Beeson podcast, Episode 470
Dr. Roy Ciampa and Dr. Scott Guffin
Nov. 12, 2019

Announcer:          Welcome to the Beeson podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University. Now your hosts, Doug Sweeney and Kristen Padilla.

Doug Sweeney:       Welcome to the Beeson podcast. I'm your host, Doug Sweeney, here with my cohost Kristen Padilla, and we are excited about today's conversation with two of our colleagues at Samford University. Before Kristen introduces them, let me make a brief announcement about an event taking place on Monday, December 2nd at Beeson Divinity School. Our Robert Smith Jr. Preaching Institute is hosting a workshop with Beeson professor Mark Gignilliat on how to preach and teach the Psalms of Ascent during the Advent and Christmas seasons. The workshop begins at 9:30 AM and goes until 2:00 PM. The cost is only $25, and that price includes four hours of teaching, lunch, refreshments, and a copy of Dr. Gignilliat's most recent book, Reading Scripture Canonically: Theological Instincts for Old Testament interpretation.

Doug Sweeney:       Beeson's Preaching Institute exists to serve and strengthen the whole person in relation to God, the church, other preachers, and the world for faithful proclamation of God's word. You can find more information about this upcoming event including how to register on Beeson website, Beeson Divinity.com/events.

Doug Sweeney:       All right. Kristen, would you please now introduce these good friends of Beeson?

Kristen Padilla:    Welcome everyone to the Beeson podcast. We are thrilled to have two of our colleagues at Samford with us today, to share about the ways in which God is at work at Samford University. Our first guest is Dr. Roy Ciampa. He is the chair and the S. Louis and Ann W. Armstrong professor of the biblical and Religious Studies Department in Samford's Howard College of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Ciampa came to Samford in August 2018 and has been a wonderful colleague and leader of the biblical and Religious Studies Department. Dr. Scott Guffin is the executive director and assistant professor of the Christian Ministry Department, which is part of Samford School of the Arts. Dr. Geffen came to Samford in 2017 after having served as a pastor for many years. He too has been a gift to this university and we are excited to hear how God is at work in your two departments. But let's begin with a short two minute introduction of who you are for our guest. Dr. Ciampa, why don't we start with you.

Roy Ciampa:         Okay. Thank you and thank you for having me here. I grew up in Massachusetts in a fairly, basically a nominally Christian home. Now though I had Christian friends, I never really understood the gospel until my first year in university, and it was there that some folks came by and shared the gospel and I was deeply convicted and I had never read the Bible before. I trusted Christ. I was baptized and discipled by the men that had led me to Christ and just found myself immersed in scripture. That's all I wanted to do. And within a year I realized that God was calling me to the ministry. Although I didn't know all that would entail. I changed from sitting in our archival studies to studying biblical and theological studies. I met my wife in college. We got married, went to seminary.

Roy Ciampa:         It was in seminary that I realized that my calling was more focused on theological education, that it seemed that God had given me some gifting in terms of not only understanding, but being able to explain the scriptures and theology and other things. And God led us to accept an invitation to go overseas to Portugal where I taught for a number of years in a school there, in an interdenominational evangelical school training pastors, and then also the Baptist seminary in Portugal. Did some Bible translation work while I was there as well, and then accepted an invitation to go teach at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary outside of Boston.

Roy Ciampa:         My research has been in the area of the use of the Old Testament and the New and especially Pauline studies and theology of the apostle Paul. My passion today is the one that I had I think right after I came to know Christ, which is still to study the word of God, to get to know it better and to have the privilege of explaining both what I'm learning and to help other people engage with the scriptures At a deeper level as well.

Roy Ciampa:         So it's a thrill to be able to continue on that calling and to find that I'm still learning things and always excited to be able to share those with others. I have a wonderful wife, Marcel, who's by far the wiser, more godly and the better half in every way and I'm very grateful for her. We have two adult children, our son Timothy and our daughter, LaKatrina, who still live in Massachusetts, and our daughter Christina and son-in-law Jordan and our two grandchildren, Jonah and Jack who live in Northern California.

Kristen Padilla:    Thank you. Welcome, and Dr. Guffin.

Scott Guffin:       Kristen is good to be here. Thank you. Thank you Doug. In some ways my story is similar to Roy's, but in some ways different. It's different in that to steal a phrase from our provost, I'm a prenatal Alabama Baptist, so started going to church nine months before I was born. But also in ways that mirror Roy's story, didn't become a believer in Christ until I was 17. I was a Samford student. I came to Samford and was a double major in biology and chemistry, initially. And as the son of a physician and my older brother now a medical doctor, that was the calling I thought I had on my life.

