- Speaker #0
Today on Biblical Higher Ed Talk, we celebrate our 100th episode with a very special guest, Matt Whitman. He's an influencer and creator of the 10-Minute Bible Hour. Here is his story and how God is using his channels to have honest conversations around what it means to follow Christ. Thank you for tuning in today. I'm your host, Philip Dearborn, and it is our 100th episode. We have been at this for just over a couple of years, and personally, I have had a blast hosting this podcast, Biblical Higher Ed Talk. We've had fantastic guests, and I guess in the podcast world, what you do is to celebrate your 100th episode. You try to get somebody as famous as you possibly can. So I reached high and low, And I'm blessed to have Matt Whitman with us. Matt is somebody that I met, I think it was probably about three years ago, four years ago in Philadelphia at first at a conference that we were attending. And I think you were just kind of getting started or in the mix of doing the 10-Minute Bible Hour. Then we met again a couple of years later and I'd launched the podcast and you were so incredibly encouraging to me as I was kind of planning kind of what does this podcast look like and guests and... How do I get into this space? And I was super nervous when I would have guests on and how do I, and you were just such an incredible help. It was maybe about a half hour conversation, but it stuck with me. And I super appreciated your engagement with me. And so when I thought 100th episode, why don't I give it a shot and invite Matt? And you said yes.
- Speaker #1
Well, of course. Yeah. I remember the conversations and remember them fondly. That Philadelphia conference was time really well spent. and I think really one of the highlights of that second one was sitting and shooting the breeze with you on the front end of your project or close to the front end of it. So I'm glad you're doing it. How's it been going?
- Speaker #0
Fantastic. We've had a blast. We have a great group of listeners who consistently tune in. And the way I say it is no one wants to tune in and listen to me talk. So basically what I've done and kind of made it my own to say, I want to hear other people's stories. And The thing about biblical higher education, Christian higher education, leadership filled with interesting people. So we've kind of used the format where I just bring in a guest and we talk about a book that they've written or, you know, new presidents, how the first six months of your presidency gone, what are some things that you'd like to do differently? We have just a broad variety of people and I, I'm a studier of people. And when I have that chance to just kind of interact with them, I've really enjoyed it. And I hope our audience has enjoyed it too along the way.
- Speaker #1
What do you hope they get out of it? How do you hope it helps the people who listen?
- Speaker #0
So the way I say it is I want people to have just a 30-minute infusion of encouragement, challenge, leadership. That's how we learn. I think a lot of times learning is misunderstood. Like we have to have this amazing experience with all of the right settings and all of the right inputs. And now I'm ready to learn. And real life is you just kind of learn on the fly. And so that's why we've designed it the way we have in little 30 minute segments. Are you going to get something every time? Maybe, maybe not, but we're consistently doing it. And that was the advice that you gave to me with my podcast to say, okay, yeah, you can do whatever you want to, but what is it that's going to make it your own? And that's what I really, really appreciated. And you've been on quite a journey with, with podcasts, with the 10 minute Bible hour. Why don't you just kind of talk to us about your journey of launching it? getting into it. How did you start and kind of where are you at today when you were in kindergarten and they were going through the, uh, so what do you want to do when you grow up? Um, did you say, did you say host of the, uh, uh, the 10 minute Bible hour?
