College Conversations Season 2, Episode 1: Biblical Education - Where’s it Headed?
Episode Synopsis
President Gregg Garner discusses biblical college education’s current and future relevance with Institute faculty Jeff Sherrod, Benjamin Reese, and Laurie Kagay. They address the challenges and benefits of a faith-based degree, its influence on career paths, and its role in preparing students for a dynamic job market. A crucial conversation for Gen Z students and their parents considering higher education.
College Conversations Season 2 Episode 1: What’s the Future of Biblical Education? (Podcast Transcript)
Gregg Garner 0:10
Welcome to Season Two of College Conversations. I'm Gregg Garner, your host, and with me today are Professor Benjamin Reese. (Hello.) Professor Laurie Kagay, and Professor Jeffrey Sherrod (Hi everybody). College Conversations is our opportunity to discuss everything related to going to college, being in college thinking about college. And it's aimed at potential students, current students and their parents.
There's a lot to talk about when it comes to post secondary education. And today, what we want to focus on is the future of Biblical education in particular. Now, the reason why I think this topic is important, is because I think for most people, when they think about biblical education, off the bat, they may not even know the difference between how biblical education could be done versus how biblical education is done. In other words, they have an educational paradigm in their mind as to oh, this is what school is like. And then they just think this, then, Bible education would be just like school, but Bible is the main book. And while I think that that might be, how things have been, I don't think that's the way it needs to be, or even where it's going. So I thought it would be great to have a conversation, as educators and folks who think about biblical education on a daily basis, and to discuss even perhaps your own experiences, as you guys are all graduates of various institutions of biblical higher education. And we can just open up some doors in the mind for the kind of consideration that can help a potential student, a current student, or parent better understand even what's possible in the realm of Biblical education. Sounds good? Yeah. Great. So let me ask a question here. When you guys think about biblical education, do you have like a cookie cutter model that comes into mind? Do you feel like there's this way that most people do it? And it probably goes like this?
Jeff Sherrod 2:22
Yeah. Well, I'll start. I think that, you know, I think sometimes when people think about biblical education, they think about popular Biblical education, you know, like the kind that maybe we've got in our churches,
Gregg Garner 2:31
okay, just so you don't even think people think post secondary.
Jeff Sherrod 2:35
Because sometimes when it comes to matters of faith, there's already an implicit prejudice against it. And it's like, well, this is easy. I've had these things from my youth kind of thing, that there's not a lot of, I mean, we get it because we deal with parents and like, if you're going to college for Bible, is that a thing? You know, like, if they're not familiar with that? Yeah, that can already be a question. Yeah. Is is the Bible even, you know, worthy of higher education. So I think that's one thing that people struggle with. And I think the other thing is that even once they are in Biblical education, higher Biblical education, there is patterns that I do think that we find, even in schools, you know, so it's like, we're going to start with a set of theological presuppositions or statements. There's gonna be something about hermeneutics.
Gregg Garner 3:23
So you're saying like, Okay, the first thing you're saying is that when people do talk about biblical education, they're typically referencing their experience in church? I think so. Yeah. And then if they do become aware that there is such a thing as post secondary Biblical education, there is a pattern that you can identify that starts with a presuppose. theological position. So maybe we'll we'll talk about the category of like, soteriology. So now classes will be taught on salvation, right? Or evangelism…
Jeff Sherrod 3:59
And from a particular viewpoint, right, so we're gonna, we're gonna say, What did you know, really popular theologians say like Calvin, or someone else, you know, and we're going to kind of pick schools. Yeah.
Gregg Garner 4:10
And those schools are going to be catering to their own doctrinal and philosophical positions. Yeah. Because a lot of the Bible schools in the country are birthed out of denominational movements anyways, yeah. Right. Okay. So what about when a parent who's not familiar with biblical education, and they get to know about these existing paradigms? What is your guys's experience of working with students or sorry families? What is their hesitation? What do you what do you sense because I doubt they're direct with you? I doubt they're gonna say, is my kids gonna get a job as a result is or do they? I don't know how it is…
Laurie Kagay 4:51
Sometimes. Yes, sometimes you get it from the kid like so the kid will say it more direct than the parent will say, you know, so the kid but they're hiding it from their parents. hanging from the parents saying, like…
Gregg Garner 5:01
The kids are more like, “I want to know God. I want to learn the Bible.” And then the parents are like, “Yeah, but you'll be jobless.” Right?
