Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep1047: Eternity Bible College, Christian Education, and Theological Discipleship: Ernesto Duke

Episode Date: February 2, 2023

Ernesto was a former student of mine when I was a prof at Eternity Bible College. He’s since gone on to get a masters degree in theology from Western Seminary and been hired back on as faculty and staff at Eternity. He currently serves as co-president of the school. In this episode, we talk about what it means to be “co” president, community leadership at a Chrisitan school, the uniqueness of Eternity Bible College, debt free education, and revisiting the structures of Christian education as a whole. One thing we didn’t touch on is Eternity’s partnership with Theology in the Raw in facilitating “Conversations in the Raw”: an online based collective of Christians engaging in raw theological discipleship. Find out more about “Conversations in the Raw” at theologyintheraw.com. To learn more about Eternity Bible College’s online offerings, visit eternity.edu If you would like to support Theology in the Raw, please visit patreon.com/theologyintheraw for more information!

Hey, friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. My guest today is Ernesto Duke. Ernesto was one of my students way back in the day at Eternity Bible College. We met about 10 years ago, a little actually over 10 years ago. And he shares an actual funny story about him as one of my students, which you'll have to listen to in a few minutes. Ernesto has a bachelor's degree from Eternity Bible College and a master's degree from Western Seminary and currently serves as part of the staff and leadership team at Eternity Bible College, serving partly as the co-president. Did you know there was such a thing as a co-president? One of the things we actually didn't get to in this episode, we went kind of all over the map with Christian education, rethinking fundamental structures and lots of stuff related to education and Christianity and really lively conversation. One of the things we didn't get to is we didn't mention that

Theology in the Raw is partnering again with Eternity Bible College to run what's called Conversations in the Raw. Conversations in the Raw is a discipleship learning cohort following the Exiles in Babylon conference. So if you've been listening to this podcast for any number of days, you know that we have a conference coming up, the Exiles in Babylon conference in March 23rd or 25th in Boise, Idaho. It's also available online. And then we're going to have a follow-up series of cohorts that you can join where you can continue to engage conversations around the future of the church, disability in the church, multi-ethnic perspectives on Christianity, American Christianity, and women in church leadership with various people leading those cohorts. So if that interests you, then go to TheologyNarod.com and you need to sign up sooner than later for one of these learning cohorts. So if that interests you, then go to theologianraw.com and you need to sign up sooner than later for one of these learning cohorts. You'll meet three times over a period of six weeks. So not a huge demand, but it is a way to engage on a deeper level some of these important

conversations that we will be having. And Eternity Bible College and Ernesto have done a great job helping facilitate those conversations. So please welcome to the show for the first time, the one and only Ernesto Duke. Ernesto, we first met when you were a student of mine. When was that? That was... Yeah, 2011 is when I started at Eternity. And so I imagine, yeah, probably 2011. Golly. It's been over 10 years now. We have a decade plus of friendship, I guess. I mean, you went on to seminary, you graduated at EBC, Eternity Bible College, went on to seminary, then came back. I mean, you were teaching for a while. And then now, what's your specific role now? I mean, are you? Yeah. Yeah. So like you said, I went to Eternity and then I went to Western Seminary online. I

did like a model where you get to go up and do classes for like an intensive period and then you come back. But I did a lot of my classes online there. And then I started teaching and I started working at the school by doing like finance counseling with students. And I'm not like I'm not like a finance person at all. I'm probably the worst person to ask financial advice to as far as like the stock market or anything like that. But I just noticed that like when I was a student, a lot of people like the reason that they were having to drop out was money. But like I was working a job, was married, had a kid and was able to go to school. And so it's just like as simple as like you just need to learn how to budget. It wasn't like finance stuff. Right.

And so I started to do that for a while. And then it became clear that it was helping the school, like it was helping retention. So I started getting paid to do it. Then I started recruiting things for a while that I taught at the school for a while. And now I have a very unofficial title of Director of Partnership and Development. I've had that title for a while. And then I'm also a co-president at the school, which we could talk more about why the co is there. But that's who I am right now. Well, that's why I wanted to have you on because the last time we talked, we talked off and on throughout the year. Last time we were on,

I was asking because I know there was talk about you being the president. Um, you guys have had some changes up top and you said, well, actually we're kind of exploring kind of a team leadership model at, at the school level. And I was like, wow, wait, I've heard about that in churches i mean it's still more rare at churches but it's a thing right elder led sometimes you even have co-pastors whatever but i've never seen it at an institution especially a school i think every single school i've ever heard of in the history of schools has a president at the top so i'm like whoa whoa whoa so so what does this mean that

there's gonna be like a team leadership at the top how tell us about your guys's thinking process on this and yeah i mean uh well i feel like this podcast might be uh way more beneficial in like five years to see if it works or not because we we're just trying right now. But I think the thinking behind it is this. I feel like one of the pillars of eternity is that we really want to try in our education with our students and discipleship, we're really trying to look at the text and just ask a question like, how do we live this in our context? What does this look like contextualized to our world or whatever? I think that eternity as an institution with the former leadership, current leadership, something that I've learned there is that just because this is how things are done doesn't mean that you have to do it that way again. Like one of our founding stories as a school is people asking Francis Chan, like, well, why are you going to

start another Bible college in Southern California? There's already Azusa, Biola, Master, San Diego Christian, you know, like there's all these schools down here. Why are you going to do this again? And the idea is like, well, we're going to do it, and we want to do it differently somehow. You know, we want to, we're not going to just take the model of education and copy-paste and call it the Trinity Bible College. So when the transition happened and I kind of came into this role, the thought process was really like, why do schools have CEOs? Why do schools have a CEO and a CFO and a COO? And is that really like the most healthy model for organizational leadership and I don't think I'll get in trouble for saying this but I feel like the only reason the schools have a

president CEO is like so you can fire somebody like so what's what the whole point is that if things aren't going well or like the school has some sort of scandal or like the fundraising is down or whatever like you can have one dude that you cut, you cut them out of the mix and then you put somebody else in there. And I mean, on a selfish note, like I'm 33, I have young children. I'm not trying to get fired in the next five to seven years or whatever, like not to say that that was going to happen. But I think it's the same thing as like, you know, the church that we're a part of also has a shared leadership model.