- Speaker #1
No, I'll tell you what I said. I wanted to be a president from space. I wanted to be the first astronaut president. Wow. Those would both be really cool jobs, but I wanted to do them at the same time. And I don't want to be an astronaut from Washington. That's stupid. So I'm going to have to be a president from space. Hasn't happened yet. Don't rule it out. It's still on my radar a little bit to be president of space. More realistically, in high school and then again in college as freshmen both times, they did the thing, you know, what would be your just dream job? And I wrote down, I didn't know what the language was for it, but effectively I was describing like an educational. history documentary cable host. Like that person who goes around and looks at awesome stuff and is unafraid to tell you they're excited about the awesome stuff and they tell you in a story in a way that normal people can understand so that they will see the beauty of it that I see in it because I was in love with stories and history and all the really juicy stuff from history. And I had a couple teachers in middle school, high school and... great ones in college and beyond. I just understood that you can give me the facts and that works and it's fine. Or you can tell me the story and also give me the facts and that'll stick forever. That'll change me. You can get me to put myself in the story. So I wanted to do that. You know, haven't seen stuff on History Channel and things like that. And so I guess sort of, yeah, I did end up doing exactly what I wanted to. I went to now defunct. Trinity College, Trinity International University in Deerfield. That's a sore spot for me. I don't feel great about the fact that that went away. A little bit of a canary in the coal mine, maybe. We can talk about that more if you want. Well,
- Speaker #0
it is interesting, and our audience knows this. I mean, higher education is just, I think we're in a reset moment, the way we understand higher education today. And I'd say that generally, not just biblical or theological education. I think it's just... The cost benefit, the public is asking hard questions about it, and I'm not sure it's sustainable moving forward. And we're just kind of in this unique time of redefinition. And where I have hope is we're not serving students to go and become famous and make lots of money. We're training the next generation of church leaders. And the church is going to be here, and the church is always going to need leaders. So the work that we're involved with is always going to be needed. It may just look different. moving forward. It's a fascinating time to be alive and to be actually in this industry. But anyway, Trinity to close, that's where you did your undergrad.
- Speaker #1
It was great. I really liked it. It was a wonderful experience. And so I did biblical studies and history and political science and philosophy there. Took as many classes as they would let me take for the time that I was paying for it. And that was a great experience. And I went to Ted's as well. On the other side of the street there, the same campus, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. I went to Nebraska at Kearney for History of Western Thought. More or less just customized my education to figure out how to do that, but do it myself without a bunch of producers. I kind of learned enough about how those shows work and everything to realize generally no one on the set knows the material. Maybe a person who knows the material, everybody else. This isn't really what they do. And as a result, a lot of those shows, you know, I think you've found this before you see one of those kind of programs that gets into your subject matter and you're going, you don't know what you're talking about. Like, it's just not a, I'm not mad because I know things and you don't. I'm irritated because it's a great story and you don't, you didn't even learn the story. Like now everybody thinks they know it and it's not that interesting because you just sold it bad. I don't know. I started kind of drifting that way. I've always liked video and writing and production stuff. Gradually, I started making more things that involved video. It was just to serve a church that I was working at. And a lot of people who didn't go to that church started watching. This is 10, 11 years ago before this was a normal thing to do. After that, I realized, man, it'd be a lot more efficient if I did this more in a podcast format and had videos that supplemented from time to time. So what I do now for a living is I do a daily Bible podcast where I pick a book of the Bible. And it's kind of like drive time radio. I'm the co-host. The Bible is the host. We crack jokes. We have fun together. And we take just a little chunk every day out of the thing. I'm not the knower of things. I'm perfectly fine with learning on mic. All in the service of showing people that these stories are phenomenal. It's just amazing stuff here. Even in the parts of the Bible aren't explicitly narrative. They're great stories. And you can do this. You don't have to go to school specifically for this to be. great at reading a text. You're way better interpreters than you imagine. You study interpretation and practice it all the time. We're just going to work on the Bible together with it and have fun. And then you will go back to whatever you're doing because I'm just some guy on the internet and we will have talked about a great story together.
- Speaker #0
That is such a beautiful thing. And the thing I like about how you approach it is you don't avoid the difficult passages or sometimes we do read and I have a practice where I read through the scripture every year, and I do different versions of it. some years or I'll do chronological or whatever to kind of mix it up. But, you know, sometimes you are reading the scriptures and you're like kind of scratching your head like, okay, I know it's God's word, but what does this mean right here? I'm struggling a little bit. You make it so real to the listener and you engage in that conflict, right? That there is some sense of, okay, help me understand what's, and there's a context to it and there's a proper hermeneutic to understanding the word. And to the average lay person who has not gone to a Bible college or not gone to a seminary, they don't have necessarily those skill sets. front of mind, but you're helping the listener do that.
