Beeson Podcast, Episode #711 Name Date >>Announcer: Welcome to the Beeson podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University. Now your host, Doug Sweeney. >>Doug Sweeney: Welcome to the Beeson Podcast. I am your host, Doug Sweeney and I’m joined today by Reverand Dr. Chris Morgan, an old friend of mine who’s back on campus here at Beeson Divinity School today because he blessed us with a wonderful sermon at our Service of Commencement and Consecration of the students that just graduated here on December 2024. Dr. Morgan serves as professor of theology and dean of The School of Christin Ministries at California Baptist University in Riverside, California. He also serves as a pastor at Immanuel Baptist Church in Highland, California. He’s a prolific author and a godly man. Thank you, Chris, for being with us today. >>Morgan: Good to be here. >>Doug Sweeney: So, I bet some of our usual listeners already know a little bit about you, but others maybe don’t know much at all about you. So, let’s just introduce you to them a little bit. Can you tell us just a little bit about how you were raised and how you came to know the Lord. >>Morgan: I grew up in a Christian home in Illinois, Mount Vernon, Illinois. I was in church before I was born, and I came to know the Lord at age seven. I already knew that God created me, that God loved me, and that everybody was a sinner, and that Jesus died for everyone, and that everyone needed to trust in Him. But somewhere down the line I realized that I’m a sinner, I needed to trust Christ, and that I’m responsible. And so, at seven I trusted the Lord and was baptized, and you know, was in the middle of growing up in church in a good church home. >>Doug Sweeney: Wonderful. Alright, and if people know you here in Birmingham, they know that you’re a theologian and a minister. So, how does a boy who was raised in that kind of a home and who professed faith at a relatively early age get from there to feeling like the Lord is pulling you into full time ministry? >>Morgan: I was just active in church, active in youth group, and you know, when the doors were open, we were there. Was interested in baseball and things like that too. Went to college and played baseball at Southeast Missouri State for a couple of years. And then got in the middle of the Baptist Student Union there and got an opportunity to serve in different ways, and one of the ways was teaching Bible studies, actually it was on 1 Timothy and 2 Timothy early on. And then along the way, I was asked if I would speak at a church when somebody couldn’t be there. I was sort of the sub and said I don’t know what I’m doing, but I’ll try. And next thing you know, I was preaching a lot of weekends there. And I went to Southeast Missouri thinking I was going to be like a math professor or maybe a law professor. And God, along the way, I don’t know, I was more interested in seeing people come to know the Lord and kind of understand theology and reading. Well, one of the books was by Dr. George, Theology of the Reformers, one of those early books in my life that was helpful to me. And then that sort of led me more and more to be devoted to a pastor of ministry and theology. >>Doug Sweeney: Did you go straight from college into seminary and grad school and so on? >>Morgan: Yeah, yeah. Immediately. Yeah. >>Doug Sweeney: Okay. >>Morgan: I was a youth minister while I was in college, pastored while I was in seminary. Went to Mid-America Baptist in Memphis and pastored in Missouri, a town called Catron, Missouri, a small town in Missouri. >>Doug Sweeney: Marvelous. And then when did you start at Cal Baptist? Was that the first kind of regular full-time academic position you had? >>Morgan: Yeah. >>Doug Sweeney: Okay. >>Morgan: Yeah, was just an adjunct at Union and at Mid-America at different points and taught what they used to call Seminary Extension, which is small classes of pastors who were in small churches who were bi-vocational and hadn’t had a chance to go to school So, I learned how to teach early. I was 24 probably, 23, teaching seventy-year-old pastors who knew more than me, but I happened to have more content in Old Testament or New Testament or theology or history or things like that. So, it was a good way to learn because they know life and I’m able to kind of help them with certain content. And then from my PhD, I had a job within a month, actually, when I was done, surprisingly enough, at California Baptist University and really felt at home there. >>Doug Sweeney: Alright. And you started out as a regular prof? >>Morgan: Mmhmm. >>Doug Sweeney: And then how did you become the dean of the School of Ministry? >>Morgan: I may get the dates not exactly right, but basically in the fall of 99, I had started, my role was to teach theology with some New Testament and church history and then along the way, I was preaching a lot. Since I loved the church and served the church, the different denominational leaders out there who I got to know and they wanted to have me out preaching, so I preached almost every weekend for that first year and then became an interim pastor at a church. It was an influential church in our movement at the time and still is. And then somewhere along the way, the school was growing and we needed to improve a few things so I became sort of, I don’t know if it was officially called associate dean, but within a couple of years, I think I was associate dean and we wrote a new program called The Bachelor of Applied Theology Program in response to the pastors and churches asking for more ministry leaders. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah. Marvelous. Alright, so here at Samford, we think of Cal Baptist as a sister school. But it’s a sister school that’s very far away. We hear wonderful things all the time and because I know you well, I get to learn sort of an insider’s perspective on what the Lord is doing at Cal Baptist, and it seems wonderful. Partly so that you can educate our listeners on what God’s been doing at Cal Baptist, partly so that you can inspire them about how God really is powerfully at work among the students in your program, will you give us just a couple of minutes on what’s going on these days, maybe particularly in the ministry school at Cal Baptist? >>Morgan: Yeah. Let me give the broad context. Our president’s been there, Dr. Ron Ellis, finished 30-year anniversary was last month. He’s a great leader. Gifted thinker and leader, strategist. When he started, we had 808 students. We now have just under 12,000, 11,970 something. [crosstalk 00:06:31]. That’s a lot. Yeah. Budget’s grown up, faculty’s gone up, all kinds of things in the area of Christian ministries. Then Wilson came and he helped Cal Baptist become more and more centered on biblical faithfulness. And so, we sometimes will say we’re conservatives, we’re just not mad about it. We believe the Bible and we want to relate to as many people as we can, which is really important in general, but also in California. >>Doug Sweeney: Yes. >>Morgan: And then I came and then we hired some, actually some Beeson grads, Dr. Tony Chute, Jeff Mooney, Todd Bates, Danny Blair and others sort of become some of our early faculty. Danny was in a different area but taught for us from time to time in deaf ministries. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah. One thing that always strikes me when I catch up with friends who are in your school at Cal Baptist is how variegated their ministries are. I mean, they’re classroom teachers by day. Most of them, maybe all, correct me, are super active in churches. Some are pastoring churches. Some of them are pretty productive in terms of their research and their academic writing and so on. How did it come to be like that? I mean, I think your department, when you talk about undergrad programs in Christian ministry, I don’t know of another one that has that many really special ministry things going on at the same time as the regular classroom work is going on. How did that culture come to be? >>Morgan: I don’t know exactly how it came to be, but we have been very picky, and you can be. It’s a, you know, 300 applicants for every job in a professor role at a place like the School of Christian Ministries at CVU. So, we want it all. We want somebody who had their PhD, obviously, who’s already committed to Baptist faith and message, who already understands these things but has also pastored and loves the church, doesn’t just check the box that they’ve pastored, but genuinely wants to serve the church. And then we want people who would want to write, whether they have time or not, at different seasons of their life, different ages of the kids, different abilities to do so and publishing opportunities. We want them to want to write. And so, along the way, we’ve had this interesting concoction of people who put the students first, the students are the point, teaching is the highest priority, but who also are active in church. All of us have pastored or been on staff in a ministry role at a church. And some of them are pastoring currently. Dr. Tony Chute and then Dr. Greg Cochran, I’m doing that. And then we have a whole bunch that have done it along the way at different seasons of their life. And a whole bunch of others who are on staff on a preaching team at a church or elders of the church or something like that because our theory is the church is the point, not us. And so, we want to do all we can to use our gifts for the church and then to use those gifts to help participate in God raising up leaders for the church. >>Doug Sweeney: Well, you mentioned Tony Chute. He has a special place in my heart. I’m friends with a bunch of you at Cal Baptist, but Tony, I was a teacher of his and really been loving on him for years and so excited to see him come along side you. I don’t know if he still is now, for a while he was your associate dean. >>Morgan: Yeah, he’s still associate dean. Yeah. >>Doug Sweeney: Okay. And he’s pastoring and he’s writing. It’s really exciting to see how God’s used him. But of course, he’s not sitting across from me, and you are. So, let me ask you about your church life. You are, what shall we call you? Are you called the lead pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church? >>Morgan: Yeah. >>Doug Sweeney: So, what’s- >>Morgan: They just call me pastor, but I’m lead pastor, senior pastor, whatever people want to call it. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah. What’s that congregation like and why did they call you and ask you to serve in that role? >>Morgan: I’ve been a pastor while I’ve taught at different seasons, First Baptist Church of Barstow especially, for nine years and helped out at a church in Helendale and then was interim pastor. It’s a long story, but there was a pastor who’s been strong there for years, Rob Zinn, who pastored there, I think it was 47 years. Transitioned to another guy, Dr. Ben Skaug, who was a student of mine. I teach, sometimes, the PhD program at Gateway too and he was a student of mine there and it went pretty well. Ben felt the need to go take a position at Southwestern Seminary, had an opportunity to be a dean there. And then I sort of became interim right then. It was during covid. So, and then I was an interim for a couple of years and it’s a good solid church, 1500 people or so and one of the strongest in southern California Baptist life. And along the way, people were, I thought they were mostly joking, any way that you’d be our nine year interim, or your seven year interim, or your 20 year interim. And after a while, we had a couple of candidates that were good but didn’t seem to be the right ones for the church. And some said, no we’re serious, we’re not just joking. We would like you to stay as much as you can. I said, well you know all the things that I couldn’t do right and if I’m part time, so to speak, at a church, I can’t do all the things. They said, we know that, but we want that anyway. And so, anyway, along the way I became the longer-term lead pastor. So, I preach, and I lead the leaders. I try to develop our pastoral staff and shepherd them as they shepherd others and coach some of our key lay leaders so they can help our communities and Bible study groups and things like that. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah. And somehow, maybe because they’re happy to allow this too, you are a pretty productive writer in the midst of all these things. Tell us just a little bit about the kinds of things that really make you tick as a writer, and then what are you doing now? What are you working on these days? >>Morgan: Different. I actually don’t like to write. I’ll say that’s interesting. I actually don’t like it. >>Doug Sweeney: Even as much as you’ve written. >>Morgan: No, I don’t like it. I don’t like to write at all. I like to build teams, and I like to think, and I like for my thinking to be improved. And I can fake myself out and can fake my students out on the precision of my thinking. But if I write, I know I don’t know the right verb. I know I don’t have enough case, and I need to build it. And so, it’s my way of deepening myself along the way. And so, I don’t know, I’ve had a system of blocking off Fridays, basically to read, write, edit, think, or stare at a wall, whatever it turns out to be. At least the goal is to do those things in time. I tend not to write well in short blocks. An hour here and there doesn’t help me at all. I have to write in blocks of time where sometimes it’s a whole week or even two weeks. Sometimes it’s 15 hours and a couple days in a row. But if I can kind of get on a roll, I can go. And if I’m chopped up into pieces, it goes nowhere for me. As far as my topics, I love things that relate biblical theology to systematic theology or overall biblical and systematic theology to the church. Those are my kind of windows. So, I’m more of a connector of other people’s expertise and synthesizer of the scholar on the front lines, like you let’s say, and Jonathan Edwards scholar. I can pull, maybe, Edwards into something about helping the church or how he can enhance us on a certain view of the glory of God or things like that. So, I find myself a student of other people’s first, whatever you want to call that, a certain level of scholarship, a certain type of scholarship and I become, I think, a synthesizer of that and sometimes a clarifier, hopefully a clarifier of that. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah. Well, that’s the job of systematic theology, right. >>Morgan: Yes, supposed to be. >>Doug Sweeney: You synthesize. >>Morgan: Otherwise, we’re dead because we can’t know all the things we need to know. >>Doug Sweeney: Right. >>Morgan: We’re dead before we start because it’s impossible to be good at all of it. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah. Well, as I mentioned at the top of the show, the reason we got you out to Birmingham, Alabama to preach our commencement service today is we love you and we love Cal Baptist, and we were looking for an opportunity to get you in front of our students and t heir families. It was a wonderful sermon on 1 Corinthians 13. And you kind of set me up for this last question with what you just said about sort of pulling in people like Jonathan Edwards from time to time because the Jonathan Edwards scholar in me appreciated it in the middle of a sermon on 1 Corinthians 13. >>Morgan: Right. >>Doug Sweeney: You gave our people a little bit of Jonathan Edwards, who’s very famous for having written about and preached about 1 Corinthians 13 himself. We want our listeners to the podcast to go and listen to your commencement sermon and we’ll put a link to it in the podcast when it drops. So, give us just maybe one or two minutes, give our listeners a little bit of a teaser and persuade them to come and listen to this sermon on 1 Corinthians 13. What were you talking about to the students? >>Morgan: Well, I’ll set it up with what I didn’t say that I could have that I was thinking about saying too, if it’s okay. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah. >>Morgan: Verses one through three, the Corinthians are clearly putting their identity in their gifts rather than focusing on true spirituality. And I wanted, without saying it, I wanted to be only positive to the graduates because it’s a positive day, but there’s a danger sitting in front of them and all of us that our identity, our esteem, our pride is found in success in various roles and having our name on the door, and having a certain job, having a certain title, making a certain income, having a certain influence of a certain size church. >>Doug Sweeney: That is so true. Of course, that’s true in all of our lives. I think, I don’t want to overstate this, but I think it’s especially true in the lives of young adults who have public ministries. They’re a little too worried about what other people think of them and so on. So, it was just a timely word, I thought. >>Morgan: Good. >>Doug Sweeney: But you went on to talk about 1 Corinthians 13. >>Morgan: Yeah. So, those are not going to be, those are, Paul doesn’t even call them good tries. He says, “I gain nothing, I am nothing if that’s the goal.” So, what is the goal? Love. He personifies love in all kinds of ways, but essentially, he says what your goal is to the Corinthian church, and what mine and others should be, is to be preoccupied with not only knowing God and loving God, but letting that love overflow in our lives out to others and so that love will be seen in all kinds of ways in patience and kindness and so forth. And in each of those ways, it’s usually emphasizing the other person more than us so we’re becoming preoccupied with the good of the others, and we’re sharing ourselves, we’re investing ourselves in the other person’s good. And so, it costs us to do so but in the end, it blesses us and blesses them as well. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah. What a great word for a seminary commencement. >>Morgan: Thank you. Good. >>Doug Sweeney: Listeners, please tune in. We’ll make it easy for you. So, Chris, the people who listen to the Beeson podcast and are part of a larger Beeson family really are seriously a praying community. And one of the things we do from time to time on the podcast is give them opportunities to pray for people and for God’s work in places that they’re not as familiar with as they are with their own backyards. So maybe just finally, what’s the Lord doing in your life these days? What’s He teaching you? How can our people be praying for Dr. Chris Morgan in the days ahead? >>Morgan: Well, thank you for asking. I think in terms of different parts of my life, I have a wonderful wife named Shelly, a daughter named Chelsea. Chealsea is in college, so pray for Chelsea. She’s doing well but is a graphic design major, a sign language, and intercultural studies minor. It’s fun to watch her trying. >>Doug Sweeney: Wow, busy girl. >>Morgan: Yeah, she’s great. Pray for Cal Baptist that we continue to flourish, that we’d make it about the glory of Christ and His church and that the students would stay the point. It’s a delight to serve them and so I’d say, pray that our vision would stay on the students, that they matter, and that we’re preoccupied with their needs. As far as the church, pray that we will continue to reach our area with the gospel, and reach all peoples in our area, and stay faithful to that task. And then I’d say, in general, pray for the School of Ministries to be blessed financially so that we are less and less dependent on Cal grants or Pell grants for the future pastors of the west. We want to be faithful to that task. And finances will come and go depending on government so we don’t have to be up and down based on that. The Lord’s been providing a lot lately to our students in terms of scholarships, but we want to see as much as we can so they’ll be having minimal debt as they serve the Lord. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah. Alright friends, you have been listening to Dr. Chris Morgan. He’s here with us today because he preached our commencement service earlier today. He servs normally as the dean of the School of Christian Ministries and a prof in the School of Christian Ministries at Cal Baptist University in Riverside, as senior pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church in Highland, California. Please pray for him, his daughter Chelsea, and the good work that God is doing particularly in Chris’ wing at Cal Baptist but at Cal Baptist generally. We love you, our listers. We’re praying for you. We’re grateful for your prayer and support. Chris, thanks for being with us. >>Morgan: Thank you, Doug. >>Doug Sweeney: We say goodbye for now. >>Announcer: 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 Mark Gignilliat. Our engineer is Rob Willis. Our producer is Neal Embry. And our show host is Doug Sweeney. For more episodes and to subscribe, visit BeesonDivinity.com/podcast. You can also find the Beeson Podcast on iTunes, YouTube, and Spotify.