Christian Education at the Crossroads Season Intro

Our introductory season of With Faith in Mind – Christian Education at the Crossroads – explores the challenges facing the Christian Education landscape today, how we got here, and where we’re headed. Our two hosts, Dan Hummel, and John Terrill, sit down with our Producer Jesse Koopman to share their hopes for the series.  

Find out more about our team.

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 0:05

Hello and welcome to With Faith in Mind, a new podcast by Upper House. I'm Dan Hummel. Uh, I work at Upper House. I'm the director of University Engagement, and I'm one third of this podcast hosting team. Another part of it is John Terrell, Executive Director at Upper House. Hey, John. Dan, great to be with you. Great to be launching this new podcast. Yeah, really exciting. And there's a third person with us on this journey, and that's our producer, Jesse Koopman. How are you doing, Jesse?

SPEAKER_00 0:31

Great. It's really a pleasure to be here.

SPEAKER_01 0:33

Awesome. Well, um, we're excited to be bringing you this first episode of the podcast. And uh before we get into the actual content of the podcast, I want to share a little more about who each of us is. Um, John, we'll start with you. Give us a sense of uh what brought you to Upper House and uh and what you do here.

SPEAKER_03 0:53

Dan, I'm the oldest guy in the room. This could take a while. Um Well, actually, I've been at Upper House about eight years. Uh I was hired as the executive director to get Upper House started. And um we have grown significantly. I think we have, you know, dozens of staff members now. Um, but I remember the days when it was just me and I was just trying to figure out how to even hire the next employee. So it's been an amazing journey. I have spent time in higher education. I worked at Seattle Pacific University leading a center there, which at the time was called the Center for Integrity in Business. It's now called the Center for Faithful Business. Uh, I spent some some years with Innvarsity Grad and Faculty Ministry leading their professional schools ministries team. Um, so I had work uh in Boston at Harvard Business School mostly, but also at MIT, and then traveled around the country helping start professional school ministries in areas such as business, law, medical, dental, veterinary science, um, things that we typically deem professional schools in a university environment. I have a background in business, did an MBA, uh, worked as a consultant in human resources and organizational development consulting, um, worked in banking. Um, and along the way, um, during my years in Boston, um, pursued seminary education, and then while at SPU, Seattle Pacific University was able to start and then finish, once I arrived here, a PhD in industrial organizational uh industrial organizational psychology. So it's been a bit of our circuitous um path, but uh have really for many years worked at the seam of business, the academy, um, and and the church.

SPEAKER_01 2:44

When you uh when you started Upper House, any idea that podcasting would be part of the project back at the beginning?

SPEAKER_03 2:52

No, we were just trying to survive day to day, quite honestly, trying to get this place launched. Um, and no, I had no idea that podcasting would be a part of the equation. And now we actually, you know, have a a a number of podcasts that we're we're running. So um so it's been really exciting to see this part of our project develop.

SPEAKER_01 3:11

Yeah, not just podcasting, but all types of sort of digital stuff.

SPEAKER_03 3:13

Yeah, yeah, it's really cool. And I think, you know, COVID really accelerate accelerated this as well. And that's going to be a big theme that probably comes into a lot of our conversation um with respect to higher education. So many different models of the way that we deliver education these days.

SPEAKER_01 3:28

Yeah, yeah. And John's previewing our uh our topic for our first series, which is on Christian education. Jesse, yeah. Give us a little sense of who you are, what brought you to this seat right here, right now.

SPEAKER_00 3:40

Oh my goodness. Uh yeah, I don't have quite the length of story that uh John might have, but um yeah, uh born and raised Madison. Uh I've been uh wow, a participant at Upper House for a long time in terms of uh coming to their programming and uh enjoyed working with this team on various things in media over the years, usually just producing videos for you guys and uh so forth. But uh when you guys uh posted an opening for a podcast technician, I don't remember what the job title was as producer. We'll we'll give it a go and see what happens. We'll have some conversations and see how it goes. Uh and I really wasn't expecting much. I actually thought I'd be bored in six months just editing stuff for you guys. Uh, but it's been quite the thing where you guys embraced me and allowed me to help with the vision casting for it uh and really take on more of a true production role as opposed to just somebody who comes and records and edits for you guys. Uh so I've been incredibly blessed to be a meaningful part of this team and uh really enjoyed the process of of creating a mission and a vision and uh to um really help you guys jump off the ledge with making this a bigger, more exciting thing than I think you guys originally had in mind. So um thanks again for the opportunity. I'm always gonna be grateful for you guys, and uh I'm really excited to see where this goes.