- Speaker #1
I hope so. That's the value proposition right there. And if whatever you're doing, whether it is a podcast, a YouTube channel, a TV show, a book you're writing, a sermon you're giving, a church you're running, a Christian college you're operating, a class you are teaching, if you cannot clearly articulate what the value proposition is to the person on the other side, your thing is doomed. It may be propped up for a while with false money, legacy money, but it's doomed. Your value proposition has got to be stronger than the competing ones and clearer than the competing ones.
- Speaker #0
Yeah. And I resonate with that. And so many of the listeners do because I've said it probably too many times on the show that I draw a distinct, like we talk in terms of distinctives when we really should be talking in terms of value proposition. Just because you're different from your competition or different, everybody can make that claim. Talk about the value you. provide. And for higher education, if you think about it, think about the, I call it the eternal fall in promotional materials of colleges where the images, the looks, the buildings, beautiful buildings, but it's always in a fall context with fall colors and the right mix of students with the pictures and whatever else. You've now described every single college in North America. And especially in our sector, small classes and chapel every day and a great dining facility and great athletic program and great events on the weekend.
- Speaker #1
Our teachers really care.
- Speaker #0
Exactly.
- Speaker #1
Really? Well, I want to go to the one college where the teachers really care, unlike all the other ones where they don't. Now, I'm hearing you on this, but at the most fundamental level, what you're saying, this is such a basic truth. And it's so important in everyone who's doing things that. are impressive and that you or your listeners like are getting this right. When you tell someone about your distinctives, you're talking about yourself. When you talk about a value proposition, you're talking about them and what they get. And look, there was a time where we could expect everyone to come to the throne of biblical knowledge at our institutions or our great fancy church with our great building and be so happy to be there and bask in our distinctives. But that is not now. You are tenaciously competing with a bajillion people who want those eyeballs, who need those clicks to feed their families. It's a click economy. Everyone lives in it. Even if you don't like your smartphone, you still live in it. This is the term that I use when I'm talking with people about this. You're fighting for poop time. And here's what I mean. You get 10 minutes where you get to shut the door. No one can bother you. It's socially unacceptable to harass you. And you have a smartphone. Your true heart of hearts really comes out in that time. What you really want to put your brain on and think about for that one moment in life that we haven't cluttered with everybody else and social expectations, that's what you're going to do. Is your thing good enough and is your value proposition clear enough to win poop time? Again, feel free to delete that. I understand that it's crass, but it's true and it's helpful.
- Speaker #0
Absolutely. Absolutely. The example that I've used, and it's so true because it makes it more tangible, is I will drive by three McDonald's where I can buy a cup of coffee for $1.99 or I choose to pass three McDonald's and pay four times as much to go to Starbucks to get a Starbucks coffee. Why? Because I have put the, whether it's valid or not, I place a higher value on that experience, product, whatever, that I'm willing. to drive further and pay more for. The opposite is a race to the bottom. If you're about distinctives, it's about, well, at this point, it's how can I get the cheapest since you're all the same? How can I get the cheapest product of that experience?
- Speaker #1
Or from the producer's side, how can I find the best advertising hack where I can get my message in front of people ultra cheap for a little while to... artificially create the impression of success. And it doesn't last, it doesn't work. So this is a mean time in that regard. Also, it's very exciting because the value proposition has got to be strengthened across the board. So let me ask you a question because you're around this way more than I am. Is that part of the equation of what's gone wrong for a lot of Christian higher ed seminaries, Bible colleges, et cetera, right now? Would you say that- They don't know how to articulate the value proposition or the value proposition isn't very good or am I barking up the wrong tree?
