. What do I do when I get there? And so I I don't assume anymore someone knows how to talk to a student to engage on campus, that they know what to do with their time. I just don't assume. So teaching the fundamentals, I think, is a big part.
SPEAKER_00I wondered if you could talk about uh getting on this ecosystem um sort of metaphor. What is Innervarsity's sort of theory of change? Like what how do you approach uh wanting to move that uh improve that ecosystem, improve that pond? What do you see as sort of the the primary ways of doing that?
SPEAKER_01Um yeah, I think there's well, there's two ways. I would say there's things Innervarsi does. So I would our theory of change. Um if we go with the pond analogy, I think there are some external factors that certainly would would help us. They do impact our ministry that perhaps we're not in full control of. So I could speak to that as well. But but in terms of Innervarsi's theory of change, um, I think the simplest way to put it is uh engaging people in the scriptures in community. So uh that's when we see transformation happen. When students gather as a community engaging the scriptures. Um we spent a lot of time teaching students to study the Bible. And because we believe when they engage with the Word of God, their lives are transformed, they they form convictions that leads to a changed life. Um and that doesn't happen in isolation. So it happens, part of why we emphasize doing it in community is we believe in the life on life discipleship, how when we live together, which you can do on campus, right? Um even in commuter schools, there's there's an opportunity to be a community, embodied community together. When there's life on life relationship, that also transforms your life. So those two things together um bring about the change and transformation in students' lives spiritually that we you know long for.
SPEAKER_00You mentioned commuter schools, and it just made me think about one of the things we're talking about, Christian education at the crossroads, and there's so much change happening in higher education. I think of one of my sisters, uh the primary way she went to college was at a community college, which she had to drive to and you know didn't live there. How do those types of communities fit into your ministry and how you're thinking about things on campus?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it does require different strategies. I would say our values are still the same. We still believe that giving a student at a community college an embodied community experience around the scriptures is still the ways that their life's gonna change. Uh there are some nuances in the way the the strategy plays out. So, you know, we wouldn't expect them to have a full weekend free. You know, for example, if we want to do a long weekend retreat or something, we might shoot for half a day on a Saturday instead to have a transformative event, let's say, or um what time Bible studies take place, or what um where a community gathering takes place? Those would all change with community colleges. But I think the value is the same. It's just how it's played out is different. Certainly there are challenges. There are different challenges on the in the community college space.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell Does InnerVarsity see over time has there been an emphasis on sort of the traditional UW-Madison type campus versus a community college? Um what's sort of the thinking about that?
SPEAKER_01Aaron Powell Great question. Actually, we we've had a slight shift in recent years. Um probably traditionally for a long time, you know, we certainly favored, if not officially, unofficially favored or biased towards the four-year residential schools. Yeah. You could say it's easier to do ministry there, it's more familiar, you know, students are more available. Um but in recent years, I think our hearts have been broken for less traditional schools because those are typically the places where there's no Christian community, where there's no other campus ministry, actually. We've been surprised when we researched uh we researched about 2,500 schools with over a thousand students. 1,300 of them, more than half, had no campus ministry. Someone would be like, there's no way. That how can that be? Actually, if you look at there are actually schools that a lot of people might not have heard of, or there are certain community colleges. And then you begin to think, oh, I can see why there's no other ministry here. There's no ministry here. It's it's hard. And so we've shifted that way. And um, you know, a lot of these schools are uh also Hispanic serving institutions or uh tribal native institutions. They're places that we value as innovarsity, but they're not traditional college ministry. And so we've had to learn how to do it differently in those places.
SPEAKER_00So, Tom, you talked about some of the uh factors under Innovars' control to try to affect change. You also mentioned external factors or things sort of outside your control. Yeah, talk to me about that. What are what are some of those?
