Lead Time
Lead Time
Uncovering the Collision of Doctrine and Leadership Development - Bonus Content
How do you bridge the gap between academic theology and the real-world needs of a diverse, modern congregation? That's the question we're answering with guests Chris Croghan and Sarah Stenson from Luther House of Study, and Dr. Ryan Bredow of Grand Canyon University. Together, we dissect the discrepancies between the academic environment and the real needs of students venturing into the field of ministry. You'll hear about how Luther House of Study is innovating pastoral training by initiating classes in leadership, ethics, pastoral care, Greek, and Hebrew. The bonus? Their unique business model that doesn't charge a penny from their students, but instead, relies solely on generous donors.
Our conversation doesn't stop there. We'll be shining the spotlight on the critical role of theological education and how the Unite Leadership Collective (ULC) is forging collaborations with local churches. We're discussing how biblical Lutheran doctrine and innovative leadership development methods are being harnessed to discover, develop, and deploy leaders. Learn about the opportunities the ULC presents and ways to join them in disseminating the gospel message. So buckle up for an enlightening exploration of the intersection between academia and local church contexts and the creative solutions being put forth to navigate it.
Additional Conversations with LutherHouse -
Conversation With Chris Croghan
Conversation With Sarah Stenson
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Welcome to this bonus episode of Lead Time. This is Chris Krogan and Sarah Stenson from Luther House of Study talking with myself, as well as Dr Ryan Brado that's the extra voice that you hear in this conversation. I've interviewed Ryan. He's a faculty mentor with the Luther House of Study as well as a vice president at Grand Canyon University. So this was after five hours of training on being a faculty mentor and we started just having a higher level conversation around the differences between the academic environment, which we're not downgrading. We think there's certainly a role for that. But we also recognize that we have students right now who would like a degree, who are bivocational and co-vocational, and our students are not going to go residential and the LCMS does not offer an online MDiv option. We're praying that with curiosity.
Speaker 1:There is assessment and analyzing that takes place of our partnership with the Luther House of Study. We are adding our own ULC classes. We've had a leadership class that's taken place and we're looking for classes in ethics, pastoral care. A number of people in our network are exploring that. We actually have a Greek class that we're looking to get for it, as well as a Hebrew option for a number of our students. I know the languages have been a conversation where we feel like there's an opportunity for improvement. Again, we're not competing with our seminaries.
Speaker 1:We actually love academics, but in the middle of this conversation it gets a little spicy. As they say, we care about those that are in the respective ivory tower. Just had a great conversation with Reverend Dr Robert Colb on lead time that'll be coming out here soon and he recognized you know my calling is ivory tower. There is a step or two that I'm removed from the local context. So we love academics but we care most about training up pastors to fill our over 1,000 pulpits being suboptimally served. And if anything Chris says or I say that offends academics, we'd love to hear from you to dismiss what we say as corrupt. Not, people are not corrupt, but the system itself maybe a better word than corrupt is just broken, in need of repair and analysis to more faithfully serve the local church. And if you're watching the video on YouTube it may look like I'm rude. I'm just taking notes actually on my computer, which is simply out of view. So enjoy this bonus episode of lead time. Thanks so much.
Speaker 2:So we're gonna answer on two levels. How does Luther else survive without getting a single dime from any of our students?
Speaker 3:Because that's the first thing everyone needs to know. As you are ambassadors, we at Luther house we're not even on salary. We don't get any money from the seminary, so we get zero revenue, not one penny from the students, even indirectly. So we're gonna pick a way forward From introducing that you know, as ambassadors, we do not have any financial interest in-.
Speaker 2:In getting those taking all those students.
Speaker 3:Nope, that's not, we're not-.
Speaker 2:This is with the-. But the reason that is is because we existed since 2006. And we've developed a network of people and supporters that have recognized what our mission truly has always been, and so that's brought a lot of people in. There's only been one significant financial supporter in the history of Luther house that has not experienced our content. Oh, wow, so it's all grassroots.