Laurie Kagay 5:08
Yeah, you how are you going to pay the bills? Yes, like is tends to be the next question. I think some of what Jeff is saying is true, I think the way people understand it may be relegated to our traditional forms of ministry. So like, unless you want to be a pastor, why would you do that?
Gregg Garner 5:24
And this is, this is where I think talking about the future Biblical education has to be a relevant topic, because much of our educational paradigms for post secondary Biblical education, are based upon a time in the United States, where you had a lot of church growth. And not just mega church growth. I mean, a bunch of small churches, right, the pastor, it needed new laborers to step into the pulpit position. And there needed to be training for these young people to be able to do that. But it's an interesting occupational consideration, because who wants a 22 year old pastor, right?
Jeff Sherrod 6:03
I guess some people do. But increase, it's not happening. It's and it's also, it's not like church growth is growing in America. So they're being more selective about who could be in the pastor, which is not going to be 22 year olds, for the most part.
Gregg Garner 6:18
So then that says, For most institutions, they go get an undergraduate Bible degree. Now they just got to go get their masters.
Jeff Sherrod 6:24
Yeah. And so that puts them at the ripe old age of 26. You know, by the time that they're done, you know, it still can be
Gregg Garner 6:29
But then after that, it's competitive because there's there's not a lot of seats.
Laurie Kagay 6:37
Right, and even with a church position, you often need another job in the meantime.
Gregg Garner 6:41
Churches aren’t doing… except for those mega church exceptions and, correct me if I'm wrong, but most megachurch pastors are pretty… I would say, they don't, they don't seem to display experience in the biblical higher education realm. If I can put it softly, right, yeah. And a lot of these church institutions are starting their own schools. Yeah, a lot of them right. And even if they're not, not just an accredited school, but they'll call it like a school of ministry, or they'll even call an institute, their their life study, school Institute, something like that. And the teachers are usually pastoral staff, especially with these mega churches and young people. So young people now go to one of these schools, for a Bible education is probably cheaper, a shorter program, and they want to get them prepared for for ministry. I wonder what the data is like on that? Like, what happens once people graduated? How many people keep their jobs? What's it look like years afterwards?
Jeff Sherrod 7:45
Yeah, I'd be interested. And I think that, you know, churches have tried, even those kinds of those programs have tried to pivot to say, are you guys might not all become pastors, but at least there's some level of, you know, Biblical education credits that you're going to walk away with, even if it's a short certification. I've seen some of these where they try to, you know, it's like, some units, and then they transfer to another school. Yeah.
Gregg Garner 8:06
And I think I think that might be even a more commendable way of doing that all things considered, because I don't think any of us would deny the value of getting a post secondary Biblical education. And I think for young people in this generation, they could probably use some time away from everything else to just immerse into the development of their spirituality. But as far as biblical higher education has gone, in the last 50 years, it's mostly catered towards putting people in a pulpit or putting them in the professor's desk, right? Like, these are the two things. And so how do you perpetuate like if it school is a business to some degree, right? There's a business to schools, there's students who choose to go there, especially with private institutions, and then they pay money to be able to go there. And so you have to have something that says, you want to be here and you should go here. But if they graduate, and there's nowhere for them to go, that's gonna start circulating people are gonna say, Well, that didn't work out for me. Yeah, my cousin Linda, her son went to Bible college, and he now is a car salesman. Right? Right. And so word spreads and people don't know what to do with it. So like, what do parents say on the other side of that, like, what are what are the arguments? What are their hopes? What did I imagine? They're saying, like, maybe you can get your degree in something more pragmatic, and then come back and do it later?
Laurie Kagay 9:42
Why don't you get a business degree or once you get something more general, why don't you get something? I don't know. adaptable, and then come back and do that later. I think. I think it happens rarely, though. Like who do you find that comes back? And later, you know, later when you're going to be probably entering into marriage probably entering into having kids, when your career is maybe going somewhere. Are you really gonna turn back?