And it's the same idea that there probably are outliers out there who have all the skill sets and experience necessary to be the CEO or the president of a college. But that's like a very small group of those leaders. For the most part, I think you could go to any church or Bible college or small Christian nonprofit. And what you're going to find in that CEO model, in that top-down model, is that whatever the weaknesses of the senior leadership are, are going to be the weaknesses of the organization. And so why would we do that? Why would we purposefully step into a model that's going to provide weakness for us? I don't know. provide weakness for us. I don't know. I should say right now that I already just said I'm 33. I'm sure that there are 70-year-old senior pastors and people that might listen to this and think this guy's an idiot. And yes, I am an idiot, but I'm just trying to figure it out. I just don't

know why we've taken the corporate America model of CEO and all these different letters after your name and said, well, that's the best way to run a Christian nonprofit. And maybe, I mean, I'm just going to think out loud with you. So I might agree or try to push back, whatever. I mean, it's theoretically possible for a model to work for a season in a different time and culture. It could could have been let's just assume there's something to some sort of team leadership non-pyramid kind of structured hierarchical way of leading a school even i mean again we're having this conversation in the church um right why not having this good and maybe yeah maybe after five years i realized you know what

doesn't work for at school we need to go back to the pyramid. Or it could be it did work for a while, but then now we live in a different kind of context, a different environment where we need to rethink the structure. I mean, I love that you guys are willing to at least raise the question. We know we've always done it a different way. Is this the best way? Let's try something different. Maybe we won't know until we try it. Right.

I mean, yeah, I think it's like all of it is contextual. All of it is you trying to contextualize, uh, values of the kingdom, values of scripture to whatever context you're a part of. Um, and I think, I mean, all of us are really bad at this. Um, and we just don't know the where the areas of our life that we're bad at this, but we. But for the most part, we just look at the pattern that the world does and we see it as functional or we see it as utilitarian, like this works really well. And so we just adopt it.

We do that with church trishul. We do that with parenting. We do that with how we educate our kids. We do that with whether we buy a home or don't or if we have a savings account, retirement, or we don't. We just look at it and say, well, or if we have a savings account, retirement, or we don't. We just look at it and say, well, this seems to work for these people, so I'm just going to do it, rather than trying to really consider, is this best? And one of the conversations I had with a board member of ours recently was kind of Christian cheeky or whatever, but

the whole idea of if you look at the fruit of a tree and what kind of fruit a Christian cheeky or whatever, but the whole idea of like, if you look at the fruit of a tree and like, what kind of fruit does it produce? And you know, that's how you can know, I'm totally screwing up the Bible, but I don't, I don't really read the appendix of the Bible a lot, the New Testament, like you guys. So I don't, I don't know the appendix as well as I know the rest of it. But my point, my point being is like, if you just like took a step back, let's pretend that you weren't American and you didn't have an idea of organizational structure for, you know, corporations or nonprofits in America, and you just tried to observe the fruit of corporate America, would you say that it produces fruit that looks like Jesus's kingdom and values and things like that. And I

think for the most part would say, yeah, probably not. I mean, it employs people. That's cool. But it's usually trying to make money and take advantage of people and squash smaller people. There's no idea of like the first to be last, the last to be first. There's no like B attitudes in there or anything like that, that those aren't the driving principles of the CEO model of corporate America. So if we're going to take that model and put it into this Christian nonprofit organization, Bible College, we have to be super careful that the value system of that organizational structure, which exists for a reason, exists to create profit, it exists to, you know, raise the name and reputation of the organization through like a figurehead leader.

We have to be super careful that those lies that are anti-kingdom don't infiltrate our organization as we adopt whatever good there might be from that model. And I don't know that, just to be honest, I don't know that we as a school, this is our 20-year anniversary this year at Eternity. And so I say our, 20 years ago I was 13, but I love to use the collective. I was in junior high playing flag football 20 years ago when they started.

But it is our anniversary. And I think that, yeah, I don't know that we've really considered that part of it. There's a lot of ways, I mean, you know, because you taught at the school, there's a lot of ways where as an organization, we have very intentionally done things differently and reconsidered, reimagined education in ways that I think are really, really cool and innovative in the education space. But in this particular area, I don't know that we've really thought about it. It's just been assumed that we're going to adopt the corporate American structure of an organization into our leadership model.

And luckily, as a naive 33-year-old, I get to say, well, maybe we don't do that. Yeah, yeah. And we'll see. We'll see how it works. For people listening that may not know, I mean, I would say the majority probably don't know all the nuts and bolts about Eternity Bible College. What are some of the key distinctives that would distinguish the philosophy of education, a program, whatever, the DNA of Eternity Bible College versus the many other Bible colleges out there. Again, I know, you know, I spent many years there and know that like, yeah, this is, there's overlap, obviously, but there are some key differences. What, for the audience, what are those? Yeah, there are a lot, but I would say that two that are the most

shocking to people, we do not allow students to go into educational debt and we do our best to provide free finance counseling and things like that so that they don't go into other types of credit card debt or whatever it might be while they're a student. Most schools operate, most schools in the U.S. operate about 80 percent of their budget dependent on federal funding. And so it's kind of been a really big thing for us to not do that, to not have student loans as a primary funder of who we are as a school. But the very short reason that we do that is that we just truly believe that educational debt is a hindrance to gospel advancement, that people who graduate

