Social Innovation | “Organic Institutions” with Greg Jones
Show Notes:
Eddie and Chris revisit the conversation on social innovation with Greg Jones. Greg is the President of Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, and is an author, speaker, minister, and the former Dean of Duke Divinity School. The theme of his appointment at Belmont is “Let Hope Abound,” and he is using that theme to create an ecumenical, Christ-centered culture for the flourishing of all people, not only the students, staff, and faculty.
Greg is dreaming the God-sized dreams, and he has a few ideas on how to lead all of us onto that path. His most recent book, Navigating the Future: Traditioned Innovation for Wilder Seas (with co-author Andrew P. Hogue) outlines his perspective on traditioned innovation as “a habit of being and living that cultivates a certain kind of moral imagination shaped by storytelling and expressed in creative, transformational action.”
Resources:
Transcript:
Chris McAlilly 00:00 I'm Chris McAlilly.
Eddie Rester 00:01
And I'm Eddie Rester. Welcome to The Weight. Today our guest is Dean Greg Jones. I call him Dean Greg Jones out of habit. For a long time he was the dean at Duke Divinity School. He is now the President at Belmont University in Nashville.
Chris McAlilly 00:16
Belmont's having a moment right now, alongside the city of Nashville. It's a wonderful university that has been growing over the course the last 20 years. It sits at the heart of the city, kind of close to Vanderbilt, but right at the edge of Music Row, and has a history that's rich, but it also has a connection to a lot of folks who have done entrepreneurship and innovation through the years. And Greg has come in as a leader of a Christ-centered university at a, I think, a poignant and particular time in its history.
Eddie Rester 00:49
And what Greg brings is an understanding of the true meaning of innovation, of what it means to not just abandon tradition, but what he calls to offer traditioned innovation, where you take the best of who you've been, and begin to tease that story forward into the places that Christ is calling and drawing us. It's exciting to hear him, one, talk about his passion already for Belmont, but also to give this vision of what it can mean for people to be surprised by the goodness of God, to be surprised by the God who is still alive and still at work.
Chris McAlilly 01:27
You know, you run into some people who are angry, who are bitter, who are, you know, just kind of bring you down, Greg is never.
Eddie Rester 01:33 Greg is not that guy.
Chris McAlilly 01:34
He's not that guy. He is a person who has always been inspiring and full of hope, and a sense of what is possible on the other side of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, Easter hope, and the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, that that's not just something that happened a long time ago, but that it creates the possibility for God to be at work here and now, in unique, surprising ways.
Chris McAlilly 02:01
They're building new institutions. There's a new medical school that they're starting. So all kinds of amazing partnerships that they're getting off the ground at Belmont. And you hear, you kind of get on the inside of the way that he thinks about how to lead an institution. So if you're a pastor, or if you're a church leader, or you're a Christian who is in the marketplace or leading a business, or, you know, whatever field you're working in, I think you're going to find here a conversation that will allow you to kind of deepen your work, or perhaps pivot to something that's new, that will be meaningful and life-givin, that will lead not only to your flourishing, but the flourishing of the communities that you're in.
Eddie Rester 02:42
I think you're going to enjoy this episode. This was originally slated to be part of our series that we started Season Three with about social innovation, but scheduling just didn't work out. But we're very thankful to have him.
Chris McAlilly 02:53
It's so hard to get on Eddie's calendar.
Eddie Rester 02:54
It's hard to get on my calendar.
Chris McAlilly 02:55 He's a busy man.
Eddie Rester 02:56
I'm a busy man. So thank you for being in the journey with us. Make sure you leave a review for us. Like it, share the podcast with someone that you think needs to hear it.
Eddie Rester 03:05
[INTRO] Life can be heavy, we carry around with us the weight of our doubt, our pain, our suffering, our mental health, our family system, our politics. This is a podcast that creates space for all of that.
Chris McAlilly 03:18
We want to talk about these things with humility, charity, and intellectual honesty. But more than that, we want to listen. It's time to open up our echo chamber. Welcome to The Weight.
Chris McAlilly 03:34
We're here today with Greg Jones. Greg, thanks for being on the podcast.
Greg Jones 03:39 Delighted to be here.
Eddie Rester 03:40
I was just thinking the other day that the last time we were working together, you were here in Oxford, and you spoke here at Oxford University United Methodist Church. And in our early service, because we were combining a couple services, it was February of 2020. And I told people to scoot in, because there wasn't any COVID among us yet. It was a real bad attempt at humor that really has not aged well at all.
