Mandy the Biblical Scholar & Tom the Seminary President - Christians Who Sell Jesus

Selling Jesus

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We want to start out this conversation by introducing you to two people, Tom and Mandy. Now Mandy is an

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Old Testament scholar and the author of some of the best commentaries on Job and Amos. Both are published by Zondervan and don't cost more than other commentaries.

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She is also employed by a legacy Bible institute and teaches several courses including Biblical Hebrew. She regularly tells her friends that she has a dream job and couldn't be more grateful for the opportunity to do what she loves.

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People respect her and look up to her as a nearly perfect model of someone who has given her life to God's service, blessing readers and students year after year.

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Unfortunately and unwittingly Mandy is selling Jesus. The problem for her like many others is the fact that she has simply never thought about copyright or the status quo of selling

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Christian teaching. Even though she is a deep, critical thinker and has a PhD, she hasn't taken the time to think biblically about whether it's right to sell her commentaries on God's word or require students to pay tuition before being able to learn about the

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Bible from her. She has accepted an old widespread system without a second thought, assuming that the system is biblical because so many other people have bought into it.

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If you were to challenge her to think differently and reconsider how biblical the system is, she would dismiss any contrary ideas as quote unquote fringe and not worthy of her time.

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Like Luke, the sought after preacher who we've talked about in another podcast, she is comfortable with the way things are.

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In this way, she resembles antebellum Christians who were extremely comfortable with the slave trade and many historic

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Roman Catholic priests who were comfortable selling baptism. Besides, she might lose her dream job if she started to take what scripture says about money and ministry seriously.

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Better to leave well enough alone, and if anyone brings it up, simply silence them by forcing certain parts of scripture to support the status quo of commercializing

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Christianity. Ignorance is bliss. Now along those same lines, let me introduce you to Tom, the seminary president.

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Tom follows in the footsteps of many seminary leaders who have gone before him since the seminary was founded in 1892.

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He has inherited a system and structure that is typical of nearly all seminaries around the world.

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Students must pay tuition if they want to receive spiritual guidance and biblical teaching.

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Thankfully, the seminary has some endowments that allow it to keep its course prices down. But Tom is well aware that there are many people who never attend his seminary because of the cost.

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Although there are scholarships available, they are limited and usually reserved for international students.

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Sometimes at night, he thinks about how nice it would be if professors could simply be like missionaries and raise support, freeing themselves to teach without charging students money.

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Or why couldn't there be more bivocational professors who support themselves with another job like Paul did and offer their services to the seminary for free?

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But then he shakes his head and laughs at how impossible his idealistic musings are.

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The seminary has been operating the same way for too long. Tradition can't be broken. There are too many people who would hate his ideas and keep them from even being tried.

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Why bother with a pipe dream? Tom, like most, is well -meaning and wants to do the right thing, but he's also still largely ignorant of the biblical teaching on money and ministry.

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He has believed the lie that obeying God is an ideal fantasy, especially when it involves breaking with tradition.

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While Tom is impressed by the size, age, and influence of his seminary, God is not impressed.

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Nor has God impressed by its lack of fundamental obedience to the command to freely give what they have freely received.

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Tom is also a coward, fearing man more than his creator. And if he's willing to admit it, he doesn't have faith that God would provide enough support for the seminary professors.

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He doesn't even believe that the professors themselves would have enough faith to even attempt to raise support.

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And very few of them have any other skill that might enable them to be bivocational like Paul.

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In the end, Tom's God is too small to overcome these obstacles to true obedience.

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The wisdom of a capitalistic economy is better than God's wisdom for building up the body of Christ through sound biblical teaching, which is the seminary's slogan.

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The scale at which Tom's seminary does ministry requires more money than God could supply through the generous co -labor of his people.

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So, Jesus must be sold in order to cover the costs. Once again, the ends justify the means, sincerity is compromised, and God is defamed and belittled as a commodity.

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Anyone in that kind of environment, in a seminary, Bible college, to kind of adopt the view, the biblical view and perspective that ministry should be free would be really difficult because, you know, not just for yourself if you're selling books and want to give them away for free, but by doing that, you'd be indirectly critiquing and criticizing everyone else around you.

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The seminary itself, if it's charging students to attend, but also the professors and lecturers who also publish their own books.

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So, I can imagine it's a very, very difficult situation to get yourself out of. Of course, it's one that God would give you wisdom and guide you and give you the confidence and courage to do so, but nevertheless, it's going to be tough.

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Would you guys say that Mandy is just really complicit at the end of the day?

