MTP 52: Jonathan Pettigrew Part 1, From Campus Minister to Professor, learning to profess Christ through faith-learning integration

Jonathan Pettigrew is a professor in the School of Human Communication at Arizona State University. In part 1 of our interview, he shares how his journey from campus minister to professor shaped his understanding of student discipleship, faith-learning integration, and ministry through academia. He offers deep reflections on spiritual formation, parenting, and how Christian professors can pursue scholarship as an act of worship.

Read more about Jonathan Pettigrew on Meet The Prof:
https://meettheprof.com/view/professors/entry/jonathan-pettigrew/

Main Takeaways:

• Professors can influence hundreds, while ministers can often go deeper with a few.
• Faith-learning integration means connecting Christian worldview with academic discipline.
• The Holy Spirit guides how Christian faculty reflect faith in teaching and research.
• Life’s trials—like parenting during a PhD—can become spiritually formative.
• Teaching is a form of discipleship, and learning can be a form of worship.

CHAPTERS
 00:01 – Introduction & Arizona Weather
 03:00 – What Professors Can Learn from Campus Ministers
 06:49 – Embarrassing & Funny Professor Moments
 09:02 – Jonathan’s Journey to Faith
 10:30 – Growth as a Summer Youth Minister
 14:16 – Decision to Pursue a PhD
 16:11 – Spiritual Formation During PhD & Early Marriage
 21:17 – What Is Faith-Learning Integration?
 23:49 – Stories and Strategies from Professing Christ
 26:03 – Holy Spirit’s Role in Scholarly Faith Integration
 29:26 – Why Learning Is God’s Idea
 30:02 – Closing Reflections & Preview of Part 2

Keywords:
 Jonathan Pettigrew, Arizona State University, faith-learning integration, Professing Christ, Christian faculty, campus ministry, spiritual growth, youth ministry, PhD journey, academic calling, Holy Spirit, parenting, discipleship, communication, Christian worldview, student impact, Christian professor, Meet The Prof, higher education faith, Christ-centered learning, scholarship and faith, Bible study, teaching as worship.

Books mentioned in podcast: 

Professing Christ: Christian Tradition and Faith-learning Integration in Public Universities, https://www.amazon.com/Professing-Christ-Faith-learning-Integration-Universi

Christian professors, share how Jesus has rescued you on Meet The Prof: https://meettheprof.com/create-profile/