Chris McAlilly 04:10
That didn't hit. That didn't hit. That was real bad.
Eddie Rester 04:11
Greg Jones 04:14
That was my last airplane flight before the pandemic hit lockdown.
Eddie Rester 04:19
Wow. It's been... Well, thank you. It's been a couple years, then, I guess since we've really gotten to...
Greg Jones 04:24 Yeah.
Chris McAlilly 04:24
Yeah. A lot has transpired for you, Greg. You have a new role in Nashville, Tennessee. How is that going? Tell folks perhaps that may not know that part of your journey, kind of where you are and how that transpired.
Greg Jones 04:41
Well, thanks. Yeah, I'm now living in Nashville, Tennessee, been president of Belmont University since June one of 2021. It was weird to do both the interviews first with a succession committee in the midst of a pandemic and then have the transition to Belmont be in the midst of that. And this year, I've spent a fair bit of time monitoring COVID stats, which I never would have thought I'd be paying attention to as a president. But that's part of the reality. But moving to Nashville has been a great gift. Belmont's been a wonderful place for us, Susan and me, and coming to a city that's growing in really extraordinary ways and a university that's growing in extraordinary ways has been a wonderful gift and opportunity.
Chris McAlilly 05:33
Your journey really began kind of as a pastor, and you did a PhD in theology, and led a seminary, a divinity school at Duke for many years. Why this role? What is it about leading an institution of higher education like a university at Belmont? What is it that that compelled you in that direction? Or that you felt called to in that? What is the, I guess, the animating kind of passion there for you?
Greg Jones 06:07
Calling is a really good term for it. I really wasn't looking to become a university president. I Didn't hit then. It's real bad now. So anyway, welcome back. Calling is a really good term for it. I really wasn't looking to become a university president. I was basically turning down inquiries for anything like that. When friend who was the board chair here at Belmont, called and said that the President was going to retire, would I be interested? I said, "Well, what are you looking for?" And they said someone who is Christ- centered, who likes to build and is innovative. And I thought, "well, that sounds, unfortunately, like me. I think I'd better be interested."
Greg Jones 06:37
And I went and talked to Susan, who I thought would say, "Well, we don't really want to move." And instead, she said, "Well, what if this is a calling?" And the more we listened and learned and got a sense of where Belmont was and where the opportunities were going forward, it seemed like a great context for me to integrate my faith, my interest in education, and my passion for social innovation.
Chris McAlilly 07:05
Define innovation. I know that it's something that you've written about and particularly think about that in terms of what it means to do that as a Christian, and in a way that leads to broad social flourishing. But how do you think about innovation? It's a term that gets thrown out a lot. A lot of people have different ways of thinking about it. What does that mean for you?
Greg Jones 07:29
Yeah. Well, I've struggled with the way a lot of people use the term because it often means making stuff up or just seeing if you can throw some stuff at the wall and see what sticks. And that's not innovation. For me, innovation is always linked to tradition. So I coined the term "traditioned innovation" to say that innovation is finding new paths forward by drawing on the best of the past before us, and that the stronger our sense of traditioning, the more innovative we can be.
Greg Jones 08:01
I like to draw comparisons to improvisational music and jazz, especially, that you really don't want people who are just making stuff up--that's a middle school band concert. Nobody wants to go to that, even the parents.--What you really want are people who are gifted, who knows the past, who have skills, and then can listen creatively to what's going on around them and chart paths into the future, make beautiful music, and really be creative. So innovation for me is always drawing on the past in creative ways.
Greg Jones 08:35
And my term "traditioned innovation," when I first thought of it, I asked Cavin Rowe, a friend of mine at Duke, who's a New Testament scholar, what came to mind and he said, "Well, the book of Acts." And I thought, "oh, that's positive." And he said, "The Gospels in the book of Acts," and I thought, "that's even better." Then we actually realized that it's a biblical way of thinking, that only God creates out of nothing. All of us are drawing on the past, and it's whether we're intentional about that in ways that can be really creative and life-giving for the future. And then I add to that the notion that it's not just being creative and life-giving for the future, but really innovation aims to change the equilibrium. It's not just doing things incrementally. We're actually trying to change the equilibrium so that a community can flourish in new ways or a person can flourish in new ways.