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She's not really initiated any of this charging for ministry. She's just kind of joining an institution that's already been around for a long time doing things this way.

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She's not actually the one charging. So, I can imagine her, maybe her pushback being, well,

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I'm not the one collecting fees from these students. It's not my fault that seminaries have chosen to run this way.

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Well, on a human level, it's certainly relatable. It's very easy to understand why she would feel this way and why she wouldn't, you know, want to peer deeper or take the time to peer deeper, et cetera.

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But as you said, at the end of the day, she is complicit. And I can think of someone else in scripture who washed his hands about the selling off of Jesus, who is not remembered favorably in scripture because he did that, even though, you know,

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I'm talking about Pilate. He is very relatable character. And I know every time

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I read it, I sympathize with him to some degree because I realize how often

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I take that approach to things, just want to stay out of it, not think about the situation that doesn't seem to involve me too much, or it's easier just to go along with the situation as it is.

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But yeah, scripture does give us that example of Pilate. And so that shows us how we should think about the guilt of Mandy in this case.

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Yeah, she is complicit, and it doesn't excuse her sin at the end of the day. And yeah, we've been pretty clear on this podcast, this issue of selling

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Jesus, of selling the work of the Spirit, essentially, by selling words taught by the

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Spirit, not taught by human wisdom, according to 1 Corinthians 2, that this is sin to sell such things. And we should probably just frame this whole discussion with reading a little bit out of James 2 about showing no partiality.

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And I think this is a good one. Probably most people are familiar with this passage, but I think it's always good to review it.

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And if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, you sit here in a good place, while you say to the poor man, you stand over there or sit down at my feet, have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?

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Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him?

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But you have dishonored the poor man. Are not the rich the ones who oppress you and the ones who drag you into court?

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And et cetera. So this is a really important passage in the overarching discussion that we're having here on selling

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Jesus in general. But when we're talking about teaching people behind a paywall, that passage is interesting in part because what it says there at the end that God has chosen the poor of this world.

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It suggests that we're guilty of the same sin as the unforgiving servant, right? To receive forgiveness and then to not give it.

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To be chosen as one who is poor to be rich in faith and then not share that with others. It really is the same, even though you might think, well, you know,

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I wasn't especially poor, so I'm not engaging in that sort of hypocrisy. But if you understand the theological context of what it means to be poor and rich in faith, et cetera, it does apply to all of us, even those of us who have wealth.

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Yeah. And so what Mandy has done is she has cornered her own self and her own teaching.

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She has voluntarily and intentionally put herself in a place where she cannot give her teaching as freely as Scripture requires of her, right?

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And so she's placed herself behind some very serious limitations when the whole world is in front of her.

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Christ is calling her to teach, and especially in this passage, to offer her teaching specifically to the poor who can't pay her for her teaching, and she instead has put herself in a situation where that is very, very hard to do, if not impossible.

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You know, obviously somebody's going to say, oh, well, people could audit the class, and sometimes they let people audit for free.

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And I know that they do that sometimes unofficially at my seminary, at Southern Seminary.

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You can talk to the professor directly and get to audit their class for free sometimes informally.

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But if you audit officially through the seminary, it does cost money. It costs less money, but it still costs money.

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I don't know about the seminaries you guys were at. Does auditing officially through the seminary cost money?

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Well, my seminary was free, so it doesn't apply there. Talk about your seminary, Conley.

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First, what is your seminary? So I attended what's called now the

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Log College Seminary. It was called the North American Reform Seminary. The name the Log College and Seminary is after the historic log college, which they are essentially claiming to be the spiritual successor of.

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And part of that historic college was that it was free. And yeah, so there's several things that they do differently.

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There's a mentorship model. It's online only. They encourage you to stay involved in your local church, and that's more or less a requirement to be part of the seminary.

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And they really want to encourage your faithful churchmanship in addition to the education.

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So yeah, there's also no semesters, and that gives you a lot of freedom to be able to do the things you need to do while at the same time studying.

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It's also free, which is a wonderful thing. And a lot of the classes are outsourced to other seminaries that have free classes.

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So, for example, I did my Greek and Hebrew through PRTS, and that was outsourced to them because they had that available for free at the time.

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And then other lecture series and things that other seminaries have made freely available. A lot of times we'll use that and then have to write a paper on it.

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So there are different employees of the seminary, not paid employees. I think there is one from the donations.

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There was at one point a paid admissions officer. But the various folks, the president, et cetera, none of these are paid positions.

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And there's really no professors. I think this model could be improved somewhat. Like I said, all that teaching material is pretty much outsourced to either books or lectures that are free elsewhere.