SPEAKER_01Um yeah, it's it's the fact that we're a part of a wider ecosystem. So we'll just say we, you know, we would uh call ourselves, you know, a Christian campus ministry or someone label it evangelical, right? We're part of a bigger evangelical ecosystem, right? And so what happens in the ecosystem affects us all. So even if Innervars was not the instigator or wasn't the primary mover on that. And so there are things like um how the church is doing. Is the church healthy? Is it not healthy? What's going on in the church today? Those things affect invarsity because um we're, depending on how you look at it, we're downstream in the set in the sense that you know we're receiving youth that have had some youth experiences in the church. Um Gen Z, the most unchurched generation ever, right? So their uh lack of spiritual engagement or church experience, that affects us. That's downstream. We're we're downstream, so we're receiving that. Uh what other Christian institutions do? Uh if they do something that's not great and it gets some bad PR, it actually affects us too because we're lumped in the same ecosystem. So those things affect us. And that main last thing I'll share that has to do with the universities directly is um campus access. So uh sometimes there are religious liberty issues that pop up on university campuses, and so that's sometimes out of our control. And so if we're if uh university administration has a certain policy that they create that doesn't allow certain Christian groups on campus, we can't be on that campus, and so that affects us too.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I want to push into that uh a little more and and just get a sense from you. Um you mentioned you know, students that are coming into college are formed by their church life all you know, the 15 years before that, 18 years before that. Um also that the reputation of the church and the society affects um your work. Uh if you can identify sort of what's the biggest challenge there right now? What what is what are you having to um what's what's uh dripping into the pond that you're having to sort of uh sift out or something uh from your perspective?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's that's a big question, I think. Um depending on your church, for example, the the polarization we're seeing in society, right? So whatever side uh polarizing force that you're on, uh w wherever your your church comes from, we receive those folks. So that affects us. I think what's tripping in is you know, things that are the gospel that's intertwined with culture or politics or Christian nationalism or you know, uh whatever, you know, you you get a variety of things. We often half jokingly say, you know, it's much easier working with non-Christian students who have no faith background because they have no baggage. They're not carrying any baggage. In fact, they're coming so open-minded and open-hearted that it's actually wonderful working with those kind of students. Whereas sometimes when you have Christian students that come from certain church backgrounds or or from struggling churches, they're bringing some baggage that you have to engage with and help them reflect, do some self-reflection. Okay, what actually what does the Bible really say about this and what did your church say? Maybe they're not the same thing, and so so you have some of that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that resonates so much with the work we do here at Upper House. And I think, you know, one of the things, um, and I think this is across the board. I wouldn't identify with any particular Protestant tradition or anything, but just the and I felt this as a student as well, uh some years ago, um, coming in with a pretty traditional white evangelical upbringing that is just a lack of uh ability to read the Bible in a way that took the Bible seriously on its own terms as opposed to sort of engaging in a lot of other debates um that the Bible is conscrip conscripted into. To where I see this now too, where students are Christian students even are sort of embarrassed to read the Bible, or at least they're fearful about what are the implications, particularly of problematic texts and how to make sense of them and how to fit them into the values that they've been brought up with in other parts of their life. Um so I don't know what that would all maybe that's biblical literacy or something. I don't know, that feels a little too thin of a category, but yeah, um that seems to be a one that we we we deal with a lot here and are trying to think about how do you just um you know, I in some ways I wish people Christians were getting that much earlier than when they were at college because there's so many other things that they're trying to grapple with, but it seems like sort of a basic ability, uh maybe ability is not the right word, but basic confidence in the Bible as the received word of God and that you know it it it's a really interesting text. It's not just sort of this fearful text that you have to confront because you're a Christian or something like that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think biblical illiteracy is a is a huge issue. Uh again, what I what I look at and have hope for is when you look at there's been studies shown around non-Christian students, people with no faith background in their engagement with the Bible. Uh the American Bible Society just came up with a survey really fascinating. They surveyed people without faith background, Gen Z types, and they found that uh two-thirds of the people they surveyed are curious about reading the Bible. They're curious, they want to learn, they want to read the Bible, they're curious. One third are very or extremely curious about the Bible. So, you know, it gives me a lot of hope. And it probably comes from a fact if they have no faith background, they're they're just really curious about what this Bible is.