Speaker 3:Wow, right, wow, so- so we're 100% donor funded yeah 100%, 100% Cigrations and individuals, but so is.
Speaker 2:so are your courtiers mostly. I mean, they do have student revenue, but that's a newer thing. Actually we have the student support because you know. But you see, this part of it is we have congregations that we don't even know now anymore, we have never even talked to, that are sending us their benevolence checks because they know what we're doing Right, because they see the mission oriented as opposed to the institution stuff. So we've never even interacted with some of these congregations. They don't have students, they just hear look what they're doing as well. So that's, it's the generosity breeds generosity kind of thing From a business model.
Speaker 2:Then what happened with Greg Hansen at the seminary was he recognized why institutions he has this MBA. He doesn't have actually a theological degree. He recognized why the institutions went like this financial and it was probably because of the overhead. But this is this model, because what happened to the demographic of a seminary students was A, you're getting fewer students. But also Now this isn't so much in Missouri, because you don't become a part-time student in Missouri.
Speaker 2:That's one of the courtiers. You're always a full-time student, I assume, and you also aren't doing it online. What happens at every other ATSD logical seminary is, you can become a part-time student at any time of the process or you can be stuck doing something online. So then the residential component reduced the income to the seminary when they were doing online, because you don't have people paying rent. Additionally, if you're part-time, you had to build your structures around having 50 full-time students, but now 25 of them just took part-time credit load the next semester you just ran in the red. So if you're making a subscription you have, your income is now much more stabilized. But then you build your overhead to meet that. But then you scale it by now. For example, having someone sit in a classroom three times a week for an hour each time Now ninth time, nine classes, so they teach a full load. So you've got nine classes and they're sitting in a classroom for nine hours talking the same thing all the time to people is very inefficient financially in this day and age with technology.
Speaker 2:Because now which is why we've captured it all there, put it on things, but we aren't recording them on their education. But it's somewhat evergreen content. What has happened in higher education? Being one who's been in it again, I started teaching at undergraduate level in 2004, taught undergraduate students until technically last year, but really haven't had an undergraduate student in my classroom for about the last five years because of a whole other thing, but anyway. So I taught that I've been teaching at a similar level, all this kind of stuff, so I know how the system works and I know that what most people do that are in the classroom teaching is they're experimenting their content, they're trying out that. That's their lab for their lectures so they can write the book. That's what I get to do.
Speaker 2:That's very poor for vocational training of people who are going to be preachers, but that's why Missouri is slow on that, insofar as they still have. That's why I'm OK with some of their purity mentality, because they're still teaching the core stuff. But what happens in the academy as a whole is you always have to come up with something new in order to get published and or to get tenure or to get your PhD. How do you say something new about the Bible? Well, you have to actually say something not about the Bible, then your Bible content, which is why you end up with all this critical method blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 2:So I understand what Missouri is doing, why they're preserving this kind of thing, so on and so forth, but as a result of a college professor using the classroom as their lab to try out what they're going to produce next for the academy, you've lost the actual core content. So what if the professor is there to make an evergreen resource, which is what MOOCs are starting to become right? So we were just like we're going to do MOOCs, but actually those are the online free classes. I can get a Stanford or whatever. So then you can get online Open content.
Speaker 3:You're trying to do something, yeah.
Speaker 2:And so we were like why aren't we creating MOOCs for our students?
Speaker 3:But that's scale Same thing with the flipped classroom. We were kind of on the front end of that, trying to figure out how do we flip it to free up our time to interact with students, as opposed to saying the same thing over and over and over, because if I sit in there and doing a full teaching load, there's nine hours a week at least.
Speaker 2:Same thing, right yeah, which is financially inefficient, yeah Right. So when it's the same time, that's why the average hour becomes the average hour. I don't have to really work, I just produce an old lecture again, or I don't know. Especially in my own individualistic puddle I'm not really interested in students. I'll hold all the office hours, but I'm not really interested in what I'm doing.
Speaker 2:So I get to write my book and get my name out there and work within my guild of the reformation research program, or blah, blah, blah, and you end up in your own little silo.