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And then you have a mentor that you either choose or is assigned to you who's doing the grading.

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What I think could be improved here is that it's the same mentor doing all the grading. And I think it'd be good if the mentor changed up who was grading so you got more diverse feedback.

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But all in all, otherwise, apart from that critique, I like the model. Yeah, I was just going to respond to your previous question, which was whether you can audit.

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At my college, spouses could audit for free. So there was a limit.

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I think they could attend one or two subjects. Whereas there was a formal auditing system as well for the general public where you would pay a heavily discounted fee to audit the class.

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Well, to explain why auditing isn't quite enough, though, everyone knows that the seminary professor, as he's interacting with you, is not going to give the same care and attention to the auditing students as the ones who actually need a grade from the course.

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And so doing the work of grading, doing the work of interacting with the material that's getting graded, all that is special attention and still partiality that auditing doesn't quite cover and make up for.

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Right, exactly. So if I were the leader of a seminary like Tom, the seminary president, and this was

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Southern, so I know Southern Seminary well because that's where I was for so many years. So the way

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I see it is that many people, they feel like they're backed into a corner because they inherited—so maybe

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Tom, the seminary president, he inherited the seminary that's got massive buildings that have to be maintained.

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And Southern Seminary, it's got this huge building that was built by the liberals back in the 80s or 90s or something with an

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Olympic -sized swimming pool, indoor swimming pool, and a three-, four -story gym with a track that goes around the roof overlooking the indoor basketball court.

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Oh my goodness, it's fancy. Crazy stuff. So, I mean, you've got this amazing campus, all of these amazing facilities, and so now, like, your dilemma is, okay,

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I can either charge people a lot of money to upkeep all of this stuff and have access to the spiritual teaching, or I can depend—or

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I can just cut the fees and rely totally on donations. Then the argument goes in your head, right?

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Well, we can't trust God for that much money to maintain a swimming pool and a gym and all of that stuff.

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I mean, it's just so much stuff. You can't trust God for that much, right? It's just a little, you know, a little radical to trust

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God for that much. Or, we already have all this stuff, but we don't want to downsize. I mean, what would we do? They even have their own hotel on the campus.

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It's really nice. So, we have to maintain all of this stuff. What do we do, you know? They're just—that's what

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I feel like these circular arguments go, where American Christians have cornered themselves in a level of luxury where they expect, oh, we have to have, like, the stadium for the conference that's really fancy with air conditioning and all of these amenities.

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And if we lower that standard, then we will have zero ministry, you know?

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It's like either luxury level or no ministry. So, I can just hear the objections, you know?

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Well, what do you expect us to do? Just sell the whole seminary campus and get rid of all this stuff?

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Or do you really think people are going to support this seminary with donations to maintain a swimming pool?

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Well, you were joking about not being able to trust God for that much, but there's a sense in which that's true, right?

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You know, real faith in God understands his priorities and what kind of things he would support.

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And I can't, with a lot of confidence, say that, you know, he would support any unlimited set of luxuries.

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No, I've never been to Southern, so I don't know what it's really like there. You know, I haven't seen it with my own eyes, but the way you described it certainly sounded, yeah, pretty ritzy.

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I was thinking about this too, you know, what do you do if you're in a position where you have something valuable, you definitely want to steward it, you don't want to just say, hey, let's cancel this enterprise and start over.

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Let me just hand this off to someone who's willing to make the compromises necessary to keep this thing going.

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It's good to have some kind of plan. And I imagine as you're talking to the other people on the board, you could navigate something that involves, you know, an increase in donations and a less reliance on tuition.

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Now, I'm not a fan of, you know, compromises like that, but practically speaking,

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I think a lot of these things are options to people and they don't even go that far. Right? Yeah, I mean,

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I think the first and most basic thing that should be done is every single course that is properly being streamed and recorded anyway, should be released online completely for free.

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And there's no evidence to say that by doing that, yeah, less students will come to the seminary.

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In fact, it could even increase enrollments because more people find out about the seminary and even more people are interested in it.

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So, I mean, that's again, not to compromise, but that's the most basic step that won't, that may not even impact finances or may even benefit them.

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Release all the teaching completely for free and also drop the copyright, which is where most people fail, such as the biblical teaching website, where there are lots of good academic level courses online, but they're all copyrighted.

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And so, you know, they're just accessible to English speakers. You have no permission to translate them.

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Although there are some good alternatives out there for free teaching online, they're still copyrighted. You still can't improve upon them, adapt them or translate them.

