Beeson Podcast, Episode #600 Name Date >>Announcer: Welcome to the Beeson podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. Now your host, Doug Sweeney. >>Doug Sweeney: Welcome to the Beeson Podcast. I am your host, Doug Sweeney and I am here today with two new friends of Beeson Divinity School, Dr. Chip Hardy and Dr. Alex Kirk, both of whom are here to teach Old Testament and Hebrew at Beeson. And both of whom have moved to Birmingham, Al this summer from far away places. We’re looking forward to introducing them to you today. The students are already loving them and their teaching, and we can’t wait to share them with the larger Beeson family. So, thank you Dr. Hardy and Dr. Kirk for being on the podcast today. >>Kirk: Great to be here. >>Hardy: Yeah, thanks for the invitation. >>Doug Sweeney: Alright, let’s start at the beginning. Tell us just a little bit about how you came to faith in Christ and how you got to Beeson Divinity School. And I’ll try to be good about this. There’s two of you. I’ll try to remember that, you know, tell which guy to go first. But let’s just work conversationally on this too. Chip, would you mind answering that question first? >>Hardy: Sure. I became a believer in Jesus Christ when I was 10. My family is blessed with having both my parents are Christians and were faithful witnesses to the truth of the gospel. And I think I heard that many times when I was young growing up in First Baptist Church, Ponca City, Oklahoma. And so, that’s a great blessing to hear that and be in Sunday school and all the other different ways, service to hear God’s word. But I think for me personally, the time that was sort of critical in my own sort of accepting my parent’s faith, the faith of my parents, the faith of our ancestors for myself was after the death of my grandfather when I was 10. At that moment I sort of had a, I don’t know if I had a Gilgamesh moment or not where I sought after the meaning of life, but I think it did force me to think about, you know, hey, there’s something bigger going on here and there is a search for meaning and for the answers to death. And so, I think that struck in my heart a higher desire to seek after spiritual things. And so, that combines with a conversation with my father, who sort of proclaimed to me the truth that, you know, if you want, if you are truly going to be a Christian, it needs to be a public decision. And so, in our context, that meant walking the aisle and being baptized in front of the church as a public profession. And so, those are the moments in my life that I look back on and say, that’s when my faith, although nascent and young, began. And I don’t necessarily think I ever went back on that. That was a real decision, a true decision that still resonates with me today in my own heart. >>Doug Sweeney: Alright. Let’s stay with you just for a couple more minutes Chip. So, fast forward a bit. How did you get from being converted, deciding to follow Jesus, on the one hand, to feeling like the Lord was moving you into ministry, the Lord was interesting you in the study of the Bible? >>Hardy: Right. I think when I was younger, I had a tendency to like to be around people and serve people and help people. And so, for me in my mind, ministry wasn’t something that was front and center, maybe. Some of my other friends and colleagues growing up made commitments to go to ministry. That wasn’t really something that I felt strongly about. But I did feel the need to want to help people. My family has a lot of teachers in it and these sorts of things, medical professionals. So, I thought maybe that might be the direction I head in my life. But the Lord got ahold of me in my first year at university at the University of Oklahoma where I think I had a very clear call to start pastoral teaching at that moment. And teaching the Bible as God’s word became extremely important to me and a lot of different influences and inputs into that. But I think that was a moment where I think I maybe was feeling a push from my studies to say maybe biology is not my thing. I think I shared with you that I really hate needles and things like that. So, it became kind of clear that maybe the medical profession wasn’t the best for me. And so, it sent me off on sort of a search for where might these talents that I feel of wanting to help people and serve people and teach individuals, maybe some talents in that way, might serve along side the desire to think about God’s word as this eternal entity that’s valuable in and of itself for our study. And so, I think that sort of started me in the path towards thinking about teaching the Bible, pastorally teaching the Bible, and eventually moving into the teaching of the teachers of the Bible, as we do today here at Beeson Divinity. >>Doug Sweeney: Wonderful. So, University of Oklahoma, then straight into seminary? >>Hardy: Straight into seminary. >>Doug Sweeney: And then from seminary at Southern Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. >>Hardy: Southern Seminary, that’s right. >>Doug Sweeney: You went straight into a PhD at the University of Chicago. >>Hardy: That’s right. I had about a year sort of gap there. I was teaching, doing some other things, sort of a transition moment for me. So, yeah, about a 