Chris McAlilly 09:25
I feel like, you know, it's one thing to do improvisational jazz with a single instrument, I think it's another thing to think of it in the seat that you're in now as a president of the university in a, you know, major kind of growing American city. And I wonder if you, I mean, you're, I guess, in the process of doing the work of traditioned innovation in this context. Situate people if you don't mind, just kind of in your current work. What's the history of Belmont? What do you feel is worth bringing forward and how are you kind of thinking about doing the work of traditione innovation where you are now?
Greg Jones 10:02
Sure. Well, Belmont actually has an extraordinary history. It goes back over 125 years. It was founded in 1890 by two women from Philadelphia. It was known as Ward-Belmont. And these two women, Susan Heron and Ida Hood had a high school and college called Ward-Belmont. I learned after my appointment was announced that my paternal grandmother actually was a student at Ward-Belmont 100 years ago. In 1950 and 51, Belmont, Ward-Belmont separated, and the high school became Harpeth Hall, which is now a girl's high school, a private high school, in Nashville, and Belmont became its own independent college. And that was when it was taken over by the Tennessee Baptist Convention.
Greg Jones 10:51
So for much of the 20th, the second half of the 20th century, it was a Baptist College and started to grow significantly in the late 90s and early 2000s. And in 2007, it's separated from the Tennessee Baptist Convention, but in a way that's different from many of those stories of a denominational college separating from its founding denomination. Rather than kind of drift into a secular institution, Belmont doubled down as an ecumenical Christian university, one that welcomes Catholics and Pentecostals and a wide variety of Christian traditions. And that became part of its identity as an ecumenical university.
Greg Jones 11:38
So I sometimes say, you know, we're kind of a unicorn. We're neither secular. nor denominational, or a CCCU school in the evangelical world. We're hospitable across the spectrum. But I've remained Christian, or as I've been reframing it here, Christ-centered, so that we're focused less on the adjective and more on the One who calls us and centers us in that way, Christ. We've grown significantly over the last 20 to 25 years, from being relatively small college, about 2500 to 3000 students to this past fall being 8700 students. We expect to perhaps be at 9000 next summer.
Greg Jones 12:20
We now have 13 colleges. We announced the launch of a new College of Medicine. It'll enroll its first class of students, we hope in summer of 2023. So we now have 13 schools. We're well known, probably best known for our music programs. We have College of Music and Performing Arts, as well as the College of Business. And then we have a separate College of Entertainment and Music Business. So we're, I say we train the songwriters, the performers, and the people who run the business. And so we've got these virtuous spirals. We've got close connections to Music Row, and my office as president actually looks out on Music Row, which is a great, great gift.
Greg Jones 12:20
But having 13 colleges and College of Health Sciences and Nursing, College of Pharmacy and now adding a College of Medicine. Our Business School is well known for its entrepreneurship focus. And most of the people for whom our colleges have been named and our buildings have been named, were entrepreneurs. So Belmont has this very future-oriented kind of focus, both commercial entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship. And so the ethos of the university is one where we're always looking for opportunities and collaboration. There's a strong sense of character formation, and working across those colleges in really extraordinary ways.
Greg Jones 13:46
The other thing that my predecessor did an extraordinary job of doing was to build relationships in Nashville and Middle Tennessee. And so we are well respected and trusted as partners in the Nashville-Middle Tennessee region, which has given me opportunities to explore new partnerships and to build those relationships in terms of social innovation. I think that's a real opportunity for Belmont. I say as a Christ-centered University, we have a clear kind of North Star. Our answer to Simon Sinek's question about start with "why," we have a very clear why that's rooted in Christ, and that's what enables us to come together across colleges and disciplines to really discover new opportunities.
Greg Jones 14:32
We started a program called Basic: the Belmont Accelerator for Social Innovation and Collaboration, where we're making seed grants available to faculty and staff across colleges. You have to work across two or three different colleges, work with students and community partners, and we focused initially on children zero-to-eight and their families. We developed two pilot projects, one in our neighborhood across the street Edge Hill, the other in Antioch working with immigrant refugees communities, aiming to change that social equilibrium in a real innovative way.
Greg Jones 15:06
And what I found is Belmont drawing on that ecumenical Christian identity has brought faculty and staff and students and our community partners together in really exciting ways to see opportunities to help Nashville flourish, not just as a city, but perhaps some of our neighborhoods where there are bigger challenges--eople in under-resourced environments and to help children and families really find ways to flourish.