- Speaker #0
No, I think you've nailed it. This is the core of it because I do believe our institutions have a value proposition that they can make. They need to learn how. to do that. We get sloppy with language and turn what are really value propositions, or we're trying to state a value proposition, but we do it by stating distinctives. Right or wrong, we're in a consumer world. We're all consumers. And if we pay something, we have an expectation that we're going to get something out of what we're paying. That's the value, that's the trade, right? That's if I'm going to give X. And I want to expect why. And people bristle. I think in higher education, we bristle at that because we don't want to boil it down to a transaction. And that's really what consumerism is. It's a transaction. And I get that. I fully understand. And I think that's where some of the pushback comes. Like, we don't want to contribute to that. We're education. We're something different. But the reality is when we, you know, we're living this from with the federal government right now of saying basically making the direct. correlation from college to job. Go to college, get a job. And companies are saying, hold on a second, don't spend your money. If the job is what you want, we'll train you. And there's a whole movement out of tear the paper ceiling and others that are saying, skip college, go right into the workforce. And my pushback to that is, whoa, hold on a second. It's not a transaction. There's more to the college experience. where you're learning emotional intelligence, where you're growing spiritually, where you're learning critical thinking skills so that you're learning a biblical worldview of understanding, okay, the word of God has something to say about everything that I experience in life. How do I use the tools then in order to live my life, right? That's the value proposition, but we have to speak it in such a way that's embedded in a consumeristic world that we live because that's how we're wired. And so we have to speak that language knowing that we have an incredible product that we can deliver on.
- Speaker #1
Wonderful. I mean, that's spot on. And I think you're making tons of sense. And I think you just benefited everybody who's listening. I don't know that I would call this pushback, but maybe a slight reframing.
- Speaker #0
Yeah.
- Speaker #1
To the people who would say, well, that's, you know, that's cheap. You're bastardizing it. That's consumerism. Well, I would say I'm not so sure I agree with that. I'm not ready to concede that. Everything is a negotiation. John Locke. thought everything was a negotiation. The fact that there are two people within who exist within the possibility of encountering each other. So like on the same planet means that you are in a negotiation. I read a book called Getting the Yes. I hated the opening chapters. It's a great book, legendary book. I mean, this isn't like some little, you know, recent airport book kind of thing. You know, this is a book that has quite the track record. And I read the book. And the opening thesis of the book is everything's a negotiation. And I was Christian offended over it. And I had to talk about this book on a show. And so I started to get my hackles up and get agitated. The same kind of thinking that you were just articulating, like, no, it's dead. You're cheapening everything down to consumerism. The longer the book went on, the more I failed to find good counter examples. It's really just about how you frame the word. This is a negotiation between you and me. We're in a negotiation right now for a... for both of us to stay on the conversation. It's going great and you're likable and friendly and you're saying smart things. So the negotiation is going wonderfully. You're at least from the faces you're making at me, not that irritated with what I'm doing. So the negotiation is going well and the conversation is continuing. Great. We're also negotiating right now with the people who are listening. There are other things happening. They're working out. They've got a stack of books they need to read on their desk and they're eyeballing it every time they get a little bored or we go on a little too long. Or they have it on speed in the background. They should listen to it faster than we can actually talk because the people who are going to be in your audience are smart enough that they can internalize it at 1.25 very easily. Yeah. The point is, it's all a negotiation. And why is that bad? Everybody knows the basic. fundamental values of Jesus. We talk about them all the time. We use them as political cudgels. Love. Yep, that is in there. More than that, he talks about loyalty and obedience and love for his father and the kingdom. Those are his biggest values by sure number of times talked about. But love. Yeah, awesome. That should come up a lot. And it does. It's a big value of Jesus. Obedience to God. That's a really big value. But here's the one no one ever brings up on this list, but I challenge you to