Beeson Podcast, Episode #726 Name Date >>Announcer: Welcome to the Beeson podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University. Now your host, Doug Sweeney. >>Doug Sweeney: Welcome to the Beeson Podcast. I'm your host, Doug Sweeney, and I'm joined today by my friend Phil Ryken, President of Samford’s sister School, Wheaton College, who delivered a marvelous commencement address to those who graduated this spring here at Beeson. So thank you, Dr. Ryken, for being with us on the podcast. >>Ryken: Thank you, Dean Sweeney. It's good to see you. We enjoyed being at Wheaton together, and it was great to reconnect at Beeson. >>Doug Sweeney: Sure was. So, you're a well-known Christian leader. All our listeners know about Wheaton College, but some of them probably don't know a lot about things like how you came to faith and got involved in pastoral ministry before you became the President of Wheaton. So tell us just a little bit about your background. How'd you come to know the Lord and how'd you get into ministry? >>Ryken: I'd love to do that. You know, every testimony is totally the same and completely different. It's wonderful the way God writes a unique story in each of our lives. One of the great privileges of my life is to have a lifelong connection to Wheaton College. My father began teaching here when I was one year old, and I grew up right here in Wheaton, Illinois, going to Wheaton Christian Grammar School, and just really being immersed in the Wheaton community. We had a lot of Wheaton students in our home when I was growing up, and all I ever wanted to be was a Wheaton student. I came to Faith in Christ about age six. I distinctly remember kneeling in my bedroom on Howard Street and asking Jesus to be my Savior. And I'd been hearing the gospel at school, at home, at church, just in a very consistent way. And there wasn't any one particular influence or particular event that I remember, but just hearing the gospel. And I was pretty well aware that I was in a sinful condition. You know, by age six, I had had enough experience with that to realize the need of a savior for sure. Particularly by the time I got to junior high, I was thinking more seriously about how to use my gifts. And I was raised in a home, not only through the influence of my parents, but also my grandparents, where there was a sense of responsibility for the gifts that God has given you. How are you going to use those gifts? God has given you so much. How are you going to use that to serve him? Particularly by the time I was in junior high, I realized I have gifts to use. And I was thinking then about the possibility of pastoral ministry or some way of serving the Lord. That really became a clarified calling, for sure, by freshman year of college. And there were decisions I made in my growing up years, including the decision to focus on debate rather than athletics, really to develop a more confident way of speaking and arguing and things that you learn how to do when you're on the debate team. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah, that may have helped you a little bit as a president. >>Ryken: Yeah, yeah, you do. So, but I just had many, many positive influences in my life. And I'll just mention a couple of things that were significant, very significant to go through a communicants class at my home church, Bethel Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Wheaton, Illinois, around age 12 or 13, and just really ask the question, is this the faith that I profess? Am I ready to say this publicly? And what does it mean to be a follower of Christ? And really solidifying that. I would also say there were opportunities for me within the debate community in northern Illinois and also nationally to be known as a Christian, to witness to people who are not followers of Christ, to take a little bit more of a stand for Christ. That was a good context for me, another way of making my faith my own. >>Doug Sweeney: We overlapped a little bit as undergraduates at Wheaton and everybody back then knew about your dad who was a well-known English prof at Wheaton, but I can't remember, was English your major as an undergrad? >>Ryken: Yeah, so I was a double major. I was English and Philosophy. I came in as an English major at Wheaton. I loved literature. One of the really transformational experiences of my life was going on Wheaton in England with college students, trips my dad led. We used to go to England for 11 weeks back in the good old days. Most study abroad trips in the summer maybe aren't so long these days because of expense and so forth. But I was in an atmosphere of great books and reading and poetry and drama and started reading that kind of literature much more seriously by the end of junior high and into high school and a lot of it was sitting in on Wheaton College classes and just being on bus trips with students that also love poetry and wanted to go to plays and were talking about literature. But I really loved my introduction to philosophy class with Arthur Holmes at Wheaton College and particularly how he articulated a Christian worldview and it kind of put a structure around Christian belief and Christian faith. And I was interested in that. So I took a class in philosophy of religion and loved Jay Wood as a professor. And next thing you know, I was TA-ing in the philosophy department and taking a decent number of philosophy classes as well. And the recommendation I had, and I can imagine some listeners of this podcast or people that are maybe thinking about Beeson Divinity School, which by the way, I hope we talk about, I hope that's on your question list because I'd love to talk a little bit about Beeson. The advice I received is, look, you can get deeper biblical theological studies in a seminary context, but it could be good to get a broader intellectual preparation, and reading great literature is a great way to prepare for ministry. Learning how to think philosophically is great preparation for that. What I tell students at Wheaton College is study what you love, and I believe that God gives us our affections and desires if they're steered towards him. And we can trust him that the things that we love to do are also things that are going to align with our kingdom passions. And so I really think English and philosophy are two of many wonderful ways to prepare for seminary education. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah. And were you thinking all the way through undergraduate study that you were headed to seminary and were you processing what you were learning in relation to a seminary education to come? >>Ryken: Yeah, so that's a great question. So, the other thing that I would have thought about coming out of high school is a career in politics and a calling in public life in that direction. I probably still was thinking a little bit about that freshman year of college. I took political science with Mark Amstutz, he's a great prof. But he, among others, strongly encouraged me to think about a pastoral direction. In my home church, there were many people that were encouraging that as well. I don't know that I was in the classroom thinking, oh, this is how this is going to relate to pastoral ministry. I probably wouldn't have even known all the ways that it would relate. What I was more so doing is using summers for ministry and doing full-time summer internships at my home church and youth ministry. My wife, Lisa and I were actively involved in leading Junior High Youth Group and helping with Senior High Youth Group through our college years. And things I was doing on campus as well, going into Chicago to Chicago Reed Mental Health Center, which was a maximum security mental health facility as a ministry coming out of Wheaton. That was a valuable experience for me. Serving as a resident assistant, that's a 24/7 kind of ministry. I really learned what it's like to have a role that's bigger than who you are and to have a role that you always play. There's never a time on a campus when you're not an RA. You're always an RA, even if you're not on your dorm floor. So there were a lot of ministry experiences, and I wasn't so much thinking about, okay, I need to do this so that I can be ready to do that. I was just wanting to use my gifts for ministry and seizing the opportunities that were right in front of me. And this is something else I tell students a lot. You don't have to have a master plan. If there's a place that God wants and needs you to be, he'll get you there. The thing to do is just be faithful today to the things God is calling you to do today and then be open to His calling for the opportunity that comes next. And He can orchestrate things down the road if we're available. >>Doug Sweeney: Did you go straight to seminary from Wheaton College? What was that decision-making process like? And I ask that, it's a little bit loaded. We have lots of prospective seminary students who listen to the podcast and just wonder, how do I know if the Lord is moving me in this direction? >>Ryken: Yeah, I have a lot of those conversations on our campus as well. Just a comment about calling. There's a sense in which a calling specifically to pastoral ministry, to ordained gospel ministry, doesn't fully get confirmed until you are set apart by the Holy Spirit for that work. And there's typically a long period of preparation that leads up to that. And the calling won't have that final confirmation until hands are laid on you in a biblical way for ordination. So you have to be a little patient with the process. I really like a Puritan construction of calling where there's an inward call and there's an outward call. There's an inward sense, God is leading me towards this. I don't want to be presumptuous. I don't want to get ahead of where the Lord is, but I have a desire for this kind of ministry and I'm going to start making decisions based on that. How I use my time, the kind of learning I do, where I get an education. And that needs to be confirmed by the witness of the church. The Holy Spirit's not just speaking to you, he's also speaking to you through others, and who are confirming and affirming your gifts, maybe putting a sharper point on the calling that you have. So I think over the long term, there needs to be an inward call and an outward call. My view of seminary education is that it can give you about half of what you need for healthy gospel ministry. The other half you have to get in the church, in those life experiences, with those living mentors in a congregational context. It may not be exactly 50/50 in the divine economy, but the education can do a lot, but it can't do everything, and we shouldn't expect it to do everything. And I really encourage people thinking about seminary education to spend about as much time thinking about where they're going to be involved in church, what's a pastoral ministry that they really respect and want to be patterned after, because that's a huge decision that you make in a seminary context. Let me just say one other thing before I briefly answer your question about how I approach this. Beeson absolutely is