12-month period. When I finished my MDiv, still participating in church and things before I started at my graduate program and the University of Chicago. >>Doug Sweeney: Alright. And presumably, in these years, the Lord is really confirming for you He wants you to teach His word. >>Hardy: Right. I think that was always a constant and I think that for me, it was a discovery throughout my years, later at university and also at seminary, to have experience in the church teaching, have experience outside the church in teaching in several different settings professionally. And also, in sort of a development of my own, sort of seeing myself well. Where is it that I’m going to fit and teach well? I taught eight graders, at one point, Bible. And I thought, you know, that’s really great and Lord bless for those who do that, but it maybe that’s not for me. >>Doug Sweeney: That’ll make a teacher out of you. >>Hardy: Exactly, exactly. It’s a whole other thing. So, it sort of was a discovery and sort of a leading, I think. I’m always a bit slow on the uptake to figure out what God’s doing sometimes in my own life and seeing myself. But I think throughout that time, it became more and more clear through both open doors, wise counsel, and then trying to observe my own sort of talents in sort of a reasonable way to say this is where God can use you. These are the things that He's uniquely gifted me to be able to do. And these are the opportunities that have been set before you to do that. And I think the intersection of all those things led on to graduate work with always the idea to come back into a divinity setting, back into a seminary setting, and teach others the truths of God’s word. >>Doug Sweeney: Fantastic. And now, just really quick, you taught for a little while at Louisianna College. >>Hardy: Yes. >>Doug Sweeney You taught for a long while at Southeastern Seminary in North Carolina. >>Hardy: That’s right. >>Doug Sweeney: That was about a decade. >>Hardy: That’s right. >>Doug Sweeney: And just this summer, you moved to Beeson. We’ll ask you more about that in a minute. >>Hardy: Great. Yeah, about 15 years total in post-secondary education. I was just thinking about it a minute ago, counting up the number of years. So, a lot of time, a lot of lessons, a lot of mistakes. But hopefully some wisdom as well along the way. >>Doug Sweeney: Wonderful. Alright, Alex let’s turn to you and find out the same kinds of thing. How did you come to faith? How did you start to feel like the Lord was moving you into ministry and more particularly, teaching the Bible for a living? >>Kirk: Yeah, yeah. Great. I mean, in some ways, my story is not radically different from Chip’s. I also grew up in a Christian home. My dad was a pastor and that was really formative for me in a lot of ways as will become clear. My mom and dad really modeled, I mean, they really taught and modeled, I think, a really robust intellectually vibrant faith. And so, I mean, there’s a very real sense in which I feel like I was always a Christian. I was born into a Christian home. I don’t remember a time when that wasn’t the case. And yet, I do remember praying with my dad when I was about five years old to accept Jesus into my heart. And then I think, you know, I remember going to his office with him when I was about nine and we talked about baptism and what that meant. I think I was baptized around the age of nine. And I think that those were real experiences of coming to faith in Christ that God used in my life. But for me, it took a while to really feel real in my own heart. I mean, I think it was real but, you know, as you grow up you kind of make it your own and you live into it a little bit more. So, for me, the moment that that really came together was in college. I went to the University of Florida, and I had been a really good kid all throughout, kind of, middle school, high school. I didn’t get in a lot of trouble. I did all the stuff you’re supposed to do, you know, serve in youth group and get decent grades, student leadership stuff. I mean, I did kind of all of that. And so, on the outside I looked really, really great. But inside I was well aware of my own spiritual struggles, whether it was just kind of a chronic frustration with feeling like I wasn’t, you know, reading my Bible enough, praying enough, evangelizing enough or just struggles with persistent sins in my life that I felt like weren’t going away. And then I got to college, and I was just lonely and frustrated and probably a little bit depressed in hindsight. I just wouldn’t have known to call it that at the time. And I got so frustrated with all the kind of spiritual striving that I actually remember, I prayed to God one day and basically said I’m not going to try anymore. I’m not going to read my Bible. I’m not going to pray. I’m not going to do any of this stuff anymore until you make me want to, basically. And whenever I tell this story, I say I’m not sure that’s an advisable prayer. I wouldn’t counsel anybody to do that. But God did ultimately use that in my life. >>Doug Sweeney: He made you want to. >>Kirk: Yeah. Slowly but surely. I mean, I was probably, probably for about a year, year and a half, I really was spiritually shut down inside. And the thing that changed