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Absolutely. And to your point, John, in my own experience, this is exactly what happened. I heard

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Dr. Bruce Ware preaching or presenting at a Desiring God Pastors Conference, which was released for free on DesiringGod .org.

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And so, because I got a free sample of his teaching and his passion and the quality of what he had to say, that was actually one of the primary things that moved me to go to Southern because I was like, if I could take systematic theology with this guy, wow, that would be awesome.

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But if that had not been released for free somewhere on the internet, I would have never experienced it and never gone there at the end of the day.

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So, there's so many win -wins here. And it seems like seminaries are locked into a fairly traditional model, which has been in need of an overhaul.

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And this is true of secular universities as well, where a lot of what you're getting is lectures in person and not necessarily interaction with the professor, just lectures in person.

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And especially in STEM fields, maybe this is less true with in -person seminary education, but with STEM fields, you're just going over factual stuff.

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There's not a lot of opinions involved. And really, what is the benefit of doing this in person versus getting this information online and then reworking the in -person experience to be one of dialogue?

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Yeah, so it is odd that people have hung on to that model where they protect these in -person lectures as being something that need be held on to.

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And any institution that innovates in this area is probably going to jump ahead quite a bit. Yeah.

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And we should mention, for those who are not aware, in Europe there are universities where you can get a

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PhD for free entirely. This already exists. It's not because they listened to this podcast or read the

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Dorian Principle. These are secular institutions. And they're figuring out ways to cut costs and all of this stuff and using technology.

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So really, the argument that it would be just too hard holds no water because there are secular institutions already doing it with success, not just giving you a little certificate, you audited this course, but actually giving you a full

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PhD. So that's something to keep in mind. If you're Tom, the president of the seminary, you really only have to do one thing.

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You have to figure out, is this what God wants? Is this what Scripture teaches? And if it does, all of the other stuff is just a matter of figuring out how to make it work practically.

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It's not the reverse, right? And we've talked about this before, right? The practicality in forming our exegesis instead of the other way around.

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People message me sometimes and they're like, well, you know, but how would I do this?

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But what about this little practical thing would be so hard and this would be so complicated.

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You need to decide, is this what Christ wants of you first? That's all you have to decide.

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And if this is really the way of obedience, then everything else doesn't matter.

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And then once you figure that out, you'll go about figuring out how it's going to work practically. It's just like, you know, we know that stealing is wrong.

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So there are a lot of times in our life where stealing would be the easy way, the most practical thing, but it's not on the table.

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It's not an option. So we have to work around that. This is the same thing. I have not found any seminaries before the 1800s that charged.

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You know, all the professors were supported by either patrons or whatever means they had. And institutions were sponsored by those with wealth who wanted to see the gospel flourish.

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So a lot of these are from Philip Schaff, but some of this information I've gotten from elsewhere. So one is the

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Alexandrian School of Theology. So that's second century. This was a school that was free to the pupils who came.

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Philip Schaff says the more wealthy pupils paid for tuition, but the offer was often declined.

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So it's a free seminary. Sometimes people would give money, but this was often rejected.

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So it seems like even when it was taken, it was just a donation. And then Calvin had a school in Geneva that was free.

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So Calvin's Academy of Geneva, that was free as well. And then Spurgeon's College was free. That's a famous one.

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And very ironically, do you know who the chancellor is? I think as of maybe last year, a couple of years ago, do you all know?

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Do you hear this headline? It is Rick Warren. Rick Warren is now the chancellor of Spurgeon's College.

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Not surprising since he's so obsessed with Spurgeon. Yeah. Yeah. So here

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Spurgeon made this free college and the guy now running it is one of the biggest culprits in commercializing ministry.

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We had a discussion among ourselves at one point where I think maybe John, it was you who had mentioned that you had heard from Poythress that Westminster Theological Seminary was originally free.

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I don't know where that had gotten mentioned. I don't have evidence on that one, but I thought that was interesting. And then

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Biola was originally a free school as well. And I'd love to get more evidence.

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If anyone listening to this finds more, please send it into one of us.

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Our contact information's pretty easy to find if you're looking for us. So Moody Bible Institute, as I understand it, is still free.

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You pay for room and board, but you do not pay tuition. I don't know all the other details. Yeah. So for those who think that, well, this seems like out of this world, this would be radically different than anything that's ever existed.

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I don't think that's true. First of all, there are schools that do this and there are schools that have done this.

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In fact, from the limited data that I've gathered, it looks like the vast majority of schools before a couple hundred years ago operated this way.

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So what we're talking about is not as radical as people think it is.

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It's radically different than what you see right now, but it's not radical in terms of Christian history.