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Transcript

0:01

Hey everybody, welcome to Meet the Prof. My name is Shane and my friend, Spence and I take questions from college students, and we ask them to Christian professors. And our goal is to encourage Christ-centered conversations on the college campus. So we're so glad you're here. Thanks for joining us. And I am especially excited now to tell you about a couple of things. For one, you're about to hear part one of my interview with Jonathan Pettigrew. Jonathan is a professor in the School of Human Communication at Arizona State University. And as far as I can remember, he is the first professor we've interviewed who has had experience of being a campus minister, and then went into being a professor. So I think you're going to appreciate his perspective. And he shares some of that at the beginning of the interview. But a second thing I'm really excited about is that Spence and I are trying some new things. So you may have noticed in the last few interviews that Spence hasn't been on the recordings themselves. And that's because he's been helping in the background with some strategic planning and we're about to start something new where we're trying to make our interview with the professor open for live call-ins and live questions. So what's gonna happen is in the next week here, we are going to invite a small group of Christian professors around the country to join us during a live interview And we're gonna record the whole thing. We're gonna take Q &A from the group and the time that it should be released, if everything goes well, is April the 8th. So on Tuesday, April the 8th, you have that to look forward to. well, let's jump in now. Here is my interview with Jonathan Pettigrew. Well, Jonathan, it is such a privilege to get to meet you now and interview you out there in Arizona while I'm here in North Carolina. So how are you doing? Yeah, thanks Shane. It's, you know, it's the time of year that people want to come into Arizona. So it's good. You know, it's not hot yet. It's just beautiful. Yeah, my one time going through Arizona went through Phoenix and it was just gorgeous and the air was so crisp. Yeah, no, that's a rarity. So only in the winter do people come here. When I first started at Arizona State, the president did a big intro to the faculty, like a welcome. And they said, there's two types of weather in Arizona. There's hot, and then there's bragging weather. And so right now it's the bragging weather. Good. For listeners who may listen or watch this later, this is actually the end of February that we're recording this in 2025. come before it gets hot. Good, good to know, good to know. Well, there's so many questions I have for you, but I wanted to start with like on meettheprof.com, you share some of your story of being a campus minister at one point and then deciding to get your PhD. And so as a campus minister myself, I'm wondering what is something that you appreciate more now about campus ministers that maybe you wouldn't have otherwise? Yeah, I think that they're so, so my story was that I was working as a campus minister and I ended up having these great relationships with a group of people and it was incredible. Like I loved getting to talk with them and talk about big ideas and have those conversations. And there's this one student that was reading a book in one of the classes that he was taking and came to me and said, well, did you know the Bible was just all put together by Ezra, like the Old Testament was put together by Ezra. It was like redacted, like he took out parts to make it look like Josiah was going to be the Messiah and that didn't happen to change Hezekiah. Like all these, like it was written by, the book was written by a Princeton seminarian. And so like I said, well, that's one belief. So we started talking about the book. I actually read the book and started talking with him about the book and said, well, we can either believe that the the Bible was written by men and that this really was the hand of people coming in and changing the story and crafting a narrative. Or we can believe that God, you know, in his sovereignty used people to write the scripture and, it was God breathed, you know, like that. Those are the options that we really have. And they have fundamental, different implications for who we are and how we live. And so like talking with that one student, like he's, he came to, to agree with me that the Bible is the inspired word of God. And if God used Ezra and there were parts that redacted, that was God's will, not Ezra's craftiness, so to speak. So it was like this really profound conversation. But at that same time is when I realized there were 99 other people in his classes, a big lecture class, about a hundred people. And that professor was having this profound impact on the hundreds, right? And so I was like, man, I... As a campus minister, I had this amazing opportunity to have deep relationships with a few and to debrief life and impact their thinking at a real fundamental level. And as a professor, there's an opportunity to really introduce ideas to a lot of people and debrief some ideas, but that depth of relationship changes in some ways or that opportunity to debrief life. And so I think as a campus minister, I really love that. depth of conversation and opportunity to think through and not just academic things, but all of life. And there's some of that as a professor, don't get me wrong, like I can have some of that in office hours. But I think one of the things I really appreciate and actually miss is that opportunity to, from an explicitly Christian perspective in the lives of the people I was discipling to really, really encourage the whole gamut of understanding life from a biblical worldview or from a Christian worldview. That makes sense. Well, and I'll tell you What I appreciate about your role as faculty is because for years when I was focused on students as a campus minister, I would want to meet with one and ask for an appointment and all, but very often the answer was, I've got to get to class. And I started realizing that as much as I could get any time with these students, like they're spending so much more time with the professors and thinking what the