SPEAKER_01 4:52

Awesome. And yeah, since Jesse's joined, um we've moved from basically um producing a good podcast, the Upwards Podcast, another one of our podcasts, um, but really uh just sort of trying to tread water on that. So now we're we're launching new things and we have uh big ideas in the works for the future as well. Uh well, I can tell you a little about myself. Um I've been here at Upper House for um about three years now, and uh I come from UW. I got my PhD in history here, in American religious history, uh, and before that, uh I uh was in Colorado, and I spent a lot of my childhood in Colorado. Before that, I was a missionary kid, uh, spent some time in Germany, but uh the big two places I've lived are Colorado and here in Wisconsin, uh, with one short stint in Cambridge, Massachusetts at Harvard, and another short stint in Jerusalem uh for some research. So um I am a pretty uh big podcast listener. So when COVID hit and we were trying to think about our project here and how we could do things when we couldn't actually meet in person, that was one of the first sort of types of media uh I was thinking about. And I've enjoyed um uh hosting the Upwards podcast for the last two plus years now, um, but also with Jesse coming on board, dreaming about uh other things we can do. So um we'll get into sort of the distinctive thing that this podcast is gonna do. But I think more broadly, podcasting is a great way to have long conversations and uh uninterrupted long conversations and uh to dive into issues in a much deeper level than um a lot of other media, uh including TV and radio, can let you do.

SPEAKER_03 6:34

Yeah, and one of the things we hope, and one of the areas that Jesse's had to coach me in um is the area of really learning to be yourself while you're on a podcast. I mean, I I listeners, you're gonna learn that you know, we we wrestle with ideas where we don't have fully formed thoughts. We have to, when we think about programming here, you know, we spend a lot of time um together trying to conceptualize what it is that we want to pull off. It's a messy process. Um and so hopefully some of that will come through in the podcast. Um we're gonna do interviews, we're gonna talk, we're gonna share our own insights. Some of our insights will be fully formed, others will be half baked. And we we we hope that'll be actually exciting um for the lit for you as as listeners to just really be a part of that.

SPEAKER_01 7:21

That's right. That's right. Well, let's jump into uh this podcast and sort of what we're hoping to accomplish with it. So it's called With Faith in Mind. We came up with that uh title a while ago. It probably means something a little different uh to each of us. John, when I say with faith in mind, when you think about this podcast, what does that mean to you? What are we trying to get at?

SPEAKER_03 7:40

Yeah, that's a good question because it it's been a few months since we actually came up with the title. We actually did have a you know a really good brainstorming session around this. I I I we often um I think in general, there there's a there's a tendency to to not always bring our whole selves uh into our work or our decision making or our conversations. And I think at times we can we can we often think about the Christian faith experientially um or emotionally. Um and one of the the things we have tried to raise in our work on campus at University of Wisconsin is that that there is a deep connection between our faith and our cognitions, that um our faith um can be complementary to our best um intellectual endeavors and um and conversely, um our intellectual endeavors can enliven our faith. And so with faith in mind means that um our faith and our our mind, our best thinking, can be um compatible projects. They're they're both a part of who we are, they're part of our whole selves, and we can bring both of those ideals into our best conversations.

SPEAKER_01 8:58

Yeah, and I think m what I think of when I hear that title, it it resonates a lot with what you just said. I think of it in two ways. It's sort of that you can you can play with with faith in mind in two ways. One is uh with faith, uh keeping it in mind, so keeping it at the forefront of uh of these conversations that can that are gonna be about all different types of topics that aren't um a lot of them do obviously intersect with religion and faith, some of them less so, and so um keeping uh Christian faith in particular at forefront. Um but there's also the with faith in the mind or or having faith be animated by one's uh intellect and uh thinking. And so in both of those ways, um, I think that's one reason we landed on the title, in part was because we could do a few different things with it. Um I think it would really signal uh what we're about and the types of conversations we want to host um with the podcast. Jesse, you were in the room when we uh came up with this. In fact, I think you were leading the uh the thought this year.

SPEAKER_03 9:58

Jesse, I think you were the one taking you were the taking notes, you'd think I'd remember, right?

SPEAKER_00 10:02

Uh actually I think it was uh our uh uh communications writer who uh came up with it, Susan Anderson. Um but uh I think it's really great because for me, my intellectual side has been uh really underseen in the church, uh in my upbringing and in my in my faith life. And uh often it's been almost even discouraged uh in the church interactions that I've had, and to uh be able to, in this environment, in the university setting, in a Christian study center environment, uh really just embrace the intellectualism that I define myself as uh is really, really exciting. And to be able to dig into issues that are core to my identity and my understanding of who God is and to how I kind of feel about God and how I feel about myself, um, in in bringing that intellectualism into that is really, really exciting uh to know that what I think is just as important as what I feel. It's not just what I experience, but it's how I think about those experiences, it's how I think about um what those experiences mean and how God's working in them. And I think there's so much that I'm really, really excited to take that more academic approach to exploring some of these questions uh about what our faith means and where it comes from. Uh so I'm really, really excited.