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah, fascinating. Yeah, and it it it's uh that's another thing I learned uh uh through campus ministries and and elsewhere, is how interesting. I mean, I'm sure some people are curious about the Bible because of its claim and Christians' claim that it's the Word of God. It's also just an amazing piece of literature that is very uh just on the themes and and on the construction, very intricate. Obviously, it's classic in world literature, but I think that that for me, particularly as a Christian growing up, I never got that part of what the Bible is. I got it as sort of a source of truth, um, a rule book, maybe, uh in some cases a sort of claim on science and other things. I never got that. It was like a really good piece of literature, and that a lot of the theology can be expressed through the stories, um, through understanding the original languages, uh, all those types of things that actually a university is a very good place to be exposed to some of that stuff. Yeah, that's right. Um uh yeah, anyway, that's um that's uh there's a lot there's a lot that is confronting students these days. Um one other question on this before uh moving to sort of the last thing I wanted to talk about. You know, Innervarsity is one of many campus ministries. Uh Upper House is a one that's local here at UW Madison, um, but there are other very large national ministries. How do you uh relate to those ministries? I know um uh it's not like other broad traditions, like maybe the Catholic Church, which has a pretty central hierarchy and everyone's sort of coordinating, and uh that's not the evangelical world I know. It's a much different, uh sort of decentered world. Um but yeah, how do you relate uh to these other ministries that are doing pretty similar work, but maybe each has their own distinctives and are many of the same campuses at the same time?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we're great question. We're we're in an we're probably in a season where we're seeing um significant partnership and that's uh and collaboration, which is beautiful to see. So while we are the largest or one of the largest, uh we partner with peer ministries uh across the board, uh whatever size, regional, um, whatever their focus. And uh a big part of it is because we launched this initiative in partnership with Crewe, uh another campus ministry that uh it's called Every Campus. We to have a common goal certainly helps. So, versus without a common goal, you're sort of like, well, you just play nice with each other because you should be nice, you know. Uh, but now we have a common missional goal, which is, as I was sharing before, a lot of campuses have no ministry at all. So why should we spend all our time uh trying to figure out how we're supposed to work together as 20 different campus ministries on one campus when those 10 campuses over there have nothing going on? So it's led to a level of coordination, prayer together, relationship together, uh collaboration that's been really encouraging. And so we formed the every campus coalition. And uh in fact, just recently there's a meeting of there's about a hundred partners now, a hundred different organizations that are a part of it, wanting to see uh you know, revival happen on college campuses and more campuses have some sort of Christian community. And so that's been wonderful to see.
SPEAKER_00I imagine is that collaboration to the level of sharing sort of data and and contacts, or is it is it still sort of it's actually it is at the level we started with prayer, so we thought, you know, uh part of my my thinking was people can't argue with prayer.
SPEAKER_01So, you know, like will you will can we pray together? Yes, we could pray together, you know. But we are at the level where we're sharing data. We're sharing where are we at? Uh, what campuses are you working on? What are your priorities? Who's there, you know? Um, and then we're actually starting to follow up together soon on on places where if someone wants to start something or somebody has a question about a campus where there's no work, we're doing follow-up together as well. So there's there's more sharing. Uh, and certainly we're sharing resources too. So when you start talking about spending money, that also, you know, you put dollars behind it, it also means something significant rather than just paying lip service to to partnership.
SPEAKER_00Right. Yeah. Um Wanted to get your take quickly on the Asbury revival. I think that did it I think that's what most people are calling it now. Um yeah, what does university make of that? What how how do you think about those types of really interesting developments? Um Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I mean, uh yeah, of course Asbury revival happened at a Christian college that uh we don't work at. We don't really work at many Christian colleges. There's a few we're at, but generally we're at the what you would call secular universities and colleges. Um we're encouraged. I mean, I think overall, whether we would label it a revival or not, you know, we we do see as uh students uh repenting before the word, confessing sin, I mean, humbling themselves and truly longing for God uh and all that comes with it. I mean, there's stories of not just a longing for God, but wanting to follow God to a cost of commitment where it actually would cost them something. Um and I think we will see uh movements that come out of Asbury or graduates that do um world-impacting things that uh including um changing the world for the better related to um reviving certain sectors of society, uh justice work, uh true change and transformation in our society, as well as the internal uh change that I think, spiritual change that we would expect from a revival like that. So I think that's coming. Um but to me, the most encouraging thing is seeing a generation get down on their knees, repenting before the Lord, confessing, humbling themselves and saying, We need you, God, because we know things are screwed up. That's I mean, in a nutshell, that's my assessment is why did it happen? How did I don't know all the factors, but I do know this generation recognizes something's wrong with the world and something's wrong with themselves. You know, it's broken. And they're seeking God in it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and and on the on wrong with with themselves, um, the confessing part. One thing I noticed I tuned in, you know, you could sort of tune in online and just sort of see it. And a lot of the students like one of the consistent things that the students brought up was uh feelings of anxiety. Yes. Which I just um i it seemed interesting as sort of maybe a generational thing. I don't we all have anxiety to a certain extent, but it seemed like a consistent repentance is is is um or or or request from God to like take our anxiety. Um what do you make of that? What and what do you make of anxiety there?
