CODE RED - Dr. Clayton Cloar

[00:00:10] Speaker A: But higher ed is right now in a moment, because America is tired of spending $250,000 to send Junior to college, and Junior not even needing it when he gets out. [00:00:22] Speaker B: Welcome back to Code Red. Today's guest is a pastor at heart. He's a theologian in the classroom, and. And he is on the cutting edge of academic progress. Dr. Clayton Clark is the president of Baptist University of Florida. And we had an amazing conversation. You're gonna wanna take note, invite a friend, share this episode welcome to code red talk. Dr. Clayton Klor, welcome to the Code Red Studio. [00:01:01] Speaker A: Wow, this is awesome, brother. Thank you for the privilege. [00:01:04] Speaker B: Well, it's. We put this together a few months ago and had, you know, in what we do, you get so many opportunities to talk to interesting people. And then you walk out and think, I wish the church could have heard that, or, you know, my son could have heard it or whatever it was. So we said, well, let's just, we know how to run a camera. Let's set it up and capture what we can, you know. And it's like we prayed earlier. It is in many ways, like the printing press during the Protestant Reformation, it's helping reach a segment of the population that hasn't been reached previously. And so what we're doing here today, this conversation also, as you know, we have a radio program, Maximum Life, and it goes all over the state and then much of the Southeast. But this will be chopped up as well for radio once we're, once we're finished here. So welcome to the studio. Tell us a little bit about your context. You're the president of the Baptist University of Florida. Tell us first of all about your family and just your personal context a little bit. [00:02:14] Speaker A: Okay. Well, I grew up in the upstate of South Carolina. My parents, my dad was third generation in a lumber business and we had sawmills there, Hardwood sawmills. And so that was kind of my life growing up. We had moved to the upstate of South Carolina because they were building this huge nuclear plant there and they were clearing all this land and putting in lakes, Lake Kiawee and the whole Bad Creek thing. And our family did all the timber. Okay. And so that's where I grew up. And I came to know the Lord when I was a young person. Grew up in church. [00:02:53] Speaker B: Did you grow up in a Baptist context? [00:02:55] Speaker A: I did. I did. Small Baptist church. How did you come to faith picking, South Carolina? Well, we were having the Lord's Supper one night. I was seven years old. I had high attendance pens. I went to everything. And when the Lord's Supper plate was passed. I reached out to get one of the elements and my dad said I couldn't because I wasn't saved. And I remembered the same thing that made me mad because I thought I'm here more than you are. And I really was. And so the next week we came, you know, we went every Sunday, but I paid no attention until the next Sunday. And I asked if we could sit on the aisle so I could see the preacher. And the preacher got up to preach. It's vivid in my mind. He preached on a sign at the funeral home and frankly there wasn't enough gospel in there to save a seven year old boy. And I was looking to hear it. That was our last Sunday at that church because that man had had more moral failure and it was going down at that time. Of course I knew nothing about that. We started bouncing around churches then and I'm under conviction, I'm trying to find out what this is about. [00:03:56] Speaker B: You know, we don't think about that when people are talking about moral failures and you know, flirting with sin or whatever. We don't think about the seven year old boys that are seeking the Lord. Right in the middle of foolishness. [00:04:10] Speaker A: Absolutely. We ended up landing at a church, Red Hill Baptist Church in Pickens, South Carolina and Gerald Martin was the pastor there and he, he threw one pitch very well. He was a one pitch preacher. So it didn't matter where we started. We were headed to John 3:16 very quickly and I heard the gospel and over about a three month period of starting to really understand the gospel. I'm asking lots of questions, very inquisitive. My uncle was a pastor and ends up on a Sunday night. I gave my life to Jesus Christ and I knew I was saved before I got to the front of the church. I went to the front of the church, prayed with the pastor. The next Sunday I was baptized in that little Baptist church and began to grow. And just really from that day forward when I opened the Bible, it just began to come alive on the page. [00:05:02] Speaker B: Were you as a child a good student? Was academics easy for you or was it. [00:05:08] Speaker A: No, no, no. I hated academics. Now in the fourth grade I took an IQ test along with everybody else and they sequestered me and took me aside and said, you're one of the smart kids. And they put me with about 15 other kids out of our elementary school the next year for the smart kid group. And I had no idea why I was in there. I didn't know I was a smart kid. And it was a challenging Time in my home life. There was a lot of stuff going down in my home life. My parents had a lot of issues and trouble that they were working through. It was definitely not Camelot at my home, so. And really, I never gave myself to any thought of being academic at all until I was in college, even though I was smart and I didn't have to study very much. And they had me on the AP track and the college prep track, but little story on that. I was on that track through 9th and 10th grade, and at the end of 10th grade, I was a competitive golfer. That's what I did back in the day. This is back before all the stuff now, like the AJGA was just getting started. So I was playing on some of the tours in South Carolina in school, and I just wanted to be a professional golfer. That's all I wanted to do. And so I didn't want to stay in that college prep deal. So I got out of it in 11th grade and went back down to kind of the regular classes. And my trig teacher that year was my pastor's wife, Scarlett Chastain. And I'm just making hundreds on every test. I'm not even having to study or half pay attention in class. She pulled me aside one day after class and she said, what are you doing? Why are you in here? Why are you doing this? And, you know, my parents really didn't have a conversation with me about that, but Ms. Chastine had a conversation with me about that, and she said, you're making a bad decision. And she really talked to me, and that made a huge impact on me. Talk about what a teacher can do in somebody's life. [00:07:18] Speaker B: Absolutely. [00:07:18] Speaker A: She went to the school board, I didn't know this, and petitioned to let me take AP calculus my senior year without pre Cal. And she got me in it. And I made a 4 on the AP exam and ended up getting into Clemson, really through my math scores. My English scores were terrible. I ended up, instead of going the professional golf route. That's another story. I ended up following the family business route and went to Clemson, went to business school. [00:07:50] Speaker B: So at what point did the Lord intervene and say, I want you, not just being a faithful church member, but when did you sense a call on your life? [00:08:01] Speaker A: It took about 18 months after. So when I was a junior in college, I met Linda. Actually, as a sophomore at Clemson, I met Linda studying for an accounting exam. I was really away from the Lord at that time. And when I say that, I don't mean that I'd gotten into illegal drugs or was all this fornication or whatever. I was not walking with God. I was out of church in a bad way. And I was flunking out of school too. And by then I was already working for the family business and frankly, I was making a lot of money and I just didn't see the need of this. And I got right with the Lord just in brokenness one night after a party at our place. And two days after that I started dating Linda. And within the week, I knew that's who I was going to marry. This summer will be 35 years we've