MTP 41: Host Interview! Part 1, Shane & Spence interview each other for this special edition of Meet The Prof

In this special edition of Meet The Prof, Shane Hartley and Spence Hackney step into the interview chairs themselves to let listeners know more about their lives and faith journeys, pivotal moments during their college years, and what drives their passion for encouraging Christ-centered conversations on college campuses.

Topics Covered:

Shane’s early walk with Christ and his turning point in college through Cru.

Spence’s journey from a small-town Christian upbringing to rediscovering his faith in college.

Influential professors who encouraged their faith and showed how academia and Christianity can intersect.

The origins of Meet the Prof and their heart to support Christian professors in being vocal about their faith.

Stories of students transformed through Cru and the impact of professors modeling faith in the academic space.

Reflections on why encouraging student-professor interactions around faith is vital.

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Transcript

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Hey everybody and welcome to Meet the Prof. My name is Shane and my friend Spence Hackney and I have this podcast to encourage Christ-centered conversations on the college campus. And so we interview Christian professors with questions we get from college students and we are 40 episodes in and so we are doing something a little different for episodes 41 and 42. Spence and I are going to interview each other. I have a good friend, Toni, her and her husband Rick have been friends of mine since I was in middle school, and they encouraged me, why don't you do a podcast where you and Spence let people know more about yourself. So we are so excited to share with you some of our hearts of what we're doing this for in the first place and what God's done in our lives in the past. So if you are your first time, this is your first time here, welcome. We're so glad that you're listening now. And we are excited to get to share with you a lot more of these as we continue. We're open to other ideas, just like my friends have given me ideas so far. Please feel free to reply, send something in the comments wherever you're listening to this. Before we get started, if you'd please remember to click on subscribe or follow or like wherever you're watching or listening to this, it doesn't cost anything. And so, well, here we go. Here is Spence and my interviews with each other. So Shane, I love that you had this idea. I think I love it. To kind of introduce people to us. You know, so often I listen to podcasts and I wonder like, is this guy real or not? So I think it's kind answering that question. I'm a little humbled by anybody who would care who we are. But then again, it's a great idea. So thanks for doing this. Have people asked you to know about? Yeah, yeah. Someone had asked like recently. Why don't you and Spence let us know more about yourselves? Why would anybody want to know me? Very humble. So it is interesting. So tell me a little bit about your walk. I mean, I know a little bit, but I don't know all the details. Like how you came to Christ, what that looked like in your early development. What your faith journey was like. That's a great way to start. That's the most important thing about me. So I came to Christ when I was around 13 years old through a mixture of influences of our church, our pastor met with me. I went to this camp that encouraged us to read the Bible in the mornings. Was that a foreign concept? Was that just like what you want me to read? It was it was totally foreign because before then I was only thinking of the Bible is what you have at church. You open it up at church. Yeah, that's right. But this was like this personal relationship. The preacher reads out of the Bible. Right. I don't read out of the Bible. Right. Yeah, so, but even though I came to Christ early and I loved him and I started bringing my Bible to school even in the seventh grade. So there was something he was doing in my heart early. it was during study hour. I would read it. Did you ever get beat up for that? No, but I was always afraid of that. Yeah. I mean, I just think of what people will beat you up verbally, you know, if they think it's weird, but But then, so, but I was really inconsistent in my walk after that through high school. And a big turning point is I went off to college and my freshman year these guys came by my dorm and said, Hey, you, you had filled out a survey on campus with us. I was like, I think I remember that some Christian tables out. And they said, we just wanted to talk to you and invite you to some of the things we're doing. And so you were a victim of Cru's campus outreach or a beneficiary. Yes. And at that point, the verdict was still out, I didn't know if I was being victimized or if this was real nurturing happening. I shouldn't, hey, let's edit out "victim". I shouldn't have said victim. No, don't. I don't like to edit stuff; I say let's keep it. But a real turning point for me was after telling these guys no for a long time I'm not gonna come to your meetings and all I went to one of their evening meetings and there was about 70 students involved and the group was Cru was called Campus Crusade for Christ back then and I'll just never forget there was a sharing time during the group where people were standing up to share prayer requests and one guy up front said hey I want to ask y'all to pray for me to have boldness to share Jesus with my roommate because I know he doesn't know Jesus. And there was a deep kind of burden that I felt