In this episode of the Higher Education, Higher Purpose podcast host Phil Cook speaks with Dr. Greg Miller, President of Malone University. Dr. Miller shares how a Christian college offers not merely academic instruction but also a spiritual framework that significantly influences students' lives during formative years. He emphasizes the necessity for institutions like Malone to integrate faith into every aspect of their curriculum, fostering an environment where students can thrive both academically and spiritually. 

Throughout our conversation, we reflect on the importance of perseverance in the face of challenges within the realm of higher education, underscoring that the mission of nurturing future leaders in faith is both essential and urgent.

What You Will Learn:

• The significance of Christian higher education lies in its ability to profoundly influence the spiritual and moral development of students during their formative years.
• Dr. Miller emphasizes that every course at Malone integrates faith, addressing ethical issues alongside academic disciplines to ensure a holistic educational experience.
• The importance of cultural fit when selecting a Christian college cannot be overstated, as it shapes students' experiences and community engagement.
• Malone University strives to meet students' diverse spiritual needs through various opportunities for spiritual formation beyond traditional chapel services.
• The role of perseverance is vital, both in ultra running and in the challenges faced in Christian higher education, highlighting the necessity for relentless forward progress.

Resources:

Visit our website: https://www.naccap.org

Email us: Office@naccap.org

Visit The NACCAP Annual Conference: https://naccapconference.org

Welcome to the Higher Ed Higher Purpose Podcast, a podcast designed for NATCAP members, prospective students and their families.

Hello again, everyone. Welcome to another edition of the Higher Ed Higher Purpose Podcast. My name is Phil Cook.

It's my privilege to serve as the president of the North American Coalition for Christian Admissions Professionals. You know us as nacap. We are thrilled today to have a very special guest with us, Malone University's president, Dr. Greg Miller. Dr.

Miller, thank you for being on our podcast today.

Well, thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Before we came on, we were just talking about some mutual connections and mutual backgrounds we have. We'll get into that in just a second, but let me take a moment to give the full introduction of Dr. Miller. Dr.

Miller serves as the 14th President of Malone University. Raised on a ranch in South Dakota, felt an early call to ministry and began his journey at Central Bible College in Springfield, Missouri.

Recognizing his ministry will be expressed through higher education, he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Theology from Oral Roberts University, a Master of Arts degree in History from the University of Tulsa, and a PhD in church history from Boston University. He also served there as a teaching and research assistant, but has nearly 40 years of ministry and Christian higher education experience. Dr.

Miller dedicated 22 years to Malone before becoming president and he's currently in his 25th year serving Malone and is still going strong and just recently signed an extension, a new contract being president there. He's an ordained minister and accomplished scholar. He's also an avid ultra runner and two time national champion.

You know, we've got to talk about that. Dr. Miller and his wife Darla have celebrated over 40 years of marriage. They have three sons, a grandson, and reside in Canton, Ohio.

Again, please welcome Dr. Miller. Dr. Miller, thanks again for being with us.

Thank you very much.

Is there anything better than being a grandparent? I'm just jumping right to that. I'm one of those recently. So do you love that? And are they close to you?

Well, so we have the blessing of having our only grandson be the kid who is close from the kid who is closest to us. So a little over an hour away here in Ohio and we get to see them whenever we're not taken up with presidential duties, so.

And there's not a lot of time for that. I know, but I'm glad you get to be close to him. You know, I'm just gonna go ahead. I'm sorry.

Yeah, he's. He's three, so. If you can remember when your grandkids were three years old, he is A blast. He is an absolute blast.

So curious and a lot of fun. I have a two year old and a grandson and a five month old granddaughter. So that lives up to the billing, right? It does for sure.

So we read your bio and so obviously you've been in ministry, but the first question comes to mind is why Christian higher education? What got you into this? And why have you spent so many years serving the kingdom in this way?

Well, there's lots of good answers to that question, but I'll start with this. If you think about the most active church that you know, how many hours a week does that church have to impact the life of an 18 to 22 year old?

You'd probably count it on one hand and then think about a residential Christ centered Christian university. How many hours a week do we have to shape the life of a young person?

I mean, the church has no other institution like Christian higher ed fulfills a very, very important role.

And in fact BARNA research has demonstrated over and over that in terms of continuation in faith into their 20s and their 30s, the single most important decision that is made is where they go to college, what happens to them from 18 to 22. Now you don't have to go to a Christian college to maintain your faith.