SPEAKER_01 11:27

Yeah. Well, you mentioned something, Jesse. You called us a Christian study center. And that uh for people who know Upper House, that that might be an obvious term. For others, they might not be familiar with it. Uh Christian study centers are a type of organization out there. Um there's a consortium of Christian study centers. And many of us who call ourselves Christian Study Centers are right at the intersection of the church world and the academic world, often at major university campuses. Upper House is at that intersection, and we also serve the broader Madison uh community, the the um the business community, the civic community as well. So when we think about questions, when we think about conversations, we're always thinking about how to bridge those different uh communities, those different uh often siloed uh uh communities that have their own ways of talking about things, that have their own ways of stating their own significance. And we get to sit sort of in the middle of all that and try to adjudicate some of that, but also just get people talking to each other across those lines. So um it's really natural for us to think about bringing an academic perspective to some perennial faith issues and also to bring some perennial religious or church issues and and talk about them with uh academic people. So um that's sort of the the DNA uh of what we're doing here, and hopefully that'll come through in the podcast.

SPEAKER_03 12:46

Yeah, I like that. I think that's really true. And then just this holding together um these ideas of heart, soul, mind, and strength. And the opportunity we do, and sometimes we need a little bit more heart, uh sometimes we need a little bit more mind, sometimes we need a little bit more of strength, right? So and and sometimes, you know, depending on where you sit, uh organizationally or institutionally, you might need a little bit more of what somebody else offers from another perspective. So in many ways, the Christian Studies Center movement and our role here at Upper House is to is to try to hold all those in balance and bring those to into the context and and environments in which we serve.

SPEAKER_00 13:25

Yeah. Yeah, I think that's really huge. And uh it kind of goes along with kind of our model for where we're going in podcasting in general at Upper House, uh, is we have this m monochrome of think be do uh at Upper House. And uh that's kind of what we're modeling our upcoming podcasts around. We're starting off with Think, obviously, um with the with Faith in mind, but we have other podcasts that we're working on uh pitching out here in the next year uh for be and do, and to bring all those different aspects of our whole selves uh to the table and exploring them each and within each podcast, but each specifically with a unique perspective in each uh podcast as well. So uh keep an eye out for those podcasts that are coming out too. We're really, really excited about all of them.

SPEAKER_01 14:06

So all right. So that's a bit about the With Faith in Mind uh uh mission and and vision for the podcast. Uh the way that we've structured this podcast is it's gonna be uh delivered in uh in different series. So we're gonna have um uh a number of episodes around a similar topic with a lot of interviews. They'll be bookended by uh John, me, and Jesse talking through uh the topic here at the front end and then debriefing at the at the back end with a lot of interviews in the middle. This is a bit different than our original podcast at Upper House, which uh it's called the Upwards Podcast, and is really a uh uh regular interview podcast with guests that uh that sort of intersect with uh with Upper House. Here we're here we're focused on diving deep into particular issues and spending a lot of time trying to understand them, talk to experts, talk to people uh who are on the ground with some of these issues to get a better sense of them. So our first series, the sort of inaugural series for the podcast, uh we're calling Christian Education at the Crossroads. And uh uh we want to unpack both key terms there, Christian education and the crossroads, and exactly what we mean by that. John, do you remember uh I have my own recollection of why we picked this topic, but but what what is so pressing that we should talk about Christian education sort of as our first topic on the podcast, do you think?

SPEAKER_03 15:29

Aaron Powell Well, I think part of it is that you start with something that you know something about. And I think this is a a space and a place that we inhabit. Study centers um are a unique and innovative and newer offering in the context of Christian higher education. I think in addition to being able to really tap into some of our areas of expertise, we also just really enjoy and read the headlines. And there's been so much in the press these days, from loan forgiveness to scandals to higher education being under significant strain in the season of COVID and even before, to people questioning the economics of higher education. I mean, it there's probably not a day that goes by in a mainstream newspaper that you can't read something, uh headline that is addressing major um challenges uh in higher education. That's right. So that's a big part of it. And then you layer in the church and all of the news that swirls around the church. Uh, and you've got a you've you've really got an interesting um possibility for a podcast and an opportunity to really dive deep on some really important issues.

SPEAKER_01 16:42

Yeah, I I totally agree with you. I think we were thinking in part about who are some people that we really want to talk to. And a lot of them happen to be in the Christian higher education space or the higher education space. I also think uh that a Christian study center is a place of education, but it's not, it's it's newer, as you mentioned. It's also not the traditional uh model. I mean, if you were just to list sort of the the enduring uh types of education spaces, the schoolhouse, the high school, the college, Christian study centers aren't on there. And we particularly chose the phrase Christian education to make sure that it was broader than just higher education or even formal uh education because we do a lot of stuff here at at Upper House that isn't formal in the sense of accredited by some outside body or something, and yet is very formative to the people who are coming through and uh and learning things and reading books and and other things.

SPEAKER_03 17:36

Yeah, and I think we even had some offhand offhand conversations um about Sunday school and just some of the traditional offerings in in churches. And um, you know, I I don't know how many years ago, a couple decades ago, you started to see churches let go of some of those um priorities. There were small groups and other vehicles that were used by churches to to help draw people into the life of the church, education, uh educate parishioners and church members and so forth. And now I think slowly over the last year or two, I have started to notice um more of those Sunday offerings starting to come back in a more traditional sense. So and I'm sure there's been uh troughs and valleys in the life of the church where Christian education has had a more prominent role, and then at times it has been uh subsumed into some different, you know, a different kind of format or different kind of offering, and then maybe the over time the traditional uh models seem to re-emerge again. So I'm just curious about, you know, even the life of the church, how Christian education is is offered and expressed.