from that like I should be doing the same. I had not even thought about sharing Christ with some of my friends. And that was a turning point and then so about 30 minutes later when the meeting was over one of these guys who I'd gotten to know apart from this, a senior roped me in and two of my buddies in, we were all freshmen, the three of us. He said, hey, how would y'all like to be in a discipleship group where we'll look once a week, we'll get the Bible together, we'll pray for each other and all. And I was sold on it immediately. And that was really what changed my life was being in the Word with those guys every week. Yeah. I love how scripture has this thread in here. I just had this idea that I should read it. To the end where like now we need to really kind of internalize it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. of that. And I still see your desire to share Christ with those who don't know on the campus has now been a, what's that? A 30 year heritage. Think about that. Yeah. You're the few people I know who's led that much of a consistent life. You know, well, feel very inconsistent, but I can truly say God was putting on my heart then a burden for those who don't know Jesus. So think that's the definition of a call probably like you were called to this. How did your how did your mom and dad's faith kind of play into yours? Well, they were majorly supportive. both my parents were believers and they had raised us in healthy churches. We moved a lot when I was a kid, but they were super supportive. Okay. So they were high-fiving you as you were doing. Yeah. I mean, I'd call them and say, Hey, they've, this Christian group's got this fall retreat and I need $55. Can y'all pay for that? Like, of course, of course. A winter conference costs 125. Yeah, we'll pay that a summer mission trip. All right. not gonna pay for the whole thing, but we'll contribute and we'll share with our friends. Yeah, they were great. Doesn't it take that? Like, it takes a cheerleader along a faith's journey? Not everybody, I guess people do it without it, but it sure makes it a whole lot easier if you have a cheerleader. All right. Well, let's let's go into your history now. Please tell me some of how you came to Christ and what was going on in your life specifically in college spiritually? Yeah, so I started my faith background like I grew up in a really not a pretty small town in North Carolina. So it was a small town where everybody was Christian, but you were like a member of the Presbyterian Church, member of the Baptist Church. That doesn't mean you ever went necessarily. It's just, of course you were one of these. And so we were kind of, you know, Christmas or Easter, we were always there and we went to church, but irregularly. You know, we would kind of go to church for a while, pretty regularly and then kind of fall off. So was in a youth group. and heard this and then I was pretty young maybe 13 or 14 about your age started asking questions. Dad called the pastor over, and I did accept Christ but I was I remember I was given this King James Bible and like an off-white with brown print little pamphlet on how to pray. Okay, and it was like good luck. Like here's your discipleship and I had a youth pastor who I liked a lot, but he was great but he I never really got much on like how do you grow? How should I be discipled? And so I never really read the Bible. I might have tried a little bit. And then got to college and somehow I got in my head that I'm gonna reinvent myself I'm just gonna have a great time. So I did. I got in fraternity, had a great time and then turned out not to be so great by the end of it. You know how those things go? And a guy named Hugh Jones, you know, this part of the story. in college, was, my pledge class was down in the basement of a fraternity house. And I was president of pledge class. I mean, I was into it. But the thing I remember about the scene to set it, there was a literally a stripper pole on the stage because that's what had been going on the night before. And the basement of a fraternity house smells like vomit and stale beer. Like it just, has a smell which is only there. It's disgusting. And that's what I remember that sensation. And he starts talking about, kind of the need to live for something more than yourself. Like, it's kind of a generic talk. We can tell he's trying to pull the gospel in. And that there's some level you're accountable for your actions and this sort of thing. And I realized I connected the dots. You know, with this childhood faith, like, yeah, I said, I believe in Jesus. He changed my heart. Was this like a one-on-one conversation with him? No, he's talking to our pledge class. Like he's up front, giving a little like... talk to our pledge class and it wasn't it wasn't necessarily evangelism. It was more about like life skills and talk. It's how we build. Okay. But it was evangelistic for me because I connected the dots back to this faith heritage I had like these learnings I had. And so went on and just got more and more convicted about how I was living and started to think about like what it might mean to live out my faith. Actually, made me go back and read the Bible and I started to do those things. And then the funny part of the story is so I had not been going to class very much. Like I got a letter from the dean saying maybe you shouldn't come back next semester. Like it was like that. And I had been going to like Cru, which was Campus Crusade at the time and FCA along with going out partying couple nights a week and I and everybody saw it and knew it and I was so embarrassed by like the deceptiveness of my life