that for me was actually, I used to drive back and forth between my hometown of Daytona Beach and Gainesville, Florida where UF is every weekend. And my mom gave me an mp3 CD with a series of lectures by Tim Keller on it. And it was the “Preaching to the Heart” series that he did, I think at Gordon-Conwell’s Ockenga Institute. My mom said, “You know, I think you might really like this.” And so, I popped it in. It’s not even sermons. There was a lecture series on how to preach, you know. And man, as I listen, I mean I probably listened all the way through that lecture series four or five times coming and going. And as Keller would say, “Somewhere in there, the penny dropped” and I just felt like the gospel made sense in a way that it hadn’t done before. And for me, the verse that I remember God using most clearly was Romans 8:1. “For there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” And I just remember, I had such a simple realization but I just, I heard him explain that and I just thought, man, well if that’s true, why am I feeling so much condemnation? And I realized that that condemnation simply wasn’t coming from God because it has been taken by Christ. And so, if it wasn’t coming from God, I mean, it was the world, the flesh, the devil, myself putting it on me. And that realization just changed something in my heart. And so, yeah, as you said a second ago, He made me want to do all those things again and I just woke up spiritually. And I mean, there’s been struggles and challenges and rough periods and all sorts of things, but from that moment to now has been a consistent process of steady growth that I can see clearly looking back. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah. Marvelous. So, how’d you get to seminary from there? >>Kirk: Yeah. Well again, my dad was a pastor, and I had never seriously considered doing anything other than teaching. The question has just been in what context. So, there was a time where I thought I would be an English professor or even like a high school English teacher. I was an English major in college. Or in the church, whether pastoral ministry or kind of in some other kind of teaching capacity for the church. I never considered doing anything else. It was just figuring out where. After college, I was really just overwhelmed by kind of the vocational decision, and I didn’t feel I liked school, and I didn’t feel ready to get a real job. So, I did an internship at my church and then I went to seminary, mainly as a way of kind of exploring whether I would go into ministry or whether I’d go get a different kind of graduate degree or just teach, you know. >>Doug Sweeney: A lot of people do that. >>Kirk: Yeah. So, I went to seminary. I started at Regent College in Vancouver, and it just became really clear over the first year or two that I loved the academic side of theological studies and wanted to pursue that further. And, I mean, I will not bore you or the listeners with the kind of blow by blow. I mean, it’s a long messy process over five or 10 years, but I slowly just developed a strong conviction that I wanted to try to get a PhD in Old Testament studies because that’s what I’ve always just been the most interested in, and then if God would allow me, to train pastors. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah. And you wound up going to England for your doctoral work. >>Kirk: Yeah. >>Doug Sweeney: What was that, short version, what was that like for you and your wife? >>Kirk: Yeah. It was, I mean, it was really enriching, and it was kind of a dream of ours because I went through a couple rounds of applying to PhD’s and trying to find a program that was the right fit and doing a number of other kinds of non-traditional things in theological education that were really formative. And I ended up starting at Durham University in the northeast of England. I started the part time, non-residential PhD program. And I had known people who had done the whole thing at a distance, part- time, non- residential, never gone but once or twice. But after a couple of years, we decided that God was kind of basically saying, either you got to go full time and figure out a way to crank this out or this just isn’t in the cards for you right now. And you know, short version, He graciously opened the door to allow us to go to England. We had dreamed of it for years, but we didn’t see a way in our power that it was going to happen. And so, we got the opportunity to go in 2019. We ended up spending all of, kind of, covid and those tumultuous 2020- 2021 over in the UK. And for us, it just felt like a bit of a spiritual retreat as a family. Like God just pulled us out of all this mess and chaos that the world was experiencing and just stuck us in a quiet corner about a half a mile from just fields and countryside and just said, you know what you need to do for two years is just write a decertation and get this PhD done because there’ll be other stuff to do after that. >>Doug Sweeney: Right. And we brought you here from Crosslands Seminary, a seminary in England. But the other thing that I want our listeners to hear just a little about is before you went to Crosslands, you were also teaching for Training Leaders International. Is that right? >>Kirk: That’s