go count up the number of mentions or allusions to it. This is a top four, top five value of the Bible and of Jesus of Nazareth and its shrewdness. Matthew 10, he sends those disciples out with the lesser commission. Behold, I'm sending you out like sheep among wolves. He starts by framing the situation they're in. This is complicated. I understand that. This is what you're going to need to do to make that work. Two things. You're going to need to be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves. It has been fashionable in American Christianity, in biblical higher education, for a long time to imagine that shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves is a slider, a single spectrum. And you don't want to be too much of either because balance is the value of our age. You want to be balanced. So you want to be. A little bit innocent, but obviously also morally horrible sometimes. Also, you want to be shrewd, but also kind of a rube sometimes. What? No, the instruction is there are two sliders. Be 100% on both. You're supposed to be maximum innocent and maximum shrewd at the same time. Why do you need shrewdness? Because you're in a negotiation. You're in a negotiation with wolves. Time is a wolf. The world is a wolf. You're up against something very, very difficult. And so when I hear Christians with the best of intentions say, I don't want to be like that. Yeah, it's worldly. What they're saying is, I don't want to do what Jesus said. I don't want to be strategic and thoughtful and shrewd about how best to use my life energy and the five coins I got handed by the master to try to get five coins back out of the deal and give it to him. What I hear when I hear Christians say, I don't want to be shrewd is, hey, I know you're a harsh master. You reap where you don't sow. So I took that coin you gave me. I put it in the ground. It's a little dirty, but I think you'll find it's all still there. I did nothing with it because of my misunderstanding of your character. There we go. That is losing thinking. It is the wrong strategy. It's the wrong approach. Shrewdness is hard. You're going to miss things. You're going to embarrass yourself. You're going to try to figure out how to say what the other person gets and do a good job negotiating alongside them. And it's not going to work. And you're going to feel dumb. I feel this all the time. But we have the truest, realest thing ever. You got to understand the moment you're in. You got to, like Paul understood it. You got to be shrewd about it. That was a little long and that was a little worked up. I feel like now I should shut up for 10 minutes.
- Speaker #0
No, not at all. I think it's spot on. And go back to what we're talking about, you know, is... with higher education, with biblical higher education, like what's at play here? And I think you've nailed it. And I think we need to boldly step into the space. I think it's a golden opportunity. I don't think we've had an opportunity like we have with where the world is today, with how connected the world today is. We know who we serve. We know who wins in the end. We know so much about it. And God has called us to be stewards and has given us resource. And it is our responsibility, not just a suggestion. It's our responsibility to invest those resources is for return because we know that someday the master will come back and we'll say, all right, so what'd you do with it? And if we don't have a response, if I don't have a response, and that's how I view what I do, and I want our colleges and our people to view it the same way. This is the time to step up in profound ways. And look how God has used higher education in modern days to spark revival. And I think about our... 70,000 plus students that we have on our campuses who feel called. They don't necessarily know what God has called them to, but they feel called and they have that sense of calling on their life. And they're at our institutions trying to figure it out. Man, what an opportunity we have to engage with them so that they can be the full potential of what God has created them to be. I think we're moments away from incredible revival in this country and in this world. And for whatever reason, the way God does it, He uses us to accomplish His work. And so let's step into it and let's do it.
- Speaker #1
Something that stood out to me from our two interactions at those two events was that your ratio of humility to influence is pretty remarkable. You're not going to come on this program for 100 episodes and... Use somebody else as an excuse to articulate your vision because you're humble and you're going to let the other person run their mouth for 10 minutes straight like I just did. But I genuinely am asking you this because I want to know and because I want somebody to give you permission to say your thing. All right, you say it's time to step up practically. What does it look like? What are the three big things that you would love to see institutions, professors, administration do right now?