Eddie Rester 15:34
It sounds like so much exciting work is happening there at Belmont. One of the things you said was "the ethos is one of looking for opportunities," as we think about Christian social innovation and its roots in Scripture, and even its roots in history, and in a minute maybe you can share a little bit about that, why is it that it seems so much in our churches--and when I say church, Methodist Baptist, the wide gamut--why does it seem like tradition and innovation are often pitted against each other? That it's either one or the other or you have to hold on to one and lose the other? Why do we struggle to hold those ideas together?
Greg Jones 16:20
It's a great question. I think the problem fundamentally is theological. Do we believe God's at work in the world or not? I say these days that I have two base criteria: One, do you believe God raised Jesus from the dead? Two, do you believe the Holy Spirit was poured out at Pentecost? If you believe those two things, we have a lot we can work on together and can disagree about and find common ground to do all sorts of creative and fun stuff.
Greg Jones 16:49
If you don't believe either of those two things, then you've really kind of adopted a this-worldly framework, an imminent frame, in the sense of only in this world, in the way Charles Taylor talks about it. And then it becomes a zero-sum game. If I have power, you don't. If you have power, I don't. And so we get into these games or fights and divisions where it's you versus me, in those sorts of ways. And I think that's where tradition, or conservatives and progressives, evangelicals, liberals, Protestants, Catholics, fill in the blank of how we end up splitting up all of this.
Greg Jones 17:31
Whereas what I say is, if you believe God raised Jesus from the dead, then you're rooted in Easter hope. And if you believe the Holy Spirit was poured out at Pentecost, then you're also rooted in Pentecostal power. And what happened in the early churches, as a result of the power of Easter, or the hope of Easter and the power of Pentecost, the early Christians were set in motion in ways that decentered them. Christ was at the center, the risen Christ was at the center, the Holy Spirit was at the center. In other words, the triune God is at the center.
Greg Jones 18:04
And so it put people into motion and mission focused on what God's doing in the world. And that led to all sorts of creativity and innovation. The first hospitals in the history of the world were founded by the early Christians, and it was because Jesus had said, you know, care for the sick and those who are suffering. And so they said, "Oh, I think that's what we're called to do." And so they created all these new institutions. And it got to the point where Julian the Apostate, the Roman Emperor, eventually said, "these nasty Galileans," what he calls Christians, "these nasty Galileans are making us look bad. We've got to do something like what they're doing." But for him, it was just a pale imitation of a social project. It wasn't rooted in Easter hope and Pentecostal power. And so it didn't work.
Greg Jones 18:52
When, in the history of the church, there's been a kind of outpouring and spread of the gospel, it's been theologically rooted in that sense of Easter hope and Pentecostal power. In our own Wesleyan tradition, that's what animated the Wesleyans in the 18th century. And all around the world, I think you see that theological grounding of expectation, of what Cavin Rowe calls Christianity's surprises. Surprising when you see the work of God in the world, and you say, "how do I get caught up in it?" So I think one of the problems we have in the American churches, we don't expect to be surprised by God.
Chris McAlilly 19:34
I wonder, I... That's a good...
Eddie Rester 19:37
I mean, I'm writing that down. Yeah.
Chris McAlilly 19:40
I think the question that I have, Greg, and you've talked about this in a number of different ways, but I think, starting, I mean, it seems like perhaps from some angles, maybe a bit of an odd time to be starting medical school, or to be building a new institution. For a long time you talked about the importance of not only thinking institutionally but working institutionally and seeing your vocation in terms of not just a solo project, but one that's at the center of an ecosystem of different institutions collaborating with one another. Talk about why that's important, why you're kind of doubling down on that, and, you know, building some new ones.
Greg Jones 20:24
Yeah, great question. Institutions are like offensive lineman in football: we really only notice them when something goes wrong. And they are necessary to the success and flourishing of any community of our world generally. And we've taken them for granted for too long. And in football, to continue that analogy, it used to be that offensive linemen were just seen as kind of replaceable parts and not much of a deal until Joe Theismann had that horrific injury, breaking his leg on Monday night football when Lawrence Taylor came and hit him on the blind side. And all of a sudden, the left tackle became the second highest paid position in football behind the quarterback because became apparent that not having a good offensive line really causes problems for your overall performance.
Greg Jones 21:24
And I think that's where we are with institutions--that we've taken them for granted and we thought they just didn't really matter much. Until now we're at a time where pretty much across the board, our institutions are failing us. That's true whether you think of hospitals and health care, or education, or faith and churches, or business. We've got weak and problematic institutions across the board. And so they're not doing the work we need them to do. Institutions, when they're healthy, are really crucial to shaping and forming us. They become, as it were, the background that enables us to live well. And when they're weak or problematic, we see the consequences, but we don't know how to fix them. And it's harder to fix them.