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If we just imagined for a moment that everyone in the world who's a believer is convinced that ministry should not be sold and seminaries cannot charge their students, do we really believe that Christian education is just going to disappear?

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That everyone will be like, oh, well, I guess we can't teach anymore. And then no one teaches. I mean, of course the churches are going to come together.

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Someone's going to do something. Ministry is going to go on. And I believe it would be so much more fruitful.

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So while it might be hard to imagine if you are just imagining your seminary with all its luxuries and with all the staff that are employed, yeah, if you think from that perspective, it can be hard to imagine.

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But if you think about the kingdom, about God and his provision and the passion of his people to see him proclaimed, then of course there will be a flourishing ministries and ample opportunities to teach and be taught if people follow this model.

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So yeah, it is not unbelievable. It's very, very rational and convincing. And if you just think about this strictly economically in terms of supply and demand and that sort of thing, there is a demand for Christian education.

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And right now there's enough money coming in to support it and it's coming in from the students.

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But there's no reason to think that, especially like John just said, in a Christian culture where the desire for the education is not just coming from the students.

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In fact, it's primarily the interest is from others who want these students to have this education that they can lead their churches, etc.

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If there's that desire already, if there's that demand already, then why would anyone doubt that the funds would be available from somewhere else?

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And it might even be from the very students themselves who want to support the university. There's no reason that that couldn't happen.

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Yeah, I mean, from my situation, so in Australia, students will usually pay for most of their tuition.

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And the reason why they can do that is because the government will give loans to seminaries and colleges because as long as they're accredited with the government, students are eligible just to get a loan just as with any other course, any other secular course.

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And so what usually happens is students will take out loans of $50 ,000 to $75 ,000

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Australian, which would be around $40 ,000 to $60 ,000

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US, somewhere around there. And so what I had to do was a few years after college,

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I paid the whole thing off. Now, if I had been taught for free, and I had earned money after going to college and was very thankful for my tuition, it's highly likely that I would give a very substantial donation after college as well.

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And so I did pay it off after college, but I could have also donated after college as well.

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And we won't even mention how much that kind of situation dissuades you from desiring to donate after you've just felt the burden of debt for years that you're slaving away to pay it off.

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I mean, what is going to motivate you after that to be like, oh, I want to drop $10 ,000 on my seminary as a donation?

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I mean, yeah, it's very, very, very demotivating in that sphere.

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And this brings up the Sattler College move that they recently shifted their model.

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I shared this with you guys a while back. I thought it'd be an interesting case to briefly discuss, but they have shifted to a tuition -free model.

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But on one condition, you sign a covenant of some kind with them that basically says,

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I think for the rest of your life, you'll do your best to support them in some way, donations.

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Maybe touch on why we wouldn't recommend that approach. Right? It's clear they're trying to address the issues that they see in scripture, right?

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They get the sense that it would be wrong to, or at least not ideal to charge for this sort of thing, but we need some way to recoup costs and get people to pay for it.

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But as we've pointed out before, and as I write about in the Dorian Principle, the idea of obligation and burden is really central here.

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And burden not meaning difficulty, burden meaning obligation. Basically that if you're saddling someone with an obligation to you, then it is though they owe you as the source of what they've received, as opposed to owing

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God, who is the actual source of the work of the Spirit in them as they are matured through the teaching that they've received at the seminary.

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So it makes an attempt, but it doesn't actually solve the issue, which is saddling them with an obligation that supplants

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God's role as the one who is the origin of the blessing here. Yeah, and I mean, if you taught your students well, then you don't need to come up with this agreement to pay afterwards, because if you taught them well, they will have that conviction to support

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Christian ministry anyway. So rather than try to legalize that ethic, then you should just stick with the

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Christian ethic and just teach your students well. Yeah, absolutely. I give to my seminary, not to brag, it's not like it's a lot or anything, but I'm thankful for the education

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I got through them. And I want to, man, I really want to support them because they're doing it for free.

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By the way, if anyone's looking for, if you hear all this and you're thinking, well, what kind of a seminary could

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I give to that would be worthwhile to fund, I would recommend looking into LCS, the

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Logg College and Seminary. And you had mentioned loans, John. Man, so these loans that are provided by the government, and in such a way that they aren't necessarily financially responsible even, right, because the government is doing it for motives other than strict profit, right?

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So they aren't necessarily taking into account whether or not this person's going to be able to pay it back easily, or anything like that.

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And while on one hand, that feels very generous to a lot of people, oh, yeah, they're not taking into account, you know, the limitations this person has, and they're being generous to all.