been married. Wow. [00:08:54] Speaker B: Congratulations. [00:08:55] Speaker A: And so we got married the next summer between our junior and senior year. I did all these hours and graduated on time. Got off academic probation. That's a whole nother story. Then we got involved in a little Baptist church and I started reading the Bible again and started praying. Dr. Stanley was on TV at that time and you could hear him on the radio. Thank God for radio. And I'd listen to his tapes and I bought some of his tapes. My dad had some of his tapes and he did a series on prayer. Having a quiet time. I started having a quiet time and I started praying some of the prayers of Paul, like, fill me with the knowledge of your will, with all spiritual wisdom and understanding and so forth. I did that for about 18 months and it started messing with me. And all of a sudden my desires began to shift. And instead of wanting to do business, which I was very good at, and frankly, even in coming out of a recession because I graduated college in 91 and only about 10% of our business school were placed at our grad because it was a recession time. But our business was mushrooming. We tripled in a year and a half. In those days we were one of the largest. We were just doing well. And the Lord somewhere in the back shadows of my mind one of those mornings in a quiet time, he was like, I wonder if the Lord wants me to do ministry. And I started praying through that for about four months, five months, and. And it was just consistent, it wouldn't go away. And the closer I got to the Lord, the more I wanted to do this. I started a little Bible study in my house, had a couple, one couple that would come. I'd teach for an hour and a half. If you ever have me preach, you'll know not much has changed. So I did that and I just. My desires went from hey, I think Lord, do you want me to do this? To Lord, I think I might want to do this. And then eventually it kind of grew to, lord, if you don't want me to do this, you better tell me. And one day I'd come home and say, honey, I know I'm supposed to stay here and run the business the rest of my life. We're so well positioned. Next day I'd come home and say, it's time to go. We got to go to seminary. I got to get in a local church somewhere and start serving. I've got to preach. I just can't take this anymore. Finally she was like, honey, I know you're going through something. When you figure it out, tell me, because I can't ride the road every day. You know, we're going to stay, we're going to go, we're going to stay, we're going to go. And eventually it just came to a breaking point where I realized I could stay in the business the rest of my life, do well, but always know that God had called me into the ministry. And when I realized that, it kind of ended it. [00:11:43] Speaker B: Well, I love to ask people that story, and thank you for sharing it with me. We've talked a little bit about this off camera, how it's not the way it was back when we were in college, when every church had a few preacher boys that were kind of coming up in the ranks. It's. Something's changed. And I want to talk to you more about that in a moment. But whatever it is, one of the things that I believe we can offer is just unpacking these kind of conversations so that a young man knows how to discern. Oh, that. That sense that I can't shake this, that I feel like I'm supposed to help them to hear a few different stories because nobody's called to ministries exactly like another person's. And it's just like salvation. We all come to the same faith, but we get there in different ways. And so hearing that witness and testimony of how God called you can be very helpful. We've got several guys right now that are, thank God, they're wrestling with that call because we know some of them are going to be called and some of them hopefully will end up at Baptist University of Florida one of these days. So you started pursuing that call. When was education on your radar as the clear next step to go and get your theological education? [00:13:09] Speaker A: Yes. So my uncle had been a pastor for many years, Michael clore. And in 1992, which was the year God called me to ministry, I took my uncle to the Masters. We just had the masters and so I got to go every year. And I took him down. And we sat on 14 green that afternoon. Beautiful day. It was the year Fred Couples won. And we talked about, how do you know God's called you to preach? Because I was quizzing him because I was struggling with this right now. It was funny. One of the things he said, when you start asking that kind of question, it's a good sign something's going on. Something's going on because it was consistent, it was persistent. It just wouldn't go away. I tried to put it away for a while, and then it was insistent. It just wouldn't let me go until I realized this is what I'm supposed to do. And, yes, I could do this other track. And I had been well positioned to do this, and I loved doing it. And Linda's father was in the same industry. In fact, my dad and her dad ate breakfast together every morning. I knew her dad when I was in 4H as a high schooler because he was a civiculturist and a land manager for the Forest Service. And so he ran the Sumter National Forest, and my dad was industry. So our families have been intertwined for years as far as knowing one another, but. So it was like a match made in heaven. We were going to do this the rest of our life. And we were good at it, frankly. And she worked at the business, too, but the Lord had different directions. [00:14:42] Speaker B: What were the three things you said again? [00:14:44] Speaker A: Yeah, it was consistent, it was persistent. I couldn't put it away. And then it was insistent. I just knew. Woe is me if I don't preach the gospel. [00:14:54] Speaker B: Now, you know Phil Waldrop, don't you? [00:14:56] Speaker A: I do. [00:14:57] Speaker B: He's a cousin of mine. [00:14:59] Speaker A: Oh, I didn't know that. [00:14:59] Speaker B: And so we grew up just down the road from each other. And he was saying back when I was in the same stage, I said, well, how do you know? And he was walking me through everything. He said, yeah, then one day God will tell you, if you don't do it, he'll kill you. And I said, okay, well, that's pretty clear, but that's what it feels like. It feels like woe unto me if I don't preach that this is something you can't really negotiate your way out of. [00:15:25] Speaker A: Yeah, nothing but disobedience to do anything else. I had no idea what next steps were, other than I knew I would need to go to seminary because I had never read the Bible through all the way at that point. Right. I'd never led a soul To Christ. I was a part of a church that didn't baptize many people or didn't have people come to faith. Nobody ever discipled me or took me soul winning or anything like that. [00:15:53] Speaker B: You know, was seminary at that time or Bible college were those things. I grew up in a context where it was like, son, God's called you in the ministry. You're pretty good at it. Don't let that school kill you. [00:16:06] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:16:07] Speaker B: Do you know what I'm talking about? [00:16:08] Speaker A: Oh, I know exactly what you're talking about. Because we ran the sawmill in town. So every high school, junior and senior boy in town came and worked for us in the summer. The whole football team worked for us in the summer. And there was a lot of those young men that were called to ministry and they went off to Southern Baptist seminaries and lost their faith. Yeah, and these are names, these are not concepts. You know, I stop naming names. [00:16:31] Speaker B: I would have, I would. I remember deacons in churches when I was doing evangelism prior to seminary. And they, they would say things like, I'm glad I got to hear you before you went to seminary, because I've never seen anybody go off to seminary and come back better. And I didn't understand that. I knew what I didn't know, but I didn't understand how it could affect. And I came along at a time when the seminaries had