Gregg Garner 10:10
I do know that there there are some folks that end up later in life deciding that they have some kind of call to ministry? Yeah, they typically go after that M div. Yeah, right, they go get that MDiv. And then now with the MDiv, that's the seminary degree that says, hey, I'm capable of running a church or teaching or preaching at a church. But again, we run into the problem, where are these churches that could sustain the debt that someone just accumulated to get that kind of degree. And then, on top of that, just because you got a degree doesn't mean, you developed the capacity to do the very complex work of leading a community of people to serve God. It's just, it just feels like there's such a narrow, and very few positions for what someone could actually do. If they got a Biblical education in the conventional sense, right. And if I was a parent, I think I would also have some issues with it.
Jeff Sherrod 11:14
Well and I think that they see that, right?. (No issues with it.) Yeah. I mean, we're not even saying like parents that are unbelievers, you know, we're saying parents that are, you know, going to church, they see this, they're just trying to ask the question, because they're talking to a kid, sometimes their kids not necessarily saying they want to become a pastor, or a missionary or worship leader, like, I want to learn the Bible, I want to get God's word. And they're asking this question like, what's the point of this? So I think part of our task is always to communicate value, you know, like to both them like, what do you what are you coming here for then? And like, what does this prepare you for? And I think part of our, like the, I'll say this way, I was at a conference a couple years ago, and there was, you know, a lot of schools Biblical education, schools were closing down. And this President was, you know, they're like, What do you guys think about this? Everyone's like, Oh, this is terrible. And one of the guys that was in the room, he was like, real harsh about it, but he was like, I think it's good, you know, and people, like, you know, what's your body talking about, but his thing I think what he was trying to say is that this is an opportunity for schools to clarify what they're about, and what they're doing. And I think that that's a task that we all have is like, because I think, you know, if we're here on this, we all believe we know that this is not just preparing you for a particular job. This is preparing you as a person to do all kinds of stuff. I mean, we have that our mission statement, right? It's like faith in any context, noting that you can go a lot different places, but it's the kind of person that you're going to become. And I think it's trying to help parents and students to recognize like, if you take time, when you're this age, you're gonna see dividends on this your whole life, more so than just getting like a very narrow degree in graphic design, you know, from somewhere else, this is gonna pay dividends forever, regardless of the field that you get into. But it does take some shift.
Gregg Garner 13:00
But you know, thinking as a parent, the there's this pragmatic consideration, even related to what kind of financial assistance or even the cultural pressure on how much time a young person person should spend in school? Yeah. Because with the consideration you're making, the idea is get your Biblical education up front. So now you invest yourself three, four years in that Biblical education. And then if we can all concede to the fact there's not a lot of jobs out there for people with undergraduate biblical degrees. It's like, what's next? Well, we already discussed you're going to your masters, or you're going to now transfer into some other program, that's going to take you two to three years to complete in some other kind of profession. Right? So now you're you're seven years in to basically achieving two undergraduate degrees, that and even within that seven years, if you were to access financial aid, you are going to get a limited amount because it ends after six. So you can't even finish out so you're going to potentially accrue debt, to get that other kind of job and but now, you know that that other job, are you saying that the worldview that you adopt as a result of a Biblical education will produce a dividend even into this next degree you're gonna get that allows you to work in a certain field? I mean, because, again, if I'm thinking as a parent taking that Radek approach, I'm like, Wow, this just seems like you're going to be in school forever. Yeah. And then you're going to accumulate debts because the conventional tools that are available to young people to pay for school, you will run out of and it's just like, was, did it have to happen? Or if anything, I'd say, can you find a two year program? And but then the question for educators is, how much of the Bible can you teach in two years? Right, right. I know in our experience, if I don't know if you guys agree with me, but for me, two years at the end, It's yours is just when all of a sudden the student goes, Oh, okay, I'm starting to get this right. This is starting to make sense. Yeah. There's just so much deconstruction that takes place initially, and then some building back up to get them to a place. But what do you think? Yeah. So
Jeff Sherrod 15:15
I think and I almost want to put this question back on you a little bit, because because I, you know, I know that for you, you've, you've spent a lot of time thinking about this question, but it's not. It's not just Alright, we're going to because I do think yes. Are there dividends to Biblical education that can carry for your whole life? I think that's true. But at the same time, I think we have a responsibility as schools, the biblical higher education entities to prepare people for work as well like to say, to give them the kind of experiences that they need. So yeah, maybe I will, maybe what what do you think some how would you apply it in terms of value? So
Gregg Garner 15:51
I think people have already been trying to respond to that. And that's where you have the Christian liberal arts school. Right? So many schools made the transition from being a biblical higher education institution, and then moved into Christian Liberal Arts.