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Some people think of that this way. But you're going to be saddled with this huge debt, and it's going to be a big deal for a significant portion of your life if you have trouble paying that back.

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And to just give a seminary student the same kind of loan that you would give an engineer, you could really be wrecking their financial, their financial stability for a long time to come.

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And it's the case with a lot of people who have gone into fields that don't necessarily have lucrative careers on the other side.

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And, you know, and they just end up getting financially wrecked by a well intentioned system. So, yeah, none of these are, man, these aren't good things.

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Yeah, read Randy Alcorn's book, Money, Possessions and Eternity on Debt. The section on debt is excellent.

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Really solid biblical assessment of the debt culture that we live in nowadays.

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It's interesting because when I was doing the course, I was thinking, wow, I'm so thankful the government offers these loans.

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Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to afford to go to college. But now that I reflect back on it, to be honest,

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I think colleges and seminaries would be way better off if there was just no government loan at all.

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Because, as I said, it's not like Christian ministry is going to disappear, that these colleges are going to disappear. It would force them to work out how to keep doing it in a more sustainable way without burdening students.

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It would force them to cut costs. It would force them to innovate and do things differently. For example, maybe a professor or lecturer records his course one semester and then reuses that material for the next few years, maybe editing it a bit, improving it.

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But, you know, why do we need to repeat the same thing every single year, which is mostly the same content?

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You know, that labor doesn't need to be reproduced every time. And if it's free of copyright, you'd allow others to improve upon it.

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So it's not like it's going to get stuck. You can keep improving on it. Yeah, and I as a professor hate repeating myself.

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I don't know how anybody else enjoys it. It's just, if you've been teaching the same course for like 20 years and you've got everything down to a script, you know,

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I would just feel so monotonous repeating myself so much instead of recording it.

34:41

I'll go ahead and insert a little testimony of my own right here just to keep people listening.

34:48

We like stories. My own story of seminaries is a good testimony for this discussion because I was poor and I had just graduated from college and I had graduated with a little bit of debt, which

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I, by the grace of God, by the miraculous work of God, I was able to pay off within the first year after college.

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It was kind of scary. I was worried when I graduated about the amount, and it wasn't like a huge amount compared to other people, but I was still,

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I felt that burden and it was not pleasant. And I didn't like that experience of being under the gun in that sense.

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And once I had finally freed myself of that, the last thing I wanted was to go get into debt again at seminary.

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And I knew that that was inevitable with my income level. And so I was like, well, you know,

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I would love to go. It's never going to happen. I just don't want to do that again. And so right there, you know, that was the hindrance.

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That was the main hindrance for me. And then once again, by the grace of God, somebody, the father of a friend of mine offered to pay my tuition.

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And that was the only reason I was able to go. And so, you know, it's interesting how, from my vantage point, what the seminary did to me by putting a paywall, and basically what it did was this.

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It told me, we ourselves, as the seminary, don't want to have to trust in God for the education of our students.

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We want you to do that, and we can't be bothered to do it. And so the top -down message is that commercializing biblical training is the default.

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And if you want to trust God for that, go ahead. That's fine, but don't expect us, the leaders, to do that and lead by example, which

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I think is unfortunate. So that's a little anecdote from my end. This is real. The poor are hindered from going to seminary.

36:51

I want to maybe transition to this question. Tom, let's say Tom is convinced, okay, we need to pull the plug on the tuition fees and all of that.

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We're going to lean heavily into getting donations. What I'm going to do is offer, you get to put your name on a building or a plaque of your face somewhere on campus if you give a certain amount towards the seminary.

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How do we respond to that biblically? To attract the mega -donors, you know. Well, certainly your motivation should not be recognition on this earth as opposed to in heaven.

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Jesus is pretty clear about that in Matthew 6 when he talks about prayer, when he talks about giving, you know, sounding the trumpet, etc.

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So I would hope that someone is not motivated by those reasons. Now, if someone wanted to honor someone who had given,

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I don't know if it would necessarily be wrong for them to honor them by mentioning their generosity, especially if it was kind of a legacy thing so that we could remember how they had supported the work of the gospel in this way.

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But yeah, there's a different ethic for the one giving versus the one receiving in this case.

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Yeah, I feel like I'd be more comfortable with that if the person was being honored, you know, a decade or two or three after they've donated, whether you've seen the impact of it.

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That's why we're thankful for it because it's actually produced a lot of fruit. But if you're just sticking it on straight away after their donation, before you've actually seen any fruit from that, then yeah, that sounds a bit more kind of looking for credit to me.