on my short list of seminaries that I recommend to Wheaton College students, and for a lot of different reasons. I think it's a seminary that believes that the Bible is the Word of God and wants people to be faithful to the scriptures. It's ministry-minded. I love your chapel and how it's at the center of campus, the way that it puts worship at the center of spiritual preparation. I think the spiritual formation piece, which is very important at Beeson, it's not just Old Testament and New Testament and Hebrew and Greek and systematic theology and church history, yes, yes, all of that. But it's also, how am I growing in Christ? And a question I love to ask people that are thinking about ministry or maybe in an internship or church calling is just this question, how do people grow spiritually? That is a simple question, but it's also a much more complex question than people realize when you start getting into it, you realize I really need to understand how people grow spiritually. And I think that's an important orientation at Beeson. I love the fact that it's a school where students from a variety of different evangelical traditions can really make a home. My connection to Beeson is partly been through people that have a Wheaton connection, either studied at Wheaton or taught at Wheaton. Lyle Dorsett, Timothy George, Doug Sweeney, Frank Thielman, Paul House. Those have been some of the connection points for me with Beeson. But so I think those are all just really, really positive things. So I looked at a number of different evangelical seminaries when I was coming out of Wheaton College. And I was definitely looking at Westminster Theological Seminary because I came out of a confessional, reformed theological tradition. And I didn't really focus on that so much during my time at Wheaton. I mean, I was in a Presbyterian Church, but I wasn't taking a lot of systematic theology, and I wanted to make sure I really understood the Westminster Confession of Faith and catechisms and understood the Scriptures from a reformed point of view. I had that tested at Wheaton, people from different evangelical traditions, and those were great conversations. What they served to do for me mainly is grow an appreciation for the strength of other traditions, but also strengthen my Presbyterian reform convictions. There was a generous elder in our local church who said, hey, I'm on the board at Westminster Seminary. I would love for you to be my guest. Please fly out with me. Stay with me. I'd love for you to visit Westminster Seminary. And just really quickly as I interacted with faculty there, I had a sense of being at home and a strong sense of confirmation. So that was a great choice for me for ministry, but it's a prayerful choice and I just really encourage people. There are lots of places you can get theological education. If you're preparing for ministry, you want to go to a place that believes that the Bible is the Word of God and that the Bible is actually what the Holy Spirit uses to change people's lives. So that makes your list a little bit shorter. >>Doug Sweeney: Amen. All right. One other thing that students who self-select and come to Beeson usually have in mind is a strong commitment to learning. Beeson is one of the more rigorous, academically speaking, divinity schools around, and I know you were someone who, when you were young and today as well, puts a high premium on learning and rigor in the intellectual life. Some things that our students try to sort out while they're here in terms of the Lord's leading in their life have to do with teaching versus preaching. Should I go on and do a doctorate? Should I move right into parish ministry? And Dr. Phil Ryken is somebody who went on and did a doctorate in Oxford. How did you think that through? If you were somebody who was sure you were going to be a pastor, why go to Oxford and do a PhD? >>Ryken: Yeah, I get that question a lot because I think some of those students that are kind of, they love learning so much and they would love to do that academic learning, but they also feel drawn to ministry and they, you kind of want to have it all and figure out how it all fits into one life. I will just put up a caution here. I love learning. I mean, nobody's more committed to the life of the mind than I am, I think. But also, the Bible gives a lot of cautionary words about that. Knowledge has a way of puffing up. It can be used in prideful ways. So just really making sure our hearts are in the right place to give guidance to our minds and their love for learning, I think is really important. One of the main things for me was ... well, there were a few things. One was a sense that I had not yet developed my gifts to their fullness, that there was not just more content that I could learn, but there was a sharpening of intellectual rigor of the ability to write and make an argument, just a sense of incompleteness. So I went directly from Westminster Seminary to Oxford University. Another thing is, we felt pretty strongly God was likely calling us to a community that was in the environment of learning, a church near a university, of which there are many, of course. And I kind of did like the idea of being able to do a little teaching, perhaps in a college or university environment. This is the community I was raised in. But I was crystal clear I was not going to get a PhD for the purpose of being in academia, because I had a clear sense of my own calling to pastoral ministry. So we made choices. We made a strong commitment to our local church. I was leading