SPEAKER_01It's it's the number one challenge confronting this generation of students by far. Uh mental health and anxiety. I mean, it's uh it's affecting every college student, every grad student that's out there. Um you know, I think college administrators could speak of this better than I can, but you know, they're they're not staffed enough at all to deal with the demand that students have for mental health services. And um yeah, and it it's the characteristic of this generation, and it's sad, it's har it's hard. Uh um and it's combined with isolation, uh sense of being alone, it just it's a very challenge a big challenge for this generation. Uh I think there are ways that the gospel can speak into it. I think there's ways that um there's good news that uh maybe we don't need to fear. Uh we don't need to um that Jesus and the gospel can address some things that might otherwise feed into our anxiety. Um but it's still a challenge, of course. Uh you know, there are so many committed politics of Jesus that significantly struggle with that, and that that is um the big challenge of our day.
SPEAKER_00Do you have any thoughts? I I'm asking you to play sort of armchair social critic here, but any thoughts on why? Like, you know, the there's the arguments about technology and the role that smartphones and other things play, isolation, I think, or sort of these breaking down of community. Yeah, what what do you think is contributing to it?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, I have my personal thoughts. I mean, I I do think I think there is uh sides of technology. Technology can be used for good or bad, but there's certainly sides of technology that do it. You you trace you know the invention of the iPhone and with, you know, you know, do you do a correlation with mental health and anxiety? Certainly, there's some things that could be said there. Um what I usually say to this is I um I'll just say share an anecdote about my daughter. So I've got a 16-year-old daughter who uh who desperately wants to put down her phone. Uh she's choosing a summer camp this summer at Wheaton College for she wants to go there for a month because they don't allow phones there. And I I I told her, I said, you know, I could take away your phone right now. You don't have to go to the camp. She said, no, no, no. She said, Dad, you don't understand. When all my friends are on their phone, then I have to be on my phone. I just can't, you know. But I want to be in a place where no one else has their phone. Now, this is completely self-initiated by her. So it tells me she knows that the phone is not healthy for her. It's it is creating more anxiety for her, and she can't put it down, but she knows that something's wrong, you know, and so I do think there's there's some tie there. And then, of course, the pandemic and isolation did not help things. I think that that that didn't cause what we're seeing today, but it certainly didn't help and you know likely made things worse because of the increased isolation we saw, and now, you know, people are perhaps, you know, uh engaging even less with each other in person, and so that adds to the challenge.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah, I I teach a or I was guest teaching in a class here at UW just last week, and you know, this is a historian's question to ask a class, but you know, every generation has like that event that sort of defines the generation. For me, I was uh 14 when 911 happened. That was sort of the the defining moment. Now, of course, we're very recent we're recently off of COVID, so um, maybe this is biased But I asked a group of students, or what's that defining event? And I actually expected a lot of them to say like 2016 election, because that's a very common one on here. But they all said COVID, and you know, that that's maybe instinctual, but they also they all explained it in very distinct sort of ways, all about breaking of basically friendships, social bonds, um, missing out on graduations from high school or whatever, like these these key events. So um anyway, I do think that that that's certainly a defining mark of that generation of sort of the students that are now undergrads in college. Yeah. Um I don't think we even really totally understand it yet, exactly what the extent of the the break is.
SPEAKER_01But yeah, the studies keep showing I mean the these studies keep coming out. It's alarming. I think the NIH had one around teenage girls and half of them, half fifty percent or some some figure like that struggle with severe depression or suicide. Or I mean it just yeah, every year, just each each year in this in this season, we're seeing, I think, harder and harder, heartbreaking news, I think.