their undergraduate degree with $40,000 worth of debt, it is going to be a shackle that they carry around with them for a couple of decades, and it is going to inhibit their ability to do and go wherever it is that God calls them. So that's something super unique about us. I think the other one is that we this this is not so flashy, I guess. Every school says that they're like relational in their education model. Nobody's going to be like, hey, we're super cold hearted, like we're just ones and zeros. Come get an education here. have like systems and checks and balances in check or at the school, I guess, implemented that really do cause our education to be very strongly relationally based. And this is from a conviction we have that the Bible kind of puts forth a model for us of a, I'm going to use big words, and then I'm going to try and define them, of a covenant epistemology, meaning that the way that we, the way that God designed humans and humanity to learn things is in the context of

relationship. That's how he's revealed himself to his people, is in the context of covenants and relationship and marriage and things like that. You know, in this biblical studies theological world, we're not going to, you know, we're going to look at the way that Abraham's living, and we're not going to hold him to the same standards, if you will, of like New Testament covenant Christianity, right? Because this is a different time. That's a different relationship that God has with his covenant people at different parts of the story. But all that aside, we really do believe that the way that God has designed education to happen is through relationships, is through friendship, is through

us agreeing to go on a journey together to be able to push back on each other. And what that looks like, truthfully, in the classroom, you've experienced this as a professor. I know I experienced this as a student and a professor, is that the hierarchy of like the professor knows everything and the students are just there to like repeat whatever the professor says, like that's not there at the school at all. My earliest memory of you is thinking that I was going to get kicked out of the college for an argument that you and I had in class. And I went home and I told my wife it was like it was like week two of the school and you and I had an argument and it was in front of the whole class. And I felt super ashamed afterwards. And then you wrote a blog about it you didn't name me but i knew it was me and everybody in my church knew it was me and i was like well i guess like maybe we'll just move and live with my mom or something

like i don't know i don't even remember this dude can you do you know what it was yeah yeah i know what it was about because it's like i i mean i brought it up to a therapist that's how like deep it is oh my gosh i my gosh, I'm so sorry. Send me the bill. Yeah, I'm really not that sensitive, but something about this one, it was just that, I don't remember exactly what,

it was in an Old Testament class. And I do remember the blog title. The blog title that you wrote was, does the devil have a 401k or something like that? Or does Satan have a 401k? And the whole argument we had was in my memory, I, it was the same idea of like, I think I true, uh, truthfully, I feel like I, I believed at that time that I would never be able to have a 401k. And so I would really, uh, I hated the idea of people having enough money to save for a future that was uncertain. And I had just moved from Mexico, working at an orphanage in and around abject poverty,

and then to go to a classroom where people are talking about trying to save up $750,000 for their retirement, it just didn't click in my head that Jesus followers would want to have, they'd be taking tens of thousands of dollars a year right now, putting it into a fake account that they can't even touch. When I like, I knew of faces, first names, last names, families, and stories that could be transformed by that money today. And so, yeah, I think I was a little emotional. I've even been getting mad about it right now. So I'm sorry.

I shouldn't get mad at that. Anyways, I just feel like the fact that I didn't get kicked out of the school after that, you know, that you're like you were like the the only full time professor on staff and like, you know, you're like i think you were one of the only phds teaching there at the time and that i was like a dumb 21 year old from you know coming from uh from the orphanage of mexico and i have an argument with you and and you win and then you write a blog about how you won and then like i didn't get kicked out of the school like i didn't i i just googled for the blog i can can't find it. It's not...

I'll find it. I do remember that title, though. That's way when I first started blogging. Yeah. It's probably... But you were arguing against retirement, and I was arguing for it, which I'm sympathetic to.

So there had to have been some overlap in our perspective because i i would be yeah i'm sure there was i'm sure there was was was i do you remember was i like upset because i mean that sounds like a great theological debate to have i well the problem okay i i remember a little bit that i think we're in proverbs and i think we were talking about something about like the ant and the sluggard and all that kind of stuff. And somehow somehow you or somebody tied it to like retirement savings. And, you know, like the idea of retirement in the Bible is only really there for like Levites, but it's not there for everybody else. But then we all just assume we're Levites or whatever. bites or whatever. But to me, I think like, well, a lot of I didn't live in Mexico for very long,

but there was still like this weird culture shock coming from Mexico to Southern California, because because of the standard of living. And like I lived in the valley, which for those you don't know, is a little bit less affluent. And I lived in like a pretty crappy apartment complex. I still live there. I just lived in that apartment over there and i live in this one um and it was so hard for me to see like the amount of wealth in simi valley california and i think that all of that was like really weighing on me a little bit it still does honestly but um it was a lot it was just a lot and so like like i said like the fact that i had names of people in my mind and families that i that i knew like if you i could put that money to kingdom use right now but you know we're trying to justify putting

it in a 401k so you might be able to use it someday maybe like that was that was really hard for me yeah um but do you still have nothing to do with that well because i we had we had all we were having ongoing conversations with the church there with cornerstone with um with francis was still there then he left a year later um people at ebc about that like people you know should you have a retirement account and i and i said well who who's gonna okay when you're 70 75 like who's gonna care for you and the response is always well the church should care for you i'm like how many old people are you supporting right now yeah yeah well man you know it's like well okay so if you're not doing like what kind of you know but i I resonate with everything you're saying.

I've been in many developing countries. Then it's like, oh, yeah, the grind is the grinding poverty. And it's like with so much excess, which you just get so used to it. And I feel sick to my stomach that we get used to it. So it's an interesting – it's a great conversation. Yeah. And when you're 21, I just got married. I had no kids.