worship pretty regularly, preaching occasionally. I had the privilege my last year at Oxford of traveling into London once a week to attend lectures by Dick Lucas at the Cornhill Training Institute. Dick Lucas is a phenomenal Bible expositor and has been a great mentor. I wanted to do things, I knew it was possible for me to drift away from a strong sense of that calling. So I wanted to actually nurture that calling during my time of doctoral work. So that was important for me. And as part of my exploration of the possibility of coming to Wheaton, I just made it really clear to the Board of Trustees, I would view this as a form of pastoral ministry. I don't view it as stepping out of a pastoral calling. If you think that's a good fit for Wheaton, let's keep talking. If you don't, then we don't need to continue this conversation further, because my sense of calling to gospel ministry is really core for me. >>Doug Sweeney: One thing I haven't told our listeners yet is that you served for a long time as a pastor at 10th Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. Was that as soon as your dissertation was done? Was that the next move you made? >>Ryken: Yeah, so we've got really great stories of God's provision and calling. Here's what happened. So I was finishing up at Oxford. I was planning to come back in pastoral ministry. You're young, you don't really know how to go about looking for a job, but you say, Lord, help me. And I tell our students, they don't need to make life any more complicated than it is. If you have something you need, the direction you're seeking, just ask the Lord for it and wait patiently and he'll provide it. That's what I believe in have experienced. There was a tenure track teaching position open at Wheaton in theology. I saw it in Christianity Today, basically days before the deadline to apply. And I said to myself, you know, we've always said to the Lord we're ready to serve Wheaton College again if you ever call us back. This is probably the one academic job I'm interested in exploring. So I was close to the deadline and I wanted to reach ... in those days it was kind of hard to connect. We didn't have the Internet in those days, so I called back to Philadelphia. I tried to get Sam Logan, who's the president of Westminster Seminary. Sam is very generous in his encouragement. He's a good person to give a reference for you. He wasn't available, so I said, okay, what about Will Barker? Will Barker was the chief academic dean at Westminster. He's been a friend and mentor as well. So Dr. Barker said, look, I'll write a reference for you for Wheaton College, but I want you to know the 10th Presbyterian Church is looking for an associate minister to preach every week. And I want you to do this for me. I want you to write a letter to James Boyce, tell him that you're available. So I listened to Dr. Barker, but I would never have even known about that opportunity unless I happened to see that little thing in Christianity Today that I was almost late for ... this little chain of providences and God could have worked it out another way. I ended up traveling to the United States, candidating at three different churches, all of which offered me an opportunity. So I don't know if you call that a successful trip or an unsuccessful trip, but I left Philadelphia with a very strong sense of calling to serve at 10th Presbyterian Church. I didn't hear from them for quite some time. Actually, I called back to the elder who was in charge of the search process, and he said, oh yeah, Ryken, right? And I said, yes, sir. And he said, you're our guy. We just had some things to work out on this end. So I went from thinking that I needed to think about other opportunities. So anyway, That’s just one little snippet of things. But I'll just say generally, if God has a place He wants you to be, He'll get you to that place. You don't need to worry about it. You don't need to strive for it. You just need to be faithful. >>Doug Sweeney: And you were at 10th for a while, more than a decade, right? >>Ryken: Yeah, 15 years of ministry there, overlapped with James Boyce for five years, and then came to Wheaton in 2010, having served for a decade on Wheaton's Board of Visitors and Board of Trustees. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah. So obviously, Wheaton's a great school. The presidency of Wheaton is a wonderful position to serve in. But I bet you were a little torn when you were trying to figure out whether to stay at 10th and lead as the pastor there or move to Wheaton. Am I right? Or were you just really convinced from God that he was moving you to Wheaton? >>Ryken: Yeah. We went through a whole process. We knew that a transition was coming at Wheaton. I keep using “we” because these are all things that Lisa and I talked about and prayed about, and I haven't even highlighted some of the key things ... the way she's been involved in that process, but I'll highlight one now. So we were praying about the opportunity of coming to Wheaton. Wheaton had started its search process. I did not apply for the position. I just said, Lord, if you want me to be at Wheaton, I'm available if that's where you have for me, and I'll just leave it in your hands. So a couple of things happened that were significant. One of them was Lisa said to me, “I feel like I don't have an agenda. We're ready to stay in Philadelphia for the rest of our lives. We're ready to serve this congregation until we die. We're ready for that. But if God calls us to Wheaton, we'll go.” And I said, that's a