Greg Jones 22:15
So if you think about starting a new College of Medicine, as we're doing at Belmont--my daughter-in-law is a physician. And she said that, you know, going to medical school was a real challenge, that she had to kind of fight against the way she was being formed. It was ripping her empathy out of her. And we see the consequences of that, that now you're seeing burnout, even suicides among young physicians. It's something being talked about, broadly. But people are looking for quick fixes rather than saying, "Oh, what are the deeper formation questions? What kinds of institutions do we need to form physicians or nurses or pharmacists well?"
Greg Jones 23:00
And so paying attention to caring for institutions, renewing them, starting new ones, developing new visions for them, is absolutely crucial if we want to have people of character, people of wisdom and judgment going forward. And we're suffering now from roughly, you know, half century or more of inattention, and the consequences are all around us. But we're still looking for quick fixes rather than paying attention to why institutions matter. That's what the early Christians discovered with that Easter hope that Pentecostal power that they needed to create institutions. Yuval Levin wrote a book a couple years ago called "A Time to Build."
Eddie Rester 23:44
I was about just about to bring him up. Yeah.
Greg Jones 23:46
Yeah. Well, his contrast between institutions when they're healthy being molds of character, and saying that we've neglected institutions and insofar as we do, we've turned them into and saying that we've neglected institutions and insofar as we do, we've turned them into platforms for celebrities. And we're suffering the consequences of that. Part of what I love about Belmont's DNA is it's long believed that forming character in our students, and among our faculty and staff really matters. And so we can now develop that to say, "Okay, how do we create a culture where that becomes even more strongly focused for us? How do we double down on that?"
Greg Jones 24:25
And sometimes it feels rather countercultural, because we're not just focused on conveying a degree. We're trying to form people for a life of flourishing. And that's a very different dynamic. We want Belmont and the College of Medicine and all of our colleges to be a place where character is molded well, rather than just a platform for celebrity.
Eddie Rester 24:47
You know, you think about my own life, 20, 25 years ago, if you'd asked me about institutions, I would have railed against the need for strong institutions. But even in my own journey as pastor, I've begun to appreciate some of the things that in previous years, I thought were overdone or not well done or not necessary in the world. And you talk about this celebrity world that we live in, and I think about the podcast, The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, and the celebrity pastor culture there, that there were no institutions, larger institutions that were depended on, utilized for formation, for ongoing character care. It really led to the collapse of a church that people had given their heart and soul to, and damaged, I think, in a lot of ways, not just people, but the witness of the church at large.
Eddie Rester 25:46
Share with us a little bit, maybe how did the early Christians begin to build these kinds of institutions that allowed the innovation and the growth of the early church to happen? I know that Rodney Stark and other sociologists talked about just this explosive growth in the power of the spirit of the early church, but they were building some things along the way, as well.
Greg Jones 26:10
Yeah, well, I think, I mean, my heart breaks when I think about Mars Hill, as well as, you know, other kinds of failures, and institutional failures in higher education or in other kinds of contexts. Because the damage is lasting, and it's painful. With the early church, the key is to think in terms of what enables flourishing, and you've got to have institutions that endure across time, that provide that kind of holding environment where character is formed.
Greg Jones 26:45
Part of our problem in thinking about institutions is we tend to use mechanistic metaphors. So we think about organization charts, and we think in very static, mechanistic kinds of terms, and then you say, "well, do they need to change?" You say, "well, I prefer them as they are,"then you say, "well, do they need to change?" You say, "well, I prefer them as they are," because we think that they're static. If, instead, you think in organic terms, which is actually how Jesus talks about institutions and relationships, then you're always tending them. Because they're growing, they're decaying, they need to be pruned, they need to be cared for.
Greg Jones 27:20
So that larger institutional context is to say, "Oh, do you like roses? Or do you like vegetables?" Well, then you're going to need a garden, and you're going to need a fence around that garden, and you're going to need to tend it, and you're going to need to weed it, and you're going to need to pay attention to it. So whereas for the early Christians, they started out saying, "Oh, we're supposed to care for those who are sick," oh, well, we need actually to provide context where we know where people are going to show up, and how we're going to tend that over time. And it's very similar to tending a garden. And that begins to matter, and be significant.