But I will tell you, especially with the kind of overwhelming orthodoxy that's present in secular education, if you are a believer going to a secular institution, all of those influences are going to push you a particular direction.

There's a kind of reigning orthodoxy and issues that are very important like sexuality and marriage and gender and many more besides, they're going to push you in a particular direction. Now you can be a believer in that context for sure, but you're going to be swimming upstream.

Whereas if you come to a place like Malone, all of the influences are going to be pushing you toward Christ. And so not just having an opportunity for a great quality education, but one in a crisis Christ centered environment.

In my entire lifetime, I can't think of a time where we need more thoughtful, balanced, mature young men and women going out into the world to be salt and light.

I'm sitting on my hands here trying so hard not to jump up and say Amen. Hallelujah. This is exactly why NATCAP does what it does and why we do what we do in particular. Now you've also spent time in the classroom.

So what you've just described, that confluence of those issues, it's probably seen mostly in the classroom. You were in the classroom. Talk about the classroom experience that you had and how do you approach Christ centered excellence at Malone?

Well, for one thing, every single one of our courses at Malone is expected required to integrate faith. Now the integration of faith doesn't just mean prayer at the beginning of class or devotional. It could or doesn't have to.

Actually, that's not really integration. Having a scripture verse on a syllabus or something, that. That's not integration. That's a good thing.

But we want every single one of our courses to think seriously, what does it mean to take scripture as authoritative in terms of this particular subject or discipline? Every single course. It does not matter what that course is.

So for instance, an accounting course, Christian accounting principles are not different than secular accounting principles. We're 20 minutes away from the University of Akron in terms of accounting principles. We teach the same thing.

But a course at Malone is going to ask questions about calling. It's going to raise ethical issues alongside those accounting principles that integrate faith into the class.

And I tell our faculty, and I tried to live this out as a faculty member, that your teaching here is different than what it would be at another kind of institution. Because as the professor, you must be willing to take spiritual responsibility for your students.

So when you're in front of a class, you realize you're not just the instructor, you also have spiritual responsibility for the development of those young men and women.

And so those are some of the things that I lived out, some of the things that I talk about with our faculty, even down to every single adjunct where I talk to them. Nothing is more important than what happens actually in the classroom.

And if that is not faith integrated well, then you don't really have a Christian university.

And the reason why I emphasize every course is that we don't satisfy the requirements of serving Christ in this way simply by having a required Bible course, which we do, or a required theology course, which we do. If it is not soaked through from top to bottom throughout the entire curriculum, then it's really not a faith integrated curriculum.

Curriculum, absolutely.

And I love the way you're explaining it. But also I love the phrase that you ended there with if it's not soaked through. So the classroom, terribly important.

But at a place like Malone, I'd imagine the co curricular is also an important part of the faith development. How important is it? How does Malone do it?

What are you doing outside the classroom to continue to nurture and develop students faith through this process in conjunction with the classroom?

Well, absolutely. So it's a multi pronged approach for sure.

So at Malone, every single employee, full time and part time staff and faculty are required to be able to sign a statement of faith and demonstrate that they are participating in a local church. Every single employee we want.

And in fact I tell our staff employees, our groundskeepers and housekeepers for instance, that you can build, make a eternal difference in the lives of students just by observing, by talking to, by supporting, in whatever way that you can. In fact, the housekeeper in this building, I know for a fact, spends the morning hours cleaning and praying room by room as she goes through.

So we're surrounding our students with people who can be exemplars and faith for them wherever they go.

And actually I personally interview every full time head coach finalist, every full time faculty on campus finalist, every director level person, because I need to know that it's not just in the classroom but on the playing fields and with our resident directors in the dorms that this same consistent Christ centered, Bible based experiences being lived out. So that's one thing. Second thing is all of our students are required to attend spiritual formation opportunities.

So we moved a number of years away from a kind of cookie cutter, one size fits all chapel experience to providing students with multiple opportunities.

They still have to get their chapel credits, but now some students will meet those chapel credits through a meeting of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, for instance, fca. Or we even have, we're an open enrollment school.

So there are students that come here for our programs or athletic or academic, and they're not believers when they come. So we try to meet them where they are. We even have the equivalent of a kind of what's this Jesus thing anyway?

Spiritual formation opportunity to address their questions.

We found out simply requiring a large group chapel meeting was not serving the purposes of spiritual formation for these students that really don't have a background. Or for instance, our chapel services are what one would expect in an evangelical church on Sunday morning.