- Speaker #0
Top of the list is to put egos aside. In higher education, we have so siloed everything. Going back to the distinctive, this is our statement of faith. This is our tradition. This is how we do things. We've theologized methodology beyond what is appropriate and raised how we do things to such a level that nobody else does it like we do. So we're going to go to our dying breath doing it the way we've done it. I'm overstating it. for purpose to say, we're not alone in this. We've got to pull down those walls and we've got to figure out ways that we can share resources. We can look at efficiencies. All of our colleges have registrars. They have financial aid officers. They have bookkeepers. They have food service. They have a lot of services that they're all doing themselves. I think moving forward, we need to be thinking about, look, how can we move into a shared service environment where Instead of just having our own registrar or our own financial aid or our own fill in the blank, how do we create a model to make this more efficient? And I think that's what the future is. So top of the list is realizing we can't do it alone. We need each other. And higher education has been, hey, we're the experts. So don't tell us what to do. We're going to do it ourselves. And we need to kind of shed some of that and realize, no, we're. We're actually in this together. And that's the ethos that we're trying to create. And I think successfully within ABHE is we're not competitors. We're all in this for the kingdom. So how do we figure out how to work together to make this happen? Second thing I'd say is it's a tension. I don't see it as an either or situation. We need to live in the tension of theological differences, recognizing that, look, there are certain things that we cannot budge on, and we're going to go to the mat and be adamant that we can't budge on these things. But recognizing that there are tier one and tier two and tier three theological issues, that sometimes we've taken tier two and three theological issues and raised them to tier one, and that's become a block. So how do we not lose our distinctive of theological conviction, which I think is a distinctive among our group, without watering elements down? How do we navigate through that? And the third thing that I'd say is we just got to get creative. I'm a big guy with means and ends. Ends don't change. We know what our end is. We're called to love Christ and serve him. And we have the great commission that God has called us to go and make disciples. And we have the creation mandate. So we pull a lot from scripture that says we have a pretty clear what we need to do. All of those things are ends. We need to hold our means very loosely. And what may work in one generation may not necessarily work in another generation. So how do we figure out just... different ways of doing things. There's a saying that I love. I picked it up somewhere. I'm sure some author wrote it somewhere, but fail forward fast. We're going to fail, but how do we learn from those mistakes? And then how do we move on and do it so that we do it in a quick fashion? And one of the things about higher education, we don't do things quickly and we don't take away things. We like to add programs. We like to add. things to our plate, but we don't necessarily take things away. So how do we become agile and recognize, okay, that worked, or it worked for a season, or we tried it, but it didn't really work. Okay. What lessons did we learn and how do we use that to fuel us forward? That comes top of mind. That's what I'm most passionate about. And the thing I love is that our institutions are doing this. And so how do we throw fuel on that fire and get the word out? And that's what I see our role as an association is there are pockets of this happening. How do we raise that so that everyone sees that, okay, we're not alone in this. The things that we're struggling with, other people are struggling with the same thing. So how do we partner together and actually make a difference? Because three strands are a lot stronger than just one. So how do we facilitate that?
- Speaker #1
Your comments make me think of another parable about shrewdness, one of the most avoided parables in the New Testament, the one about the shrewd manager. Hmm. Where, you know, you remember the one, this guy, he works for a dude who has a lot of money and he goes and he starts, he realizes I'm going to get canned. And so he changes the accounts and he starts cutting customers a break. And the thinking is, while I still have access to this role of influence and power, I'm going to do something to set myself up for what happens next. And big time paraphrase here, Jesus is like, if that clown knew what to do in that kind of a situation, how much more should
- Speaker #0
Children of the light know what to do. And one of the exercises in keeping with that, that I try to teach my kids, hopefully they've internalized it. It's a problem solving exercise. It's a get yourself out of trouble exercise is the art of thinking about the moment you're actually in, not the moment you imagined you were in a minute ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago. If you were dropped in from space into your body in the situation you're in right now, kiddo. What would be smart? Make decisions like that where you can, especially when you're under pressure. This is the same thing I see when I go to campuses right now. That line of thinking would be really advised. Okay, look, you can't keep what you have right now. It's not happening. Things are changing. The clock is ticking. For a lot of these institutions, the clock is ticking faster than time is changing. It's just like it's going to run out. I don't think we can keep most of what we have right now the way we have it. But we still have a bunch of stuff. So if we were dropped in from space in each of these institutions with still having land and a campus and faculty with a great reputation that's still here and a really nice student body and a good name with a good reputation, what would be the smartest, shrewdest thing we could do right now, not based on where we wish we had been 10 years ago or whatever, But what would be the smartest kingdom thing to do with what we have at our disposal right now? It's shrewd manager kind of thinking, but it's scary for organizations as big as a higher ed. Also, I think, you know, every kind of person, every kind of institution we have an Achilles heel. We have a thing that if we do that and if we think that way, it's like it undermines the thing that we think makes us valuable.