turned a corner and were heading in a good direction. But really when you were wrestling with that, it was a little uncertain. [00:17:03] Speaker A: I called my uncle, Michael Clore, and I said, God called me to preach and I know it. We've been talking about it for months. I said, what do I do now? He told me three things. He said, get your life right with the Lord. And frankly, I had to make some phone calls. I had to tell some people some things. I had to get my life right. Because you start scrubbing, you start scrubbing the corners, like looking for that leaven before the Passover, like, oh, I lied about that, I need to settle that. Second thing he said, make it public in your local church. And the third thing is get you some training. Go to seminary is what I'd recommend. And I said, well, where should I go to seminary? He said, there's only one seminary. That's exactly what he said to me. And I said, no, I think there's more than one. He said, no, there's really only one that believes the Bible all the way through. Where every professor knew. He told me about Mid America Baptism Seminary, which at that point was the Only Southern Baptist seminary that you could really trust. And Gray Allison had founded it and started it. [00:18:03] Speaker B: And he really started it for that reason. [00:18:05] Speaker A: For that whole reason. That's correct. And so six weeks later, we moved from the upstate of South Carolina to Memphis, Tennessee. And my dad. I was looking for a job. I wasn't planning to move quite that quick, but I told my dad that morning that God had called me, and he said, well, you're through here, son. Go do what God's called you to do. Really? Wow. And about three weeks later, he walked in the office because I was trying to get a job in Memphis. And he said, I'm going to pay you a salary and cover your insurance as long as I want to, and that's none of your business. And he just left. And he did that. [00:18:37] Speaker B: What a gift. [00:18:38] Speaker A: And allowed me to go and immerse myself. I taught a few golf lessons. It was the only job. I cleaned a couple of factories, but otherwise, I just jumped in the deep end of the pool. We spent our savings. We had a lot of savings. And I did 102 hours of master's level work in about two years and four months and just immersed myself in trying to understand the Bible. And by the grace of God, Gray Allison became my mentor. And we developed as close a relationship as anybody. [00:19:11] Speaker B: Now, tell me how that evolved. [00:19:13] Speaker A: You know, it was just a miracle of the lord. You took Dr. Gray's class. I suspect so. He used to carry a little New Testament with him all the time. And when you'd come in his class the first time, he knew you by name, and he knew your wife's name, if you were married, knew your children's name. [00:19:30] Speaker B: Let me. Several of our viewers will not know that name. Dr. Gray Allison is legendary. Legendary. I mean, you know, we talk about who would be on the Mount Rushmore of Southern Baptist or whatever. I'm not sure where he would fit, but he may have carved the images. You know, he's one of those guys. He's one of those guys that. Where we're from in the Southeast, there were stories that you really had to see, to believe sometimes of just how the Lord used him. And so the significance of that. I can't think of anybody in academia during that time that would have been in his orbit. In conservatism, faithfulness, evangelism, wanting souls to be saved, all of the things that you would want in the head of a seminary and able to build an institution that in and of itself to put something together from scratch and fund it. I mean, you know, it's a miracle in and of itself. And so just to give people a little bit of the context there, now, you took his class, you knew his reputation. [00:20:47] Speaker A: I became his grader the very first year I was there. [00:20:52] Speaker B: And that's just because of your grades, I'm assuming. [00:20:55] Speaker A: Well, I mean, that was some of it. No, it was God. I mean, it was a strange set of circumstances. Now, first of all, I was kind of a unicorn for a pastor because I had business background. I had been running a multimillion dollar business before the Lord called me to preach. And so I've just rolled right in here. I didn't come from Bible college. I'm just absorbing everything. Very zealous and growing on fire. And so he had me share my story with some donors. One day I asked him if there was any way to help him. He started taking me out and I would share my story of how I got there and what. Because I'd never led a soul to Christ till I enrolled at Mid America and then started. [00:21:36] Speaker B: And that was a requirement. Right. [00:21:38] Speaker A: I had to lead eight people to the Lord. My first eight. I had to witness to eight people my first eight weeks in school. And I had a goose egg up on the scoreboard when I started. I was scared to death. [00:21:47] Speaker B: And it was part of. To graduate, you would have to. [00:21:51] Speaker A: Yeah. If you didn't do eight witnesses in 16 hours of practical missions, you did not get a grade. Didn't matter how good you were in the class. [00:22:02] Speaker B: And I think that's so foreign now, but at the same time, to produce someone that's a pastor of a church who doesn't make it part of his life to witness to people, God's got to do the saving. But to just share your faith with people, that was such good training. [00:22:23] Speaker A: Oh, it was incredible. And you know, Dr. Gray, you may not know this, but Dr. Gray, when he came back from the war, ran a dry cleaning company. No, I did. Yeah, he had his own dry cleaning company. And the Lord called him out of business in the ministry just like he had me. And so we had a lot in common. And I ended up being his assistant for the next eight years. I taught his classes. When he was gone, I was the only student student that he ever was, the Advisor for their PhD program. He took me around the world and he taught me how to do this job. And it was just uniquely equipped for it and got all this training from who was. You know, we talk about Al Mohler today. Al Mohler would tell you, because I've Heard him say it many, many years ago that Gray Allison defined what a seminary presence supposed to look like for Southern Baptist life. And when the resurgence happened, Dr. Mohler became president at Southern about the time God called me to preach. And when these things happened, all the other seminaries began to try to be like Gray Allison had built Mid America Seminary. And then, if you want to know Gray Allison, you know, I'll name a few of his students who he dramatically impacted. Adrian rogers, Jerry Vines Jr. Heal. These are men that had Gray allison. Homer Lindsay Jr. Loved Dr. Gray Allison, had him at first. Jack's every opportunity he had. [00:23:58] Speaker B: Now, back in the day, I was about to say, where was he teaching then? [00:24:02] Speaker A: He taught at New Orleans in the late 50s, and then he did another stint at New Orleans in the 60s, but he finished at New Orleans in 65. And he went to the old Home Mission Board and did evangelism for 18 months. But he was a traveling evangelist, and he spoke in every state convention and in all the major churches across the country. He was, like you say, more than a legend. He was a mentor to these men who reconstructed the convention. [00:24:30] Speaker B: So you had firsthand experience with some of those men, and. And I know some of your professors had walked in the fire of revival, and you've got insight into that sort of thing more than most people do. I want you to talk to me a little bit about the revivals in China and some of the things at Mid America that you were able to experience the reverberations from. Talk to us a little bit about some of the professors and the greats that you encountered. [00:25:06] Speaker A: Wow. [00:25:06] Speaker B: There's no longer around many of them. [00:25:08] Speaker A: Yeah, well, Dr. Gray Allison, certainly one of them, but one of Dr. Gray Allison's favorite men who taught on the