SPEAKER_00 18:43

I think that's really interesting. Uh something I didn't really think about until we're literally all sitting here talking about churches doing education, but we all go to Black Hawk Church uh here in Madison, and we just started offering some new classes uh about um various aspects of our faith and and Christian life. So uh it is interesting to think about, even in our own congregation that we're a part of, uh seeing kind of a crossroads in or tipping points in education where things are shifting a little bit for us. Right. Um, I also really wanted to just say I thought when this topic was first pitched, I wasn't very excited about it. Um, and then I took a 30 seconds to think about it, and I'm like, okay, we're a Christian study center. Why would I not want to talk about Christian higher education or Christian education in general? Uh it's like the most logical place for us to go. Uh, so I was really glad uh to just take a step back and embrace it. Uh, but I also think it's really great for you guys all to get to know us and in our fields a little bit better. I think in this pay uh place of Christian education at the crossroads, we'll get to talk a little bit more about who we are and our perspective on education, but also how we approach things. Because this is something that we have all thought immensely about. So I'm hoping that we all get to a chance to share more about who we are, our perspective, how we think about things, how we feel about things. And as we tackle more controversial topics or more difficult topics or uh more embedded emotional topics, uh, that you can have more of a perspective of who we are as individuals and how we approach things, as opposed to just getting the the nuts and bolts of stuff.

SPEAKER_01 20:16

Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_03 20:17

And I think we we have a historian in the room as well. And I think that is something we wanted to to layer in as well, is to take a historical perspective. So it these issues are not just issues of today. They're issues that we've wrestled with over the life of the church. And so we want to take a long view, both forward and backward, to really understand what new what new space is emerging, what new possibilities are emerging.

SPEAKER_00 20:38

Yeah. And to be clear, John is not speaking the third person. He's not the historian, and either am I. It's Dan. Uh uh Dan Hummel is a fantastic historian whom I've really come to appreciate and uh get to know over the last year. Um with that being said, I love the the historical approach that you bring to things, Dan. Uh, what's your approach, or or how do you like to tackle things, John? Um, I know you don't generally approach things from the historical perspective. You often think about things in an institutional way or through an organizational way. Uh, but how would you say your primary way of dealing with stuff is?

SPEAKER_03 21:12

Well, I probably bring a management science lens. I bring an organizational science lens to things. So I'm interested in um how institutional institutions take form to serve the audiences and um customers, um, stakeholders that they're called to serve. So in a lot of ways you could think about the life of Christian education through an organizational lens. What forms have emerged that help address needs at a particular time? And certainly the evolution of the church and the mega church and the way the church has changed and is changing today coming out of COVID, um certainly has um had impact on the way that it offers um its its educational um offerings. Right. So so I I tend to take, you know, uh uh often an applied organizational um and management perspective. But I also am really interested in history as well. And um I've had a chance to to meet, you know, uh leaders that are leading in different parts of the church. And so I'm always, you know, interested when I um when I'm able to you know identify with the challenges the particular leaders face at the particular point they're serving in the broader church. Um and so that tends to be an angle that I that I take on as well.

SPEAKER_01 22:35

Yeah, I think we're gonna try with with all of these topics and particularly with Christian education as we started to to sort of uh sprinkle in the history and we actually have a few conversations that'll be directly related to the history of Christian education, of higher education. But uh our primary interest in this is is sort of that at the crossroads part, which we we intend to mean for right now. Sort of where is Christian education right now? Where is where is it heading in its next era? So that being said, as we get to uh this other term in the title, the topic titles, crossroads. What do we mean by crossroads? John, I remember just a few months ago in a staff uh retreat, we read an article um about continuing education in the church. It was from, I think it was from 1978 in Christianity, um, where similar phrasing around crossroads was being, and that's you know, uh uh 40 something years ago. And so I think in some ways, every generation feels like Christian education is at the crossroads. So we don't want to say that we're in some unbelievably unique turning point here, but there are different challenges that each uh era brings for education. And I wonder if we could, you mentioned a few of them earlier. Uh there's uh financial uh considerations, changing ways that we fund education, changing uh uh sort of benefits of going to a seminary or a Christian college, um, or changing benefits to taking a Sunday school class if your if your church offers that. When when I say or when we say that Christian education is at the crossroads, what comes to mind in the crossroads? Like what what are the what are the roads and and what are the the sort of main uh tension points that we want to explore in this series?