Jeff Sherrod 16:04
I don't know if we're talking about the difference here. We're saying like, like a Bible bible school was where pretty much everyone was a ministerial major
Gregg Garner 16:11
It’s a ministerial school, right? Everybody is, is getting ready to do ministry, right? That's the end, they're going to learn the Bible because they want to either be in the pulpit, a missionary evangelist, or an academic, right. That's that's been how it's worked. What I think happened with so many of these institutions was they recognize what we're talking about decades ago, right? And then they said, Wow, there's just not enough positions or enough churches, to matriculate a class of 1000 people. And then expect in four years, there would be 1000 jobs, ministerial ly available from our one institution of the other 500 better in the United States of a similar ilk. So in thinking through it, and looking at their model, and not wanting to have a future where a bunch of people graduate with Bible degrees and, and are going back to school and have no work or burdens on their families. They said, Okay, let let us engage other industries. So we're going to have a nursing major, we're going to have a business major, we're going to have, they just open up these departments, right, a medical, pre med major, and engineering, whatever it was. So now a student does that. But because it's a Christian liberal arts school, they also have essentially a minor in Bible, right that they get, which is about 12 units. Yeah, it's all 15 units. So now you go and you get your engineering degree, but you had a minor child 15 units and is a Christian school. So the idea is like, there's christian ethics, there is a Christian culture that characterizes the chapel, you're gonna have a chapel primary, a prayer location that people can go to. And and I think that that has been the more successful model that's been implemented to attend to the questions that we're asking. And I think the benefit is obvious, like, because it works for them. Lots of schools are doing this. Christian schools that aren't or Bible schools that aren't closing down, are shifting into…
Jeff Sherrod 18:19
It answers that “one degree” question? Yeah. Yeah. And so
Gregg Garner 18:25
I think that when you have that, I don't know if we'd call it a problem. As as it Gosh, because you even have to backup at some point go, who invented this idea that post secondary education should be the venue within which young people gave their late teens early 20s. So that they could be prepared to be operational contributors to society.
Laurie Kagay 18:56
Yeah, right. Pressure, like even on an 18 year old even think through all this? Yeah, those decisions.
Gregg Garner 19:01
Yeah, we so there's, there's just so much to talk about with respect to post secondary education. Because you will have proponents out there who will just say, yeah, that's, that's why you shouldn't do it. Like we should throw them into an apprenticeship. Let them go to work, let them learn how to manage their money, build themselves a financial basis, because it is an interesting thing that as soon as you graduate high school, you're your first move is to go into debt. Yeah. For most people, right. And now you're you're working out from underneath a mountain of debt, most people. So the debt question, I think most institutions of biblical higher education and Christian liberal arts, they're answering the debt question through their access of governmental assistance with title for funds. So students fill out the FAFSA form. Now, the institution is able to charge X amount of dollars that fits within the demographic that they're there, their expendable income or they're saved income with the kind of people that they want to have at their school. And now they know they're going to Get X amount of dollars for whatever kind of financial aid to get other folks in there. And then they could write grants. And and now the institution is has some kind of financial model that gives some sense of predictable stability, right, for as long as the legislation holds. And I think young people have no knowledge of this whatsoever. Most young people are just going to college because it's what their parents did. It's what they're told other from other people they need to do. And most colleges, in my opinion, don't even train the young people to be able to get out into the world and make sense of it. Yeah, in terms of managing their personal life and their, their, what we often call work life balance. There's there's not much given to them to make sense of that. And I'd say that the type of standards that exist by accrediting associations coming from the USDA even don't necessarily create an expectation for institutions to contend with that issue as well. It's more about all of the academic components. So now you think about putting your kid into an institution where at the end, they're supposed to get job, and