- Speaker #1
Yeah. Yeah.
- Speaker #0
So,
- Speaker #1
yeah. Yeah. night.
- Speaker #0
So they think that being unchanging is what makes them good. So this is very difficult. And I get that.
- Speaker #1
Yeah. I love how you framed it. And it reminds me of something that I learned later in leadership that I wish I had had earlier on in leadership. It's just a very simple axiom, maybe, of when we make a decision and we're trying to make the right decision, sometimes it's helpful to divorce the consequence of the decision or the context of the decision. to make the right decision and too often we allow context or the implication of that decision to drive us away from making the right decision so you almost separate the two things what's the right thing to do right now make that decision and then have the conversation of okay now here are the consequences off of the right decision that we just made and it may be very difficult and naughty and stress-filled and complex, but it doesn't change the fact that you just made the right decision. And then you work through the consequences instead of we need to make this decision. Well, you know, if we do, and we've all been in these conversations, if we do that, then it means that this person is going to get upset at us or this donor is going to walk away from us or this or this or this or that. And then we come back to the decision and we say, all right, well, Whoa. Deal with this next time, as opposed to saying, no, you know what? Make the right decision first and then deal with it.
- Speaker #0
For my money, the simplest step forward that all of us can take, myself included, as we try to crack this nut and we're on the same team and we're working on this together is really focus about making it about the other person.
- Speaker #1
Yeah. I mean,
- Speaker #0
that value proposition is so, so important for your church, for your worship service, for your podcast. People should know exactly what you get. I think a really good exercise here would be for folks who are listening to imagine trying to sell an art appreciation class for freshmen and sophomores in college. That's a hugely important class. I'm not kidding. That's a massively important thing. Art appreciation, music appreciation. When I hear people talk about those kinds of classes, their impression is this is a thing I have to do because those things are important. That's a terrible value proposition. Run the art appreciation exercise. How do you sell that? How do you communicate to someone what they get from that without sounding like a pompous, pretentious, know-it-all and intimidating the heck out of them because you're telling them they're going to get something that they can never aspire to and they can't even understand the words that you're using. How do you sell art appreciation? Well, you get this. You will get decoder glasses for life. Because the art you're going to cover in this class is going to be the stuff that you see everywhere. It's baked into advertisements, movies, stories, books. Songs are going to be referencing this stuff. And further, it's going to give you... The ability to quickly voice deep, complex things about your own story that some other artists from the past also experienced, and they found a way to encapsulate that in, boom, a work of art. And instead of searching for pages of explanation for what you're feeling or what you're going through, you'll be able to say, haystacks. And people will be like, oh, yeah, like the study in light and the different seasons of life and all the brushstrokes. and You're going to have this whole new vocabulary to express yourself. Like, I don't know. Dude, I'm making stuff up. No. My point is, that's what it sounds like to try to make it about you.
- Speaker #1
That's exactly right. And when you're talking distinctive, it's about the point in time and us as a player at the table and your experience that you're going to have with us. There's a place for that. But when you're talking about value, it's what are you going to take away from this place and away from this experience? And that's where I think it aligns. beautifully with what higher education is all about. It is like foundational skills to life, understanding who you are individually, how you've been created in the image of God. You have gifts, you have talents, you have abilities, God-given abilities. I understand that to myself. Now, how do I relate that to those around me? And how do I relate it then and back to worship to God. If you can get that right in the 18 to 22 year old timeframe, my goodness, Matt, it sets you up for life.