38:45

Right, you're offering it as a perk for giving a certain amount or more, right? You're offering it up front.

38:52

Right. Yeah, and we've talked about things like Patreon before and how, you know, Patreon is good when you offer something in return, and then you're, you know, especially if it's extra teaching or whatever the case may be.

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Which Patreon highly, highly pushes, you know, pushes hard for you to be doing that, to offer these special things to the insiders who are giving.

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So, yeah, it's interesting because this question applies to us too, you know, we don't, well, we don't take any donations, but if we did, which we're not, we're not saying that's wrong, obviously we're saying it's good to be supported by fellow co -laborers.

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Would we be willing to put people's names on the end of the video? You know, how you see that occasionally on YouTube videos, like, oh, these are all our

39:35

Patreon supporters. So I guess the same answer, right? Maybe after the fact we would do that, not having, you know, incentivized them in that way, but, but yeah, no, this would not be the, this would not be the reason to give.

39:49

Right, right. Okay. I want to bring this up real quick. I've spoken to people in poor, marginalized or developing countries who are doing their best to run a

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Bible school or something like that. And one of the things I've heard pretty often is, well, we don't have a culture of giving like they do in the

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West, you know, philanthropy and donations and I don't know what, especially giving enough.

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You know, maybe people will give a little bit at church, but, you know, giving outside of church to para -church ministries to support something as big as a

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Bible school is just not part of what people are used to in our developing country.

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And also people are poor. They don't have as much extra income to be given away like people in the

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West. So because of that limitation, I don't think it's reasonable for me to step out in faith and run this whole institution on faith.

40:46

That's a pretty common objection from a lot of people. Yeah, I think it's tempting to sympathize with them because they are from places a lot worse off than we are.

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At the same time, I myself have had to work a secular job on the side to get by in ministry for a while.

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And there's many in the West that have to do that as well. So it's not like everyone in the West is enjoying the same comfortable standards and job security as some of the people in seminaries and really big ministries are the

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CEOs of those para -church ministries. So there's nothing wrong with being bivocational.

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In fact, it's a great way to do ministry. Of course, it's also great to be fully supported and that's good to pray for as well.

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But in the end of the day, ministry has to be done by vocationally or by some other means that isn't necessarily a negative.

41:45

That could be a positive thing. Yeah, I don't think giving to Christian ministries was normal when

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Paul went around receiving money for the Jerusalem collection. And you see in 2 Corinthians 8 and 9, he talks about the degrees to which he's pressing them to give even beyond their ability to use his phrase.

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Now, whether or not, you know, that's a hyperbole, I'm not suggesting beyond what they could beyond what they could so they could support their place.

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But, you know, he says in 2 Corinthians 8 .1, So Paul's going around encouraging these churches who have never really given this way before to give.

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And this is a Christian virtue. If the Christians of the area aren't used to giving, maybe they should start getting used to it.

42:46

And then on top of that, in some ways, because you're dealing with an area where the costs are a lot lower, even though that means that people have less money, it also means that external dollars are going to go a lot farther.

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So in some ways, this could be a lot easier to find partnerships to fund if you truly are a worthy ministry.

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You know, it might take some networking to find the right people who understand the importance of your ministry, but in some ways, this could be easier.

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And the culture is not going to change, you know, the culture of not giving is not going to change if you don't give them opportunities to give, right?

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If you just deny them, maybe they're waiting for that opportunity and they like what your

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Bible school is doing and they would jump at the opportunity to give towards it if they had it.

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The other thing is, you know, like, have you actually tried it? Have you tried seeing what

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God will do? You know, you can't tell God what he won't do and then not even try it, you know?

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Like, well, God, that's a little too much to ask of you. You probably won't provide, and so I'm not even going to try.

43:59

It doesn't strike me as the kind of faith that Scripture requires of us. My own experience in the developing world, which is where I have lived most of my life, is that just like the

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Macedonians, people in their extreme poverty really do overflow in a wealth of generosity, and it's actually not that true.

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I think it might be a skewed perception that people have or a very strong pessimism that they may have.

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But I myself have been on the receiving end of this generosity with people who have not even met me.

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When we were robbed here in Mexico a while back, there was a church up north in Mexico that heard about it through the grapevine, hadn't even met us, and sent us like $500.

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It was crazy. So, in my experience, it's just not true. I think it is a lack of faith.

44:52

Yeah, coddling stinginess is not the answer. And then, on top of that, it really doesn't seem to understand the nature of giving, that it's a great blessing.

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It's more blessed to give than to receive. It's a great thing to give people opportunities to give, especially if it's a worthy cause.