difference. a believing professor can make day in and day out. So I appreciate that. Yeah, it's a fun. It's a, it's a, it's a different role. That's for sure. I guess I didn't, you know, I was, I didn't ever imagine I was going to be a professor. Like that's not something when I went to college that I was thinking about. Some people it is, but for me it wasn't. And so I didn't actually know what a, like the difference between like a teaching assistant and a professor and a tenured professor versus a instructor. Like there's all these hierarchies within the university. didn't know anything about. And so, Yeah, so I think I've learned a lot about what professors do and the kind of impact teachers have. there's plenty of professors that are teachers that aren't in the same kind of role that I'm in as like a tenured associate professor at a research university. Yeah, good. All right, well, Jonathan, what is one of your most embarrassing moments as a professor? Did you know I was going to ask you that? We're trying to ask everyone that. Good. I was presenting at an academic conference. And so this was early on, right? This is when I was finishing my, well, going through my PhD. so I'm working as a professor at Penn State is where I did a PhD. And I was at this conference and it was an academic conference. And I had written a paper about text messaging and mobile phones, which is what I had studied for my master's thesis. And I had created this paper that was looking at how mobile technology was trying to approximate God likeness. And like we were using, like we had this limited omniscience, like we were trying to be all knowing through what we hold in our hands, right? So I'm presenting my ideas as part of this academic conference. part of this panel and I'm reading this quote from, you know, someone in my field who had written a book about kind of mediated communication. So I'm, so I'm reading this quote and I read, And this is the epitome of, and I just kind of keep going, and after it gets worse, right? So if you didn't know, the word epitome is like the pinnacle or the most important, and then it's spelled like epitome, right? And so after the presentation, one of the professors comes up and he's like, and the word's epitome. I was like, hey, it's not my word. was something I was reading in a quote. That's great. So you didn't get what he was saying. That is great. And that professor's totally forgotten about it. People didn't even notice, but it sticks with you, doesn't it? yeah, there's, I'll tell you another funny story. It wasn't exactly an embarrassing moment, but kind of, right? So I was a professor, I was working at the University of Tennessee and we have five kids and our kids were real young at that time. And we had a friend who had just gotten his medical doctorate and he was going to come visit. And so I was telling the kids, we're going to call him doctor so-and-so because he's, you know, this is a big deal for him. He just got his doctorate. And the kids in the back were like, does he work with you at the university? It's like, no, he's a different kind of doctor. They were like, well, is he the, my four year old in the back of the minivan says, is he the kind of doctor that helps people or is he one like you? Yeah! That's a four-year-old question. Yes. And now that child knows better. You are helping people too. That's funny. Well, so Jonathan, how did you come to faith in Christ? I always love to start with that. Yeah, so for me it was a long story of following Jesus as a child and in my family. So I grew up in a Baptist church and a Southern Baptist church in Texas, which is different than some Southern Baptists all over the nation. it was a church that really loved the Lord, loved the Bible and encouraged family. And my parents really encouraged that in us as kids. So I really grew up. learning the scripture, appreciating and loving it, and really converted to a belief system in Christianity as a young child, and then it only grew from there. So I felt as I studied other religions, I learned more, as I experienced more, even went to college and was exposed to a lot of different belief systems, lots of different belief systems. Just it felt like it reinforced to me Christianity as a, not just as an intellectual system, but as like a life system as faith, you know? So I feel like I've walked with Christ as a, like in a progressive way, like getting to know him more and in different ways and new aspects continually over my lifespan. So it's been a huge blessing to me. Okay. Well, when was the time that was really significant for your growth? Yeah. So maybe I'll tell a couple of stories. So first was a time I was, I had some friends that were ministers, like he was a pastor at a church in New Mexico, but they lived their folks were in Houston. So they were driving through our small town in San Angelo, Texas and stopped by and stayed with us because they were good family friends. And this was over Christmas break. And so I think I was in my second year of college. Maybe, yeah, I think so. And maybe my first year. he, the pastor friend said, hey, I want you to think about coming out to Glorieta, New Mexico and being a minister at our small church. It was a real small rural church there. I want you to think about being a summer youth minister for us, because I'm the only staff person. We won't pay you anything, but we can make sure that you have a place to live. You know, we'll feed you. You'll live with us in the parsonage. And we'll take a love offering for you, you know, once a month from the, from the church. And, I want you to pray about being a minister with us. And I think for me, it was like a real significant time. Cause I, I, I said I would. And so then over the next like three months, I really spent a lot of time praying and like, God, is this something that you want me to do? Like, can I not work over summer? I worked at Chick-fil-A off through college. So was like paying for things and that scholarships to help cover the cost of school. You know, so I was like, can I take off a summer, which would be like a lot of hours to earn money to go do something like that. So I really, I really did pray about it. And I think for me, it was one of those times I really felt like God was