right. >>Doug Sweeney: And that’s a pretty cool way to bet a feel for what God’s doing around the world. I would imagine it’s a great way to start learning how to be a good teacher. Tell our listeners just a little bit about that experience. >>Kirk: Sure. So, yeah, I illuded to this a second ago when I was saying I did some kind of non-traditional things in theological education, but I knew I wanted to teach, and I didn’t have a PhD yet. And for a while there, the track to getting a PhD wasn’t entirely clear. And so, there was a moment when Meghan and I kind of spent a weekend praying and thinking through and saying, what can we do? How can we serve in teaching, in a ministry of teaching the Bible when I don’t have a PhD? And we had done a little bit of volunteer work with Training Leaders International as seminary students, training pastors in the majority world who don’t have access to a seminary like Beeson. It either just doesn’t exist in their context or if it does exist, it would be completely financially unachievable for them. So, what TLI does is it ties to take sound theological training to those pastors in their local context. We have partnerships with local church leaders. So, yeah. Long story short, we signed up and started doing that in 2016 full time and did it for about four years. And I had the opportunity to travel all over the world. I mean, I think I’ve taught in 10 or 12 countries and traveled to a lot more. And just great to see. I mean, if anybody who listens to this podcast wants to serve a real need in the global church, there’s a massive need for people to really invest in training the local church leaders who have incredible ministry experience and incredible passion and are willing to suffer for the gospel, but just don’t have the resources and access to the kind of training that we have in the west, so. >>Doug Sweeney: Wonderful. >>Kirk: Yeah, it was great. >>Doug Sweeney: Alright, I have a next big question. Maybe I’ll just start with you, Alex, since your kind of all warmed up here. I want out listeners to hear why two wonderful men of God, like you guys, who were gainfully employed, thrilled with ministry in other contexts were open to the possibility that God was moving you to Beeson. How did the move to Beeson happen for you? And what was the, this is a little serving, but I want people to learn more about Beeson and why a guy like you would come here. What was it about Beeson that was attractive to you? >>Kirk: Yeah, sure. So, for me, I was serving with Crosslands Seminary in the UK, which is fairly new, and Crosslands’ is also doing very innovative non-residential training for people who are basically already serving in ministry. But it involved a lot of travel, and we were in England and a young family. And we’ve been asking ourselves for years, because you do a PhD and you don’t know where you’re going to land or what the end result of that is going to be, and Meghan and I had been asking ourselves for years, you know, Lord, prepare a place for our family. You know, where can we put down roots and serve long term? And we had no idea what doors He was going to open or not open in order to do that. But if you had asked me anytime in the last five, six years, maybe longer, if you could teach anywhere in the world where would you want to teach, I would have said Beeson Divinity School. And the reason I would have said that was just because I have a real personal value on the kind of interdenominational ethos that Beeson is so proud of but grounded in the historic traditions of Protestant Christianity. I mean, that’s something that for years I just have felt really strongly about, knowing and valuing your tradition. There’s answers and resources in knowing your tradition and people often jump ship and convert to different traditions or faiths or whatever often because of the failures or the weaknesses that they perceive. But I think if we learn to go deeper into our own traditions and kind of mind those traditions for all the riches that are really there, and there are kind of historic roots, there’s often really strong answers. And Beeson, I think, does that really well and reaches students how to do that whether they’re Anglicans or Baptists or Methodists of Lutherans or you name it. That’s just something I value. And I felt from a distance, if I could teach there, I would be enriched by that. I could instill that in my students. And that would just be the kind of, I could be myself. I wouldn’t kind of have to fit into a mold of, you know, you have to… some places you can study have quite narrowed theological molds. Let’s just put it that way. And I have strong personally theological convictions, but I want to work more broadly and invest more broadly than that. And Beeson felt like a place to do that. >>Doug Sweeney: Well, I mean, you know, I love that answer. I’m the dean of the school and I’m a church history teacher so of course, I enjoy learning from the tradition. Just for the sake of our listeners though, it’s important to know that, you know, in some contexts, Old Testament professors, people in Biblical studies, they used to study the Bible mostly to correct the tradition, not so much to learn from it. So, how does and Old Testament prof like you develop