- Speaker #0
Yes. Well said. And I come back to what you were saying earlier about distinctives versus value proposition. You know, I'm always around pastoral searches and things like that. And I look at a lot of these documents or churches will send them to me and be like, Hey, will you look at this? Just give us some feedback. Cause I visit churches a lot and I'm flattered that they would even care about my dumb opinion. But I look at so many of these listings. And I call them RSTLNE listings. These are all givens. You know, Wheel of Fortune. We know you're going to guess these letters in the final puzzle. Here, just have them for free. Now let's get into the actual work. These listings are, should be a devoted man of God. You think? Should be familiar with God's word. Really? Should know how to run a church. Huh? It's RSTLNE stuff. And when I see things, I got two kids about to go to college. We're... inundated with Christian higher ed stuff right now. It's all R-S-T-L-N-E. Really, you have a nice cafeteria and the professor's care and your campus is beautiful in the fall and you're, I mean, all the same language, all the same everything. And I'm going, that's just a basic expectation that should come with the territory of the basic sign that you're hanging out front. I want you to tell me what your philosophy is of what happens to my kid. How did they turn out? What do they get? Who do they become? And don't give me weird, dopey, calligraphy, Christian bookstore language for that. Get practical with me. This is exactly what we're going for. Talk to me like you assume I'm competent and sell me on this negotiation. Win the negotiation. Give me a great shrewd sales pitch as to how you're about to partner up with what I've been doing with my kid to get them somewhere that, frankly, you might be better at helping them get to at this stage in their life than I can do. That's interesting to me. And that's not RSTL any thinking.
- Speaker #1
And at that point, you're ready to say, I'm willing to pay this amount in order to set up the chances that that is what will happen in my son or daughter's life. Value proposition. Wow. Well, this was a fascinating conversation, Matt. I really, first of all, I appreciate you. I really do think and have this be an encouragement to you. I know the daily grind of what you do. and You're making a living off of it, but you're opening the word of God. And I truly believe it's biblical that every time the word of God is open, the Holy Spirit is at work and you have your millions of views and people are listening in. And so I just want you to be encouraged to keep doing what you're doing, wrestling with the word of God, opening it up and allowing the spirit of God to work through you to the people that you're engaging with. I'll let you close us out. give us like you With the audience that we have, leaders in biblical, theological, Christian higher education, from your seat, your experiences, can you distill down to just one last kind of thought encouragement challenge for our listeners?
- Speaker #0
If you're involved in the kind of stuff that we've been talking about here, you're involved in hugely important things. I think there has been a bit of a malaise for the last 20 years, sort of this sense of Yeah, everybody knows this material. Everybody does this stuff. And we're... One more group that's kind of an extension of our Christian group, and I am hearing a lot of people vastly underestimating the importance of what they're doing in biblical higher education. Imagining that it's just kind of out there and it's already covered, it's the discovered country. It's not. It is the undiscovered country, because all of this truth, all of this stuff that we're talking about. is found and refound in the lives of each successive generation of Christians. And something has been hollowed out in the last 20 years. I didn't feel this way about the 20th century. I was also a kid, but looking back on it, I didn't feel this way. There's something going on now where if you are hearing this and you are still in the game and you're still making this a priority, you're awesome. You're doing something wildly important. Feels like this field is well-tended, but I don't think this field is super well-tended at the moment. I think there's huge opportunity for you to be creative and think in terms of being a problem solver, not a thing you're supposed to say repeater. That's great, but really we're solving a problem here. We're in a negotiation and we're in attention. We have the truest, realest thing that was meant for all people in all nations, all languages. It wants to be understood. It's meant to make sense. And we live in a completely unprecedented, weird, untested, we have no idea how this is going to work out moment in history. It's just going to require creativity. So take your swings. The fail forward fast thing is really sound advice. Yeah, great. Yeah, I'll leave it at that.
- Speaker #1
Great. Well, thank you, Matt. And thank you for saying yes to be our 100th guest on Biblical Higher Ed Talk. So if you'd like more information about the 10-minute Bible Hour in our show description, we'll put a link there. And I encourage everybody to check that out. And if you search on YouTube, if you look on your favorite podcast platforms, you'll find plenty of information about Matt and the work that he's doing. So until next time, stay kingdom focused.
- Speaker #2
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