directing me and putting before me a path and asking me to, walk on that path. So it was a significant time of growth. So I ended up, I did go out to there that summer. went in spring break actually, and drove, was about eight hours or something. out to New Mexico and spent the week with them over spring break and really did feel like God was confirming to me that that's what I should do through my friends and through my kind of prayer time. And so I did that. So I was a youth minister for a summer and really grew a ton through that experience. what was something that really caused growth for you out there? When you look back, like, what is a highlight that you remember? There's a few, but I think for me one of the things was learning how to teach the scripture, not just to learn it myself, but learning how to teach it to other people was part of that. The pastor friend, taught me how to preach and how to really hear, how to understand the scripture and then translate that into a sermon that would benefit other people. you know, he used a lot of stories and illustrations in his sermon style. He was a great communicator in that way and really taught me how to do that. And so I think I learned a ton from that. The other big takeaway to learn how to do ministry was really learning to love people. And that, maybe that sounds strange that it's a skill that we learn, I think for me it was, it was something to really learn that you know, everybody's made in the image of God. Like these are, I think C.S. Lewis said it's something like these are eternal souls right next to us, like in the grocery store line or, you know, in the pews of a church or walking on campus or my colleagues in the office next door. These are eternal souls, each of them. And so I think learning to adopt a mentality that sees the eternal in everybody is something that I credit to that time of working with the pastor there and ministering with him through that summer. It's neat. Early on, you were getting this ministry experience and then to go on to be a campus minister and then pursuing your PhD. Tell us about the decision you made to go from campus ministry then to pursuing your What did that feel like to you? Was it scary? What helped you? be motivated to do that. Yeah, well, I think ignorance was the motivation there that helped so much because I didn't know what it was. I didn't know what I was getting into. I didn't realize it was a whole profession. thought professors taught. That's what I thought that they did. Because like I said, I didn't know the difference between I didn't, you know, I didn't know I had to take the GRE to apply to grad school, but I did. so, you know, when I'm looking up, so this is like January and looking up how to applied to this master's program and I only applied to the one master's program at the place where I was a minister because I guess I really understood that that I had a bunch of relationships I had networked and created this. Yeah, I networked like this group of people that I knew and trusted and loved and had done ministry with at this specific university. And so I so I only applied to that master's program. You know, now as a professor, that's not how I coach undergrads who want to go to grad school. It's a different process, right? Like to think about what the field is and to think about different universities that prepare students well for PhD programs, et cetera, et cetera. So I say the whole thing was just God's grace. Like there's not a good reason that I'm where I am other than God opening the doors for me, so to speak. It was a new master's program at the university where I was. It was a branch campus from a main university. And so because it was new, they had just, I think it was the second cohort that I was part of. And so it was the first year that they had funding for like a fellowship and a research assistantship that they gave. to students and so because for whatever reasons they didn't have very many applicants or whatever, I got a fellowship and then a research assistantship. And so it really positioned me to be able to go into a PhD program at one of the top, in my field, one of the top universities in the country for that. Yeah, that's great. What was that whole season like for you spiritually? Was that a time of strengthening your faith as you're getting your PhD? Were there challenges spiritually during that? That's a good question too. So yes and no and all of in between. So I got married after I finished my master's and before I started my PhD. So my wife and I moved from Indiana to Pennsylvania and we're newlyweds and we're living on a grad stipend. So we're at the poverty level and we got pregnant with our first kid two months later. And so Before, when I was taking my finals of my first year of PhD studies, we had our first baby, like the month before our first anniversary. It was a crazy stressful time. So not only am I newlywed, but then I'm also a new father. And I'm trying to go through a PhD program that's rigorous and difficult and reading a ton and feeling overwhelmed in that way and working as a research assistant and teaching assistant. at different times and so it was super stressful. And we visited lots of little churches in the area that we were and we got plugged into a Bible church in that area. And what they eventually did, I think it was out of charity, but they eventually took me on as a junior pastor. yeah, and so I worked as a junior pastor where I'd preach about once a month and I'd teach about half of the Bible studies on Sunday night with a congregation of about 50-ish people, 50 to 60 people. And it was just an amazing experience that kept me really biblically grounded, kept me really spiritually grounded in the midst of these swirling ideas in the university. There's lots of them. And I was participating with kind of a culturally Jewish boss, and I had like very anti-Christian professors that I worked with and you know, but we but we got along it was okay, right and and I think that being being in the church helped keep me grounded and and then being in my family like with developing a Little family and helping them grow and changing diapers and serving taking care of my wife and I was having conversations and learning together it really