MTP 63: Sara Myers Part 2, How to Launch a Campus Fellowship and Pray for Your Students

In Part 2 of our interview, Dr. Sara Myers, Associate Chancellor of Research and Creative Activity and Professor of Biomechanics at the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO), shares how she has grown bolder in her faith as a professor. In response to a student’s question about faith and legal boundaries, she gives practical advice for Christian professors. Sara also tells the story of starting a thriving Christian faculty fellowship at UNO and shares tips on engaging students and new faculty.

Read more about Sara Myers online:
https://meettheprof.com/view/professors/entry/sara-myers

Books Mentioned:

• A Grander Story   https://a.co/d/8VoYXSV
• The Case For Christ   https://a.co/d/hjzQmoB
• The Case For Faith   https://a.co/d/a9pioL0

CHAPTERS

• (01:00) – Rachel’s Question: Boldness and Legality
• (01:15) – Sara’s mentors and her perspective on public faith
• (02:27) – Offering prayer in professional settings
• (02:45) – Creative visibility through Meet the Prof
• (03:47) – Her daughter’s mission trip and open professor responses
• (05:15) – How Sara introduces her faith when teaching
• (06:23) – Finding Christian community through professional associations
• (08:59) – Launching a grassroots Christian faculty group at UNO
• (11:36) – What they actually do when they gather
• (13:47) – Discussion on “A Grander Story”
• (14:37) – Transitioning to Faculty Commons G3 Lessons
• (15:42) – Locations and visibility on campus
• (16:14) – Lightning Round: Advice for professors, students, and parents
• (19:25) – Her next step: Reaching out to new faculty and students
• (20:03) – Final encouragement

Christian professors, we invite you to:

1. Submit a Profile on MeetTheProf.com: https://meettheprof.com/create-profile/
2. Read A Grander Story: An Invitation to Christian Professors: https://a.co/d/8VoYXSV

Students and parents can find over 500 Christian professors at:
https://meettheprof.com/

Get free resources for answering questions about God at:
https://www.everystudent.com/

Watch Meet The Prof on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@MeetTheProfOfficial/videos

Listen on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/show/6kizp6klascdMj1nqaj6LD

Listen on Apple Podcasts:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/meet-the-prof-with-shane-and-spence/id1733311320

If you’d like to financially support our ministry, you can do so online at https://give.cru.org/0424344