Like you never think you're going to be 75 and an empty nester, right? But I think like my mom becoming an empty nester and living at home, I think that like just being involved in ministry and having old people here in our church and neighborhood and things, I get it. I still think there's like an excessive amount, right? Like there's some, there's some weird line and nobody really knows where it is, you know? And there's always like the justification of like, yeah, well, I live in Southern California where the, you know, a living wage for a family of four is $85,000 a year. So I need to be able to save for that, you know, whatever that's going to be in

2050 or whatever. But it's just it's so much money, man. It's so much money. It's crazy. It's great. Yeah, I think that makes us unique as a school that I was, you know, fresh, fresh out of the mission field. I could argue with a senior professor at the school. I could leave the school feeling like that was my last day and I was going to get a phone call that I was done. And I was just welcomed back, you know, after that. And obviously, you know, I stuck around and then I now I've had those arguments with students about other things and kind of full circle. But I really do appreciate. Yeah. Yeah. I just appreciate that that style of education that it is very like we need to build a trust and a relationship between one another. And there isn't a hierarchy of like, you have more letters behind your name or you're older, therefore, you're right with whatever this thing is. And because I'm a child or whatever, I absolutely know nothing. Like it's a very, I think there's a lot of equality within our classrooms that you

just don't find in other places. Yeah. It does have a, it's always had a non-hierarchical flavor to it, you know? Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, that's the other thing about, you know, the idea with the CEO model is I feel like we've never figured out and hopefully we are now figuring out as an organization, how can we have this culture and flavor ethos of like equality and non-hierarchy and all that kind of stuff? There's probably a better word than non-hierarchy that sounds sexier, but I don't know it yeah but how can we how can we have that but then there still have been like these touch points throughout the history of our school where stuff does fall on a ceo or a cfo or whatever it's like well that's not how we operate ever like we've uh i mean maybe maybe early days when francis was there there was more like a spearhead leader who's in charge of everything or whatever but for the last 18 years it definitely hasn't been like that. So why? Yeah. Do we just have those

titles because California requires that somebody sign a document as a CEO? Well, then let's just have it be that because, you know, render to Caesar what Caesar wants or whatever. See, I messed up another New Testament quote. But then what's that? Run into Caesar when Caesar wants. Give Caesar whatever the heck he wants, man. Give Caesar what he wants. I don't remember. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's just so, it's silly that I feel like, It's just so it's silly that I feel like, yeah, the groundwork has been laid from previous administrations at the school where.

I'm to combat any sort of existing ethos of hierarchy at the school. Right. It's not like I'm coming in where there used to be this like hierarchy and I'm trying to level it out. It's very level as it is. Even our executive team for the presidency, we all just work very similar to how the shared leadership at our church would work, where we're going to talk things out, we're going to discuss, we're not going to make a decision, so we're all on the same page or whatever. But that's the thing. When I have said this to other folks, they will tell me how inefficient it is. And they'll say, well, it's just so much more efficient to have a singular leader who can make

a decision. But to me, that is a value of corporate America that I don't know that the church needs to value. Like we don't need to have that expediency as a value in decision making, because it's not efficient to have to meet with two or three people before you make a decision. It's way easier for me to just decide this is what we're going to do. I would say another big kind of unwritten value of the school has been, I don't know how to describe it, just like not falling, like always asking the question, what's the best, most Christian way to do this or that? And let me give you an example. You probably remember this. I think it was a John Marshall teaching a class on ecclesiology. And one of his big points

is that ecclesiology, the church is a corporate community. What one person does affects other people. We're not a bunch of individuals separated from each other and like, oh, all the head knowledge going in, going in. And then it comes the time for the final and in typical john marshall fashion who is one of the most outside the box incredible teachers i've ever been around he's like okay for your final one of you is going to take the final on behalf of everybody else and the rest of you will be praying while this person is taking the final people were like what in the world like wait you can't do that's my grade he's like wait it's who's great it's my it's mine and all this individualism just came out

it's like what do we learn this year like no we're going to take a test we're going to the very nature of the test is going to reflect the basic ecclesiology that we talked about. So they did. They had one person, I think it was even Yvonne, that when she was a student took the final on behalf of class. And so you have an hour to help her to prepare. So it's all this, you know, come around and help her to prepare. And people were angsty, like, all right, come on, Yvonne. But it brought out this robust community in this classroom. I mean, it was crazy that she literally took the final while they're all praying for her while she's doing the final.

And he did it. And so we've, here I am. I'm, you know, we, Attorney Bible College. I'm a surrogate member, I guess. Yeah. You're estranged, but you'll come home. We'll get to it. I just, I love it. I love that.

I love that. Especially in that time in my life, I was in this kind of like, I wouldn't say iconic class, but just like questioning, like, why are we doing this? Is this the best way to do it? I don't want to just fall into just, you know, cruise control, Christianity. Like, let's just mix it up. Let's do things creative. Let's do things that are most impactful and even like you know assignments like even as a professor

not everybody learns a certain way of taking a multiple choice test or even even writing a paper some people are the you know some of the most brilliant interpreters of scripture are artists some of those brilliant interpretations of scripture are in Caravaggio and Rembrandt and other, you know, like artists just have a way of bringing out stuff in the text through art. So I'm like, okay, I'm going to test you on your knowledge of Isaiah. There's many different ways in which you can use your image of God bearing creativity to demonstrate that you have not just absorbed the knowledge of Isaiah, but it's become part of your life.

And there's many different ways in which I could assess that. So all that to say, I just, I loved just the freedom that teachers had. Is that still part of, I mean, the school? Tell me it's still there. Yeah, yeah, I think, yeah, I think that it looks a little bit different. So we're 100% online school now, which some people would say is contrary to having like a relational vibe to your school or whatever. And it does create difficulties, but it also creates a community of people all around the world. know, something that we was completely inaccessible students in Nepal and Italy and Australia and South Africa who there's no way they could have been students at our school before. And out of that has come a lot of different creative modes of people demonstrating competency

in an area. And that, yeah, some of it, I don't know how many of them are, you know, art projects, but some of them are. It's really up to the professor. Like it's up to the professor. And we give a ton of freedom for them to assess competency, assess like their understanding of a particular topic or book or whatever the class is. And however they want to do that, it's really there is there is a lot of freedom there. is a lot of freedom there um that yeah the john marshall story is but i actually told the story yesterday of uh with a mutual friend of ours chris cotri of another lesson that john marshall taught me which was actually to be very careful about who you work with and it was a similar thing where he