Scott Guffin:       And it wasn't until I was 19 years old, I was asked to work with the youth in my home church that I began to realize that there was a different calling on my life and jumped into that. I talked to my pastor, he said, "Well, if God's called you to ministry, get busy." And so I did and I became a youth minister early on and knew that my life was in the church. Later married a wonderful woman and I've been married now for 30 plus years. We have also two children, two adult children. My son who's a graphic designer in Atlanta, Blake. And my wife is Beth, I didn't mention her name. And then my daughter Bailey, and I always tell people, you can tell I'm a Baptist preacher, I have three people in my family, they all start with the same letter. So BBB.

Scott Guffin:       But my story about coming into the academy is far different. I did a PhD back in 1999. My area of study was evangelism and church growth, but specifically focused on the foundational influences of the megachurch movement in America, and I was fascinated with that and thought, that's such a unique thing to happen in Christian history. What made it happen right now? Didn't really do anything that went beyond a dissertation. And I went back into my church ministry, and always kind of wondered why I had a PhD. It was one of those things that God kind of led me in that direction. I didn't pursue a PhD, but was recruited by Tom Rainer, who is now the retired president of Lifeway to come and do that and always wondered why did I do that?

Scott Guffin:       A few years ago when I was sitting in the president's office here at Samford and talking about this new Christian ministry degree program, he said "If you didn't have a PhD, I wouldn't be talking with you right now." So it took me about 17 years to figure out why I had that PhD. But in the meantime, always engaged in church ministry. One of the, I guess more unique stories about my years in PhD work is that a good friend of mine, also a Samford grad, Rob Jackson, in 1999 he and I were working on our dissertations and he looked at me, he said, "You know what I see for us in 20 years?" And I said, "What's that?" He said, "You and me working together at Samford University." And I said, "Well, maybe you, but not me. My life is in the church and I don't see myself ever changing that."

Scott Guffin:       So back up five years, I could never have called this one. But that's the way God works. But excited to be here. This is a wonderful opportunity, excited to be pouring into the lives of young ministers and missionaries as well as we train them for the next several years of ministry.

Doug Sweeney:       Scott and Roy, the two of you like me, are both pretty new to the work you're doing here at Samford University. Can you tell us just a little bit about why you decided in the end to come and join the team at Samford and then let our listeners know what roles you play here at the school. Scott, how about if we start with you this time?

Scott Guffin:       Yeah. For me it was an interesting transition. I have a lot of family history at Samford. One grandfather started as a student in 1938 to train for ministry. He had dropped out of high school to run the family farm after ninth grade and been called to ministry and gone back to school after high school as a young father and husband came to then Howard College from '38 to '42. And then my other grandfather in 1947 came to Samford to create what's now called the Ministry Training Institute, back then the Howard extension program. So I've grown up at Samford. We now have three family members at Samford and when those complete their training, the final one will be the 50th member of our family to graduate from Samford University.

Scott Guffin:       So all of this connection, both my parents, both my in laws, both my brothers, all a part of of Samford, the life of Samford. So for me, when the call came to start this new thing and ate breakfast with a provost one morning and he said, "We're going to pull the trigger on this new program." And I said, "Well how can I help?" And he said, "We want you to do it." There was an instantaneous yes in my heart there. And I had told my wife that morning on the way to meet Mike Harden that I wondered if there would be a job offer. And she said, "Well what happens if that job offer comes?" And I said, "I think this is what I'm supposed to do."

Scott Guffin:       And so for me it was an easy thing. In regard to what I do here, of course they brought me in to create this new degree program with my vast experience in academics to do that. But I had a lot of help, a tremendous group of people surrounding me who gave me instruction in that area and have had just a wonderful time doing that and really enjoying being in the college mix now with these students.

Doug Sweeney:       Well, we sure are glad you did come. How about you Roy?

Roy Ciampa:         My first exposure to Samford University was about 16 years ago. It was after I'd completed my doctoral program in New Testament studies. I was teaching at Gordon Conwell, and one of my colleagues was co-editing a volume with Paul House who was here at Beeson Divinity School. And they invited all of the contributors to this book on biblical theology to come here and share our chapters and papers with each other and have a symposium and discuss these things together. And so I came and was here at Beeson Divinity School. I believe that was the first time I met Dr. Timothy George and had the privilege of working with Paul House and Frank Thieleman on that project with others who are from outside of here.

