Future of Christian Ed (Part 1) - Rupert A. Hayles, Jr.

We are a Christian university, so at the foundation of it is Christ. And so the differentiator, that every single student will leave, yes, they'll be on the smart left brain, they know all that stuff, but the right brain part of it, the character part of it, character part has to do with ethics, has to do with integrity, has to do with us, that's a differentiator. And in a world like this, these differentiators matter. Welcome to Faithly Stories, the podcast that brings you inspiring tales from conversations with church leaders as they navigate the peaks and valleys of their faith journeys through their ministry work and everyday life. Join us as we delve into their challenges, moments of encouragement and answered prayers. The Faithly Stories podcast is brought to you by Faithly, an online community committed to empowering church leaders, pastors, staff, and volunteers. Learn more at Faithly.co. Get ready to be uplifted and inspired as we unveil the heart of faith through stories from the front lines of ministry on. The Faithly Stories podcast. Welcome to Faithly Stories podcast. My name is Pastor Adam Derso and I am guest hosting this episode along with the founder of Faithly and CEO, Alicia Lee. So excited to be with all of you and our guest today is Dr. Rupert Hales. So glad to be here. Thank you. I'm very glad you are here. Dr. Rupert Hales is the president of Roberts, Wesleyan University, but there is a long track story before that. I've known you for over 20 years. You've been a coach of mine, a mentor that has spoken into my life in many of occasion. You have coached teams that I've been around. Talk to us a little bit about the journey before Roberts, before some of the other higher education experience that you had, even before going to work at the largest church in New Jersey. Oh, wow. That's a long story. We've got time to have. I was born in Jamaica and after 14 years, 13 years, gave my life to Christ. I don't know, 14th year came to the US. When I came to the US, I was this wonderful high school, Trenton Central High School. I spent some time there and graduated. I was salutarian, second and five out of six or two graduating. Okay. I applied to various different places, Princeton, all these kinds of things, but the thing that got me to see at my university was, it's really complicated. My brother went to see. No, sorry. I just said no. It's complicated. Thanks. I spent four years there. While there, I focused on accounting and my dad. That's what my mom loved and my dad was computer science. And I decided to double major in accounting and information systems. I wanted to, I guess, one of those things, please, your mom and dad. Yep. And so I did that. While I was at seeing all the, I had a love for flying. I just loved that concept and constructed. So in the middle of sophomore year, just before we go to summer and then come back for junior year, we had this crazy idea. Myself, my brother and his roommate. We said, you know, we have a summer off. Why don't we just join the Air Force? I'll have mother dad. That kind of crazy idea. Anybody just join here. That's not like, let's go to Cancels this week. Nope. I just said, let's go join. Let's just join Air Force. Okay. And we really woke up and went to boot camp. I don't wake you. I just started down to your face and tell you all kinds of things about you. Did you never knew about yourself? And so, you know, we did, did time down there boot camp. Then went to technical school and all that. I was interested in flying. So as I said before, so I did load planning. These major aircrafts. I would load out to, they're not to take care of them and all that stuff. I came back. And so when you come in the military, you're usually a, if you don't have a college degree or an enlisted, in order to become a fly airplane, you have to become an officer, which means you have to finish college. And you have to either be in ROTC or one of those things. So we came back and joined ROTC. Okay. And this is what my schedule looked like when I was at signal. I'll go to class in the morning. I'll drive two hours to McGuire Air Force Base. I'll take flying lessons. I'll come back in the afternoon. I'll go to class. Then I'll add off to NGIT, which is another university where the ROTC was. Okay. And then I'll come back by eight, nine o'clock at night. So it was kind of a typical day. Yeah. And we go through. I got my license in 1985. And you know, affiliation with the Air Force continued where I ended up at various different Air Force bases in Texas and California. And then, you know, at while in the military, I decided, okay, I was going to come back. And the moment I came back to Prodentral a year later, I was at University of Pennsylvania. Okay. I really wanted to focus on, you know, business school and all this kind of stuff. And so I went to Wharton Business School. And I spent two years there. When you're at Wharton Business School, they tell you that you're going to be a king of the world. And that's what you should do. You should go out there and be a king of the world. I'm a little guy from Jamaica. And the thing about the business school is you meet people there that are from all walks of life. And they're, you know, Supreme Court justices went there. One of our wonderful, depending on who you're talking to, Donald J. Trump went there. His other members went there, financiers went there. So there's all these kinds of people say, you meet some folks who are dirt poor or just came from Africa with nothing. And then you have people who are going to be billionaires. And so you just meet all these kinds of people. So I was in the mix of that. So when you come out, you just say, OK, I'm going to really go do some significant things. Sure. I went back to Prudential. I spent some time there doing financial analysis and then technology strategy and all that. And did that for some time? And I got a little bit tired of that. I really learned a lot of our strategy working for the CIO of all of Prudential. So how do you go from, I'm going to be king of the world to working in ministry. It's getting there. It's just about to get there. You see, people's