this perspective about the importance of the Christian tradition? >>Kirk: That’s a great question and one that I’m personally continuing to wrestle with. But I think, man if I can try to come up with a decent answer to that, I think for me, it became clear that if you disconnect from the tradition and then try to read the Old Testament text, it’s not clear that you’ll end up in a health orthodox place. There’s a lot of people who have kind of gone through that exercise and in claiming kind of an intellectual objectivity, they end up in some really, I think, unhelpful places, some places where, you know, they’re pitting scripture against scripture and they’re just kind of become overly skeptical and really not ending up in a place that is conducive to faith. And frankly, I think the way God has inspired scripture and given us the scriptures, they’re not really meant to function that way. You know, there’s categories like Canon and the Rule of Faith and the history of tradition of the apostolic teaching. It goes all the way back. I mean, I’m not talking about a rigid, necessarily unbroken thing, but there is a deposit that has been passed down, to use the language of Timothy, right. And if we disregard those things and we kind of try to read scripture in a vacuum, I just think it’s quite unhelpful. So, just to wrap this up, my own teaching of the Old Testament, I’m constantly, I’m trying to engage all of the philological work in the Hebrew text and I’m thinking about ancient near eastern context and all those things, but then I’m putting that into conversation with voices like John Calvin, and Martin Luther, and Saint Augustine, and even some modern like, you know, I like to look at you know, I was just editing a lecture I’m going to do next week and like, we look at the way that Jordan Peterson has looked at Genesis, you know, because he’s a modern version of somebody reading it through, you know, a tradition, a lens. And I think that’s what makes it really interesting to me. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah. Fantastic. Alright, Dr. Hardy, I want to ask the same question of you but let me set it up with just one more kind of element here. You’re older than Dr. Kirk. You were pretty comfortably ensconced for a long time at another wonderful seminary. So, how does a guy like that all of a sudden think, maybe the Lord’s doing something at Beeson that He wants me to be a part of? What went on in your head? >>Harvy: I think like many people in 2020 and on, I think I started thinking, what’s really important to me? And I was reaching a point in my career where I was settled and in all the good ways. Life was good. My son was born. We were in a good space. But I think in some ways, when we find ourselves settled, like David maybe even, that sometimes we’re the most unsettled. And then when circumstances outside of ourselves, like you mentioned Alex, sort of start putting pressure on the world and say, well maybe I need to be thinking very carefully about where it is that my ministry is, where I want to go. You know, I have a certain amount of time. We’re all only given a certain amount of time. We don’t know how long that is, but we hope, you know, for the Lord’s grace to give us a certain amount of time to be teaching and actively engaged with others and encouragement. We hope that’s for our whole life but in these sorts of professional settings, there is a restricted time. There’s only so many years. So, I think a lot of different factors led to both my wife, Amy, and I to think about, you know, what should we be doing? And I think as that was happening and as the world began to shut down in the covid 19 crisis and pandemic, I think that added another layer to things. We were all forced to see life through a screen. We’re forced to see life at a distance. And I think that started putting additional pressure on my own vision of what does it mean to have incarnational ministry in my church, in my community, and of course in my professional life. And so, I think one of the big pressure points for me coming out of, sort of as the world began to start looking normal again, I think my world was upside down. And I started thinking, okay, what does this unsettledness mean for me? How am I going to adjust to the new realities of a post covid world where, you know, zoom calls and all these sorts of things are the norm? And I know that many of your listeners, our listeners here, probably are dealing with that in their own life. And so, when the opportunity came to think about coming to Beeson Divinity School, one of the very big attraction points for was to say, well this was a place, not a haven of the past, but rather a look forward to the future of what would incarnational ministry, intentional incarnation ministry, person ministry mean? And what would it mean to be back in a classroom a hundred percent of the time with other human beings that we can touch and hug and feel and, you know, all the other positives and negatives that come with that? And I think that became something extremely attractive, overwhelmingly attractive. And then I think as time went on, our discussions continued here around the possibility of coming here. Am I a good fit for you? Are you a good fit for me? These