did you know, keep keep in perspective the important things of life, right? Like there was I guess I at that time I always said there's always another paper to write. There's always another article to read. There's always another book I could be reading at this time, but I just have to set some boundaries. And so that's what I ended up doing is saying I've got these hours to work. And, know, it wasn't always nine to five, certainly. But I've got these hours to work. then outside of that, I'm going to help out with, you know, of colicky baby or I'm gonna go for a walk with our jaundice baby or I'm gonna, you all that kind of stuff. always something with young kids. There's always something in life and that life is more important or at least equally as as the kind of things I can do in my career or in my studies. So all that to say, think, and the other thing that helped keep me grounded was a campus ministry. Actually, there is a guy who was a campus minister at Penn State and I just volunteered with them. And so with a group of undergraduate students, my nickname was Noj. So they'd call it Hodgepodge with Noj is what they did. Why Noj? in high school, I had a friend who said my life had been all backwards. And so he's going to call me Noj, which instead of J-O-N, it was N-O-J. And so I have, yeah. So then, yeah. So then I've had that as a nickname for a long time. That's great. yeah, so during my PhD, like I did this Bible study with them and we just do different kinds of things. I was really influenced by a guy named Ray Vanderlaan, who's a Jewish rabbi and Christian minister, teaches in a high school in Michigan, has been to Israel maybe a hundred times and teaches. There's amazing videos that he's created, but it's kind of like a Jewish look at the Christian faith. And so we would do things like I'd say, follow me and I'd have... I'd just go for a walk around campus and they'd follow me around campus. And I'd say, okay, did you notice this? And ask questions because I wanted to bring out the point that like, when we follow the rabbi, Jesus, he leads us and the path isn't always straight. Sometimes he leads us in a very serpentine kind of way because he wants, he wants us to grow. He wants us to experience life with him as we walk past a certain place or, you know, things like that. So we. We we studied through the book of Daniel, which is a great book for college students. So anyway. something. Well, so you co-edited a book with Dr. Robert Woods, that's Professing Christ, which is a marvelous undertaking of taking many different faculty, them sharing their stories of what it looks like for them to profess Christ on their campuses. a term that you use in there quite often is faith learning integration. And will you define for us what you mean, faith learning integration? And then what are some of the standouts or takeaways you had as you were helping and you learning all these stories from other Christian faculty? Yeah. So I think that the faith learning integration, the question is really asking how do we, how do we as Christian faculty, how do we take what's Christian about us, about our identity, about the things that we study about the, as a philosophy of life? How do we take Christian as a worldview and how do we understand our subject area in a way that honors and integrates those two kind of areas, right? So some would say that all truth is God's truth, that there's no such thing as truth that isn't of God. And so when we look at in any direction in the biology, in anthropology, in political systems, in family systems, in the ecology, when we look at the astronomy, when we look at the stars, Like in every direction that we could potentially study and learn, we're pursuing, we're pursuing God in a way. So, you know, the theologians would call, that we have primary revelation, like the revelation that comes from scripture and then secondary revelation, which is the revelation that comes from nature. And so in as much as we can know God from studying creation, studying what is, we, we can then integrate it. Right. So I think that's what faith learning integration really is about is really saying like, as we, as we pursue God through the lens of our field, whatever that field is. And so I think that's faith learning integration. So what we did in Professing Christ is we said, well, let's talk to some professors who are at state universities at, and different kinds, right? There's, there's research intensive universities, there's teaching institutions and everything in between. So let's talk to people at small liberal arts colleges, let's talk to people at big R1 universities, let's have those kinds of conversations, and let's see if we can hear the strategies that people are actually using. And so that's what the book is. And so we collected stories from, I think 18 people altogether is who we collected stories from, and then tried to take those stories. And in their own words, so it's edited together that we put all those stories together. And so then you just have a buffet or smorgasbord of different kinds of approaches that people have engaged in to say, here's how I take my Christianity and my profession as a professor and pull them together. Great. Were there any stories from professors that stood out to you as this is really insightful or this is a great example for many people to follow? Yeah, so I think all the stories have something for anybody, right? I think that was the thing for me is I learned maybe in some ways I was inspired through the stories and in some ways I picked up practical strategies of things that I could use. And so, for example, one of the writers talks about kind of does a jumping off point of Paul talking to the Epicureans and the Stoics. and says, like, these were two philosophies of his day. And Paul said, neither of them are fully right. I'm going to pick a third way. so, you Ryan Bisel talks about that in the in one of the chapters. And so I've I've used that approach when I'm teaching my graduate students and offer offer a theoretical critique of postmodernism, which is again comes from Bisel postmodernism and modernism and say, no, but there's there's something to be gained from each of those. But there's also a third way. Another strategy that I've used