Roy Ciampa:         I was enjoying my work at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary. Did that for a good number of years. I took some time, a few years to work with American Bible Society and training Bible translators and translation consultants. And then I saw the opening for this job here at Samford University and I still had these very positive regard for the university based on my experience here earlier, and the job description really seemed to meet with my passions and my experience. The opportunity to lead a department. I had served as chair of the division of biblical studies at Gordon Conwell and had a combination of teaching and administration, and this job was similar to that, and I knew just what an environment this would be and the opportunities to train people headed for all kinds of ministry.

Roy Ciampa:         I knew the legacy of the Department of Religion and how many pastors had come through here and had studied and prepared for ministry through here. In the course of the candidate in process, I've got a much better idea of some of the challenges that the department was facing and some that the university has been facing. And I think God actually used those to excite me a sense that this would be a place where all of my gifts and all of my experience and whatever wisdom I had would be put to the fullest use.

Roy Ciampa:         I think I had sense in the job that I was in that I could do this probably until the day I retired, but that God had something in store for me that would actually be a greater challenge. And with the possible result of helping a department be all that it could be, all that it wanted to be in terms of just having the impact it should have in this region in terms of training young men and women, both for ministry in all walks of life, but also the role of the department, which we may get into later in terms of providing a biblical foundation for whatever area of life they're going into.

Roy Ciampa:         And so the more I got to know about the context and the challenge, the opportunity and the strategic impact that this role could have, the more God convinced me that this was some place that he would have me come and have me depend on him and the prayers of others to see how can we best move forward.

Kristen Padilla:    Let's talk a little bit more about each of your departments, and Scott, I'll start with you. You had already mentioned that you were brought on to start a brand new department from the ground up. A Department of Christian Ministry. What was the need that Samford saw for this department? What was the reason for starting this department? What has it been like to build it from the ground up? Where's the department today and your vision for it as you look ahead to the future?

Scott Guffin:       I think the need that was addressed for Samford was the leadership of Samford saw further opportunity out there to meet a request of prospective students to do further training of ministers and those who desire to be missionaries beyond those who desire to do that in a career sense, those who might do that avocationally. We focused from the beginning on being very interdisciplinary. So for instance, we have a course called My Major in the Mission of God. We'll have our professor who teaches that teaching a section of it in the College of Health Sciences in the spring.

Scott Guffin:       And the idea is that we address those students who come to Samford who have a distinct calling to ministry, yes. We don't by any stretch think that we're the only ones doing this. We're in addition to an already very rich tradition of ministry training that's happening at Samford. In fact, I'm a product of Roy's department and was brought up in that department and trained by some very wonderful professors.

Scott Guffin:       And we also within the School of the Arts where we are, have a very rich tradition of ministry training. So we feel like we're in addition to that, maybe a little bit from a different perspective in terms of practical ministry, a very strong focus on disciple-making, great commission, ministries, that sort of thing. And with the interdisciplinary focus we hope that we have students, and this is beginning to come to fruition, that we have students from business and from education and from healthcare and all walks of the university coming into our programs.

Scott Guffin:       A good, I guess, example of that would be that I teach disciple making. So we teach students what is a disciple biblically. How do you do that? How do you actually carry out the process of discipling someone, really from evangelism all the way through winning someone to faith in Christ and then discipling that person through to maturity. And in that class this fall I have 20 students, well eight of those are not Christian ministry majors and that's good. That's exactly what we hoped would happen, is that we would have this influx of students who have a passion for ministry, a passion for missions, but who are going to utilize that in their chosen field of work.

Scott Guffin:       In terms of what it's been like developing the department, I really don't have anything to compare it to. After coming out of 32 and a half years in ministry to step into academics. I look at it and I compare it to the difficulty sometimes in ministry in the church, and it's been kind of a cake walk. In comparison, and I think that's because there've been so many helpful people. That's how Samford is. There were people even within Roy's department who coached me along and they would say, "Have you looked at Bloom's taxonomy?" And I would say, "what's a Bloom's taxonomy?" And then they would carry me through that and we would have discussions about those things.

Scott Guffin:       So all of these people along the way, our Dean, Joe Hopkins, who himself is a Baptist minister and a world-class musician, but he's a minister. He's been engaged in missions in his life too. All of these people coached me through the process. And so the process itself has been not too taxing. And honestly, one aspect of it that for me was very, very rewarding was that our faculty member who was over at the ministry training Institute, Kevin Blackwell, he and I traveled around the state of Alabama and we talked to about 150 pastors and we asked them the question, "If you could go back and change anything about your training, now that you've been in ministry for a while, you know what you kind of missed what the holes were, what would you add?"