Greg Jones 27:57
I remember a conversation with a friend who was a church leader in southern Sudan during the the war. And I was talking to him, and he said, he was talking about how they had to do education every Saturday at a different location, because of the instability, the war, and everything. He said, "Well, we lose a lot of our students, because we have to try to get the word out. We say we're gonna meet under this tree, and they say, 'Well, wasn't that different from where we met last week?'" He said, "No big deal. We're just gonna keep moving it around." And then he looked at me, and he got a very strong kind of look in his eyes. And he said, "Never take your institutions for granted."
Greg Jones 28:40
And I realized that, you know, having a building where you know where you're going to go to class really matters. That there's a kind of routine to it, and then you can concentrate on learning. You're not spending all your cognitive energy and time focused on where is it I'm trying to get to, in that sense. And so institutions are the fabric. They're the background that make our life possible. And that's what the early Christians discovered. It's why they started those hospitals. And the visibility of those institutions became really compelling to others to say, "Oh, if you want to live a healthy life, you want to be among these people," in that sort of way.
Chris McAlilly 29:24
Isn't it true that once you build the building, then a big part of what it is to lead is to maintain it, you know? And then once the institutional structures and forms get made, a lot of what has to be done is like the day-to-day operations that are essential to the maintenance and the functioning of the institution. That's an important part of its health.
Chris McAlilly 29:47
I just for you, like, how do you balance that, even in your own leadership? I mean, part of it, I assume, is surrounding yourself with good people. But how do you balance kind of keeping an eye out on the vision and the big picture and making sure folks leading across the institution, across the university, are thinking about big picture dreams, while also maintaining a high level of execution day-to-day, making sure things are maintained and cared for?
Greg Jones 29:48 Absolutely.
Greg Jones 30:24
Well, I think you have to stay missionally focused, that otherwise it becomes a bureaucracy and you're just maintaining a facility. And that's where people have gotten into this mechanistic sense that it's just the building, and it becomes an albatross, and you're focused on a kind of bureaucratic maintenance, rather than saying, how do these structures, or whatever the ecosystem is that you have, serve our mission? And why do we need to be oriented in these sorts of ways?
Greg Jones 30:55
The more missionally focused you are, the more you'll stay focused on that big picture. And you do need, you know, a diversity of gifts within that. In the same way that you don't want to create a basketball team with all 6'10" guys, or all 6'1" guys, that's not going to work out so well. You need a diversity of gifts, but you want them to be all part of the same team. And I think the stronger your missional focus, then the more you can be creative and adaptive. And you know, pruning isn't only when something is dead, you also prune things that may be healthy, but need to be pruned in order to enable better growth.
Greg Jones 31:35
And so a healthy organization is going to be thinking, not just about how do you maintain the physical plant? How is that physical plant serving mission? When do you need to adapt? Or when do you need to create different kinds of space or relocate? All those sorts of questions become really important. You want the talent there. And I would say you need to be sure that that talent is missionally aligned. I think of it in terms of how I've listened to great basketball coaches talk about putting together a team. You know, we tried it as US Olympic team, just throwing out really talented individuals. It didn't work so well. You really wanted people who were missionally aligned, and focused on what it meant to be a team. And I think that's really crucial for any healthy organization. And that's what's going to enable that kind of social innovation to be transformational, is when you have that missional alignment, then people will be willing to adapt their own gifts to work together in creative ways.
Eddie Rester 32:39
I heard behind that conversation about basketball, the recent article, Coach K molding LeBron and that whole team. So I'm sure you're thinking about Coach K right there in that conversation, right?
Greg Jones 32:52
Yes, it actually is a story I love to tell about when Coach K became the coach of the US Olympic team, we had just lost the World Championships, lost the Olympic Games. And it was a crisis of confidence because basketball was supposed to be, you know, like...
Eddie Rester 33:07
Our sport.
Greg Jones 33:08
Our sport. We were supposed to get the gold medal and everything, almost by inherited birthright for us. And so we lost, and so he realized he needed to change the culture. And one of the things he did was to get the entire team focused, as he would put it, on the three letters on the front of their jersey--USA--not the name on the back of the jersey. And what he did was brilliant. He brought in three veterans of the Iraq War, whom he knew, one of whom had lost his eyesight, one of whom had lost an arm, one of whom had lost part of a leg. And they started talking about what it meant to sacrifice for the sake of the larger mission.