SPEAKER_03 24:23

Yeah, there there are there are a lot of layers to that. It I I think we could probably think about a crossroads in the life of the church. We could think about crossroads in the context of higher education, we could think about uh crossroads probably in in in in primary and secondary education, Christian education. So each of these um I think uh presents um an array of unique challenges. And we're gonna try to explore all of these, uh but I uh and to tie the threads together in some ways. But I think fundamentally, you know, the church always has to be thinking about how it's gonna continue to have impact in the world for good. How will it continue to to invite people into an experience of life with God, life with Jesus, and how will it continue to serve um communities, to serve those in its midst. And it has to make decisions about how it is going to train people to to think about what the church is to be in the world.

SPEAKER_02 25:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 25:35

And to bring some, you know, continuity of historical context and understanding of scripture and to create a common language so that there can be a common life. And so I think it at any given point the church has always been in a crossroads because it's always had to wrestle with those questions. How does it create life and impact beyond the life of an individual member or congregation?

SPEAKER_01 26:00

Yeah. And I I think too of the just the Great Commission and the command to make disciples. And I think often we think of that in terms of uh you know, bringing new people into the church uh through missions or or other things. But there is the also the making disciples is a generational process. Um that's all that's another way of bringing people into the church, but it's not, it's it's sort of a uh chronological way as opposed to a spatial way or a or an immediate way. And so so much of Christian education is about educating uh the next generation of Christians. The um the happenings, if the history of the church just automatically get passed down to the next generation. It's through institutions, it's through education. Um and it's also the way uh education is also the way how current Christians and future Christians um are strengthened in what they know. Uh so I think uh Christian education is just at the center of so much of what uh the church is called to be. And it's become such a large part, uh such a large uh uh not industry uh network in the United States and and abroad for where Christians work and where Christians uh sort of put their put their energies in any given day.

SPEAKER_03 27:21

Yeah, and we we get glimpses of the future, so we can look way out in the future. Um, and and the book of Revelation, Isaiah, there are they're there are pictures of the new heavens and the new earth, and they're populated with people, and they're also populated with institutions and things that we recognize, um cultural artifacts that are uh representative of the kinds of things we interact with today. Right? So discipleship making Christian education, the life of the church um plays out in relational personal terms. It also plays out in really important institutional terms as well. Yeah, that's interesting.

SPEAKER_01 28:03

Well, I think one uh other aspect of this that we can explore is just recounting our own personal experiences in Christian education settings. I think that'll be an interesting um I know John, you and me, we have pretty uh maybe opposite ends of of this experience, but you talked about this a little in your bio at the beginning, but uh just list for us again, what are the in Christian educational institutions that you've you know been a part of, either as a student or help lead?

SPEAKER_03 28:29

Yeah, so I uh I came to faith after college. Um and so the uh but came to faith through a local church community and a group of guys that invited me into their small group. So I'm I'm a a product of the good work of the local church. And I then in graduate school, my MBA program had a really profound experience with an university graduate community, graduate student community. And so I really benefited from the parachurch, or what some would refer to as a more sodality ministry, something that, you know, complements the work of the local church. And so university Christian fellowship, university graduate and faculty ministries was a big part of my development. Um I have I wor spent time working and leading uh in the context of a Christian university, Seattle Pacific University. So I have been on the inside of a Christian college and know what that is about. Uh and then also working in a study center, Christian study center. But even when I worked in business, um there were times of profound uh a deep and profound sense of the spirit at work in that place. So I tend to um I I think Christian uh before as a modifier to organization is appropriate. But I think there are there are Christian organizations because they're they're you know commissioned and incorporated as such. But there are also organizations that are deeply um uh infused with the Spirit of God, people that you know bring the presence of God and they take on a characteristic of their own that can be very Christian. And I've had experiences in both of those contexts, and so I think um, you know, it's gonna be fun to explore some of the topics that we're gonna explore and to think about the impact of Christian education for the life of all of our institutions more broadly.

SPEAKER_01 30:45

Yeah, that's very interesting. Thanks for recounting that. I think of um so I'll I'll tell you what what I I was thinking, I was anticipating, John, that you were um gonna go there and you have a just a wealth of different organizations or experiences. I don't think I have that many, um, I th which is odd for someone to say who grew up as a missionary kid and then um has been and now working in a ministry, but um I uh to the point where I when I I went to non-denominational churches for most of my childhood, um, there weren't really adult education offerings. I didn't even like going to the youth groups. I just wanted to listen to the sermon. So um I didn't really have uh an educational experience in the church. I definitely had a lot of education at home. My parents were very intentional about teaching me um, you know, basic uh ways to read the Bible, to understand the Bible, basic theology and things like that. Um, but I never I I actually went to a Christian school for second grade, and that was the only grade, and that was after coming back from the mission field. After that, I was in public schools. Uh I went to uh Colorado State University, a public school. Um I I did I was part of a campus ministry for a year. I did not like it, and so I stopped going to it. Um and then I came to UW and and uh another public institution. I have written about Christian education institutions. Uh in my first book on uh evangelicals and Jews and the State of Israel, I spent a lot of time actually studying a particular school in Jerusalem called the American Institute for Holy Land Studies that was a mix of um biblical archaeology, uh that was the curriculum, but it was also a very political organization that was very interested in Israel. And so I got to um think a lot about Christian education in that unique uh context. And then I've written a lot about theology in seminaries and in Bible institutes, Bible colleges. Um, but it's all sort of secondhand, you know, it's as a historian looking at documents, it's not very much uh firsthand experience. So I have very little firsthand experience in in Christian education of any type, really, until coming to Upper House, to be honest.