then you think about how young they're going to be when they're done. Like there's, there's just a lot that's unrealistic, and doesn't even seem to work anymore with us, and where we're at, as folks living and heading into 2024. Yeah, there's so many of these kids can monetize a skill set they learned with their cell phone. And when they're 18 years old, and make more money than what a lot of college students would make over the course of their four years in school. Yeah, just that first year, you know, so So things have changed. And you saying that you're giving the value to families, so that they can make a value decision. It just seems like you really need a Biblical education, just to reorient your values away from what feels like success in our world at large, even if you are a Christian, because I would say we do work with good Christian families, and people who love God. But a bottom line is money. Yeah, a bottom line is how are we? How are we going to get our child into the position that they can afford a lifestyle that is becoming of our family and our culture. And it just seems like very hard for people to draw that from a Biblical education or ministerial education. Because like for our school, you've been talking about the other side with like, missiology, or community development. And that has its own connotations to like, my kid is going to grow up to be a beggar and write letters to people, and ask them for money and beg for money for themselves just to survive, and they're not going to ever have anything. So there's there's also this, like, preconceived association with the ends for that student. But again, they graduate, typically at 23 years old, is when they're done with the program. And that's just so young. To put that on a young person. I think one of the first things that we all have to revisit in terms of post secondary education is whether or not we are giving it enough time. So like, the idea is cram something into four to five years. And all the students feel it right. Even with our program, we've tried to D cram it by, instead of giving them like five classes a semester to work out all at the same time. It's like two or three classes a term, so that they're just kind of concentrating on two or three things one time, and for some students who who struggle with that, we even reduce it down to one taking one class a term, we've got seven terms, take seven classes over seven terms kind of thing, but then they're theirs, they're just developmentally catching up to themselves. I've just noticed that a lot of people who all of a sudden are ready to get out of school the reason why they're ready to get out of school so fast is because they don't see that schools of any benefit to them. School is just the the hoops they have to jump through that gets them the paper that now has some kind of external body acknowledging they've learned whatever this was learn so they can work for you. But as an employer of a lot of folks in various industries, I know that there is no there seems to be no direct correlation between a person graduating with a specific degree and their ability to perform that work. Are they learned in school? Yeah. In fact, Chris, and I actually worked with somebody that we hired, Chris is he's back there. Hey, Chris, he's our camera guy, Director photography is making all this happen. But we hired somebody who graduated with a blue Master's, right, Chris, a master's in film. And she wanted a job with us. And so we kind of she didn't really have a portfolio that was worth investigating. Like it was very, it was like one project. So her college gave her a portfolio of one project, and then tiny little mini projects. So what it wasn't a corpus of work that you could make any judgment by. So I want to give her a chance, thinking she got this from one of our big Nashville schools is education. So Chris, and I gave her an assignment. And it was a product assignment to film this product. It was an
Gregg Garner 25:39
over the ear microphone. And that was a project, do a product spotlight that we maybe could put on YouTube with a review, and everything and I, it takes her forever to make it happen. Like forever. She's apparently asking Chris, all these questions about how to use the software how to do this. So she knows nothing pragmatic about how to make this task happen. Yeah. And then she's asking for all this help. And then she she's expecting us to be like teachers with her, not employers, but teachers to walk her through things and teach her stuff and tell her she's doing great. And then into like, be really positive. I don't know. But you know, in business, the goal for everybody is to produce the kind of product that people want, so that we can be here tomorrow. Everybody has that goal, or that service, or goods industries, everybody has that role, or that goal. So anyways, Chris, and I start looking at the video. And I look at Chris and I go, Chris, do