faculty there. But he had passed by the time I arrived. But getting things secondhand was Dr. Charlie Culpepper. Now, Dr. Charlie Culpepper was the president of East China Theological Seminary in the Shantung Province of China in the 1920s, 1930s. Now, Southern Baptists know Bertha Smith. Bertha Smith was in that shantung revival. Well, Dr. Culpepper was the leader of it. And so you know anything about the history of the missions in China? There was a taiping Rebellion in 1848, and then in 1899, the Boxer Rebellion, well known. And about 250 missionaries were killed during the Boxer Rebellion. In the 20s, late 20s, there was another rebellion that was spurring up, and all the missionaries went to an island, and Dr. Culpepper led a prayer meeting for basically three months there while they were waiting for the destabilization to settle down, because they were all afraid they would be killed, like what happened in the Boxer Rebellion, and. And the missionaries. So the missionaries were all together, and it was just an unusual thing. There was a Lutheran missionary there named Ms. Munson who would stand at the door of the church every day when they would come in to pray. They'd pray in the morning, they'd pray in the afternoon, they pray in the evening. They couldn't do their ministry, so they decided they would pray for revival. And Ms. Munson would stick her bony fingers the way Dr. Culpepper put it in every missionary's face and ask them, are you born again? Are you born again? Now, you know, there is a lot of mainline denomination missionaries. The World Council of Churches had taken shape by that time. And the biggest secularizing force in the world, according to Ebert, was the World Council of Church's missionaries. That went out in the middle part of the 20th century. And so there were a lot of unsaved missionaries, to be honest with you, who were kind of Peace Corps volunteers, if I could use that kind of terminology. Well, they started getting saved. Some of these missionaries did. Ms. Munson, are you born again? Are you born again? You couldn't get in the building. And then they started confessing sin that they had committed. And, I mean, it got raw and it got real. Then they started writing letters back home to confess the sins that they had committed about. They wanted to get right with God. And they just got desperate for the presence of God. And then it began to spill out to the churches, the Chinese, the nationals, which at that time there were about 700,000 believers in China. The largest concentration of them was in that Shantung province, about 100,000 of them. There were pastors and stuff coming into these prayer meetings. They were catching it. They were getting right with God. And then they were going back and in boldness, witnessing to the faith, and people were getting saved. Strange things started happening. Strange things started happening even in the lives of the missionaries. And then after three months, it broke apart. And so they took it back to all of their churches and they started doing the same thing. They'd meet together in the morning, in the afternoon and the evening to pray, kind of like Daniel Deed, you know, and they would seek God's face, they'd get right with God. And this unusual feeling of the Holy Spirit power empowered that. And they went from about 700,000 believers in 1949, when communism took over in China, and it closed until 1976 when the Gang of Four took over. And Mao died in 79, really about 1980. Before we could look back in there, they multiplied from 700,000 to four and a half million. And that revival movement carried on. Of course, Dr. Culpepper and Bertha Smith had to return to the States. Bill Wallace was killed, you know, there kind of famously as an IMB mission. Well, Dr. Culpepper finished his years teaching at Mid America. He taught the Deeper Life at the seminary in the 70s. So Bob Pittman, who had a big influence on us, was one of the first 28 students. And Dr. Culpepper taught him and John Mahoney and David Skinner and all these guys that were around Mid America at that time, my uncle who attended Mid America in 1975, Dr. Rogers and these men were all influenced by this revival movement in the Shand, which was the most significant revival in the history of the 20th century, globally was in and of course China. Then by the time we turn the century, we're talking about estimates of 70 to 100 million believers in China. And I have seen that first. The first time I went to China was 1998, and Dr. Gray Allison took me and we met with house church leaders and with registered church leaders there. And then since that time, I've been many, many, many times and have seen and participated in the house church movement, the factory movement, the underground movement, even some of the registered movement. And that revival fire that started then, sort of like the second Great Awakening in America, how long it took it to taper off, it just continued to burn in China. So as a lot. [00:30:45] Speaker B: What do you think? What do you think when it comes to how would you define revival or how would Dr. Culpepper define revival? What. What is it that, that he was hoping would happen in, in Memphis or. You referred to that, that special feeling. And I know different movements kind of wrestle with what do you call that, but you can't deny that there does seem to be something that the Lord does there. What insights do you have when it comes to a true move of God and a true revival? [00:31:23] Speaker A: I think Dr. Culpepper would say it begins with an awe inspiring awareness of the presence of God to where the mundane and just day to day life takes on so much more meaning. And from that awareness grows this intimacy with God and then this yielding to the Spirit's control. And really so much of the emphasis, even in China, you know, you think about controversial figures like Watchman Nee and Witness Lee, the Deeper Life movement really Started in China in that Shantung revival and the different iterations of it. This incredible awareness of the presence of God, a yielding to the presence of God. And then God begins to work in that, to where there is such authenticity that strikes. There's staggering humility through. So there's no strutting at all. There is a brokenness that creates a fresh openness among the people to the presence of God. Instead of big hot dog preachers, we're more very broken men and women who depend upon and rely on the presence of God. It's not purpose driven, it's more power driven where the spirit of the living God is working in us. And it's far more organic than it is organized. It's the power of God working through people who are just being authentic, humble, dynamic, because. [00:32:59] Speaker B: And it's not something like God says, jump through all these hoops and I might give this to you. It seems to be more the heart of God. This is what he wants us to experience and to walk in. Let me just say, thank God that we've got somebody in one of our Baptist universities who had a taste of that and who understands that world. It can easily become cold academics, you know, And I think we have to be intentional about keeping the fires of revival stoked in our churches from coming out of evangelism. The urgency of every Sunday the Lord may return. This may be the last sermon you preach. That urgency is probably the one thing that I miss the most as a pastor, is you're thinking long term. This is a marathon. You're trying to finish well, finish strong. But in evangelism, it was a hundred yard dash every week. And so I think there's a blend there in ministry that we've got to maintain the urgency of the Lord to return and having our hearts ready and helping people be prepared for it, but at the same time pacing ourselves in emotions and in life. [00:34:19] Speaker A: Yeah, brother. We've almost gotten to the point, if we're not careful, where we think we have to approve of the work of God. I'm just not sure that's a work of God until I've seen it for six months or something. Well, the work of God is messy. He brings people out of darkness into light. [00:34:39] Speaker B: And it's always been that scripture, it was that way. [00:34:41] Speaker A: Absolutely. It's messy. Paul and Barnabas go to one town and they start bringing out the cattle, you know, and we've named one Zeus and another Hermes. And we're going to sacrifice these cows. Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute, wait a minute. And they rend their clothes, you know. [00:34:56] Speaker B: And you mentioned it one time. You said, you know, people who go through that, they're a little different. [00:35:01] Speaker A: They are. [00:35:02] Speaker B: And that's true. [00:35:04] Speaker A: They are. [00:35:05] Speaker B: And so we kind of have an idea of what the standard guy, that God will use, what he's like or she's like. And it's not always predictable. [00:35:15] Speaker A: That's exactly right. You think about this, I would argue, the most. One of the five most effective missionaries in the history of the world, frankly about 2 is Jonah. The boy was backslidden the whole time. Look how God used a backslidden missionary. I mean, he's protesting every step of the way. [00:35:37] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:35:38] Speaker A: And then you think about Naomi. When you think about a woman who exemplifies the faith, tenacity, belief, you think about Ruth. Well, what. What root did she come out of? Good old bitter mane. So two backslidden Old Testament characters actually produced incredible fruit. You know, a lot of times we think they got to be perfect before anybody can produce any fruit. Man. No, I'm glad God uses the imperfect. Amen. He wouldn't use it. [00:36:11] Speaker B: Well, what do you think? You know, we're hearing stirrings about on college campuses and things that are taking place. I know you're not far from Auburn up there in Graceful. What happened on. What was the campus up in Kentucky, Asbury. What are your thoughts on those sort of things? [00:36:32] Speaker A: Oh, it's happening. We're already in the revival. We're in it already. It's happening. There is a fresh, overwhelming hunger for the things of God. People been eating out of a garbage can so long, if they just get a taste of something that's close, close to the presence of God and something authentic, they're climbing in the building now to try to get a piece of it. Young people are as hung angry as I've ever seen them in my lifetime in this country. There is no question about it. [00:37:04] Speaker B: Are you seeing that on the campus of Baptist University? Are you seeing the numbers go up and that sort of thing? [00:37:11] Speaker A: Oh, definitely. The kids are having their own spontaneous prayer meetings, their own spontaneous revivals. You know what they want to do? They want to experience God. They want to know God. They want to walk in his power. They don't have to have all these trappings of all these formalities and different things. They want to know him and the power of his resurrection. And it is infectious. And it's happening that way at Florida State as well. You know, we had the BCM from Florida State, did their retreat on our campus, and Just folded in with our kids for a weekend. There were about 90 of them. I'm telling you. These are lawyers and doctors and teachers and engineers and nurses on fire for God. We did a section with them to talk about the call one afternoon over at Florida State. And we. They thought, well, they'll tell the bcm and the ones who are interested will come. I thought we'd have six or seven. We had 40 that are praying through the call of God. And so I'm seeing this all over the place. This new generation wants something real. They have experimented. They've been among this Alphabet soup for a while now. They've watched their buddies and their friends try to grow up in this worldview that the world is espousing with a megaphone that says that's the only way to look at gender and reality. And they've seen it doesn't work. It just produces broken people. They've seen the brokenness, they've felt the brokenness. They want something real, and they want to know Christ, and he's working among them. [00:38:41] Speaker B: Well, you know, that's not going to continue and happen without a fight. You know, we have an enemy, and he's going to mobilize, and he's been doing this a long time, and he's seen a lot of these kind of things happen. You can't get into the enemy's head completely. But if I were him and I were looking at society and setting up a countermeasure to battle against what God's doing, there's certain realms of influence where he's going to set up shop, and one of those is going to be on the education system. It's going to be college campuses in particular. And so the area that you've stepped into, right at the height you were leading a very successful church, and you in many ways, living the dream for a pastor in a leading city, a leading church, and God called you into that space where the enemy's got to be working. So how did that transition, what would cause you to leave a very solid opportunity in central Florida to go to the university campus that had a lot of challenges at the time? [00:40:05] Speaker A: Well, I think, first of all, when I was called and asked if I've even considered it, it came out of left field. And I said, but the person that called me is somebody I have incredible respect for. And I said, I'll pray about it a week. And honestly, I didn't, you know, it caught me out of left field. Now, when Dr. Gray Allison was mentoring me, there were a lot of Seeds planted that one day I would do this. Of course, I did my PhD as well so I could teach and love to teach. People like me who had come out of business world, not necessarily a church on fire, hadn't seen a big move of God growing up. And, and so I started praying and the first thing my mind went to is, you know, the Lord kind of prepared me to do this with Dr. Gray Allison, and there's no better teacher than him for this. And then I also was pastor of the Church at the Cross in Orlando, but the president of the Central Florida Christian Academy. So I'd been running a primary and secondary school for 19 years and we had as many Title 1 kids as anybody in the state in our school. And so we had an incredibly diverse church, seven language communities, about 30% African American in our church, enormously diverse and in great need. A community in need of the gospel and of a church. And I've seen so many of our kids have nowhere to go in the state of Florida for a fully accredited four year and graduate program. Baptist University, there's only one in the state of Florida and it's us. Texas got 20 of them, South Carolina's got three, you know, and on and on and on. And I got frustrated with my kids having to go to Cedarville or Liberty or Union or wherever out of state, a long way off, pay all this tuition when we could do that here in state. My own son ended up going to North Greenville and then transferred to the Baptist University of Florida to finish his last year and a half of school. And so I knew the need. And then frankly, it was something my father in law said. And my father in law, you remember, is the forester. He told me years ago, and he didn't know this would have meaning to me, but he said oak trees, and he was an expert on oak trees. Literally, he said when they pass maturity, they begin to divert their energy away from foliage, limb production, leaves, canopy, to making acorns. And I had just turned 52, 53, and yeah, just turned 53. And I was like, I wanted to make some acorns because, you know, my, my next chapter is going to be looking toward the finish line for me of ministry. You know, retirement, 65, 70, whatever, you know, comes along. And, and so I prayed about it and the Lord called me to do this. He called me to do this. And I told the search committee, I believe God's called me to do this. And I didn't know I would need that, that strong, but he called me to do it. So, and that gives me unique insight because I just don't know of other universities. There are 49 Baptist universities in America. There's another about 25 that are unaffiliated Christian universities that are really Baptist universities that