Scott Guffin:       And so we heard things like disciple-making, we heard things like leadership, men saying we were trained in theology and Bible and preaching and history, but then we were sent out to lead and nobody ever taught us how to do that. And so we're trying to address some of those things as well. In addition though, we've had a tremendous partnership from Roy's department. Of course, Roy's addition has only ramped that up significantly. We built some of their curriculum into our curriculum.

Scott Guffin:       For instance, in biblical studies, we don't have the capacity within our curriculum to do what we really want to do with that, but they do. That's what they do. And so we wired that into our curriculum. Same thing with a pretty in depth theology or history, things like that. We didn't have the space, the bandwidth for that, and so we wired the existing curriculum within our Department of Biblical and Religious Studies into ours to do that. So we really look forward to the partnership long run, what it's going to look like in terms of how we partner together with the existing Department of Biblical and Religious Studies to train ministers and missionaries.

Doug Sweeney:       That's wonderful, Scott. And we at Beeson sure have been cheering you on as you have done all the things you've been describing. But Roy, you too have been a pretty busy boy in the last year, year and a half here at Samford. You have led what was formerly their Religion department through a name change. You've added a new major and minor in Biblical Studies. You've hired new faculty. Let our listeners know what's going on. Why is it going on? What are you trying to do with the Department of Biblical and Religious Studies as we move into the future?

Roy Ciampa:         Thank you. Yes, it's been an exciting time to be here. Before I came, or when I came to the department, the department had already carried out a self-study, an analysis of its strengths and its weaknesses, and I'm very grateful to Dr. David Banes, who was the interim chair before me for the research that went into that and helping the department kind of look through its current situation and where it was strong and where it was weak.

Roy Ciampa:         And among other things, the department realized that it had really lost touch with a number of the constituencies and churches in the area. And one of the things we needed to do is make it very clear just how committed were to our relationships with not only Alabama Baptists, but other evangelical churches, and not just evangelical churches, but the mainline churches as well. Our vision is a broad vision for preparing people for ministry, but we had really wandered away from some of the core constituencies that are so essential to the health of the department and the health of the churches in this region.

Roy Ciampa:         And so among other things, we've been kind of thinking through both, what do we teach, how do we teach it? What is it that our students really need most as they prepare to live out their lives to follow the calling that God has on their lives. We also realized that we had partly with me coming and the opportunity to hire another biblical scholar, we had a particular strength in the area of biblical studies and a lot of what we teach in our department is Biblical Studies since, among other things, we offer a course on Bible for every undergraduate student at Samford University.

Roy Ciampa:         And so when I was at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary as chair of the division of biblical studies, this is a bit of an exaggeration, but sometimes it felt like I had to swat away students who just wanted to study the Bible. They were preparing for ministry and they'd come and say, "I want to do an MA in Old Testament in an MA in New Testament and then I'm going to go out and be a pastor. And as the chair of the division of biblical studies, I found myself telling them, well, you need more than Bible. You need to know theology needs to know ministry. You need to know church history. You need to know pastoral counseling.

Roy Ciampa:         But I thought at a place like Samford University in the buckle of the Bible belt, we ought to be swatting away students coming here with a thirst to know the scriptures, to understand them better, to study them more deeply, to be able to pass that knowledge on along with students interested in studying of course theology and ministry and other kinds of things. But we decided that we could while maintaining our other strengths, because we are an interdisciplinary department, we have faculty who are specialists in Old Testament and New Testament, in church history and in ministry and sociology of religion and world religions among other things. We wanted to lean into our biblical studies giftedness and strengths.

Roy Ciampa:         We were able to hire a new faculty member, as I said, who's a professor of Old Testament, Will Kinds, who's a graduate of Southern Baptist seminary, but did his PhD at Cambridge University and a postdoc at Oxford, an amazing teacher, committed Christian, committed as is the department to the integration of faith and learning, or better to say the inseparability. If we talk about the integration, it sounds like the two separate things to begin with that we have to bring together, and we believe these are two things that begin together and should never be separated.