Speaker 3:We did that.
Speaker 2:No, I've not done that. I've been in that game. This is why I know all these people in St Louis and a few of them in Fort Wayne and stuff, because I actually interacted with them on that academic level.
Speaker 3:And did I for the record, went to the International with your colleagues you gotta stop talking.
Speaker 1:You gotta stop saying that Stop making this that game is crap. Yeah, it's crap.
Speaker 2:It's very sad, so let me see but this is why I actually so Sarah and I have been published in journals like high level journals, and in it's like the media books. I haven't published a book because I've been too focused and busy on what we do with Lutheran House, because that really is our calling, you know. But right now, sarah and I are like we're writing all these what we call evergreen lectures that we're putting in our videos. I'm like all this stuff we're putting because the challenge for the professor which some people don't like to do is when you write a lecture that you're going to make evergreen for a video, you've got to be on time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, perfect, yeah, you, really you're saying you do not want to.
Speaker 2:You're not, so you say something oh, you're on time, something, right, yeah, I mean you got to be, and it's got to be within less than 20 minutes that you're getting your point across yet, at the same time, rhetorically captivating, Right that we like, so.
Speaker 3:Did we answer? Did we, I think, roughly a different 10 questions? This is part of it. Yeah, yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:So, so, just, you guys can't see this. That question how do we do the business model? So here's, here's a lecture that we're doing. This is one. Wow, 15, 20. Yeah, we're putting a 15 minute break 15 minutes maybe at most, video on natural. Oh, that's, that's 14. I'm going to do 15. And I'm in the Is it paganism?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, that one we're stuck on.
Speaker 2:So I'm finishing this up, but this is on paganism and science in relation to this is for sure about the creator. How do you deal with paganism, how do you deal with scientific stuff and natural theology and that most is going to be 15 minutes? We're talking in two of the I spent. I probably spent 40 or 45 hours to get to that.
Speaker 2:No, it's true We've had some of these that are incredibly dense content that we had did deep on and I'm and I'm dealing with, I'm dealing with, I'm dealing with Homer, odyssey, the Iliad, plato, aristotle all this stuff in a paragraph, each one of those. Basically, I have to make it accessible to a student. So this is a really hard hard work, but once it's evergreen, it's evergreen. But that's part of the model, is you get that evergreen? The problem that we're going to have is getting other people coming in to follow us to do this. That's where the business model is going to be. You beat me to my next question.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:What's your biggest barrier for growth? That's not growth in.
Speaker 3:Currently we don't really have any barriers for growth because our mindset has always been partnerships like this, which which actually answers the scalability as well. So currently, in for the next 10 to 15 years, given our age, luther House is fine. The growth is actually going to for our purposes. The biggest challenge is going to be who replaces us to continue the mission of Luther House.
Speaker 3:And so that we're waiting for God literally to drop it in our laps, but I'm confident he will because, logically, luther House should not exist. I mean, this is unique in the landscape of theological education in North America and you know now, all of you, it's two people plus Lars now at the core of this huge, what's turned into a pretty significant enterprise, in spite of two small town, both of us from Iowa, not the In the middle of you call South Dakota. Yeah, in the middle of, as Alyssa in the Bishop of the ELCA said, small Baptist summer is small town in a small state. Well, and students to you. So, yeah, good question. So.
Speaker 4:You simply Cool. No, you do this, no.
Speaker 3:There is no strategic plan that now we're seeing the fruit of it. We've just kind of been pulled along all the way through.
Speaker 2:We've capitalized on what we see as the market, giving us opportunity to make the town rework. Theological education.
Speaker 4:You've been listening to Lead Time, a podcast of the Unite Leadership Collector. The ULC's mission is to collaborate with the local church to discover, develop and deploy leaders through biblical Lutheran doctrine and innovative methods To partner with us in this gospel message. Subscribe to our channel, then go to theunitleadershiporg to create your free login for exclusive material and resources and then to explore ways in which you can sponsor an episode. Thanks for listening and stay tuned for next week's episode.