Transcript

0:01

My name is Rachel Ward. I go to UNCW. I'm a freshman studying nursing. My question would be, how do you be bold in your faith while still respecting the legalities of being a professor and honoring different people's worldviews? Well, welcome everybody to Meet the Prof. I am Shane Hartley and I'm here with Spence Hackney. How you doing, Spence? Hello. Hello. Good morning. So this is a podcast where we interview Christian professors and we use questions we get from college students and our hope is to encourage Christ-centered conversations on the college campus. And we have the privilege of getting to meet Sara Myers this morning. Sara is both the Associate Vice Chancellor of Research and Creative Activity and also a Professor of Biomechanics at the University of Nebraska Omaha. So Sara, great to see you. Welcome to Meet the Prof. Good morning, thank you for having me. Well, we have a question from a college student named Rachel. So she has recorded a video question for you. So take a listen to Rachel's question. Okay. My name is Rachel Ward. I go to UNCW. I'm a freshman studying nursing. My question would be, how do you be bold in your faith while still respecting the legalities of being a professor and honoring different people's worldviews? Yeah, that's a great question. And I will start off by saying I feel like my college career, I grew in this bubble. I actually came to undergraduate here at University of Nebraska at Omaha, but I had my two primary mentors were very outspoken about their faith. And so I would just say, Don't feel like you have to hide your faith as a professor. There's nothing that says you can't share about your faith, talk about things you're doing in your life that are related to your faith or the church. And then another way that I'm becoming more more bold in my faith is when you're talking with people, when they have challenging situations in particular, offering to pray for them. or asking if there's a way that we can pray for them. And I've done that frequently with both people I know are believers and individuals that I know are not believers. And typically they appreciate that gesture, whichever side they're on. Tell us a little bit about how you have shared the gospel and maybe what creative approaches you've had to communicate that you're a Christian or that sort of thing in the classroom. Sure. So I'm not a very creative person. I'll say it start with that. um But I think one way that is a very low barrier with sharing that you are Christian is with the Meet the Prof profile. And as you may have noticed, I have my the link to my profile. I don't have a research website or anything like that. But my Meet the Prof profile link is in my email and I go through a lot of emails. And the interesting thing about that is I never really knew if anybody was looking at that or wondering what Meet the Prof is. However, several times when I have hired students, they comment about that. They said, oh, we read this and I'm glad to know you're a Christian. or whatever. So some people are looking at that. So that's one really easy way. um And then I've never really been one to be scared about sharing activities that we're doing in our church. We're very active at our church and our kids are very active and other things too. Our oldest daughter graduated from UNO and she was very active on missions. Mm. point where she was going to miss some classes because of being on a mission trip. So I just said, just email your professors and let them know. And, you know, it was really interesting professors, advisors, even mandatory meetings because she was in teacher prep. And so they have some things that are like, you can't, you can't miss this, but she was going to be in the Dominican Republic during that time. And a lot of people responded back, that's great. You know, we love that you're going on mission trips. And I did that when I was in college or whatever. So, so I think, you know, just being yourself and not being afraid of sharing about your, your life and your faith, which again, I didn't really think much of that because it was modeled for me by a very prominent professor in my life. You know, another thing that I try to do if I'm giving any kind of workshop or when I was teaching a class, I did this more when you give the intro that talks about yourself. I mean, one of the things I mention is um about my faith or just roles I have in the church like that. Just so students have an idea about who I am because my faith is a major part of um what I'm doing in my life. I love the fact that you've simplified it. It's just about being who you are transparently. We make this too hard sometimes, we? Yeah, that's great. overthink it and be afraid, but I don't know. Like I said, I had great role models in that way. um And so I never really thought twice about it. Yeah, that's great. That's great. What a great praise to uh see God working and giving role models in your life. uh Yeah, none of us get where we are by ourselves, do we? No. Well, so how have you seen God connect you with other Christian faculty on campus? Yeah, well, I'm going to start with a story that wasn't actually on campus, but it was a major catalyst for what we have started doing here at UNO. I belong to a professional organization called the American Society of Biomechanics. It's the main uh organization for biomechanists in the United States, and we have even members from Canada and other places around the world. My mentor that I've been referring to belongs to that organization. uh We have an annual meeting every year and they have different affinity group activities. So I was looking through some of these activities that happen at the conference and one of them was a Christian faculty or Christian biomechanics lunch. So I went to that lunch during the conference and there were like hundred people there and their conference was, I don't know, 800 or a thousand at that time. There's a lot of other competing activities and there wasn't anything, any formal program. We just, you know, started with a prayer, introduced ourselves. There were students and faculty of all levels and people went around and shared what church they went to or, you know, kind of whatever people wanted to share. And I was just really encouraged by the number of people who attended because you know sometimes in professional organizations and when you're thinking science, I mean people can oftentimes be very vocal about not believing in God or not being Christian and so it can be uh difficult to be outspoken about being Christian more so for me. at that national level than the local level just because of the support that I've had here. And so after that meeting, I came back to UNO and uh there were some follow-up emails. uh In the meantime, kind of on the side, there is a Christian group at our sister campus, Lincoln, and during COVID, they were having their meetings online. So I had a friend. who taught at UNO and at UNO. And so she invited me to attend their meetings. And after I went to my professional organization and then came back, I thought, I really want to have something here at UNO. And so it basically started completely grassroots. I just emailed, there was maybe five or six people that I knew were Christian faculty. been at UNO 20 years at that time. So I knew a lot of people and just said, I want to start this group. Are you interested? Yes. Then I'll keep you on my list. No, you know, I won't email you anymore. And then just share the invitation. And that was about two years ago. And now we have 40 or 50 people on our list that we've just added uh over time. So we've we've met. about monthly or so. And we started last year going through the book, A Grander Story, which was wonderful and answered a lot of questions, gave a lot of inspiration to the faculty being involved. And it's been really encouraging. Even when people who are on the email list can't come to the group, I get about as many emails from those people that say, I can't be there, but I'm really encouraged that you guys are meeting. Will you pray for me for such and such reason, or just, you know, thanks for organizing. Please keep me on the list even though I can't go. So it's interesting how The biggest benefit of having this group is just knowing that there are other Christian professors on campus. uh that we're not alone as a Christian professor here at UNO has been really inspiring. One reason