SPEAKER_03 32:58

And it's so interesting because I completely left out my seminary experience. I wasn't even thinking about it.

SPEAKER_01 33:02

Oh, yes, at Gordon, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:03

But so uh yeah, so that's a whole but but we do bring our perceptions, like you know, you you you describing your childhood and your lack of interest in youth group, I guess that it just didn't strike a chord. I remember, you know, we were less frequent churchgoers, but we would, you know, we would go to church, and I just remember sort of these dark hallways and kind of the chemical smells, you know, where the the the you know the custodian staff, the custodians had, you know, doused the floors, you know, these marble floors or whatever they were with these heavy chemicals. And I just remembered that as a kid, I associated youth group and Sunday school with this chemical smell. Right. And so it's hard to shake that stuff.

SPEAKER_02 33:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:48

And it wasn't until you know, I was an adult that I had experiences where Christian education actually was something that was interesting.

SPEAKER_01 33:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:58

And um didn't have negative associations with it.

SPEAKER_01 34:01

You know what's so funny, uh, and this just gets at our personality differences, which we'll come through too, is I I went to a large for like middle school, high school, I went to a very large church in Colorado Springs, and the uh the youth group was actually called uh Surge, which was based on a now defunct um uh soda drink uh called which is like super caffeinated. And that's what I associate and and much much of youth group and um I won't name the church because I don't want to um sort of put anyone under the bus.

SPEAKER_03 34:32

But you named the soft drink, though. I did name the soft drink.

SPEAKER_01 34:34

Well, and it had a resurgence uh a few years ago. Um resurgence, and a resurgence, yeah. They probably used that in them in the marketing. Um but I associated youth group with these sort of uh just unserious ways of being a you sort of the youth culture. I we had you know eating contests and all that kind of so that's what I associated with youth group was like I and it that's sort of my personality, but it's like I just want to learn something here, I don't actually want to just waste time. And so that was why it sort of drove me away from youth group was going to where in the church there were people who were actually sort of interested in ideas and and learning. Um so much different than the the chemical smell, but um, I think a a similar sense that um uh wanting to get education at church and trying to seek out like where is that uh in the church that that that's happening.

SPEAKER_03 35:22

Yeah, and then that that's really interesting. And I guess maybe one other experience I would throw in that I think hopefully just sort of um kind of mixes up the categories for us. I remember as a seminary student pretty much getting to the end of the degree and realizing, you know, I've I've I'm I'm sort of training to be a leader in the church, and I haven't had to do anything in collaboration with any of my peers here. It was all solitary work. And I contrasted that with my MBA, which was was was kind of extreme in the opposite direction. It was just loaded with teamwork. And um and so I you know I've had time to reflect on that, and I think they're you know, they they both make sense. You know, I I I sort of get the the the process. Um but I think sometimes, you know, our experiences um of Christian education can reinforce um ideas that you know are kind of misplaced ideas, and in some ways they can break paradigms down that that that need to be broken down. And my certainly my experience of seminary education and and my aim and MBA program started to jumble the categories in some ways. Yeah. Yeah. And they were both really meaningful experiences. Yeah. But not what I would have expected going in.

SPEAKER_01 36:46

Very interesting. Well, we're we're gonna bring a lot of these uh personal experiences into some of the interviews that we do and are obviously shaping the questions that we're asking. Uh so uh I want to move on to just what what can listeners expect from this series and how are we going to approach it? Uh I mentioned that we're gonna do a series of conversations, bookended by the three of us talking. Um, but uh in between those uh bookends, what do we hope to explore? Uh Jesse, maybe you can just chime in here on uh because you you were so uh instrumental in helping us figure it out and the structure of the series. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:25