really good place for me to be too. I don't have an agenda. I don't need an agenda. God needs people that are on his agenda, not people with their own agendas, which of course is a big struggle for me as much as anybody. So on the eve of Wheaton starting its process, I went to my parents. We actually went to our parents and to Lisa's parents both. Lisa's parents both graduated from Wheaton, have tons of Wheaton connections. We said, look, this process is starting at Wheaton. We don't want to be presumptuous, but somebody might nominate us or we might end up being part of this process. So we're telling you now that we're not going to tell you anything about that because we wanted, particularly my parents, to have the freedom to say, oh, Philip never tells us anything. We don't know. Whatever the rumor is, they won't know anything about it. I said to my dad, the earliest you'd hear anything from me, if anything happened with this, is the night before it was publicly announced. So the reason I said this is I wanted his advice. I said, so if you've got any advice, now's the time to give it. He said, well, I've been thinking about this a lot, he said, “Don't underestimate the influence and significance of what you're doing in church ministry in Philadelphia. And don't overestimate how much influence a college president actually can have. Because the institution's a lot bigger than you are.” And I said, well, that's a really good word for me. And I'm not gonna try to figure out what's a better place for me, or what has more influence or anything like that. It doesn't matter. It's where the Lord wants me to be. So that helped me set aside trying to think about or strategize something that I didn't need to think about or strategize. We went through a whole process with this thing, and eventually the search committee came to me and said, “Look, people would like you to be part of this process. Are you willing to be part of this process?” And we were totally ready and sort of off we went with the process. But I also told the search committee, I cannot come unless I have a release from my elders. And I love a book that Francis Schaeffer wrote called No Little People, No Little Places. He talks about the difference between intrusion and extrusion. Intrusion is when you put yourself forward or try to elevate yourself to a place that God doesn't have for you. That's what [inaudible 00:24:40] does, getting ready for the death of David. He says, I will be king. That's intrusion. You don't want that. Extrusion is when God pulls you out of where you are and puts you in the place he wants you to be. One of the little side comments he makes is, if you think you actually want a position of more prominence or leadership or influence, you have no idea what you're even asking for because the burdens that go with that, they're gonna be just crushing for you. There's only one reason you would do it, and that's if God called you to do it. And then it wouldn't matter how difficult it was or what a burden it was, because God was calling you to do it. So I think that's a paraphrase, obviously, and Schaeffer uses Moses and other biblical examples, but it's a good principle to follow. This has been kind of a long answer. I won’t go through all the steps that went along the way. But it became really clear to us and clear to my lead elder, and then eventually pretty clear to the other elders as well, that God was giving us this freedom. It was very difficult, many, many tears. My wife in some ways is a woman in exile because she's not in the church that she loved. And it turns out, she likes my preaching about as well as anybody's preaching and loves being [crosstalk 00:26:00] every week. >>Doug Sweeney: She’s biased. >>Ryek: Who knew? You know, surprise is surprise. So there are definitely losses that have come with it, but also tremendous gains that have come with it as well. >>Doug Sweeney: Many people listening to this interview right now can imagine how difficult and what kind of crushing responsibility somebody feels who's serving as the president of Wheaton. And I don't want to ask you about that because everybody just assumes there's got to be a lot of that if you're in that presidential role. I'd like to ask you something about Wheaton that's maybe harder to answer because you've been there 15 years or so. That's a long time. If you could point to a few things that the Lord has done in the 15 years you've been at Wheaton that are really just encouraging and inspiring and would help our people's, would help the Lord deepen our people's faith in his providential work at schools like Wheaton. Even in crazy days like this in American society where the culture wars are so hot and so on. What would those things that the Lord has done be that you'd pick out? Ryken: I mean, there'd be so many. So one thing, I'll just start with this. God is faithful to his people, and we've seen God's faithfulness in his financial provision sending his students. So just the faithfulness of God one year after the next in staying on mission for Jesus Christ and seeing a campus community do that. We've seen Wheaton become a much more global and diverse community during the last 15 years. We welcomed students from 51 different countries in our freshman class last year. We now, about a third of our incoming classes now are minority students from North America. That's very different from the Wheaton that we attended. And there's a beauty to that. There's a complexity to that. And it makes lots of things much more challenging when we live together. But