SPEAKER_00Is there anything as the leader of an organization that you know is trying to minister to to these students, is there anything you're thinking about doing differently in the next season to like hit that head on?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, there's there's a variety of things, but I'll just share one of them is um uh I'm a big believer of bringing students a way to unplug experiences off of campus. It's very interesting. As a ministry, we highly value ministry on campus. That's that's why we exist. Everything happens on campus in your dorms and everything. But in this season, uh, we're investing more in how do we bring students off campus to retreat centers, nature. Uh if it is in a hotel in a city because you're an urban area that's hard to get away, that's fine. But a third space that's not your university where you can unplug more or create rules to unplug, be in an embodied community where you're together with students, that I think is one way that both from an overall health standpoint, maybe that'll help people be more healthy holistically, but from a spiritual engagement point, you're taking them away from distraction as well so they can more engage spiritually. So that's an example of one that we think we need to do with Gen Z. We've always done camps and things like this, but to invest even more with this generation there.
SPEAKER_00Well, that that gets us to our my last big question, which is about scale. So I'm really fascinated by InnerVarsity. Um, and I'm thinking of sort of doing these sort of retreats like all across the country, right? You wouldn't just do it in one spot. Um InnerVarsity is such a large organization. You mentioned 1,500 or so employees, um, tens of thousands of people who sort of are coming in and out of inner varsity programming. There's got to be some blessings to that scale, um, but there's also got to be some challenges to it. So if you could just, yeah, from the leader's perspective, sort of what's the blessing and what's the challenge of such a large organization?
SPEAKER_01Uh yeah, great question. I mean, there, yeah, there are a lot of benefits that come with scale. Uh, I think um we're, you know, in every state, uh almost every locality you can think of. And so uh so that's wonderful. The breadth of our ministry everywhere. Uh, you know, our sister movements are in 170 countries, so we've got movements around the world, uh, even though Innovarcy USA is not running them, we we identify with sister movements. So to be part of a big fellowship is wonderful. Um you I feel richly blessed to be part of a big fellowship where uh I can interact with brothers and sisters in almost anywhere around the world, right? Uh that hold and carry very similar values. So there's so there's blessings there. The scale allows us, as I mentioned before, to do a lot of things efficiently. So we can do a training or a uh a tool that we create for campus, and it doesn't get used in one campus, it gets used at 700 campuses, right? So so that that scale is really uh really helpful. Um a lot of uh internal learning. So you can have we have a lot of wonderful leaders in our movement, and so we learn from each other and the richness of learning from each other and not being alone in isolation if you were with a smaller organization. Um some of the downsides, we are slower because we're bigger. You know, we're slower. Um we uh, you know, one size doesn't fit all, even though we're we have scale, it's sort of because we're big, we're also very diverse. So we have a lot of different kinds of ministries. We've got campuses where we focus on athletes and some where we're we have a lot of Greek students, fraternity sorority students. We've got um ones that are a lot of engineering, we've got community colleges, we've got Ph students. So you can imagine while scale is great, um not always does one tool work for everybody. So because of that, we're creating multiple versions of tools, then, right? We're we we have a high value for contextualization, so we're we're changing and tweaking everything to fit all the different exceptions in our movement. So so we've got that. Yeah, and we're slow, as I mentioned. That's so big decisions, you know, because I'm trying to, or my leadership team is trying to represent the whole, it takes a while to to get the buy-in from the whole. Um to try to roll something out organization wide is not that easy because again, we're we're big, we're wide, we're diverse. So yeah, so I think those are those are uh some of the challenges, and um we have to always be aware of mission creep. So you know, when you're big and you have a lot of people, um nothing bad, just people have different things they want to do, and you could end up going in different directions if you're not uh watching carefully around. Okay, is everything we're doing aligned with our purpose, our mission, what God's calling to us as a ministry? Um so those kinds of things.
SPEAKER_00So yeah, yeah. And so different from uh on both the benefits and the challenges from any of the other people we've interviewed who are um you know running things very large, like a like a university um or or a nonprofit, but um but not as large as as in a varsity.