And then you take a Catholic student who comes to Malone and drop them in the middle of that setting.

And if you really want to shape their spiritual formation, you're going to have to actually do something intentional that's different from just that large group meeting to meet them where they're at.

Excellent.

And you're describing exactly what the situation when you have an open enrollment school like this that give them different opportunities, different responsibilities.

You're listening to the Higher Ed Higher Purpose podcast.

We're Talking to the 14th President of Malone University, Dr. Greg Miller, here with us on our Higher Ed higher purpose podcast. Dr.

Miller, the Classroom, the co curricular, all this is so important, but man we gotta have students enrolled. And the talk every day about the value of higher education, the demographic enrollment, cliff, all of those things are out there.

But choosing the right Christian college, which is why NACAP exists and today we are all pioneers, we're all saying you should consider Malone University for your son or daughter or you as you're listening to this.

But if you had to give three tips or two or three tips to students and families as they're making this choice, what advice do you have to our listeners to choosing the right Christian college?

Well, let me first say that we're in a really, really unique place here at Malone in that we are unusual for our CCCU schools across the country.

We're in a place that has a distinct regional identity, approximately 5 million people, robust church attendance, 16 private Christian evangelical high schools in our region and, and one CCCU school. And so that puts us in a really, really wonderful situation.

And as over the course of the last few years we have really turned our attention towards serving the church capital C, we are experiencing, we're set for our third year in a row of increased first year enrollment here at Malone. And it's simply because we're putting first and foremost our calling to serve the church in our region.

And the church is responding and our private Christian schools are responding to this strategic direction of Malone. In my mind. Christian universities, there are so many independent, small four year institutions across the country.

If Christian institutions cannot center down on the authority of scripture and on Christian faith, we really don't have a reason to exist. But as we do that, families especially, we're not in Boston, we're not in Seattle, families here in northeastern Ohio are turning toward us.

And so that's been a really good thing. So the traditional reasons that families give for choosing schools, I think they're all valid to one degree or another. Program matters.

Although as all of us know, the pathway that God leads often means that a student might be interested to start in a particular program and end up changing majors or even fields maybe once or twice or more. So program matters, but I wouldn't encourage families to look only at program. Affordability matters for sure.

And we're doing everything that we can to make our private Christian tuition comparable to secular public tuition as much as we can. Affordability matters. But that's not the be all and end all either because for a good quality product, it is worth paying for that.

And we do this every single day. I see people walking around with Starbucks coffee and they could have gotten it a whole lot cheaper, maybe at quick Mart or something like this.

But it's worth it because it is really that much better. So program affordability, geographical proximity to home, that also matters.

And I'd encourage families, some kids need to go a long ways away and some kids need to stay close by home. So those kind of questions do matter. But there are other, I think important reasons as well.

So one of the most important is in terms of a kind of cultural fit. I'll put it in those terms.

There are a lot of different flavors of Christian higher ed institutions depending on their location, their heritage, for instance, whether they're in open enrollment school or not, all of these kind of factors matter. And so cultural fit for your particular son or daughter, for you as an individual, you can pick something of this up in a campus tour.

But I would encourage families to ask further questions to get a little bit more involved in terms of what the culture is. So at Malone, I'll just give you as an example. Here at Malone, we have an open enrollment school.

So we tell our families that come from our churches, there going to be a percentage of kids, our latest residential survey said it was about 8 or 9% that either don't believe in God or unsure whether they believe in God or not.

So they need to know that if they come to Malone, they're going to be rubbing shoulders with people that maybe don't share their same faith and certainly not their faith tradition. We serve believers across the spectrum in terms of denomination. Is that something that excites you or is that something that makes you nervous?

So institutional fit. I will also add to that we are an Evangelical Friends school and most people don't know too much about Evangelical Friends.

It comes out of the Evangelical Friends. They kind of serve the west and we kind of serve the East.

Here our Friends heritage actually matters, even though a minority of our students, faculty and staff come from Friends background. Because the Friends have this amazing ability to integrate seamlessly warm hearted love for Jesus and a commitment to social engagement.

And they do it without apology. It just comes naturally to them.

Quakers were leaders in the abolitionist movement in terms of providing support for women, women in ministry, women in positions of authority. We may be the first institution of higher education in the country that had a woman faculty member teach Bible to male students.

So that may be something that is either interesting to you or you're going to say, you know, that's not the kind of place that I think would be home in terms of a cultural fit. So that culture, I think matters, that makes a difference.