had like a group project thing and you all like shared a grade and i i got paired with somebody and the the lesson i because this person was a dingbat and the lesson I learned from it was like you don't want to get deep into something with someone who's like not committed to it like hit this this particular person's issue was just that they had so much going on in their life that they weren't able to commit to this project that we were supposed to be working on together. But John was very intentional in not allowing me or the other person in our group, like you can't pick up that person's slack. And so there's like all three of us are going to turn something in and each one is going

to equal 33% of your final grade for the three of you. And so we all got whatever it was like 60 something percent. And it was just because this person didn't do it, you know. And to me, like it was a very good lesson. And like, just be careful, you know, with with with with ministry, with even like hiring at the school, professors, staff members or people I do ministry with here or people I choose to like covenant my life with in foster care or family stuff or whatever. People I choose to like covenant my life with in foster care or family stuff or whatever. Like it's not just because you're willing doesn't mean that this is that's going to be a good outcome. I'm sure you've experienced that at the center, too. You know, just because someone wants to be involved doesn't necessarily mean they're going to bring a healthy culture to it, to the organization.

We've been deliberately slow and careful at bringing people on. We, I mean, the, the, since you ask, I guess, I mean, the, the, the center for faith, sexuality, and gender has huge potential of booming, becoming this big organization. And if a bit, if a business savvy person came in, they'd be like, there's so much untapped like potential here. And it was a few years ago, my wife and I looked at each other and says, do we want this to be big? Do we want to be managers of people? Do we want to whatever?

And I said, honestly, that sounds so stressful. I want to love on people. I want to create resources. I'm going to write books, read books, and live a sustainable life. write books, read books and live a sustainable life. I don't want to spend all my energy just managing people over because it, because with, with growth comes hiring and all this stuff. And when we have, we have been able to hire, but we're very,

very careful with who we bring on and, or even like, we've had a lot of people who could have internships, free labor, you know, all this stuff. I'm like, I, I, that just sounds so stressful to me, you know, like I don't yeah and like well you're missing there's there's 90 there's all this need that you're not reaching i'm like i just i want to be stewart well the needs that we are reaching and do that very well um but i don't feel this drive of just because we can grow we need to grow or get bigger like i don't you know i don't know I know it's the mindset of most other organizations. Do you guys have president, CEO titles and you act like that at the center?

Well, yes and no. We do our titles, yes. Do we act like that? No. You know, it's interesting, Ernesto. I mean, we function very much like you. I mean, I'm the president. I don't function as a president.

My wife, if anybody would be CEO-ish, my wife would do that. But even that, she's not making major decisions on her own, minor ones. And she's running point on a lot of different stuff but so we have um i would say five people that are at least half time to full time and we all run in different lanes and we all are kind of like view each other as well you're the authority in that lane what do you think is best here you know and um there's decisions that they don't need to check with us to make and other things that are bigger that we come but we don't we never have we hardly ever have meetings we might have right um there's no org chart there's

no org chart somewhere that like a decision tree to figure out who makes that we have no office no there's no there's no there's honestly no it's so relational and so far i'm not saying this is wasn't planned out this way like we don't have like meetings we have we'll get together and have wine and dinner and hang out and talk um so we have just kind of a relational rhythm um sometimes we see each other frequently sometimes we might go a few weeks without even seeing seeing each other um so no yeah yeah, we have the titles, I think. My title is President. I couldn't even say what most of the other titles are.

Yeah, that's interesting. I've never reflected on that, that we just don't have a – just because I don't want to be the guy at the top making all the decisions. That doesn't excite me, and nobody else does either. So we're just kind of like – we all have different gifts and lanes. Yeah, I think that's it. Like it's a it's a giftedness thing. Right. I think there are people I don't know them, but I'm sure they exist. That would be great. CEO, spearhead, leader type people.

But to assume that that's what you have to have it or that that's what the president or whatever needs to be, that type of person who functions exactly in that way. Um, that seems unhealthy. And I think that's, if I can make a statement, that's definitely not backed up by any data. I think that that's probably what causes literally all of these scandals that we see happening in the church all over the place is somebody stepping into a role with responsibilities and, um know, and power that they weren't ever really gifted or talented or called to take on. But the letters and the role said, these are the things you have to do. So you just threw somebody in the deep end. And guess what? Most people who can't swim, you know, they drown when you throw them in the deep end. They don't just learn to swim.

That's not really a thing to just be thrown in the deep end and figure it out. It's not going to go well for you. So, well, it's working for you guys. So then maybe I'll just keep doing it. And then if you fail, then I'll change directions like a year before or something. I think getting the right people around you, I think that's key. There definitely is. Because I'm so

particular about how we handled this the topic the conversation the lgbtq conversation that yeah there's certain things i'm like oh yeah no we're not saying that we're not doing this not you know but i brought on people that share the very very like-minded in that we don't all see on everything but i mean it's like yeah i don't have to, I don't have to like constantly do quality control because the people we brought on aren't going to say stupid stuff or, you know, for the most part, I might be the one saying stupid stuff. This episode is sponsored by Abide. Do you have trouble sleeping or do you battle anxiety and stress?

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If you subscribe now, you can receive 25% off your first year when you sign up for the premium subscription by texting the promo code THEOLOGY to 22433. Okay, so text 22433, enter THEOLOGY and get the 25% off your first year of the premium subscription. Sleep better, pray more, and meditate on God's life-changing word with Abide. One of the things about EBC that also just while I'm thinking about it, that really blew me away is just how genuinely exegetically driven the school was. Like we even, I was there when we revamped the curriculum to where we took out a lot of systematic theology and just put in just a ton of having students pour through scripture without a preconceived theological conclusion in mind. Is that still a big part of the way?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. We think that is so, and nobody else cares at all. I talk to students. I talk to potential students, pastors. I talk to different people. And I think it's just another way that this is how theological education is done. You do Systematics 101, your Ecclesiology, your Hermetology, Theology of God, all that kind of stuff.