SPEAKER_01So uh one of the things I enjoy is you know uh well that's a fun thing is because we we do have a lot of boots on the ground, I often say. So um some ministries are really great content producers, but they have no boots on the ground. So when we can partner with them, or they often look to partner with us because they're looking for boots on the ground, we can provide that. And um, and that that's one of the fun things is we can test things out sometimes because we got a lot of boots on the ground to test. Um, and then I'll just say personally, as a leader, I can always find encouraging stories because because we've got a thousand chapters around the country, and there's always something fun and amazing happening somewhere, and and I can often find encouragement from there. Now, of course, there's a flip side, there's usually a problem somewhere everywhere in the country because with a thousand places, there's bound to be some problem somewhere. So, but anyways, it it is a lot of fun.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, let's end on this question. I wonder, from your perspective, what's what's the main thing or one thing that you're looking at in higher education as a whole, maybe this secular higher education world that university largely um serves. What's the thing that you um are looking for in in that sort of uh ecosystem uh in this next season?
SPEAKER_01Uh as it pertains to the university, yeah. Um yeah, I mean I think um it's it's hard to narrow down to one. Um I think from a uh college and university standpoint, I I think one of my concerns that I see and challenges in the university world that maybe a campus ministry like ours can address is um I'll just put it as a decline in investment in soft skills or areas like the liberal arts, we even say. Um, you know, not for bad reasons, but generally, I think universities and colleges and Gen Z in general is is gravitating towards the pragmatic. Uh, we're in a time when this generation's concerned about jobs. Are they gonna are they gonna be able to survive in the big bad world? Fear, right? And so there's a gravitational show of the pragmatic. Um I think people are are uh doing things that are, I would say they're getting tracked earlier to certain pre-professional routes. And so there's less of the exploration of ideas. Um, and then I think in the process, we gradually lose soft skills. So emotional intelligence, cultural intelligence, how do you solve conflict? Um, how do you relate to people? How do you start a conversation? I mean, there's a lot of these things that are important to the fabric of our society, but um, I think the investment in those are going down. And and you can understand because of financial models and other economic models why colleges and universities need to do what they're doing. But um, in the end, I am worried about the long-term effects of that. So for a group like Innovars, we actually get asked sometimes, like, so what are you all doing about um polarization in our society? Or how are you uh what are you doing about helping students uh engage in tough issues and conflict and and arguments, healthy arguments, you know, and because I think they see that colleges and universities aren't doing that, you know, they're not preparing students for that. So um so it does provide an interesting opportunity for us to engage in that. And as we train students, because we do train students um how to lead and serve, you know, how would you love someone that you have a conflict with? Um, how do you reconcile with somebody that you're in conflict with? Um, you know, how how do we give you some soft skills to lead well? So so we're doing those kinds of things.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it it just to bring this uh full circle, it seems like one way that campus ministries, that Christian ministries of all types can serve the university is if if students aren't learning these in the sort of formal curriculum of the university or the or the the or the sort of formal part of being in the university, well they can get them from um uh these ministries. That that's not the primary goal of these ministries, but in some ways it it's integral to the gospel and to uh sort of Christian values uh of humility and uh dialogue and other things. So um It is, it is so there's a sort of an opening there, um, even if it's an absence, there's an opening to fill a need in many of these universities that isn't being met right now.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Powell I have a great story from probably uh several years ago, but one of the University of California schools, they were dealing with some racial tensions on campus. And uh the head administrator, I don't know if it's from the president's office or a dean's office, they actually call the university students into the office, the university leaders uh into the office saying, you're the most diverse group on campus, you're the largest group on campus, too. You must know something about race relations and how do you how do you do it? How do you relate together as such a diverse group? And will you help us? Will you give us some advice? And I just found that so striking because um the university administration is looking towards this Christian group for answers to their most pressing problems on their campus. And uh we like that actually. That demonstrates some of what we talked about, this partnership with the university. We're for the university, not against it. And we want our students to be salt and light servant leaders to their university. Uh so those are the that that's maybe a good illustration of this.
SPEAKER_00Oh, definitely. And that that's such a vision of of kingdom ethics or or what what um the kingdom of God is called to do, right? Is to is to show a different type of loyalty, a different type of um unity uh around uh Jesus as opposed to um uh other things. So thank you, Tom. Thank you for the conversation, and uh great to hear from you. Great to be here, thanks. 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 Upperhouse UW.