that's inspiring and exciting to me is I feel like one of my major battles is against disconnection. The disconnection that faculty have from each other and the disconnection that Christian faculty have from students. And it seems like uh at least two things are needed. One is just someone who will organize it and initiate it and God raised you up to do that. Oftentimes the second barrier is for faculty to know what might we do? What do do when you gather? So you mentioned doing a book study on A Grander Story, An Invitation for Christian Professors. Can you paint more of a picture of practically what you all have done when you've gathered? Is food involved? Any kind of real details that give people a vision what they might do? Sure, yeah, so in the A Grander Story book, for those that aren't familiar with it, it starts out really talking about the principles of the idea behind A Grander Story is that our lives aren't just about ourselves, we're part of God's grander story. And then how do we approach that role as Christian professors? So there's a few chapters that talk about that. And then there's 8 or 10 chapters written by amazing, inspiring Christian professors that talked about what they did throughout their career. uh When I'm telling people about this, I say, if I could just choose one activity from one of the chapters, I'll feel like a success. mean, it's just crazy stories, some really funny stories too. eh There was one story in that book that I almost couldn't continue the discussion because I kept laughing. It was just unbelievable. Well, it was, I can't remember which professor, but he was talking about how he invited all of the faculty to hear a testimony of someone from a different country. And someone asked a pretty challenging question and then they had a discussion. So he was just like, well. I guess there's nowhere to go but up if I don't get fired from here. It was kind of interesting because he felt like it was a failure, but it really gave him the courage to try about anything because he said, well, that was about as bad as I could have imagined it going. So it was just hilarious. I encourage you to find the book and read it. And then at the end of the book, there's a couple of chapters on legal questions that faculty have, which are quite helpful. So we just met, um you know, I encouraged faculty to read a chapter. I really did this because I'd had that book since COVID when I started being active in the Lincoln group and I hadn't read it yet. So it forced me to read the book. Just, I needed the accountability. But we just talked about a chapter. There's questions in the back. um I tried to highlight or underline things that stood out to me as I was reading, and we just had a good discussion. But I also encouraged people that didn't have time to read, just come, you'll get something out of the discussion. You can catch up later. So we worked our way through that book, and that was great. And now we're doing these G3 lessons that Faculty Commons provides. And so we're working our way through those. Those lessons are basically about a front to back page. You don't have to prepare anything. There's a couple of Bible verses with the lessons and they're very relevant topics for academia. In terms of what else we do at the meeting, usually we come in, greet each other, make introductions if there's any new people, and then start with prayer. then do the discussion. And then I like to save like 10 or 15 minutes to take prayer requests and then we pray um and people can leave taking those requests until next time. So that's pretty simple. We can bring, if we're meeting around lunch, people can bring food. We have people that are eating their lunch during that time and um it's pretty low key. We try to keep the barrier for entry very low so people can come. um if they have that time available. Yeah, how long do you typically meet and what are some of the locations where you've met on campus? Yeah, we meet just for about an hour and then we typically just meet in this building called the Student Center that happens. It's next door to my office, but that's been pretty convenient. Great, probably students see you all gathering and they ask, hey, what's that group? If you're in the student center. it's possible. Yeah, we walk through a lot of students as we go to the meetings, so it's good. Very exciting. Wow, thanks for being practical there with us. Yeah, of course. Well, so why don't we jump into some lightning round questions. This is where we'd love to get your advice on something. So very first is Sara, what advice would you give to other Christian professors? I would say don't let fear keep you from sharing the gospel and also uh don't downplay just little steps of faith and how that can make an impact on campus. Great. How about your advice for students struggling with doubts about God? Yeah, well, I would say um research. I'm a researcher. So do your research. There's a lot of evidence for God and Christ existence. A couple books that I read in college, think our Campus Crusade group gave them out, actually, the Case for Faith and the Case for Christ. And then the other thing I would say, especially for students who don't want to have doubts about God is to pray about it. Just pray for an unshakable faith and to remove doubts. And then finally saying um doubts are okay, your questions are okay. um It's understandable. We're not capable of understanding everything about God. He's so much bigger than what we can understand. And so as long as you believe, I think it's okay to have those questions unanswered um until we're with him. Sara, what advice would you give to Christian parents who are a little nervous about sending their students off to a secular college? Yes, so, um you know, we spend 18 years preparing our kids um to go off to college. So I think one thing that's essential is just praying for your kids. um Another is to help them find the Christian community that exists at college. So they have access to that. um as they want to and encourage them to be involved. just finally, um just remember that God loves our kids more than we're even capable of. So just trust in all the work that you've put in in the last 18 years and keep those lines of communication open with their kids. And hopefully you'll see them start to really make their faith their own at that time. keeping lines of communication open. We've heard some other faculty say that. That's helpful. I'll be thinking about that as I drop my kid off orientation tomorrow. Thank you. ah How about, eh personally, what do you think is your next step of faith on campus? Yeah, well, one uh topic, I guess, that's been on my heart is how we can engage new faculty. So we did a little bit of outreach just sharing some welcome bags last summer, but em doing more to make sure they know that we exist when they come on campus. And then also trying to engage more with students, especially student groups. ah to see how we can work together to share the gospel here at UNO. I love it. I know many other faculty are wrestling with those questions too. How to reach out to new faculty and then how do I connect with students? So Sara, thank you so much. So what else? Do you have any other things you would like to talk about or things we haven't covered? uh No, I just am happy to talk with you and uh am encouraged that there are Christian professors in my field and other fields across the country. If you're a Christian professor, have you considered how you might creatively introduce spiritual things into your lectures in a way that would open the door for students to come to you if they wanted to talk more, especially about Jesus? I'd encourage you to think about that. College students, if you'd be interested in submitting a question to Christian professors here, we would love that. And the best way to do that is if you find us on Instagram and send us a DM with your question for the professor and let us know your name and what school you're at as well. And lastly, if you would like to give financially to this outreach, I'm on staff with Cru, the Faculty Commons ministry. We would love to have you a part of our team. So if you're interested, you could give online at give.cru.org, that's C-R-U dot O-R-G / 0 42 43 44. thanks for listening, for being a part of this with us. And until next time, we hope this encourages you to have a Christ-centered conversation on your college campus.