And they think that that's supposed to be part of your education. And they can understand why you don't have those classes, but it's not actually cool to them. But the reason we haven't changed it is we are super committed to biblical studies and to like, you know, just going through the text over and over and over again. And without fail, all of our students that go to seminary realize or go to grad school after eternity, they realize how much more prepared they are for their systematic classes, their historical church theology or church history classes or whatever it might be. There's a friend of mine, a recent graduate who's at, well, I probably shouldn't say it. I don't care. He's at Fuller. I'm going to call you out, Fuller. Not that you're ever going to listen to this. But he's in an MA program there. And the truth is, you could have an undergraduate degree in communications, right?

And you can get into this MA in theology program at Fuller. And you will not study the whole Bible. It's that simple. You're not going to have to take an in-depth look at the entire Bible. You're going to do some Life of Christ type classes. You might do a Pentateuch class, but you're never going to spend a significant amount of time in Malachi or Haggai or Song of Songs or something like that. You might even miss some letters, you know, if they're not like the Pauline letters that everybody's debating about. And to me, it's just like, well, if that's the path that our students are going to take, either seminary or ministry or even like, you know, just lay leaders within their church, we want to take the short amount of time to prepare them for ministry, for biblical literacy, so that they can actually have experience and knowledge and understanding of all of Scripture and not just whatever hot button areas of scripture people wanted to study at that time.

Yeah. So when I was there, at least the first year, the students would take Old Testament survey, New Testament survey, along with other classes. But then the most unique thing was the second year, they go back through, they spend an entire year combing back through the Old Testament on a much more in-depth level i mean they might spend weeks in like jeremiah another week in a couple weeks in in isaiah minor prophets and then the third year they did the same thing with the new testament so they're just getting just going through over and over through the text of scripture and it's not until the fourth year when when the

and then then the theology that was done it was historical theology it was not here's all the right answers you must land on. It's here's how the church has wrestled with the text of scripture. Yeah. I love it, man. I'm totally sold. So you said you guys have gone fully online now. I was there when we introduced the online branch. And I'm sure you've reflected on what is the future of Christian education in terms of in-class versus online.

Because every single school I know, or let me say most of the schools I know, from how I understand the structure, their online branch or whatever is kind of carrying the school. I mean, if that wasn't there financially, they just couldn't make it. So most schools I know, online cohort module, this has become a significant part of the school, even though they still have in-person class. Do you see that trend continuing? And what does that mean for education? It keeps getting more and more online.

And we can end up talking about conversations in the raw, which we partnered on and other things. Yeah. So this is probably an overstatement. So take it for what it is. But most schools, honestly, that are being carried by their online program, I think it's like a real dirty game they're playing, if I'm being honest. Because most schools are also charging the same amount of tuition, right? So they might charge $7.50 a credit hour to be on campus, you know, in Southern California. And they also might charge $7.50 a credit hour to be online. But the truth is that most of what you're paying for as a student

is the campus. You're paying for like the grounds to be maintained, the sports teams, the cafeteria, the dormitories, like all those different things. That's what your dollars are funding, right? And so there is a semi-fair transaction between campus students and the school in that they pay an exorbitant amount of money, you know, whatever, $80,000 for an undergraduate degree, but they got to live at Disneyland for four years and they got to like hang out with their friends. And so like, if you want to spend your money on that and go into debt with that, then I think that's a dumb decision for most people, but whatever, you can do it. However, if you're spending that same amount of money or even close to it for an online education and you are not getting to experience all of the things that your dollars are actually paying for, it's kind of a dirty deal.

Right. It's like you're you're paying for some other student to have, you know, intramural sports that they get to play on campus and all of the costs associated with that. they get to play on campus and all of the costs associated with that. But you don't get to you don't get to do any of it. The story that I tell around this idea is that my brother was a student at UC Davis. He was a chemical engineering student when he was a student there. And I remember flying home one day and seeing the Davis men's soccer team on my flight. And I just did like some math to figure out like how how much did it cost to fly these guys from LA to this, to Sacramento, where they're going to go back to Davis. And it's thousands of dollars, not to mention the uniforms they're wearing and then like the customized bags and whatever other costs were associated with this trip, with the school, they were playing in Southern

California. And I'm realizing that even at that level, like my brother, who's just trying to get a degree so that he can go work at a petroleum plant or whatever, like he's paying for these kids to play soccer. That's so silly that, and I think that over pandemic and especially like with, especially with the financial pressures that are on millennials and Gen Z, I don't see those big schools, unless there's an endowment funding their existence, I don't see them existing in 10 to 15 years in their campus form. I just don't, in their current campus form. Now, they might downsize or get rid of sports or get rid of intramural things or get rid of the water slide or the lazy river that goes through their campus or whatever the different things they have to do to cut costs. But at some point, this bubble of like student

debt and the crazy cost associated with going to college is going to have to pop. There's some Barna study, and I wish I had the exact stat, but it's something like 80% of people don't even work in the field that's related to whatever they got their undergraduate degree in. Right. And so America, the lie. And I was there as well, too, that that the reason you go to college is to get a job. The reason you get an education or a piece of paper is because you want to get a particular job. And that's still true of some hard sciences, you know, whatever it is, nursing or my brother. I don't want anybody making the gasoline that goes in my car except for my brother, right? Like I want somebody to have a chemical engineering degree to know how to make the gas that goes in my car. But for a lot of degrees or for a lot of jobs, it's just not true. And something that we have kind of nailed down or really pressed