is one of the writers talks about putting an empty box, well, it has something in it, like a box with something in it, and walks into the classroom and starts shaking around the box and says, okay, what's in the box? And kind of goes through this Socratic exercise where the students are guessing what's in the box, right? Is it the keys or something like that? And he says, but nobody said, you know, All of truth is inside the box. No one said, you know, like, an elephant is inside the, but, know, like we actually are using kind of knowledge that we have to decide what could or couldn't be in the box. What's likely, right? Like a probabilistic, framework. I've, I've used that, technique as well. which is kind of fun to do. So there's, so what I'm saying is there's in the different chapters, there's like different strategies that I've pulled. that I've actually tried out in the classroom that have worked pretty well. And it's been fun to integrate some of those kinds of things into my teaching craft. You know, one thing that stood out to me from what you wrote in the book was, I'm paraphrasing, but it was the idea that ultimately we are dependent on the Holy Spirit to direct us in how we reflect our faith in the learning experience, the teaching experience and all, so What is an example of how you have sensed maybe the Holy Spirit directing you towards future integration of your own faith with your in academia. So when we started Professing Christ, might've been like, the book was published in 2022. it really put in the forefront of my mind, how am I doing faith integration? How am I doing it in my job as a at a state university and working for the university? And am I doing it faithfully? I think for me, the next question that I had to ask that I felt was prompted by the Holy Spirit is, well, how are you actually doing integration? in your scholarship. And so it's at that time I proposed a book with another colleague, what eventually became Family Communication in the Christian Faith, which is published in 2023. But again, that started about five years before, so 27 to 2018 and 2019, I started working on that project and then invited a lady named Diane Badzinski who's at Colorado Christian University to author with me. And so I started that book project really as a work of integration because I'm taking my research area around family interaction, around parent-child adolescent communication, and kind of the literature around that topic. And then I'm taking, well, what does the Bible say about family communication and about how parents interact with their children? And then we really pulled it together. And so that book for me was an outworking of Professing Christ because I felt prompted by the Holy Spirit to say, okay, I need to be doing integration. Here's my philosophy or strategy or theory of integration, so to speak, in Professing Christ. So now I want to do it. And so the book, Family Communication in a Christian Faith, really is like, it was like writing sermons and lit reviews tied together, which was a ton of fun to do. And, you know, I learned a ton through the process because I'm asking questions of the scriptures that I haven't asked. I'm asking, what's a model of parenting in the scripture? Like, who's a good parent? It wasn't Solomon who had 700 wives and 300 concubines or something. It wasn't David who basically had his son overthrow him. Like there's some weird dynamics, you know, to look for sibling relationships. You don't want to look at Cain and Abel. You know what I mean? Like, and so it really... It forced different kinds of questions for me when I culled through the scripture to try and do that integration work. So was a ton of fun to work on. I think that the third, so to get that narrative arc, right, I was developing a theory of integration, trying to do integration. And I think where it's left me looking toward the future is to really ask the question, well, what about universities is fundamentally Christian or not? And so their history is Christian, right? Like was Christendom in the UK, you know, in England at the time and the monasteries specifically that were really encouraging education. And that's like through history. So the universities have a base in Christendom, so to speak. And like during, we'll say the dark ages, the middle ages, however you want to look at it, it was... It was the monasteries that preserved all kinds of knowledge, not just biblical knowledge, but they were actually preserving the universe of knowledge, right? They're the ones that made copies of all the great texts and things like that. So the church has always been pro-education. And so it's kind of got me kind of following that arc, asking the question, well, what is, what's fundamentally Christian or godly about education. And that's been a fun kind of new project that I've been working on for the past year or two. Maybe a future book? Yeah, I mean, we'll see what form it ends up taking. But yeah, I think that's the idea is really to, I think for me, one of the fun parts was to see, know, learning is totally God's idea. Like learning is divine because it reflects his desire for us to know him. And so if we pursue truth in all those different directions I was talking about earlier, we just encounter God. Mm. Yeah. poem, I think it's Browning, It says, Earth's crammed with heaven and every common bush ablaze, but only he who sees takes off his shoes while the rest go on picking blackberries. Well, we will pause right there. with that poem and a challenge that our learning can be a form of worship. I think you're really going to enjoy part two if you will come back next week as we interview Jonathan on other subjects that show how he walks out his Christian faith in his university profession. So before we go, please click on subscribe or follow or like. and that helps us get the word out to others. And share this with a professor that you think it would encourage. We hope that we can get more professors to come on like this. So if you're a Christian professor, please consider going on meettheprof.com and sharing with us there some of your personal journey, how Jesus has rescued you. so until next week, we hope this encourages you to have a Christ-centered conversation on your college campus.