sorts of questions as one does when they’re at these moments in their life. I think I was overcome with joy about what was going on and meeting the people here and seeing that that was a similar vision for this type of ministry, this very personal ministry, that was available here at Beeson Divinity School that, you know, in other contexts is just a little bit more difficult to get or maybe not the norm, or however we want to say that positively. Whereas at Beeson, we’ve intentionally created an environment to where, you know, you’re in a classroom face to face with a professor, side by side with your colleagues and students, working towards a common goal. You know, the mission that above all else we want to be forming or be men and women of God, I think I got that right, is a great mission because, you know, formation happens. We can go to church, or we can go to a divinity school or seminary and we can be told do all kinds of things but it’s intriguing that this mission is to come and be something. And I think you have to be something renewed, right, in order to then do something. And I think that vision is just terrible attractive, you know. Maybe like a, you know, mosquito to a light, you know. It just drew me in. So, I guess I’m the mosquito in that sense. That’s okay in that metaphor. But I think- >>Kirk: We won’t squish you. >>Hardy: We’re in the south. Those bug zappers are a real thing. I remember that on my grandmother’s carport, you know, hearing that zap. What is that sound? So, in some ways that was me coming and seeing Beeson and saying, wow, this might be unsettling for my current existence in my job and in my life, in our family’s life, but that attraction is so powerful that it drew us in. >>Kirk: Yeah. >>Doug Sweeney: Well, we’re thrilled that it did. Okay, so now that you’re here, this is a hard question because you guys just moved here this summer, you have families, you’re still catching your breath. >>Kirk: It’s a lot of reverse culture shock around bugs, I will say. >>Doug Sweeney: I bet though that you and your wives have spent a little bit of time kind of praying prospectively, kind of thinking about what you think the Lord wants you to be about while you’re here at Beeson Divinity School. And for our listeners, it’s important to remind everybody that seminary professors can be about a surprisingly wide array of things. Of course, we have jobs that put us in the classroom teaching students. We’re also church people who plug into local congregations and sometimes speak at other congregations. Many of us are scholars, so we do research, and we do writing. And there’s not a cookie cutter, even at place like Beeson where we’re all on a pretty serious common mission. We don’t all do exactly the same set of things. So, Chip, what do you think the Lord has for you here at Beeson? What are you the most excited about? How do you imagine He wants to put you to use for His ecclesial and kingdom purposes at Beeson and beyond while you’re here? >>Hardy: Yeah. I think in many ways, Beeson allows a very serious engagement or encouragement for others, whether that’s students or the larger community or even in our own churches here to engage with the Old Testament in serious ways with the scriptures. And you know, there’s pressure to abandon the Old Testament scriptures. And if there’s anything that two Old Testament professors that think that this stuff is important need to be saying is that you can’t abandon this. This is the tradition. This is the Bible that Jesus knew. And if we step away grom that, if we think, even if it seems most expedient, that we’ve lost so much. And I think we’ll lose everything is actually the end of it all. And so, not to be a doomsday person, that’s not really the way I work, it’s not really what I think about things, but that is the trajectory that we could be on and we have seen this happen before in other times and other places where folks would abandon the scriptures and therefore end up in a space that was just not any longer Christian. And so, I think, for me, when I think about my ministry and what it is that drives me, what gets me up every morning to do all the things I want to do in the day is at bottom to say how can I as a minister of the gospel, as a teacher at Beeson Divinity, as a churchman, as father, as a husband, etc., etc. and all those spaces live into and live out of the word of God. And so, I think that actually in some ways is super exciting and maybe it’s almost daunting the ways in which that could be done, whether it’s a personal decision of how I do this, what we do at church, what we do here, what we do in the classroom. But ultimately, that’s the thing that’s always in front of me. How can I continue to show and demonstrate to those around me that we need to keep leaning into this? We need to keep reading this. We need to keep engaging God’s word because it’s a powerful, transformative work. And it is ultimately the only thing that’s going to transform the world. And we can go to all kinds of other places, whether that’s politics or clubs or whatever it is that we find maybe small measures of transformation, but ultimately, we’re always going to fall short. But our engagement with God’s word in serious way in all these realms of