Roy Ciampa:         So he's been a wonderful addition to the department. We developed a new major in biblical studies. They had actually developed a minor in biblical studies just before I arrived. We added a new major in theology and ethics. We looked at the Bible course that had been taught and has been taught to all of undergraduates called biblical perspectives and tried to wrestle with whether or not it was really meeting the needs of the students and the needs of the curriculum and reflecting as well as it could Samford's core values and what we were hoping to accomplish through that course. And we reworked that into a course we call biblical foundations, which I think serves better the purpose of providing a biblical and theological foundation for students and also a foundation for the rest of their studies as they go through their undergraduate experience here.

Roy Ciampa:         And so with these and other changes going on in the department, we thought it was important and the administration agreed that we could communicate in various ways that this isn't your father's Oldsmobile, that there's a lot of new exciting things going on in our department and we could both respect the legacy of the department and lean into some of the new strengths and emphasis of the department with the name like the Department of Biblical and Religious Studies. And so the administration and the trustees approved this at the end of last academic year.

Roy Ciampa:         So this is an exciting time for us. We see us going forward and being evermore so a place where students can come from all over the region who are excited about any part of kind of theological education, whether it's church history or biblical studies or theology. Virtually all of them headed for one kind of ministry or another. But some of them will be going on for further graduate studies or seminary and then some for other kinds of graduate studies and some will be heading out to be business people or other things. And we also have very many people who are double-majoring, a major in religion and psychology or religion and something else.

Roy Ciampa:         So this is an exciting time for us and for our department and we see ourselves being a place that is growing evermore in terms of our strength of connections, not only to the churches outside of the university, but very grateful for the relationship that we have here with Beeson Divinity School. For me, having a much closer relationship with this divinity school is a major part of my agenda and I'm very grateful for your commitment to that as well. Have been very happy to have Beeson people come into my class and teach just as I have had people from the Department of Christian Ministry come in and teach in our classes and to be able to fill in for people like Frank Thieleman or others when they need help over here at Beeson. And also very grateful for Scott and his colleagues.

Roy Ciampa:         The course that we teach for all of those undergraduates, Scott and his colleagues in Christian ministry are also teaching those courses with us and we're very grateful for that, very grateful for their students that are taking courses with us and our students that take courses over in their department as well. So I think this is a very exciting time for me and for our department and as I see it, an exciting time for Samford University.

Kristen Padilla:    Samford is a significant place to prepare for ministry in large part because of what God is doing through the two departments that you represent and also through a place like Beeson Divinity School. So I'm going to put all three of you on the spot, including our cohost, Dr. Sweeney, to talk about the ways, and you've already mentioned this Roy, but the ways in which, not only the two departments work together, but work specifically with Beeson Divinity School, how you view the work of Beeson Divinity School. And then Doug, if you have anything that you want to share with our audience about your vision and prayers for how Beeson might support and work with these partners across campus. So who would like to begin?

Doug Sweeney:       I'll begin. This is Doug Sweeney again and let me just say how excited I am about what Roy is doing in the Department of Biblical and Religious Studies and what Scott and his group have been doing since the beginning of the Department of Christian Ministry. There really is a growing synergy between our three parts of Samford University. That's exciting to watch. The ethos of the Department of Biblical and Religious Studies is becoming a lot more like the ethos of Beeson and our faculty here are really excited about it and excited about cooperating with the people in Roy's department. And of course we're all about Christian ministry, so we're thrilled to see what Scott and his group have been doing in the Christian ministry department just right across the way here from Beeson Divinity School. I've been telling people around here ever since I arrived that one of my goals for Beeson Divinity School in the next phase of our institutional life is to integrate us better into Samford University and given what the Lord is doing at Samford these days this is a perfect time to do that.

Scott Guffin:       I feel like I have a lot of investment in Beeson. In both of you guys. I served on the faculty search committees for both of these gentlemen, and so I have a lot of investment in both as an alum of the Religion Department, but also Doug, I don't know if we talked about this, but I was in the very first group of students at Beeson Divinity School when it opened. There was a young lady here in town who desired to ask to marry me and then did, and I have been married to her for over 30 years now, so it worked out well. I did finish up my MDiv at Southern seminary, but was for the first year of my theological education, my master's level was at Beeson Divinity School.

Scott Guffin:       Beyond that, even as a pastor, the value of Beeson as a local pastor in Birmingham of having students from Beeson work in my church. My eventual associate pastor who was still the associate pastor at the church at Liberty Park, I got him as a brand new MDiv graduate in 2005 and we brought him in as an intern initially. And then I asked the personnel committee could I keep him? And they allowed me to do that and he's been invaluable to that church and its progress.