you see what I see? He just starts giggling guys. She the focal point on her camera was not on the actual microphone. But it was on the case behind the microphone. Phone was the product that was the product, the over the ear microphone was the product. But this whole review, it wasn't even in focus. So I brought her in the room was like did you do you notice that the microphones on focus? And she looks at it? She goes who? Gosh, yeah, no, I didn't notice that. Guess I guess I'll have to do it again. And I was like, no. Because see in school. Yeah. You that's why you go to school. Right? Right. You go to school, so the teacher can tell you the kid. But at work, what did what did I just spend for her to do that? Right? Yeah, there was Ben. Yeah, I just paid for you to do that. And now you want to do it again. Sorry, you're fired. Like that. But but young people need a venue to develop these kinds of skills within the context of whatever work they're going to do. And I think colleges try to attend to that with internships. Yeah. But here's the problem with an internship. And I'm experiencing even now with our school in terms of the professional developer program, but only in the first year. And it's because it I think some of the managers that we're working with, they're unfamiliar with internships, like the first year of anybody going anywhere, you're not going to do anything of any substance. And if you expect to, you're kind of out of your mind, you don't know anything about what's going on. So if an intern is going to go work with Chris, Chris is going to make them pack things up, he's going to make them fold cables, he's going to make them dump SD cards onto a hard drive. Like that's the kind of stuff so if the person's like in the first year complaining, saying I didn't get to film a single thing, that person wants to go to school, they don't want to go to work. So I think there's this fundamental confusion between what school does and what work does, but then you add in all of the accreditors in the usde standards of expectation, and then you look at what school actually is in school becomes an intellectual conceptual drawing, right, that has has no tangibility whatsoever, so that a person can say, Yeah, I know how to film a product, and it for advertisement, and write the paper and show a little snippet of it. The teacher looks at it, the teacher themselves, probably having never done it yet, but also written the papers on it gotten the degree and now, now they're done. But then they go to work, and they expect to still be in school, but it's actually work. So an internship serves a very effective first time experience, but it's not going to get you what you get in the second year or the third year. Yeah. So as an employee, usually
Laurie Kagay 29:14
And usually internships only last a semester, like so then college. Yeah. So then you are done.
Gregg Garner 29:23
Yeah, now you’ve got your internship. And then you got you. You went and graduated and now you go to a job. You're not any better at that job. So you're the first hire out of school. You're your it's going to take you years, you basically go OJT right on the job training, your next several years are actually learning the craft while you're there. So that's what led me to go okay. All right. We recognize that a biblical worldview is paramount to the sustainability of our Christian music movement at large. Without a biblical worldview. We're Big Trouble. That being the case, we need people to get a Biblical education. You can't teach it in two years. It's just not going to happen. It's going to take seven. Nobody wants to go to school for seven. So then how do you couple that Biblical education with? Also the perceived need for people to develop? Or to get an education that gets them a job? Yeah. So so then you concede, and you say, All right, we're going to try and make this happen in four years of the Biblical education. Yeah, cuz it's got to happen concurrent, it's got to happen. But our goal is, at the end of that four years, they're gonna have such a hunger for the Word, that they're, they're gonna want more of it, even into their adulthood, they're gonna find themselves wanting to take courses to stay sharp when it comes to knowledge of God's Word. So we've got that goal. But at the same time, we don't want to graduate young people into a world where they go on the job training to, to the degree that I just discussed, yeah. Instead, we right off the bat with like, our professional development program, put them in that internship, the first term, and they start learning things. A lot of our students learned this is not what I want to do. Right, which is a great thing just talked to a student today, she worked at the K through 12 school, believing that she wouldn't do education. And she came to a point place where she realizes she, she likes kids and things, but She despises that that experience, what a gift.