life is what’s gong to allow us to participate in the kingdom that God is building here in the world. >>Doug Sweeney: That’s wonderful. It’s going to sound funny, but I wish my wife, Wilma, was here right now to respond to what you said a couple of minutes ago about many people thinking that they can do without the Old Testament in the Christian life. She grew up in a Dutch reformed church that really placed a pretty high premium on good Old Testament preaching and teaching. And so, she was immersed in that as a kid but over the course of her adult life, she’s found herself wishing that more pastors more of the time would be willing to teach their people the Old Testament. So, it’s a real privilege to be in a context like Beeson that has such a strong Old Testament faculty that’s here to help pastors, preacher, Bible teachers learn how to do that well. >>Hardy: And listen, it’s not easy. I mean, I hear that in Alex’s answer really too about the attraction for Old Testament studies. And for me, the hard thing’s the one thing I run after. I’m like, okay I know this to be true, but I know also that the truth of this is hard and difficult and maybe hard to understand. But that’s why I’m going to get up tomorrow and do this again and continue to have conversations with each other about how to do this better. >>Kirk: Yeah. >>Doug Sweeney: Alex, how about you? As you think about the same question, and again, this is all new, you’re still thinking it. But what’s your sense? How does God want to put you to work here at Beeson? >>Kirk: Yeah. I mean, I echo and resonate with everything that Chip has said. I think for Meghan and I, you know, working out vocation in a marriage is always a challenging thing. Well, it’s not, I don’t know, maybe it’s not always a challenging thing. For us, it’s been a bit of a challenge over the last 15 years. And one of the things that we prayed for a lot, Meghan especially, is you know, a way to kind of do it together, that our vocation wouldn’t just kind of pull us in opposite directions. And we felt like during our time in England, that really worked for us because we really found rhythms of life and ways. We did a lot of mentoring of university students and a lot of kind of life on life, life together kind of stuff, which you know is a bit of a catch phrase here for good reason. And I think in coming to Beeson with some of the things that Chip mentioned about just being face to face, being in person, being residential, being full time, and I haven’t mentioned yet the mentor group component, which is a huge part of, you know, each one of us has a small group that we lead year in and year out as students go through the program. And all of that stuff, I think, provides a space for, I mean in time, and we’ve been here not quite a month, and I mean, our heads just spinning and we’re, you know, we don’t have rhythms of life quite worked out yet. But in time, I think there’ll be a lot of space for Meghan and I together as a couple to mentor students and to invest in students and that’s something we’re excited about doing. I mean, Meghan’s quite theological. She’s interested in the stuff I’m teaching. She’s, you know, very serious. I mean, she’s a much better Christian and more spiritual person than I am. And I’m not saying that in a, you know, there’s kind of a tendency of guys, I think, to kind of flatter their wives and I’m saying that with upmost seriousness. She is wired that way, in a way that I’m not. And so, she’ll be a huge asset to the students and hopefully together, we’ll be able to do that. When it comes to the Old Testament proper, yeah, I mean, you guys ask a question in the interview process. I think Chip and I both got asked the same questions because I think you asked the same exact questions of everyone. And you said, you know, something like, what is the value of the Old Testament for the Christian life or what ongoing significance does it have today? And that was a great question. And I mean, I couldn’t agree more that if we lose the Old Testament, we lose a huge amount of the substance of the Christian faith and the witness to the triad of God. I mean, my personal conviction is, you know, that the New Testament takes the Old Testament as read and doesn’t necessarily reestablish doctrines and truths about who God is that it felt were abundantly clear and established already in the first testament. And so, think about just one example. Just think about the book of Psalms. I mean, if you lose the ability to engage with the idiom and the poetry of the book of Psalms, then you lose most of the history of personal Christian spirituality over the last 2000 year. You lose the ability to pray and worship and relate to God the Wy Jesus did. I mean, and you got to know something about ancient Israelite thought and images and world view and stuff to really, really get the Psalms at the deepest level. So, I mean, it would be an incalculable loss to the church if we didn’t know how to engage with that material well. So, helping pastors to do, I think, the hard, as Chip said, but really fun work of learning how to preach and teach and read and engage with the Old Testament, I mean, I think it’s a blast. I mean, I jokingly tell my students, I mean, the Old Testament is so