Scott Guffin:       Also as a pastor, worked with the supervised ministry program here. And so I've seen Beeson develop, I've seen it from the inside out. And even now with the interactions we have with Beeson, it's so valuable to what we do. And our department, about 60 to 65% of our students are female and I recognized right away that all of our faculty are male at this point. And we needed some female influence. And of course Kristen has written a book on woman's calling to ministry. And so last year I set up a moment when the female students that I have, I had them meet me in the library, I bought coffee for everyone and then I said you guys talk and I left.

Scott Guffin:       And the value of that moment, my students still talk about that Kristen, about how wonderful that was, how important that was for them to hear from a woman, our ministry from a woman's perspective. And so in regard to things like that where we can interact, where Beeson students can disciple our students, I look forward to having opportunities for that. Of course, we have faculty members who already have been teaching in Beeson. JD Payne has been teaching evangelism. I may have an opportunity to fill in and teach some pastoral ministry in the spring. Looking forward to that. I think everywhere we can can interact and grow in cooperation with our two departments and Beeson, we only strengthen what Samford has and I really think that it gives us a very unique opportunity to be a place that kind of becomes the go to place.

Scott Guffin:       It kind of used to be that decades ago that when you were called to ministry in Alabama, really in the Southeast, people said, "Go to Samford." I think that this new kind of thing that's happening at Samford with Beeson and with our departments gives us an opportunity really to be the thing again, when people say "call to ministry, what should I do?" Well, you go to Samford and all the way through, through your Master of Divinity and maybe even beyond with a Doctor of Ministry, Samford has things to offer you there that can grow you up biblically, theologically, in terms of ministry so that you're the person who is prepared to do what God's calling you to do.

Roy Ciampa:         I'm very grateful for the same sorts of things that both of you have mentioned before. I've as already mentioned, I just love to have Beeson people teaching in our courses. I love to come over and contribute any time and any way I can to things at Beeson, the same thing with the Department of Christian Ministry. One of the things that attracted... I know that our a new colleague for instance, Will Kinds came here from Whitworth University, and one of the things that he said that he looked forward to was coming into a larger conversation that we have. We can have a great conversation in our department, but not only within the department, but here on Samford's campus. We can have wonderful conversations across the Christian Ministry Department and Beeson Divinity School and we can bring together a larger number of scholars both from within fields, whether it's Old Testament or New Testament or theology or church history and ministry, whatever. But also we can bring together interdisciplinary conversations and it just makes for a much richer environment to be in.

Roy Ciampa:         A number of our students of course graduate every year. A number of them come here to Beeson. Some go to other divinity schools or other seminaries elsewhere, but I think everything we can do to continue to build a closer relationship between our departments and Beeson Divinity School, I think our students benefit from that and our students benefit from that when they're in our department. I think our department and Beeson benefits from that as well.

Roy Ciampa:         So I'm thrilled. I was thrilled to be able to be involved in the search committee for you. I wasn't on both of your search committees but only on one of them. But I think that also speaks to the larger administration's desire and commitment to see this as a place where we don't have three different silos on campus, but three interrelated departments or schools that are doing the best that we can do because we're working from the synergy that comes from the prayer fold collaboration of like minded scholars.

Roy Ciampa:         So I'm grateful for what we're doing. I know we're looking forward to having conversations about possible degree program developments in the future. Whether or not we would head down the direction of accelerated programs or not, but this is an exciting place to talk about what can we do to make this the best possible experience for people who are headed towards ministry and towards other callings, not by just working on it on her own little project, but with colleagues with similar hearts and minds and commitments.

Doug Sweeney:       Amen and amen. You have been listening to Dr. Roy Ciampa, who leads Samford's Department of Biblical and Religious Studies and Dr. Scott Guffin, who leads Samford's Department of Christian Ministry. These two men have become good friends of mine already and good friends of Beeson Divinity School. I am thrilled that they were willing to come and share with our podcast audience today what God's been doing through their lives and ministries and through their departments. There's a lot for which to be thankful. This is a wonderful time to be at Samford University and Beeson Divinity School. We thank all of you for joining us today and we say goodbye for now.

Kristen Padilla:    You've been listening to the Beeson podcast. Our theme music is written and performed by Advent Birmingham of the Cathedral Church of the Advent in Birmingham, Alabama. Our engineer is Rob Willis. Our announcer is Mike Pasquerilla. Our cohosts are Doug Sweeney and myself, Kristen Padilla. Please subscribe to the Beeson podcast at beesondivinity.com/ or on iTunes.