have left conventions and so forth. But out of all of us, I'm about the only one that came out of the pastorate to do this, especially a long term pastorate. And I know what the local church and the community needs. [00:43:58] Speaker B: Oh yeah, that's a unique perspective that you can hire a theologian and thank God for great theologians. They're helping us in ways that the average pastor needs. But at the same time, to get somebody who hasn't stayed in the classroom all the time that's been in the laboratory and saw what it's like to be a pastor, I mean, that really is a godsend. We're praying. I remember when New Orleans was looking for a new president. That was one of the prayers was that God would give them somebody who had pastoral experience, you know, because so many, so many times they don't. And you take somebody out of seminary and they go into the pastorate with the right theory, but they don't really know how to connect the dots. And so you have that caged stage where they feel like they know everything and they kind of come down to reality and this like, that's when they start learning, you know, so you can thank God for that. [00:45:01] Speaker A: Well, higher ed is, has entered a new stage and Covid tremendously accelerated the entrance to this stage. And so higher ed as we know it is, has ridden this huge wave. You know, there are really only five industries in America that have had a global competitive advantage the last 35 to 40 years, only five. And we have built our economies and we have really done incredibly well with those five industries. And I'll tell you what they are, and one of them is higher ed. Everybody in the world wants to get an American higher ed education. So the best and brightest globally want to come here and go to school. And frankly, our public universities and our university systems have built enormous endowments on the backs of international students and people who value that. Very wealthy people from all over the world who have come here and there's been a competitive advantage that we have ridden into the shore of the moment that we're in now. I'll give you the other four real quickly. So technology, you know, we're the innovators. Other cultures don't innovate the way that we do. It's a part of our individualism, part of Our market economy is open to that. And then there's medical. The world comes here to get medical care because we have a free market system in medical care, and therefore you're rewarded for exceptional medical care and so forth. And then, unfortunately, war. We make everything that everybody wants to buy to blow people up or fight a battle. And so that's been a huge industry in our culture. And then travel and tourism, of course, I lived in Mickey Land down there for all those years, and the world wanted to do that, and the world wants to go to vacation in America. And so our travel, those five industries have propped up the economy for decades. And you just look around just about anywhere at who's making a lot of money. It'll be around a university, it'll be around technology, it'll be be around medical, it'll be around defense. It'll be around one of these things. That's where things have happened. And so. But higher ed is right now, in a moment, because America is tired of spending $250,000 to send Junior to college, and Junior not even needing it when he gets out. We're tired of that. The basic American population is finished with that. And quite frankly, it's not junior, because 60% of the the college students in America are female. It's more my daughter. [00:47:42] Speaker B: So in looking at when you stepped into the seminary environment, Bible college, and you had the one school that was kind of holding the line theologically, thankfully, the rest, it seems, have turned and they're on course. We've got great schools in the Southern Baptist Convention currently. But I've heard it said that an institution needs an immune system the way a body does, because those infections are going to creep in. And what do you do as a university president to keep this institution moving in the right direction theologically and holding the line conservatively and that sort of thing, how do you guard against that? [00:48:34] Speaker A: Well, I mean, first you have to be vigilant, and you have to realize that wonderful people do change. It's true. And people that once were quite straight sometimes don't end well or they might get in a bad place. So you have to be ever vigilant all the time. You got to know what's going on in your classrooms. You got to know what's being. You have to hold people accountable and you have to be accountable. And I like institutions that are tied to accountable ecclesiastical bodies that are responsible to the local churches. And that's one of the reasons I'm a Baptist, right, Because Baptists are local, independent, autonomous congregations. But we Network together in this group we call Southern Baptist or Florida Baptists. And there's a lot of accountability. So our institution, our trustees are appointed by our state convention. So I get a new batch of people that are appointed that I'm accountable to all the time. So there's a high level of accountability. [00:49:35] Speaker B: There is and relationship. I think you and I can speak to it because we've hunted together. We're going to fish together tomorrow. We've been in meetings together, we've been in worship together. And it seems to be that there was a time in Southern Baptist life where there was a gap between the average pastor and the average college professor or seminary president, whatever it was. And I think that in itself it would be hard for you to go very far without a few friends not trying to rescue you and bring you back. Because we're going to hear what you're talking about, we're going to follow what you're saying. And same with us, it goes both ways. I would assume that if I were drifting, word would scatter pretty quickly, you know, if these programs were going in a bad direction or whatever that's going to. Our relationships in this state in particular have been strong, it seems. [00:50:39] Speaker A: Absolutely. And we steward, trust and we very much take that incredibly seriously and highly accountable culture. We lean into that. We also are innovative and we want to be relevant. And you can be relevant. You have to embrace change. At the same time. One of our great strengths is we don't change our convictions, our belief system. [00:51:11] Speaker B: Well, it's that open hand, closed hand. You got the doctrines closed. But the methods are open. [00:51:17] Speaker A: Absolutely. And methods in higher ed are dramatically changing. Of course the modalities are changing. And the practical applicant people want degree programs that help them in their life, not just something on their wall. [00:51:34] Speaker B: I know. For your student body, what is the ratio you've got how many are on campus currently? [00:51:41] Speaker A: 100. [00:51:42] Speaker B: And then how many are residential? [00:51:46] Speaker A: Residential on campus is 100. Now we've got other campuses and we've got more than that. [00:51:50] Speaker B: And then. And then off campus digital people that are online. How many students you got total? [00:51:56] Speaker A: Well, we have 847 students today. Now we've had 1059 total headcount this year. But some of them graduated. [00:52:04] Speaker B: Right. [00:52:05] Speaker A: Some aren't taking classes this semester and we'll pick back up in the summer, that kind of thing. But. And out of that, all of them have an online component because even if you're in person now, the lms, the Learning Management System, a lot of your work, you do on your computer, of course. And there's, there's forums and things you have to fill out and a lot of use of technology in everything we do. But I would say we have about 300 and. Well, no, we have 153 in that program. We have another 40 in that program, another 500 in that program, and then another hundred. So most of our students have some in person component and we have about 150. That's 100% online. [00:52:47] Speaker B: So there's different