And also one thing that I'll say about Malone, and that is every small college says that it does community. Well, I know from personal experience that that's not actually the case.

But here at Malone there is an incredibly strong intentionality about forming community with I mean really we put a lot of work and effort into it and it just is evident.

And so if you are someone who really appreciates the idea of being integrated into a community, community within the larger community, then this would be a really good place for you. So those kind of cultural questions I think are often unasked but very, very important in the selection of which Christian college you should attend.

Excellent. And being authentic to who you are, obviously when you're in that lane and doing that, you're finding success.

Students are finding the right fit for them and succeeding. As we're finishing up our time with you, believe it or not, the time flies by for us.

And so we've had a wonderful description of how approach Christian education, Christian higher education at Malone University. But we want to talk about your personal interest a little bit in ultra running. I read your bio. Our friends could listen to it and easily find it.

But what lessons? 1. How do you get into ultra running, by the way? Maybe a quick description of what it is.

And what lessons does one learn from being an ultra, not just a runner, but an ultra runner.

I think it's the best possible preparation for being a Christian college president, let me tell you. So you couldn't get better. So ultra running is long distance races beyond the marathon. So I was a collegiate athlete.

I coached collegiately seven seasons when I was at Valley Forge Christian College cross country for men and women and was a marathoner.

And then I got old and slow and so what I wanted to do was to stay competitive, which meant I needed to push the distance out and God did not make me to be able to dunk a basketball. But I can go a long time on my feet.

And so these are races that 50 miles or 100 miles or 24 hours in length and it's been an amazing learning experience for me. I probably learned more about the Christian life through long distance running than through anything else really, except for marriage.

In my life personally, there's so many lessons and I would just leave your listeners with with a couple that I use when I'm talking to groups, one of which is the power of perseverance. When you go into a hundred mile race, you know you're going to go through what we call rough patches.

And some of these rough patches are times where it's just you feel horrible. You absolutely feel like there is no way that you will be able to go on. No way you'll be able to go on. You feel that bad.

I have literally been in the middle of the night, curled up in a the fetal position, lying in Michigan in September alongside a trail thinking, I'm done, this is over. But an amazing thing happens if you simply persevere and keep going step by step by step. We call it in ultra running, Relentless forward progress.

If you can't run, walk. If you can't walk, crawl. Just keep moving forward. Rfp and as you do this, the most amazing thing happens.

You're able to push through most of the time. If there's an injury, that's something else. But you're able to push through those rough patches.

And that race that I just mentioned that I was lying alongside, I got some calories in me, did some walking and within an hour of that experience, I was running like I was running at the beginning of the race.

So I would encourage your listeners by the grace, grace of God and through his strength and power, no matter what you are facing today, if you simply persevere, amazing things can happen. So that's one very, very important lesson. And maybe that's about all the time that we might have, but I could talk about this for quite some time.

Do you know what I love about it is I think we've gotten the name of this podcast which is Relentless Forward Progress. Maybe a closing thought, Dr. Miller, about how that applies to what you're doing alone.

What we need to do for Christian higher education, the perseverance piece of what you're describing about we must continue with relentless forward progress in our industry and.

For Malone, absolutely, because what we are doing matters. Christian higher ed matters. It matters in ways that people I think only have outside of our world, only have a vague understanding.

But we have kids that come to our institutions and their lives are headed one way and by the grace of God, through what happens here, their lives are headed in a totally different direction. Opportunities are opened up for them. The combination of Christ centered quality education and a concern for their spiritual and moral development.

What we do, it matters. It matters eternally.

And because of that, I think because of this there are tremendous headwinds, there's a very real enemy, a very real enemy who wants to steal, kill and destroy, and especially these young people. And there are incredible headwinds. There are cultural headwinds, there are fiscal headwinds.

And so we must, we simply must be committed to the task of Christian Higher Ed, our ability to serve the church and by the grace of God as we face those headwinds honestly, soberly, realistically, not with a fake optimism or fake hopefulness, but a realistic, realistic approach that by the grace of God, this good work will be able to be continued.

And on our podcast today, we think that Malone University is a great place for you to do that. Dr. Miller, thank you so much for sharing with us what a wonderful time we spent together.

We wish you well in your running and your training and also your presenting. Thank you so much.

Well, thanks so much for the opportunity and may God bless the work of NatCap. It's important work, work.

Thank you so much.

Be sure to join us next time for the Higher Ed Higher Purpose podcast.