Laurie Kagay 31:22
Like we learned it in one semester, you save so much, yeah,
Gregg Garner 31:26
Instead of getting a five year degree, it's a your license to make that happen. And then two years experience and then decide it's not something you want to do, and now have the pivot after seven years of Essman, right. But now, you know that we have other students, though, who after that first term wants to do a second term, and then they're affirmed in it. And they're like, I want to keep going further into this. By their second year, they're now going to get interning type experiences that other interns don't ever get. Right. But it's concurrent, as you noted, with their biblical education, that is shaping how they even understand themselves to be within the workplace. Because where's the real work education happening? At the actual on the job, right? Oh, J T is happening concurrent education. So but here's what a collegiate, here's what a accrediting association would do. Well, if you're gonna have that program, we want to see the components in the standards, we want to see all of the elements that was proved to us that the goals you're or the the outcomes you're expecting to have are actually happening. And they want us to script into, again, a conceptual framework, how it is that we just put a student behind the desk, again, to learn these kinds of things, not being able to admit that, yeah, you've taught a lot of teachers, all of those things, sitting at a desk, and then they went to school, and they didn't really know how to teach that first year. And they learned it at school. And then so if anything, write the books, get them some kind of awareness, but it's a practice will in our model, it's like, look, they're not going to get an education degree. So you can't regulate us on their experience in working with a school. But here's what's gonna happen, this educational institution that they're working with, is going to teach them how to be a teacher, by on the job experience, if they stuck with it for the four or five years, they will have four or five years of teaching experience. And they'll have started like all of the grades, right, you hear of all the greats like I started as a janitor at this place. And I moved my way up from the mailroom all the way to the executive position. Now I'm the president, right. Like you hear about that companies? That's kind of how it goes. Yeah. Because Because there's upward mobility that exists within the institution. And there's a trajectory of development that these these job locations have had to create, because post secondary education has failed, creating the kind of people that can just graduate and come straight in and make it happen, right. So there's a minority of people like that, but they're typically inherently gifted. Like there's or they knew about teaching, because their parents were teachers.
Laurie Kagay 33:57
Yeah. So they have some in some company already.
Gregg Garner 34:02
Sure, sure, and at that company with the end that they have they have it because their parents were in that industry. There's always some kind of connection, right? No, very few people are that savant nature that could just acclimate immediately. The most people if they are able to acclimate had some kind of context for it. Their their, their parents, their brother, their sister. Yeah, something like that.
Jeff Sherrod 34:21
Yeah, I mean, this is, and this has been the problem with front loaded education. And this way, just forever. It's like you have a certain number of classes that you're going to do, maybe you take technical class about film and semester two, yeah. But now you have three years where you graduate and it's like, we front load all these technical skills where field work has always been, you know, how you actually remember because you're doing it. Yeah. But with biblical education, you can't. That's not the same as as feel or you have to have a time in the classroom.
Gregg Garner 34:52
To be able to you need time to just mull over the information. That's right. Yeah. Because it's impacting your life. It's changing who you are in terms of identity and and and your ambitions. Yeah. So that kind of education. To me, that's the most valuable, like the classroom, like, paradigm that we have. And post secondary education does really good for biblical studies, philosophy, theology, these types of things, because you're, you're working with conceptual frameworks, right? But like this idea that everybody's learning how to do a job by going to school, it's just not the case anymore. And I mean, I'm talking about any industry if it weren't for, and, you know, I think the laws are going to change, like, for example, you have certain existing regulating bodies, that won't allow a person to practice with certain credentials in a certain space, unless they attend to their prerequisites, often, a bachelor's degree with this many units in these types of courses. Well, I think when it comes to the future of people aren't going to care what your Bachelor's degrees in anymore, they're not going to care. They're whatever it was, they're going to acknowledge that people don't want to go back to school for whatever it was that they missed, they should have done. So we don't care what your Bachelor's degrees in. And they, we've already seen the creation of bridge programs, right? Where people say, you got a communications degree, you want to be a nurse, here's a bridge program, it's going to take one year, you're going to take all those necessary nursing classes, you can take your communications program, you're going to end up with a bachelor's in nursing as well, at the end of this one year, and you go straight in our master's program, or whatever it is, we've seen those types of things existing. And I'm saying that they're going to become more common, we're going to see a lot more institutions acknowledging that what's going to be most valuable for employers, people who want to make hires is that there's a specific skill set that has been tested through some kind of assessment program that licenses that behavior or practice. And I don't think people will, employers will care whether or not you learned it in school, you learned it on your own, you learned it through some third party tutor, but that you can come to their