ways that someone can get a Christian education. [00:52:52] Speaker A: Yeah, different modalities. [00:52:54] Speaker B: What about the diversity of your age? So I'm sure you've got some that are straight out of high school. Oh, you actually got some in high school that are getting college credit. [00:53:04] Speaker A: 163 dual credit students. Absolutely right. [00:53:07] Speaker B: And that's something that, you know, we're telling our own kids about. Absolutely. You know, use. [00:53:12] Speaker A: And our dual credit is exploding. It just is exploding. [00:53:17] Speaker B: And if a college, if a high school student takes a class through Baptist University, they can, are they limited? Can they take that into a secular university? If they go to University of Florida? [00:53:29] Speaker A: Yes, it's fully accredited, fully transfers anywhere. SACS accreditation, that's the same accreditation Florida has, same accreditation UCF has, same one UNF has. [00:53:38] Speaker B: So you're beginning in that high school school age. They can go, you know, if somebody's in Nassau County, Florida, and they want to get a degree through Baptist University, can they do that from right here? [00:53:51] Speaker A: Oh, absolutely. And they can do it multiple different ways. [00:53:54] Speaker B: Okay, so if somebody is graduating high school or if they're wanting to go back and get more of a theological education and they come to Baptist University, first of all, what, what sort of degree options would they have? [00:54:10] Speaker A: Well, so for undergrad you've got multiple education degrees, multiple psychology and counseling degrees, business opportunities, multiple business degrees. And then you could do different Christian studies or ministry degrees. And you could do music and worship degrees, plus you could do health degrees, science degrees, you could do computer science, you could do cybersecurity at the Baptist University of Florida as well. And you could do leadership degrees. So there's a whole battery of degree options that you can do in the undergrad program and in the graduate program also has these. So you can do MBAs, you can do Masters of Sciences, you can do Masters of Education, you can do, you can do Masters in Music and worship, you can do M. Div. Or Masters of Divinity, a Master's of Theological Studies, a Masters of Christian Education. So if you've got professionals in your church that Teach Sunday school like I was, who was a businessman. And you want to take some theology courses, you can enroll in our program and take them right online here. Or you can drive to North Jack's and actually take them in person if you want. [00:55:20] Speaker B: Now what, what would it. So for undergrad, what roughly would that cost? [00:55:26] Speaker A: Oh, it's about $265 a credit hour for an undergraduate student. [00:55:32] Speaker B: And are there any advantages for. Does the same in state, out of state kind of dichotomy of now if. [00:55:41] Speaker A: You'Re a high school student coming out of college, you know, there's different, like Pell Grants and all of these things that are available. And we take all of those. [00:55:50] Speaker B: They can apply for those just like. [00:55:51] Speaker A: They could on campus. Our total tuition for a year is 22,000. Now that's eating the food, living in the dorms. That's everything on campus. Student, full time student, 22,000. That's one of the lowest 100 in the United States. There are 4,500 colleges and universities in the United States. That's in the lowest 100. So we have always had a passion and conviction to be affordable, to make it available for Florida Baptists to attend another one of the beauties of our program. You can attend in four languages. We're doing undergraduate and graduate programs in these diverse fields in four languages. English, Spanish, Haitian Creole or French, and then Portuguese, because there are more Brazilians that live in Orlando, Florida than any other city outside of Brazil on the face of the earth. Wow. And we have 40 currently in our Portuguese track. And we. And we've got another 40 that are onboarding in May. [00:56:48] Speaker B: When this goes on radio, it'll be in Pennsylvania, Alabama, different states. What if somebody's listening and they want to explore? [00:56:57] Speaker A: Yeah. We have current students from all over the United States. In my preaching class right now I've got a student in Las Vegas, West Virginia. So yeah, you can enroll and take courses. [00:57:07] Speaker B: It's amazing what technology has opened up. I mean there's a lot of bad as well, but a lot of good that can be leveraged for the kingdom. [00:57:14] Speaker A: Absolutely. It's incredible. We've got students, we've got students from 23 countries right now. And we actually have dual credit students in Guatemala studying in Spanish and in Mexico next year. And so we're looking at Haiti next year. Cause there's, you know, Florida is a unique state. [00:57:32] Speaker B: It really is. [00:57:33] Speaker A: There are 5.1 million people that live in the state of Alabama where you're from. There are 6 million Hispanics in The state of Florida. Wow. So there's more Hispanics in Florida by 900,000. Right. Than people in the state of Alabama. And so we've got a robust and huge Hispano buff. Hispano is exploding across the state in undergraduate and graduate programs. And some they can take a class in Spanish or in English. So we've got guys in our MBA program, for example, who the accounting vocabulary in English is very difficult for them. They're taking it in Spanish, but they're doing a lot of the other classes in English. They're bilingual and their resumes going from the bottom of the pile to the top of the pile because they're bilingual and they're getting a degree from the Baptist University of Florida, which is enhancing their capability. And they can minister to both English speakers and Spanish speakers and move in and out of it. It's. It's serving the local church where the local church is living right now. [00:58:33] Speaker B: Well, and it's evolving in the sense of. It's not all limited to Graceville, Florida anymore. You're exploring other. You mentioned North Jacks. You've got other opportunities for campuses. Orlando. [00:58:45] Speaker A: Yeah, we're in seven, eight different locations now, of course, Graceville, which is north of Panama City for our listeners who've never heard of it. But if you drive toward Pensacola about two hours before you get to Pensacola and turn north and you'll be in Graceville. Tremendous campus there, residential campus. We're launching full athletics this year there. And that campus is exploding in growth. It looks like it's going to more than double this year. [00:59:11] Speaker B: Maybe we can show some pictures later, but when you walk into the athletic department, it's exciting. It looks like a Division 1 school. I mean, you're some of the best workout facilities and all that. So young people who have talent in that area, they should look at Baptist University for sure. [00:59:30] Speaker A: So once again, I ran the Central Florida Christian Academy, and private Christian academies in this state are exploding. Just about everyone in the upper school has a waiting list, many of them, hundreds on the waiting list. And one of the beauties about the programs in private Christian academies is that sports are available to you and you can have that team experience. You can have a coach who cares about your grades, who helps you with your school, who helps coach you not just in how to shoot a basketball, but kind of life. You build these lifelong. And of course, as the head of the school, I pick champions for Christ to be my coaches because I'm discipling and developing these young men and young women who become Just champions for the faith. And then they go off to the university and they can keep that collective experience, that coaching experience, that whole thing helps them with their grades, help them with their attitude, helps them with their progress. And it's very exciting to be a part of that. [01:00:29] Speaker B: And it's, it's