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I really do tend to think of these in terms of investments. If someone tells you about a great penny stock that's going to explode because it's such amazing technology or whatever, you want to get in on that early.

45:25

I like to think about when I give to good works, the due diligence I do, and speaking to someone, seeing what they're actually doing, hearing how hard they're working for the purpose of the gospel,

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I know that when I'm giving to that, I am a co -laborer in an excellent work. I'm excited about being part of that.

45:43

So, one of the things that Mandy could do is what missionaries have been doing for centuries, and that is raise her own support.

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There's nothing in the Bible that forbids that, that professors could also just raise support like missionaries do.

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This is the kind of thing that I think a lot of people would love to support. We're so one -dimensional when it comes to support models in the

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Western church. It's like missionaries and that's it. What if I don't want to support a foreign missionary necessarily with all of my money?

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What if I want to give some of my money to a professor? What if I really value what this professor has to say?

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What if I've read Mandy's book and it really blessed me and I want to support her reaching more people?

46:30

Once again, people really don't want to accept that answer for some reason.

46:35

I think a lot of it might have to do with what we've addressed before with receiving your legitimacy from different institutions.

46:42

Remember when we talked about Joe the author, you had talked about people wanting to publish with big publishers, not necessarily because they thought it was going to make them any money, but because there's a level of ego stroke that goes on when you publish with Publisher X.

46:57

I think that's really true with these institutions as well.

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There's a lot of legitimacy that people feel that they have and maybe even do in the eyes of a lot of people through using these institutions or being part of them.

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We have to be willing to, like you said, examine what Christ wants first and then sort out the details after.

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Maybe at the moment they get a lot of respect, but to be honest, I truly believe in not too long, in decades to come, there's going to be

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Christians looking back at these institutions, not with respect or as much as respect as they might hope, but as peddlers of God's word.

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So for that reason, if anything, they should start changing right now.

47:43

Yeah, if you believe what the Bible says we are on the right side of history here, people will look back.

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Even if it's not in this lifetime and it's in the next one, people will look back and they will see what the honorable cause was here.

47:56

Right. It's going to be like the slavery issue. It's going to be like the pew rent issue. It's not going to be pretty.

48:03

We also have here the idea for Tom's seminary, you know, he could have ministers from local churches function as adjunct faculty volunteers to teach courses for free since their living is already covered by those local churches.

48:19

Many pastors, I would hope, have not only the capacity but the desire to pour into more people in a classroom setting in that way.

48:30

That would be a pretty easy answer for covering some of those, where are we going to get the faculty, how are they going to live, all of that kind of question.

48:39

Yeah. And a lot of it has to do with the divorcing these things from the local church or just a lack of emphasis on the local church.

48:46

I don't know what the stats are, but I know that a lot of seminary professors are not necessarily heavily involved in their local church.

48:54

They're not necessarily doing the work of a pastor or anything like that. Not that every scholar absolutely has to be a pastor, but it does seem a bit odd looking at the modern landscape and seeing how few are choosing to actually do that frontline work.

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And if they were, like you said, they'd already have the support covered and they wouldn't even need tuition to pay the bills.

49:19

So a couple of years ago, I was approached by a seminary that I had some interest in because they had been free and they wanted me to be an adjunct professor.

49:29

But the difficulty was they were transitioning to no longer be a free seminary. And I thought that it would be all right in my conscience if I just waived the stipend, the small stipend that they were going to be giving me.

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But then after a while, just after basically a week of thinking about this, I hadn't even started doing any of the work or anything.

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I realized that I would be teaching behind a paywall and there would be a lack of access to any other students who could otherwise benefit from this.

50:01

And I would be favoring by giving special help to the students who had paid.

50:07

And it was, yeah, just going back to what we talked about with James 2 and partiality and God has chosen the poor of this world.

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How could we show favoritism to the rich? I realized I couldn't in good conscience do this, and I had to step down, even though I had just been put on the website like the day before.

50:26

But yeah, it's worth it. And now I'm mentoring for the log college and seminary, and I know that a good work is being done.

50:38

Yeah, that freedom of conscience is so important. Now, of course, I'm talking to some people who may not even have any burden of conscience, but regardless, the

50:47

Lord, yeah, it's so good to give freely to the Lord because he has given freely to us.

50:53

Amen. Now we're going to ask John to, on the spot, create a seminary institution that's free.

51:04

Is this a new thing? I was hoping you could ask me to start teaching on a random subject, but actually creating an institution is a bit much.

51:13

I guess it's a little out of control. Yeah.