I didn't go back to those places. I found this out of the way Baptist Student Union, Baptist Campus Ministries little you know, it was kind of like the island of misfit toys a little bit. don't know. It was like, you know, gravitated because I grew up Baptist went to that and that was oddly enough where I was discipled and I was discipled pretty well like people Bible studies and the campus minister kind of poured into me and I learned what it meant to be a Christian. And, and I kind of realized this is big enough to, to dedicate my life to because of what Christ has done for me. Does that make sense? And, and it was all that campus ministry. Then, anyway, so just grown since then, you know, I felt some call to go seminary a little later, but, yeah, that was the turning point. And it was about, Hugh Jones having the guts to go into a fraternity house basement smelling of stale beer with a stripper pole and give people a Christ-centered message. So so, Tell me how you got... got on this mission to encourage these conversations, particularly between professors and students. So much of what we're trying to do here. Yeah. The first thing that comes to mind is back when I was in college and I I didn't have a single professor who ever expressed that they were believers. And I was walking with the Lord and wanting to grow with the Lord. I didn't know what I was missing really. I was just sort of starting to believe this false assumption that God really doesn't have anything to do with academia. And then my senior year there was finally one professor who stood up at the beginning of class and was introducing himself and the syllabus. And he told us about his family. He told us about his hobbies. And he told us that he was a Christian and he goes to such and such church. And then he talked about his dog and kept going. And he had just inserted it right in the middle there about his faith. And you know how some things when they make a difference for you, you can still look back and see where you were sitting and what it was like. That is etched in my mind now. Sitting in that classroom, excited to talk to him after the class, going up to him afterwards and saying, I'm a Christian too. I'm so encouraged that you shared that about going to church and your belief, and having that connection that I didn't really even know how helpful that was to me in my heart. And so, When I kept growing closer with the Lord and ups and downs, I decided to come on staff with Cru when I graduated because of what a, I mean, just like your story and mine, God is often doing such a powerful thing in students' lives during that season of their life. Yeah, for sure. I said, I just want to keep this up. so I came on staff with Cru thinking it would be like maybe two years, just get the training and all. But stayed on staff with Cru. Now it's been 32 years and there's 32 years, which is to me, just like this in some ways. You might be the only person I know who has done the same thing for 32 years. It's rare these days to have any job like that. Yeah. Well I love it. One of the key factors for me of deciding to pursue this podcast and wanting to encourage professors to be more vocal with their faith was the over the first 16 years I was with Cru, I was strictly with the student ministry and there was one student who came got involved with our movement and said that he just transferred from another school because in his freshman year, his religion professor, a professor of New Testament had caused him to doubt everything that he'd read in the Bible. Did he transfer from Carolina? Because ours was kind of famous for that. Was it? This was actually Appalachian State. It could be just as well be any campus though. Yeah, these days. But yeah, he was he was confused and tanked, and, and then I started seeing there were more situations like that. There was a student a freshman girl at our luau one time we do this outreach luau, and she was sharing with a group of us, hey, I've got this religion class with Dr. so and so and he told us that if there are any of you in here who are Christians, I want you to know right now, you just want to drop this class, because you are not allowed to talk about Jesus in this class. It's a religion class. It was. And so she dropped it. Imagine if you said, don't talk about Mohammed in this class. That can't happen. Yeah. We're seeing that some of these interviews with people. So about 16 years ago then, I asked Cru, can I switch and help with the professor ministry of Cru? So you actually went to them and said this? Yeah. You said, want to do this new thing. Cru is so open and they're really for the staff. Yeah. So when we want to try new things. That was a big part, all of that feeding into my passion to help professors be more open about their faith and have these Jesus-centered conversations with the students. You've had a lot of them since then, Jesus-centered conversations with professors. And we were trying for more and more. The podcast has been encouraging so far. This is going on a tangent, but thinking back in 32 years, you probably got a handful of high points where you're like, Yes, like that's that's what it's all about. yeah conversation people or things like yeah, tell us one of those high points of a man that's followed the same call for 32 years. So, you're talking about being in campus ministry and experiencing that? The first friend that comes to mind is a friend from my first three years on staff. I was on staff at the University of Alabama and there was a freshman guy named Joe. Aren't they big soccer school? Yeah, that's what they're known for, and lacrosse. Soccer & lacrosse. That's