jobs, having the appropriate certification license, and understanding of how to work and you display that kind of work. So I think this opens the door for biblical higher education, because now a person can go to school and spend their time, like you said, in a way that that has a lifetime, return on investment. And at the same time, they can give that time over to God for their, their own identity development with respect to what it is that they could do to contribute to making the world a more beautiful and sustainable place. And as they discover, well, this is the route I want to go, that they'll their, their person will be more grounded, and being they won't be driven by the anxiety of the rat race. Instead, they'll just be like, this is how I'm going to benefit and the world I live in and how I'm going to be remembered. And I'm going to settle into that. And I think our responsibility at large now is acknowledge that these people exists. And and to make sure that we we don't do the Christian thing, the Christian thing is always ask for discounts to always pay less, to always get a Christian favor. And I think instead, we need to recognize that the there there's a value to having biblically minded people in the professional world rendering services, who may not have the credentials from post secondary institutions that are correlative to the profession that they implement, but nonetheless, can do the work and often do the work better. Yeah. There's something about having a paper that says you can do something that can give you a false sense of confidence, versus having no paper and then having to demonstrate you can do something, right. Like I've often told my students in class, that for me, as a lecturer, I know that if I, if I had like, a PhD from Vanderbilt, and I was part of their teaching staff there for 25 years, and I helped work on a seminal paper with respect to the Bible in genetics, I don't know that they would be all ears for me if I was to give a lecture because they're like, Oh, his reputation precedes him. He has these accolades, this pedigree, and literally, I could be as boring as anything. They'll tolerate the whole thing. Listen, like, even though it's kind of painful, they'll try and pay attention to the subject matter. And they'll hope that my experience and my words come across some such a way they can take away from it. But if I go in the way that I am, and where they just don't know anything about me or anything, I have to perform in such a way that they have to pay attention. They're not going to defer to my pedigrees and accolades and give me the respect and attention that I would probably We deserve, I'm going to have to merit it. And I think in the same way, people who graduate from our school with a biblical studies or community development, we're setting them up in such a way that when they show up to these various venues, and they do have, whatever certification or experience and licensure in the field that they're going to perform, when they do show up, their performance merits, their their presence, like people will want them to be around because they're like, these folks are different. And the work they do is stellar. And I wish I had more people like this. And in my opinion, 10 years from now, one of the things that we're all going to recognize that even our own collegiate institution contributed to, is the trend where people are going to say, Man, I want to hire a Bible student, right? How will I doesn't matter the industry, they're gonna say, I want to hire a Bible student, somebody who learned God's word, someone who gained a Christian worldview to work for me, they work better, they work honest. They, they care about their families, they care about making the world better. The the think critically, they know how to get past hard things. Right. There's just so much that comes as a result of getting a Biblical education that the world just doesn't have access to outside of God's world. Yeah, yeah. So anyways, here, but we had a lot there to talk about. And I fear I did a lot of the talking. But I do appreciate everybody. Good to be here, and chime in.
Jeff Sherrod 41:33
Yeah, that was great. Guys,
Gregg Garner 41:34
it's so important to take time to think about what it is that you're investing yourself into time is your most valuable resource. And it's a tricky one, because you don't know how much of it you have. So when you do consider how you're going to invest your time, I can tell you with a confident heart, that you will give no better investment into than into God's word. Because God's word is an investment into you. God's word is going to develop you as a person who has the kind of mind that the Bible explains as the mind of Christ. And this mind of Christ is one that allows you to rise above all of the different challenges that you're going to encounter as you move into adulthood. And really, now is the time now is the time as a young person, before you get out there and, and the world takes its punches at you, now's the time to do what the Bible would say and put on that whole armor of God. Because life is going to be challenging, but you don't have to be left defenseless. And you can develop in such a way that when you do walk into a room, and when you do implement that service, that job that you're going to do. People will have to ask you the question, where did you go to school, what you learn? What was your major and you'll say the Bible, God's word, because that that is that that to me is something I know as a human being, I can't guarantee but it's something I know that God does. He guarantees through His Word. If you read the first chapter of Psalms, you'll see that for the writer there, he or she understood that. If you're a person who is rooted in God's word, you're like an evergreen plant. You're like someone who's just situated right by streams of water so that regardless of the season of life you're in, whether there's a lot of rain or there's no rain, you live a sustainable life. And that comes as a result of being rooted and grounded in God's word. Just really pray that God's speaks to you guys in such a way that you would consider biblical higher education. Thank you, everybody.
Thank you. Thanks.
Show Notes
Institute for GOD
Gregg Garner
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