highly competitive. I mean, there. Oh, yeah, you got some great athletes coming to the program. You can win a championship and not lose your soul at the same time. [01:00:37] Speaker A: You know, when you start the New Testament, you find that Jesus liked to pick very competitive people. [01:00:45] Speaker B: Never thought about that. [01:00:46] Speaker A: You think about those 12 disciples. They were incredibly competitive. Here they are in the upper room talking about who is going to be the greatest. Yeah. [01:00:53] Speaker B: Never thought about it before. [01:00:54] Speaker A: Jesus liked competitive people. [01:00:57] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:00:58] Speaker A: And God leverages that. And now he's got to get the flesh out of it. But let me tell you, full of the spirit, that's not a bad attribute. [01:01:06] Speaker B: There's some raw material there you can fight. [01:01:08] Speaker A: You think about Caleb. You know, the name Caleb means dog or prostitute. That guy wasn't born with a good name and I don't know why. His parents gave him a really tough name to grow up with, but he changed the name. He made the name something we want to name our children now. Absolutely. And so we don't think of a dog or a prostitute now. We think of somebody who was tenacious, who never complained while all of his peers whined and complained. Somebody who embraced change. Somebody who was digging it out of the dirt even when he was 85. No joke. He said, give me this mountain. And so give me some people like that. Because that's what our churches need and our culture need. We're raising up a whole new generation of them. Zack. We've got 270 students today that are studying vocationally to spend their life serving in the local church. [01:01:57] Speaker B: Wow. Well, and there's, you know, we've talked about before, there was a day when, and I could, if we had a position open at the church, you would get 100 resumes for it. And those days are gone, long gone. It's tough to staff a church right now. There's just the pipeline got so empty for so long. And so you're telling me that it's beginning to fill back up again? [01:02:20] Speaker A: It is. And also what we're doing, like with your church, I just had meetings this week while I was here with two of the largest churches in Jacksonville about this very thing, is everybody's got their pipeline now because, you know, you're surfacing 13 year olds they really started in junior church or maybe before then, but they're serving, they're running a camera, they're taking the offering, they're teaching a lesson, they're being a group leader, they're cleaning up the table. You know, they're emerging 13, 14 year olds and before long they're running most of your stuff. And all of us are doing that discipling. These guys, well, by the time they get 16, they're a junior in high school, they can take four credit classes at the Baptist University of Florida in dual credit and they can get biblical training or they can take, get an associate's degree with us. If they're in a home school co op or they go to a private Christian school or whatever they do, we can partner with you all the way from that level to the D Men level. So you've got guys on the spectrum that go from 13, 14 years old to 34 year old guys who have emerged and you're trying to train them, you're discipling, you're meeting with them. I used to have a Bible study at 5am on Thursday morning, another one at 5am on Friday morning doing the same thing, trying to disciple these guys. And this is where so many of these guys come from that end up pastoring our churches. You talk about the Sin Network. The executive director of the Sin Networks got engaged. Greg Murphy. Greg Murphy was a deacon in my first church in Senatobia, Mississippi when I was in seminary 32 years ago. And he came to my 5am Bible study. God called him to ministry. He went through seminary, he was a drug sales, pharmaceutical salesman. He left that world and then he went to New York and planted churches and he became the church planting director down there. Then he worked for Kevin Ezell and still does to this day in the Sin Network. He emerged through a system in a little Baptist church because I was discipling, well, now we can come alongside of you and these guys can get academic credit and get the training where they've got the practical part of being here in Fernandino Beach. But now they've got the theological education that they really need to do their ministry for decades and years to come. [01:04:31] Speaker B: So if somebody, if somebody's curious, you've kind of stoked their curiosity, where do they go to learn about next steps and that sort of thing? [01:04:40] Speaker A: B U F edu buff buff.edu. that's B U F Edu. Click on apply. [01:04:51] Speaker B: And if somebody is, you know, you mentioned earlier kind of the marketplace economy in giving and generosity. I've Never seen a season in church where people care more about where their money's going and want to know it. They want to see it. It's difficult for people who are generous and who have means to give. It's difficult for them to throw money at something and not see where it's landing. And so things like a Baptist university in our state that we can lay eyes on and we can have conversations about it. We've talked about a lot of things during our time together. Nothing have I felt like was off limits, that if I wanted to challenge it or speak into it, that we have a seat at that table. And so if somebody says, hey, I've been giving maybe to a secular institution and I'm thinking about leveraging some of that for the kingdom, how would they go about that? [01:05:58] Speaker A: Yeah, they just reach out to us as well. You can call my office. Just go on the website, Buff Edu. There's places to give. There you can give. We're actually in the middle of a campaign because we're being overrun on our campus. We're going to fill up on our campus this year. And I've got a dorm that's got to be renovated by August 1st, and I need some funds to do it. It's $9,000, a dorm room for us to renovate. [01:06:26] Speaker B: What would it cost to do the whole thing? [01:06:27] Speaker A: It's 200, and there are 24 dorm rooms. So it's like $200,000 a little over that to do the whole building. It's got to be renovated. It got storm damage from Hurricane Michael, and so we're still trying to get all of this fixed. [01:06:42] Speaker B: So if a couple's watching and they say $200,000, God has blessed us in that realm and we could cover that for you. How quickly could you accommodate that and get those hammer swinging? You're ready. [01:06:57] Speaker A: We are literally ready. My general contractor is ready to start. They're actually doing a little demo work today on faith that we're going to get the money. He said, I'll float it myself to go ahead and pull out some of the water damage stuff, and we're going to be ready to go back in so that the kids that God is raising up to come to the Baptist University of Florida. Many of these are going to be your grandchildren's pastor. Yeah, they're going to be the ones preaching the gospel. That makes it first 30 years. [01:07:25] Speaker B: You know, when you can. When you can look at it that way. I know when we're raising money for buildings, we have to get it to where people can see. Oh, your grandkid may get baptized in that baptistery. [01:07:38] Speaker A: That's right. [01:07:38] Speaker B: It's got to be personal, you know, and you said about 9,000 per unit per room. So a lot of people watching could probably do that. Well, you know, I remember Dr. Piper said one time, don't take, don't go to schools, don't take courses, take professors. You know, look at who's there. And from the zeal that you've demonstrated today, when you talk about these things, that's the influence that I want our students to sit under and for that to spread. So, Dr. Clore, thank you for joining us today. May your tribe increase. May God bless Baptist University of Florida. [01:08:21] Speaker A: Wow. Thank you, Zach. What a privilege. This went by fast. [01:08:26] Speaker B: Well, good deal, man.