harder on at Eternity is that the purpose of education is to change and transform your life by being exposed to things that you've never heard before or, you know, ideas that you never heard before, and to have those ideas or concepts evaluated by somebody who understands them. That's really what education is. You are, in like a New Testament sense, like you're submitting yourself to the discipleship of these people, of your professors and the people who write the curriculum. And you're asking them to in a good educational environment, you're asking them to help transform you as a person through exposure to this knowledge. And that can be Bible. It could be history, philosophy. It could be arts, it could be English literature, it could be whatever it is. That's really what you're paying for in education. And I think that the

longer that you continue to believe the idea that like your degree is going to get you a job, I just feel like there's an entire generation of us millennials will just tell you it's not true. I mean, how many biblical studies PhDs are there out there who do not work at colleges teaching? They don't have research grants. I mean, there's thousands. I get four or five emails a month from people with multiple letters behind their name who want to teach at our college, and they probably have $80,000 worth of debt or somewhere around there. And just the idea that you're going to go to do this thing so that you can get this job. I just think it's a it's a really weird way to view

education. I'm sure there's some, you know, government funding post-war era type thing that really explains how it all came about. But it it's not sustainable. If you just take it to any other business model where you are tricking middle class and poor clients to pay more for your product than what it's actually worth or whatever the return on investment is going to be, eventually that'll pop. Eventually it'll be exposed as corrupt, which has happened a lot in higher education and people will slowly move away from it there are some Yale Harvard Stanford all those schools are gonna be around like they have endowments they're fine but other you know smaller ish or a middle-sized semi-large Christian colleges unless they change their model of education, where the funds that students pay actually go towards the education and not the entertainment of the students, it's not going to

last. Now, okay, so you did say earlier that the government does highly subsidize education, right? So that's even with Christian schools, right? So it's not really – the high rates of tuition is not – like if that bubble pops, they still have 80% funding coming from the government, right? Yeah. Sorry. When I say government funding, I'm including loans because they're government-backed loans. Yeah, which is why you can't – which is why death can't even absolve you from student loan debt and neither can bankruptcy. can't, which is why death can't even absolve you from student loan debt, neither can bankruptcy. Yeah, students that are getting like grants and scholarships from the government, like Pell grants and things like that, the highest earning Pell grant people are getting around like $5,000

a year, and that you have to be in the bottom like 15% of income in the US. Don't quote me on those exact numbers, but it's somewhere around there. So when I say government support, I'm meaning like the government giving access to Stafford loans and student loans that are subsidized, you know, for that time that the student's not paying back or paying interest. But yeah, people are, I mean, I think right now, the average student graduates with $35,000 worth of debt, and that's not debt. That's not a private, uh, private loan that they have with JP Morgan. Like these are government subsidized loans through the schools. Yeah. And would you say, so going so going back um because i've got two uh well one kid oh she started college today actually yeah she's at a junior college down down the street so that and that

model is you know very to cost hardly anything she's getting classes done. But what about for the student that does recognize, okay, I know this college is expensive. Not the junior college, but maybe a Christian college. And they're going for it. They are going for the experience. And even looking back, I kind of look at my two years at Master's College, which were a wonderful two years. And most of that was the late night dorm conversations, the cafeteria times, the memories. Looking back, I'm like, yeah, that costs a lot more than just simply getting just the education piece. But I'm like, all of that was part of this really, I would say, awesome and important experience i mean so what you're saying is

or let me are you saying you know like for somebody that kind of knows going in and i didn't know this is me reflecting back i didn't know going in i just which you're gonna call it but like um if somebody says yeah here's this other very very low cost thing you're just going to get education or there's this more expensive version that has all of this experience most of which was really helpful um yeah yeah sure we just say as long as that i mean that that's that's for someone who wants that they want the intramurals and they know they're paying for it great awesome you're saying people some with a disconnect can be people maybe don't realize that they're paying not just for that educate they're paying for so much more than just the education yeah i'd say there's multiple levels to the conversation so one

of them is exactly what you said like i think um parents uh this is another staff staff from barnard that like most parents and kids don't even talk about the school they're going to go to um there's under 10 of people in this study they did under 10 of people even talk about the school they're going to go to. There's under 10% of people in this study they did, under 10% of people even talk to like spiritual leaders or pastors about their education, right? This has not been a discipleship conversation. This is just like whatever the heck you want to do with your family is fine. But go back to what you said. Yes, I agree. You need to decide if that's something you're willing to pay for. And let's just put a price tag on it. Let's just say 50 grand, which would be a pretty affordable, pretty low cost four year degree. So $50,000, half of 100, you know, more than the average income per year in the United States right now.

that on what you're primarily paying for at an in-person college, which is the experience. And if so, just be aware that that's what you're primarily paying for. And then know that that's where your dollars are going. And then the next question is, is that a good use of your money? Is that being a good steward of Jesus's money for the kingdom to spend $50,000 on entertainment for your 18 year old over the next four years. And that was not just, not just entertainment. It doesn't sound like the answer yet. You can't reduce it all to, because there is character. I mean, there's even from a Christian perspective, just again, when I, when I say I had a good experience at Master's College, now, now university, so much of that was, I would say, under the umbrella of discipleship.

Yeah. Yeah. And if there was an amount of money that I could pay right now that would guarantee that my children would be discipled into Jesus followers who love Jesus and who live for his kingdom, I'd start saving it right now. Right? Yeah. That's not necessarily a promise that a Christian university or college can make about their experience. But those are the promises, like this is a Christian college, a Christian environment, a Christian discipleship, discipleship-based dormitories, like whatever

words they use that almost like give this false sense of security that when your child comes here, don't worry, we're going to give them a Christian education. We're not going to teach them any liberal things. And at the back end, like they're going to be good, you know, church going, Jesus loving Christians at the end. But I'm sure there are people that you went to college with. I know people who went to Christian colleges who that was a horrible experience for them. And it actually caused them to walk away from the faith. Right. And so I don't know that, uh, that part's not a guarantee.