much more fun than the New Testament. The New Testament just says what it means. You don’t even have to do hermeneutics or anything. It’s just right there, you know. If you want to actually to have to do some fun interpretive stuff, you got to get into the Old Testament. >>Doug Sweeney: Way to sell it Alex. I love it. Alright, your mention of the fact that your wife Meghan is a great partner in ministry with you, that’s a great segway to the last question I have for you guys. And it’s just a very practical, spiritual question. We have a lot of people who listen to the Beeson podcast who love Beeson, who love Beeson’s people, who love Beeson’s professors and who pray for us. And so, I would like to ask our listeners, even now, to pray for our two newest professors and their families and their ministries among us. Chip, I happen to know your wife, Amy, I know that she’s also a seminary graduate and probably a fantastic partner with you in ministry. Your prayer requests don’t need to be about your family, but I imagine that you would appreciate it if our listeners prayed for you and your family. How else can we be taking your needs before the Lord in prayer? >>Hardy: Yeah. Yeah, I feel like I should go through resume here too, but no, we do, we feel similarly as Meghan and Alex do about ministry as a joint thing. I know you and Wilma do as well Doug. And that’s another major attraction point to our coming to Beeson Divinity School, seeing that in the lives of the faculty here and even the dean. So, thanks for letting us into your lives and that allows us to be more transparent, I think, in some ways with our own lives, our own struggles, and our own hopes. And so, but yeah, just on a real practical level, I mentioned, I think I mentioned my son who is in school. Just started school this past week. His first day and my first day were the same this past week so that was nice. So, Papa and Samael both got to go to school the same day together. >>Kirk: Only happens once. >>Hardy: It only happens once. Exactly. So, that was joy. So, new school for him. And then the other side of our life is that my wife is pregnant and expecting. We’re expecting our second son to be born in October. So, certainly, we are hoping and praying for everything to go well with that. And then, you know, the adjustments that come with new life, as both of you know, in your home. And so, I think those are, you know, on the personal prayer side of things. Those are obviously the most immediate and most pressing needs for us. And then, just for us to get started, settled into spiritual life in a church here. Kind of figure out where exactly where that’s going to be for sure and then enter into that life of the church and start participating in the worship of our Lord together. I think that’s the other side of our lives that we’re really hopeful for. >>Doug Sweeney: Great. How about you Alex? How can our listeners be praying for you? >>Kirk: Oh man, yeah. So, as I mentioned earlier, it’s been not quite a month since we landed in Birmingham. July was just totally transitional in between England and Florida, which is where we’re from, and here. And then, you know, August first, we drove to Birmingham. And yeah, so Meghan and I have three small girls. Rue is six. Willa is four. And Janie is three. And so, I mean, the girls have no memory of anything apart from England and we’re coming to a whole new place, a new house, a new church, a new everything, new rhythm of life. You know, I’m working outside of the home for the first time in five years, which is just totally new. So, it’s all, you know. And in all of that, you know, new house, new job, Meghan and I just feel like we’ve been going kind of nonstop on a list of pressing projects for two months and also trying to start teaching and get plugged into a community is a lot of social stuff going on. So, all of this is just to say, the prayer would be headspace and rhythms of life. I think, yeah, I feel like I’ve started into teaching, which I’m really enjoying and loving, but I feel like I haven’t had much time to think a deep thought in a while. And I know Meghan feels the same way and we’ve also just, you know. Every day, you kind of have to reinvent the wheel and you know. Where does Rue’s backpack go? Who’s going to make lunch? How are we going to get, you know. And just those little things when you don’t have them kind of in place and nailed down just can make you feel really discombobulated. So, yeah, just rhythms and headspace. Yeah. Deeply appreciative of anybody’s prayers. It means so much. >>Doug Sweeney: Okay listeners, Beeson Divinity School has two marvelous new Old Testament professors in Alex Kirk and Chip Hardy. They are going to be wonderful additions to our school in our region. Please keep them in your prayers in the days ahead. We are praying for you. We love you. And we say goodbye for now. >>Rob Willis: You’ve been listening to the Beeson podcast; coming to you from the campus of Samford University. Our theme music is by Advent Birmingham. Our announcer is Mike Pasquarello. Our engineer is Rob Willis. And our show host is Doug Sweeney. For more episodes and to subscribe, visit www.BeesonDivinity.com/podcast. You can also find the Beeson Podcast on iTunes and Spotify.