Well, I think the the basis of the series really comes down to us all wanting to um really embrace what we're curious about in in terms of this. And I think you'll see some of that as as uh even the topics get assigned to different interviewees uh between these two. Um they're gonna be picking topics that are more or less relevant to them. And I think that's really exciting because you'll get a lot of genuineness from each of them about the the topics that they want to explore and that they're curious about. Um, I know Dan's gonna be uh certainly happy to explore some of the um the historical narratives and helping us to understand uh the framework on how we've gotten to be where we are. But he's also gonna go into stuff that's relevant to him and his life experiences about uh his life in the university world and the public institution world, um, as well as just some of his uh relationships with the church and um how that's been explored. So that that's great. And then John has, like we've been talking about, this very different experience with different areas of interest. Um, also just exploring the different relationships they have with people in the industry. Um, there are so many wonderful connections that these do have that I've been blown away by in the year that I've been here. And uh I'm really excited to get to meet some of these people that they rave about and uh are excited to talk to. So I think that's gonna be the biggest thing. And then the other side of it is just the arc. Um we're we really want to provide a full context and understanding of this concept. Uh, one of the things that we really want to do as a team uh in exploring this whole notion of with faith in mind is not beating around the bush, not not ducking the tough questions, but really exploring things from a deep academic understanding, not just a surface level let's get the gist, but really wanting to uh dig deep and and and understand things at their core and how do they they matter to us as individuals, how do they matter to us as groups, as institutions, and uh really just kind of go through the gamut. So we've got what, 15 different episodes planned already for this series. And growing. And and it's yeah, we are not capping it at that. So as we uh talk to people, if we come up with new stuff, uh, or uh suppose if any of you have uh concepts that you really want to see us explore, uh whether it be in this specific uh realm of Christian education at the crossroads or or others, feel free to reach out to us anytime. Um you can reach us at podcast at slbrownfoundation.org uh and uh I'll get that email and we'll we'll take a look at them.

SPEAKER_03 39:56

So and we're gonna have some interesting conversations with leaders, um, leading in higher education, leading in primary, secondary education, leading in some of the in in the church. Uh and I I think those will be fascinating conversations because there are a lot of tensions that these leaders have to grapple with. I've often said that, you know, being a college president may be the hardest job these days. There's so little margin of for error. And um and you know, it's um and you know, the the tenure just continues to sort of come down, I think, with college presidents. So we're gonna talk to a couple college presidents and and get a sense of what it is that they do and why their job, why they enjoy their job and what they find challenging about their work.

SPEAKER_01 40:40

Yeah. And John, we were just talking about this a couple days ago. We're sitting here in, you know, in Madison in Big Ten country, and I think it's um there's j there have been recently a few announcements of of further Big Ten schools changing leadership. Yeah. And I think it's about half of the whole Big Ten right now has changed leadership in the last year. I think that's right. Yeah. So I mean, we're this is part of the crossroads. We're at a moment when there's a lot of uh uh transition happening in the higher education world. Same thing in the Christian education world uh as well. So um if you can't tell from how we've been talking, we've we've storyboarded out a lot of where we want to go in this series, but we're we're also being flexible. And as we talk to uh different experts, different leaders, uh we we have the uh the flexibility to add in uh conversations and maybe have a few small sub-conversations or mini episodes as as uh as the opportunities present themselves. So that'll be the the basic structure. Um it'll either be John or me interviewing most of the people, and Jesse will be uh hanging out with for all of them uh as the producer.

SPEAKER_00 41:47

Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna add in a few things that I'm just thinking through as we're going here. Uh I want to make sure that people know too that we're gonna have something for everybody in this. I mean, yes, it's very academically minded, and we're taking a very uh thoughtful approach to this, but I think everybody that would listen to this would find something for themselves. Uh they'll hear about the struggles of institutions and which is gonna be the church for some of us. For some of us, it's gonna be the college that we went to or might attend someday. Uh, we're gonna be talking about things like access issues as well and financial concerns and and things that will address hopefully everybody on some level. Uh, and I'm really excited that we're not capping it, even though we're three white adult Christian men all sitting here, uh, that hopefully we can uh help everybody who's approaching these concepts together in a way that will meet them where they are.

SPEAKER_01 42:37

I'm wondering if we can wrap up uh before we just uh say goodbye, and then uh the next episodes will be the interviews themselves. Um each just sharing one sort of big thing we we want to learn about uh over the course of these interviews. I can start because I've been thinking about this a little, um, but maybe we can all we can all share one. Um one thing, and this comes out of working at Upper House, uh, one thing I'm really interested in is how to think about uh higher education and particularly public higher education in relation to Christian education. So if you just went by the numbers, because high public higher education is so big in the United States, there are many, many more Christians that work and and or or attend public universities than if you put all the Christian colleges and seminaries together, um, you'd still have far fewer Christians in those settings than you would if you added in all the big ten schools and all the uh SEC schools and and everybody else. And I don't know exactly what to make of that, except that I think we often overlook that public university setting when we talk about Christian education, because that's not the the sort of institutional framework. The the institutional framework there is is these are this is a public good, this is non sectarian, this is not supposed to be um where Christianity or any religion is is advocated. And yet if we just sort of added up the numbers, there's a story to tell there. So I'm curious, I this will not be the the sort of thing I drive all the all the people I'm interviewing to, but I'm curious if if if by the end of this, I can have a better sense of how to think about uh the literally hundreds of faculty at a place like UW, the thousands of students who are Christians, and and if I can think about them in relation to the big Christian colleges and universities, as opposed to now where there's sort of a separate category, or I'm I'm just not exactly sure uh how to connect them. So that'll be an enduring question. I'll think about that from a historical perspective. We're gonna have a few conversations that deal with uh public public education and and uh and the broader higher education world that I think will lend themselves to that as well. So anyway, that's that's just one of the things I'm I'm thinking about going into these interviews.