Um, obviously, but yeah, you can have an amazing experience. I mean, I, yeah, I'm a little biased because I, I never went and lived in a dorm at a college or anything like that, but I'm, I've made friends. Like I had social networks. I was part of a solid church. I've been discipled. I was discipled that whole time by people in my church or friends or whatever it might be. And the truth was that for my family, it just wasn't an option to spend $70,000 or $50,000 for me to go have this experience. And I think that's an easy answer. Those are the people that usually end up becoming students at Eternity. Honestly, they're like, well, it's not that I didn't want to go

to X school. It was never an option for me. Right? Well, that's what I did like about Eternity is you had people that came from more higher socioeconomic backgrounds and many others that didn't they just hey i want to be trained in a classroom setting on in theology and bible i just can't afford the other i don't want to go into debt so and that's where i feel like eternity isn't the only way and i think is it the best way i mean what do you mean by best um But it can come alongside the typical way as another option for people that do want solid theological education and just can't afford to pay for other. Let's just assume you're a little more negative than I am. Let's assume those experiences you're paying for are actually good.

Yes. Still 50 grand a year. I can't. Sorry, I can't. You know. Yeah. Yeah. Let's assume that your 19-year-old needs a slip and slide. And without the slip and slide, I swear to you, like they're going to we're going to walk away from Jesus. No, listen, I'm not saying that. OK, this this is this is a seat of ignorance and you're sitting in one, too. OK, so neither of us are multimillionaires. Neither of us make over half a million dollars a year. you're probably like 450, but you'll get there, right? The truth is, I don't know the experience. But what I do see is that Jesus,

Paul, Peter, John, all of the prophets, they have no problem being poor people and looking at rich covenant family and saying, are you sure that's what you're supposed to do with all that money? Yeah. And that's where I'm at. Like I'm a regular, you know, middle of the road, average income person living in Southern California. But I talk to families. I interact with students and families, you know, sometimes early on or people here in my church or in my community or whatever it might be.

I say, I don't know what it's like to have the, they would call it blessing of having, you know, making a quarter million dollars a year and having an option for my child to go to a school that's going to cost me $75,000. But I still get to ask you as your brother, your covenant brother in Christ, I still get to ask because it's not your money. That's what we all believe. And you would say that. And if I put it on a test, you click the button, right? So you don't think it's your money. So it's not actually your decision. It's actually, it is a kingdom decision, which ought to probably include members of the kingdom rather than just like you and your

wife sitting at home and deciding if this is going to look good on our bumper. Like, you know, our daughter goes to whatever it might be, which that's not why people do it. But that is a reason. It is a reason people go to legacy schools and things like that. Or the kids go to the school that their parents went to. It's for the name recognition. It's for like the consistency. It's for the status and honor in society. It's not.

And sometimes all those things are true, and they really did pray and consider and spoke with different people in their community and church and feel like this is the best use of the money that they've been given to steward for their son or daughter to go to this school. And that's fine. I think most of the people at those schools, though, that never happened. Right, right. Well, and also, yeah, it's tough when you're not in an ecclesiological environment that's even close to that kind of communal, you know, like I'm just thinking about there's people in my current context. I'd like, absolutely, I'd want them to speak into the intimate details of her life but then others i'm like you don't even know my kid's name like i wouldn't ask you like hey what do you think i should spend my you know so we sit next to go to church and you haven't asked me a question in two years you know like i um but if it was an actual like because what you're casting is a new

testament vision for this radical corporate community brand of Christianity. That's very much very new. I mean, you could, you could, even though you don't read the new Testament, if you did, the appendix, which happens after acts is the appendix. All right. Those are just appendice one, appendix two two appendix three uh ernesto teaches you're an old testament guy you're framing in terms of like this is what more of a new testament vision of of a of a community unfortunately the ecclesiology in many churches is not even close to that and that's kind of going back to our original conversation about should we have a 401k the church well the church should care for people i'm like our church is set up with's kind of going back to our original conversation about should we have a 401k? Well, the church should care for people. I'm like, our church is set up with that kind of financial structure.

It sounds like it's not even close to something like that. Yeah. Well, you and I, we all do all sorts of things in our life because we realize the world's broken. And this is not ideal, but we just have to do it this way. But that should be a process where you realize like, man, I really wish that I didn't need a 401k or Roth IRA or whatever it is because I really wish that I was a part of a community that could care for me long term. Maybe that's not going to happen. So open your dumb 401k account, but then also realize that this is a mark of the broken world that you live in and the imperfect church community that you're a part of. This isn't ideal. This isn't like

a no-brainer, yes, an automatic decision that we should be making. This is kind of like, and same thing with the amount of money spent on school or where your kids go to college or even how we become biblically. Eternity shouldn't exist. In an ideal world, we're a parachurch organization. It is our job to come alongside the church to do, truthfully, what the church used to do on their own for most of Christian history. But we got to a point as a capital C church where we needed support from organizations like Eternity. So my whole existence as a leader at the school and all of that is realizing that we shouldn't be here. But we got to. So this is a compromise.

This is a second best. But we've got to do it and do it to the best of our ability. Ernesto, how can people find out more about eternity? And what kind of person, lots of people listening, what kind of person would you encourage to explore is, you know, checking out eternity and the different theological educational offerings you guys have? Yeah. There might be for them. Uh, yeah, you could find eternity through, uh, Google or being or Yahoo or duck, duck, go, whatever, whatever you're into. I don't think we're hitting on duck, duck, go. And yeah, eternityternity, we are for everybody.

And that sounds stupid. But our desire is for anybody who wants to know the word better, for anybody who wants to get a formal education with subject matter experts who are going to disciple you and care for you along the way, no matter what stage of life you're in. We do have traditional college degrees and things like that, but we also have certificates and shorter degrees and things that you can do. So yeah, it's literally for anybody who wants to do that. Awesome. So eternitybobacollege.com, is that the URL? No, eternity.edu. Ernesto, really appreciate the conversation and thanks for the good time. Love what you guys are doing. Hope people check it out.

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