Greg Jones 33:51
And Coach K said, as he watched, he saw Kobe Bryant with his head in his palm. And he saw LeBron wiping away a tear. And he thought, "Okay, I think we can get there," because he was seeing them begin to catch hold of a larger vision of what it would mean to be a team focused on USA, rather than just their individual gifts. And when I heard when I've heard Coach K, tell that story, I think to myself, well, you know, those of us who are Christians believe the reign of God is our mission. That's way better than even the USA or any other organization, because we're part of bearing witness to the truth about our world and about what we were created for. And so we ought to be aligned even more powerfully.
Greg Jones 34:44
And for me at Belmont, that's what it means to be Christ-centered, just to be focused on that vision of the reign of God. And so, one of the great delights I've discovered is when I'm talking to the deans of our colleges, their focused less on turf protection of their discipline or their college then they are "how can the gifts of our college be part of a shared witness to the goodness of God?"
Chris McAlilly 35:08
When you think about the tenure that you will have, and you kind of imagine at the end and kind of work back, I mean, what are you hoping for, for the time that you're in this role? I mean, what would be for you 100%? You feel like you've given it your all, and you can step back or retire or move into the next phase of your life, feeling like you've done, what you were called there to do.
Greg Jones 35:39
We've just set a aspirational trajectory, a strategic trajectory, and aspirational aim for 2030 that we would be the leading Christ-centered university in the world, marked by three things: One, forming diverse leaders of character. Second, forming people to find creative solutions to complex problems. And third, to be radical champions for the flourishing of all people. And if we have that clearly in our DNA, in a way, where everybody who's a part of our community-- faculty, staff, students, alumni, parents, friends, people in the community--see Belmont as a place that's committed to those activities and willing to align ourselves in all the formation that we do in degree, non-degree programs and our projects and relationships, that we're focused on those themes in a way that is become so woven into our culture that's just part of who we are, I will be a very happy and contented person. And I see my role as a catalyst to help people see the possibilities and to align along that trajectory.
Eddie Rester 36:56
You've you've pastored a local church, your wife Susan has as well. You've worked at Duke Divinity School. So you've worked in the institutions of the church at different ways, different places. How do you help institutions? I'm asking this question for any pastors or church leaders who are listening to the podcast today. How do you help an institution like a local church rediscover the surprise? How do you help a local church kind of move in that direction of rebirth so that they can begin to do this traditioned innovation? What would you offer there?
Greg Jones 37:37
Well, the first thing I'd say is spend time in prayer and listening to God and listening to one another, about being surprised, about expecting that. I love the prayer at the end of Ephesians 3, where we're invited to comprehend with all the saints, what is the height, the depth, the length and the breadth of Christ. And then the final two verses are, "Now to the One, by the power at work within us, is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we could ask or imagine. To him be honor and glory in the church forever. Amen."
Greg Jones 38:14
There's a pretty big task for a local church or pastor to say, "Okay, what does it mean to comprehend with all the saints?" Who are some saint? I mean, you know, it's a pretty crazy group, whether you just focus on the official Roman Catholic canon of saints, or you broaden it in a Protestant understanding of saints. It could be the saints in your community and in the history of your congregation, as well as others. It's a crazy group of folks, and if we're asked to comprehend with all of them, it's going to challenge our imagination and the height, the depth, the length, the breadth, that's beginning to say, it's the biggest questions that can be asked and about the smallest details of the universe.
Greg Jones 38:57
I remember hearing Francis Collins, the now former Director of National Institutes of Health, but a brilliant geneticist who helped uncover DNA. He came to faith through his work in science, through working on the details of biology, and it helped him discover the beauty of the universe and of God. And I think, wow, that's extraordinary. I think that, you know, if you really believe that God raised Jesus from the dead, and the Holy Spirit is poured out at Pentecost, then you're going to be turned upside down. You know, Flannery O'Connor, in a short story, "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," the nihilist says "Jesus thrown everything off balance." And that's, I think, you want to be part of a church where everything has been thrown off balance. The status quo doesn't make sense anymore. And that means that you're going to be on an adventure.
Greg Jones 40:01
My dad used to say that he thought the church should be like the crazy house at the carnival. I remember going to a crazy house at Arnold's Park in northwest Iowa, where my grandparents had a summer cottage. And, you know, you walk in, the floors move beneath your feet. The mirrors make you look funny. There's a barrel you have to walk through. Everything's disorienting, then my dad would say, but isn't that why you buy a ticket in the first place? You know, Annie Dillard said that you ought to have to wear a crash helmet to church because of the expectation of what God might do showing up.