SPEAKER_03 44:54

Aaron Ross Powell Yeah that's interesting and I I think sometimes the perception can be if you're not on the inside of a public institution, the narrative can often be that that it is a place that's antithetical to the Christian faith.

SPEAKER_01 45:06

Right.

SPEAKER_03 45:07

That's even you know hostile, that's um suppressing. Uh and that's not been my experience. Um it is can be a place that does embody some of that uh in pockets but it can also be a place that's very open to conversations of meaning purpose transcendence uh even issues of faith. Um that's true here at UW Madison it was true in some of the other parts of my own educational you know history where I went to college and graduate school. It was also my experience in Boston working at MIT and Harvard that there was real openness. So I you know I'm curious about your question um and in part because I have seen so much light in some of those places. Right. Um and again it's the light isn't the whole story but um but darkness isn't the whole spiritual darkness isn't the whole story either.

SPEAKER_01 46:11

Right. And we know that from our own work here, right? That it's it's you don't want to entirely ignore the the predominant way people understand higher education, but there's so much happening in a place like UW Madison that um looks a lot like Christian higher education or Christian education and yet just is never classified that way. It's never it's either a sort of a an exception or talked about in a different way. And um yeah I think I think the the the hunch I have is it's more complicated and I want to sort of put some meat on that that hunch uh through these conversations.

SPEAKER_03 46:44

And we're gonna talk a little bit about Christian study centers because that's our context but we've had experiences and experiences in campus ministries as well and there are l dozens and dozens of campus ministries at a place like UW Madison.

unknown 46:55

Right.

SPEAKER_03 46:56

And that and they're they're very active and they have you know hundreds thousands of students are involved in these organizations. So we'll we'll explore that along the way as well.

SPEAKER_02 47:05

Right.

unknown 47:05

Right.

SPEAKER_03 47:06

Well that's good. I think your questions are interesting. Um my questions are I want to be hopeful. I there's there are a lot of reasons not to be hopeful. I think there's a real demographic cliff that's taking place. There are you know more people that identify themselves as um you know non-affiliated with any religious institution or any faith tradition. And so if you just look at the numbers um it can be a bit depressing.

SPEAKER_01 47:38

It feels like faith is on the margins in some ways and increasingly so I think we originally we were playing around with the original title for the series as Christian education in crisis I think and we might went we wanted to actually move away a little from that for this very reason. If we didn't want to sort of predetermine that it's going to be this alarmist uh sort of negative conversation.

SPEAKER_03 48:01

Yeah so I'm looking forward to the good stories and even the stories of struggle but the little glimmers of hope and the possibilities because I do think that um the church can grow, can be strong, that you know we can the church can continue to educate people well. It's a story that that needs to be told um it's a tradition that that brings real life and meaning uh and a sense of purpose and coherence. And so I'm I'm really excited to explore you know the challenges um at all levels but to also hear stories of hopefulness and um innovation and discovery.

SPEAKER_00 48:41

Yeah. You know that actually gets me really excited too. I think one of the things that's lacking in our culture today in America specifically but lots of places around the world is that there's a lack of public discourse about things that really matter. There's a lack of public discourse about things that are are not just a two second sound bite that sells real easily or grabs hits or likes on on a uh social media, uh, but that we would actually be exploring these things in a real deep way and opening up public discourse and allowing people to hear and see and experience what's going on around them that they're not a privy to because it's below the surface. Yeah. So I'm really excited about just exploring things on that level and putting it out in the public setting. And we really hope, I think as I can speak for us all as a team is that everybody comes away from this with a semblance of hope about not necessarily where things are even headed, but where things can go and how they can be a part of making things better.

SPEAKER_03 49:39

And I think public discourse about things in a in a more complicated and deep and um intentional way is really one of the places where we can get that started Yeah I there's been so few times in my life where I have if you really do pay attention to someone and sort of recognize the fullness of their humanity I can't think of a a situation in my life where that wasn't received well. But there are so many forces that push against that kind of conversation, that kind of relational depth. And I think Christian education has an opportunity to move in the direction of holism uh in the direction of the recognition and the honoring of the full humanity of of individuals. And that that can feel really unique and that's why I'm hopeful because I do think that that is um that is a a breath of fresh air so to speak in a culture that I think has lost some capacity to do that.

SPEAKER_01 50:38

Well I'm excited to uh start the journey uh together we have a lot of work ahead of us um for listeners if uh after you hear this if you're interested in asking us any questions leaving us any comments uh once again the email is podcast at slbrown foundation.org Upper House is also on most of the social media platforms with the uh handle at upperhouseUW so feel free to leave us comments there as well so really enjoy talking to both of you today for John Jesse and me we just look forward to seeing you in the next episode thanks for joining us if you enjoyed today's podcast be sure to subscribe and give us rating on your favorite podcast app.

SPEAKER_00 51:24

Also be sure to check out our upcoming events at 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 Turrell, our executive producer and editor is Jesse Koopman please follow us on social media with the handle at Upper House UW