that's the mosaic of the kingdom that we're trying to live into. And that we're preparing our students to live into. I love our, the general education curriculum that our faculty developed, Christ at the Core, which is a distinctively liberal arts curriculum that opens up the world for students by giving them different ways of looking at the world and very clear in its Christ-centered commitment in every class through that curriculum. And it's an even better curriculum than the one that you and I studied at the time. This is a smaller thing, but it's meaningful to me. Our campus has become a more beautiful campus, partly because of the strength of our landscaping team and how they've approached just the physical beauty of our campus, partly by maintaining our buildings well, but also by the work of the President's Art Commission. We've really elevated the presentation of visual art on our campus in, I think, a God-honoring way. And I think it has an impact, whether you specifically notice it or not, but also if you really do attend to it. We're really blessed by resources that have been provided for our music program. And in these recent last six or seven years, we've had an opportunity to build a facility which is for music, which we have never had. We've taught music at Wheaton since 1860. It's only in 2019 that we finally had a space on campus that was actually designed for the production of musical sound. And it honors the gifts of our musicians. It's something I feel good about. The other thing I feel really good about is, we go through, we're always thinking about, praying about and concerned about just the spiritual tenor of life on campus. And I definitely think, not only at Wheaton, but at many other Christ-centered schools as well, there's a larger interest in global missions than there was 15 years ago. >>Doug Sweeney: Fantastic. >>Ryken: I think perhaps there's some signs of a deeper commitment to the life of prayer. I just have a lot of sweet experiences of just seeing how students are growing spiritually and how they're talking about their faith and the work of evangelism, which is I think another area where we're starting to see a growth back. So those are a few of the areas that come really quickly to mind. The other thing I'll say is I've had five children come to Wheaton during that time. The main thing I like to see is what's happening in their lives, the leadership opportunities they have, how they're growing in their faith and ability to use their gifts. So that gives me a window, those students and their close friends that we see a lot in our house. So those are a few of the things, but God's at work in many ways on the campus of Wheaton College. >>Doug Sweeney: Well, the students you have sent from Wheaton to Beeson Divinity School sure are marvelous people. I was just talking to one on the sidewalk about an hour ago. I've got a meeting with another one later this afternoon. What a wonderful blessing they've been to us. >>Ryken: And we are sending you a couple more good ones next fall as well. >>Doug Sweeney: Super. We'll take good care of them. All right. We're pretty well out of time. But the occasion for the interview is that you preached at our commencement service and we're going to provide a link when we publish this podcast episode to the talk that you gave at commencement. So will you give our listeners just a little one-minute teaser? What are they going to get if they click on that link? >>Ryken: Yeah. We were in Matthew 24 especially and I wanted to keep things pretty simple. Matthew 24:14, Jesus says, this gospel of the kingdom will be preached to all nations, and then the end will come. That's a simple view of the rest of human history. We have this proclamation calling, and God is calling us to be fearless in our proclamation of the gospel. He's calling us to preach the gospel everywhere we go, and there's going to be great kingdom blessing as we do. So that was our focus. I see that verse as kind of a mic drop moment in the middle of maybe the most important thing that's ever been said about the future and about the end of the world. And it's really, really clear what our calling as a church is, and particularly for students that are studying Bible, theology, master divinity degree, students that are doing counseling, all the great programs that Beeson has. In one way or another, we are not merely demonstrating the gospel of Jesus Christ, but also proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ. And it seemed like a good, just healthy reminder for our Beeson graduates. Nothing they hadn't heard before, I'm sure, but maybe a good message as a final word. >>Doug Sweeney: Amen, it sure was. Friends, you have been listening to President Phil Ryken of Wheaton College. He preached just last week at our Spring Commencement service. We'll put a link to his sermon on the podcast recording when we drop it soon. Thank you for tuning in. Please pray for Dr. Ryken and Wheaton College, its faculty, staff, and students, and especially the students that they'll be graduating in the next few days. We love you and we say goodbye for now. >>Mark Gignilliat: You’ve been listening to the Beeson podcast; coming to you from the campus of Samford University. Our theme music is by Advent Birmingham. Our announcer is Mark Gignilliat. Our engineer is Rob Willis. Our Producer is Neal Embry. And our show host is Doug Sweeney. For more episodes and to subscribe, visit www.BeesonDivinity.com/podcast. You can also find the Beeson Podcast on iTunes, YouTube, and Spotify.