Greg Jones 40:38
The truth of the matter is, most churches that I go to, or sometimes even am preaching at, what you really need is a neck brace to avoid dozing off. We had a friend who was a member of a church Susan and I served in Baltimore, and he had neck pain, so he had to wear a neck brace to church, but he called it his "Susan and Greg anti-nod sermon neck brace." And it was just a joke, but I thought, well, you know, anything that helps people avoid falling asleep, but I hope, you know, we're not preaching sermons regularly that would cause him to want to doze off. But, you know, I visited a church once when my kids were young, and one of my kids on the way out of church said, "Dad!" I said, "What?" He said, "If the pastor didn't want to be there, why should I?"
Eddie Rester 41:28 Wow, yeah.
Greg Jones 41:31 Oops.
Chris McAlilly 41:31
Yeah, yeah, let me pitch the question in a slightly different direction. Because, you know, there are some pastors that listen to podcasts, but we also have a lot of folks who are working in the marketplace--doctors, lawyers, people working in politics or or education or health care. What would you say to someone who is mid-career that, you know, perhaps got their initial training and chartered off on a trajectory and perhaps has achieved some measure of success and wealth and all the rest and has kind of lost or is drifted away from kind of an animating purpose and a seeking to kind of reorient themselves? And maybe the pandemic was one of those moments where they really said holy crap, like, there's something fundamentally off here and I need to kind of get reoriented and start off in a new trajectory.
Greg Jones 42:28
Yeah, it's a great question. I think I'm a firm believer in small groups and what Susan I call holy friendships. You know, I'd say for folks like that, get a small group of folks and start having breakfast together or lunch together, and asking each other how is it with your soul? Where are you feeling the tugs or the the yearnings? And how can we support you in that? And offer challenge, support, and help people dream again. I find a lot of people, and I feel myself at times, who have just kind of settled, and we're afraid to dream God-sized dreams. And you know, it can be a friend. Or it can be somebody you're just getting to know who doesn't know you.
Greg Jones 43:18
If you're around people who will say, "Well, yeah, he'll never do that. I know him too well." or "She'll never do that. I've known her all my life." Maybe it's somebody who can see you in a fresh light or in a fresh way. And maybe you actually decide to do a project together, you know, venture out and see, test some new muscles, or a new imagination. I think that's where, especially in the wake of the pandemic, we have been so much on our heels and in a reactive mode, whether it's around issues of COVID, or issues of race, or issues of economic disruption, or mental health challenges. We've just been kind of, on our heels in a reactive mode, rather than leaning in.
Greg Jones 44:09
You know, coming to Belmont, we were focused on what would be the theme for my inaugural year. And after a lot of discussion and reflection and some bad ideas--most of which were mine- -we settled on the phrase "Let Hope Abound," and it has been an amazing phrase. And, you know, because I'm at Belmont, some of our alums actually set it to music in this amazingly beautiful song that has been played and sung at a number of our gatherings. The notion that hope is different from optimism, because hope is rooted in who God is, whereas optimism is rooted in who we are. And that notion of abounding, it's kind of multiplier effect, that it's not a zero-sum game. And "let" is kind of permission giving.
Greg Jones 44:53
What we've discovered is that notion of "let hope abound" has enabled people to get on their tiptoes rather than on their heels. And I think that lots of people who are, you know, lay people, and whether it's been the kind of success-to-significance midlife move, or the kind of things aren't going right midlife move, or a young person saying, you know, "I've checked all the boxes and there's still something missing at the center." There are opportunities to explore that and to get on your tiptoes. That's where I think the opportunities are. And we're spending way too much time on our heels.
Chris McAlilly 45:34
I think that's a good place to stop, although we could we could go on for a good while.
Eddie Rester 45:40 We could keep going.
Chris McAlilly 45:41
I really appreciate your time, Greg, today. Thanks for being with us on the podcast. Thank you for your leadership and for continuing to kind of press closer to Christ and to dream big about where the Spirit is leading. Thank you.
Greg Jones 45:59
Well, thank you. And thanks for all the great work you all do. It's, you know, when I was with you a couple years ago, I left feeling more on my tiptoes because of the ministries that you all are doing in the ways you lead and relate to others. So thanks for all the great work y'all do.
Eddie Rester 46:14
Thanks, Greg. Blessings to you at Belmont.
Greg Jones 46:16 Thanks, and you all as well.
Eddie Rester 46:18
[OUTRO] Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed the podcast, the best way to help us is to like, subscribe, or leave a review.
Chris McAlilly 46:26
If you would like to support this work financially or if you have an idea for a future guest, you can go to theweightpodcast.com. [END OUTRO]