a joke for those of you in podcast land. Yeah, everything was about football. But Joe wanted to walk with the Lord. And so I was privileged to get to spend time with him in the Word and see him growing in his faith, see him start to share his faith. And now we're still friends till today. So this was like 30 years ago and he's a pastor up in the Greenville area. So I love getting to see him and hey Joe, if you're watching or listening to this. It's funny, I think that's why I felt the burden to go and reach out to Hugh Johns. Because sometimes that kind of has to be a discouraging job at times. Yeah, yeah. You just, you're in fraternity basements. It's just got to be tough at times. And I just wanted him to know like at least one guy it made a difference for. So that's good. I think it's common for teachers also teachers need to hear input. You've made a difference to a lot of people. Thanks. Well, so will you tell me some about like your experience, maybe a story even about why this whole thing is important to you of encouraging these Christ centered conversations? Man, one is that I went to college and I remember wanting to reinvent myself, wanting to be somebody new and different. And I think a lot of kids go to college like that. I think left alone, the influences you have in college can be not great. A lot of our, I think that a lot of our kids come out of a great Christian school, a great Christian home, want to reinvent themselves too. And I had a Christian home, to most degrees. And I had a professor, it was an English professor at Carolina. I think I was, this was like my sophomore year, and I'm trying then to like... express my faith somehow. I'm trying to live into this. Yeah. I'm in the phase of like buying the What Would Jesus Do? bracelets. Listen to all Christian music like I'm trying to understand what this means. And so we had to write poetry in the English class and I'm trying to write about the Holy Spirit. Right? I'm trying to and I think I'm clever. Yeah, I'm like he's like steam and ice and water. I'm like like I'm the first person to ever think of this, right I'm trying to express this stuff, and this this guy Says I want to see you after class about your poem. And I'm like, I don't like going to professors' offices cause it's never good you know. He sits down he was like so read your poem about Trinity let's talk about this some more and he was like here's something, maybe some theological things about that you might want to rethink and I'm like, what hmm like he's like guiding me theologically and he was like I think you should read Dorothy Sayers' Mind of the Maker. He was a believer. I think you're gonna understand the Trinity better after doing that. And he had seen flaws in my theology, which I had no theology, you know, I'm like I've been like really active Christian for maybe a year. Yeah, I'm still in like the "just-wear-it-on-my-shirt" stage, right? Yeah, and he's like and I had this mind-blowing moment where I'm like some of these professors teaching me believe the same thing I do and that's okay because I thought in order to be a Christian I have to check my brain and I have to I can't be great at my job and I can't, it's not about that. It's about something else. And he taught me like, being great at your craft, right, is also a way to worship, right? And like, you know, that same, it's the same Hebrew word for work as worship in the Old Testament. So there's this whole, this idea... I learned so much from that guy. And it's funny, I can't remember his name. It was something Irish, but I can't recall it. I've tried to think of it recently. Yeah, but, so that had an impact on me. Then, then you, you brought this idea of encouraging more of those interactions and I'm like, man, if every kid has an interaction like that in college. Just, just, just have one big one, you know, and then I would like, I had a dive, I took scuba diving in college, had this guy, and I had a marketing professor, and a few along the way, then I started to like, kind of ask, started to kind of wonder. You know, so I was a little inquisitive then after that. What would you ask? Just like, like I was in marketing. I was like, wait, how... I remember talking about belief systems there, you know, like are we lying? Should we have a moral problem with some of this stuff? Yeah. And she had a good answer, and I'm like, ah, I think she is. And then I kind of, you know, But, but I want that for more, more, I call them kids, more students. I mean, I've got kids. I want that for my son that's in college. Yeah. Spence, I had never heard that story, never heard that about your English professor. They were an English professor and all? This is already a great thing about doing this interview with each other. That's amazing. Yeah. Well, it is fun that we learned some things about each other for the first time just by doing this interview. So thanks for tuning in and please stay tuned for next week when episode 42, we will do our second part of our interview with each other. And before we go, if you please remember to like or follow, subscribe wherever you're watching or listening to this, that'll help us get it out. If you're a college student and you want to leave us a question to ask Christian professors, please find us on Instagram, that's @meettheprofofficial, and you can send us a DM with a question and hopefully we can play it on here. And lastly, if you're interested in supporting our ministry, then thank you so much and you can give online at give.cru.org/0424344. And so until next time, we hope this encourages you to have a Christ centered conversation on your college campus.