definition of king of the world is different when you're in the kingdom. Right, different. And so, you know, I'm going along saying, OK, this is great. You know, I'm going from Prudential to Merc pharmaceuticals. I went and up at Citech Industries, which is a chemical company. And I'm doing all these great things. And at that time, I was often challenged against my life. Remember, I was a believer for all this time. And, you know, all of a sudden, I'm having some challenges in my life. And, you know, there's a one young lady that I know. And Mother says, there is this church opening up in Monterey. OK. Why don't you just go there? And it's a nice place you go in. You know, God will bless you. And I was, you know, as a, and when you're on a long journey with Christ, it's, it's happened flow. Right? You go up sometimes, sometimes. I'm like, down sometimes, not so good. At that time, I wasn't, I wasn't doing so well. So calling into the church was a wonderful experience for me. But when I got there, one of the things I wanted to do was just kind of sneak in and sneak out. I don't want anybody to know me. You don't see me. I'm just in there. I'm just getting my stuff and get out. Well, somebody got wind that I was there. And the pastor used to do this wonderful conference every year. And he said, they know I need an administrator. I need somebody to help make this conference. And so I said, oh, we have somebody in the church. I don't know how they found out about me. There's Rupert Hales. He said to have some administrative skills. Let's get them. And so he asked me, Rupert, can you get up this wonderful conference? It turns out that that conference led me to one of the best things ever in my life. Okay. Because my wife, Mary Ann Hales, was part of the team on that conference. Okay. She came alongside and I made sure she was as right close to me all the time. For ministry purposes. Of course. Of course. And let me just let you in on those secret doctors. I don't know if you know this, Alicia, but out of you and Mary Ann, my wife's favorite by far is Mary Ann. Okay. That's fine. I understand that completely. And I can understand why we both understand the better. Okay. There's a statement made. It says, if you want to hear the voice of the Lord, listen to you. There you go. And so I said, you're just going to work for twenty five years. Exactly. And this is really crazy. That might be the best thing I heard all day. We'll just get them the broadcast. I was going along. And you know, then after did the conference or the pastor says, you know, I wouldn't mind if you joined a staff and be my chief operating officer being number two in the church. And you know, remember, I set the stretch already. You know, Air Force, notary corporate America, that's business school in the war. And somebody's asking me to come lead some church with five hundred people. And I'm like, bro, I got places to go things to do, man. I, I can't do this because I'm thinking in myself every single thing I'll learn up to there. If I go in a church, it's going to be all right. I'll never use it again. It's strategy stuff, the financial stuff. Oh, that kind of said, never use it. Well, I was very hesitant. I didn't want to, I didn't want to get involved. I wanted to kind of, you know, stay as far away as possible. And I don't tell people about this dream. This is kind of the first time this dream is probably go go crazy. But I had this dream because I was struggling with it. It's very struggling with you know, do I go in a ministry? I did not go in a ministry. And God deals with me in dream. And I had this wonderful dream. And in this dream, I was at, I was at, I was at the top of a building like this. And I'm looking over. And when I looked over there, people on ladders who were coming up and say, Rupert, just let go. See what happens. Just let go. And I'm petrified at the top of these buildings. And they go down. And people come back out. And I'm like, no, I'm not doing that. I'm not letting go anything. And then all of a sudden, the dream change, the scene change. I'm driving in this wonderful car up a hill. And as I'm going uphill, the hood came up. Couldn't see again. It's just one of those things of, you know, dream interpretation. You say, okay, you cannot. There's, you're in determination. You can't determine things. The hood came up, can't see. Somebody in the back of the car say, hey, Rupert, we can't see. We can't see. And then the dream ended. And I was like petrified it. What did that mean? What the fuck? You know what I'm like? Okay. In decision, let go. If you're smart enough, you're kind of thing. Okay. I think it probably has to do with the decision you have to make. But I say, I'm not doing that. Well, I had a wonderful life group leader. I remember it in Julie Humph. Julie Humphries. She came over. Hey, Rupert, how you doing? Life group leaders, you know, you know, small groups and various things. How you doing, Rupert? I said, great. You just say, you know, Rupert, you know, I had this dream last night. And in this dream, I was in the car with you and we were driving up a hill. I forgot the hill. The hood came up. And I kept on saying to Rupert, we can't see. Rupert, we can't see. Imagine now I'm sitting there. I just had a dream last night. And this lady's telling me that she was the one in the dream, in the back of a car. And so I thought I'm just, if you can imagine, completely white. You're just looking at her. And didn't say a word. And she said, the hood, it fell off. And then we came to the top of the hill. And we came to the top of the hill. We went into the back of the trunk and there was food in there. And we took the food out and there was a church close by. And we went into the church and people were there in the church and they said, we've been waiting for you. And it was like, okay. So I went to David Ireland another time. I was, okay, man, tell me what you want to do. Because there's no need for dream interpretation or anything like that. That's pretty crystal clear right there. So that's kind of how I ended up in ministry. I spent 16 years at that Christ church. My wife and I were there in all kinds of ministry doing things. My beautiful wife, Mary Ann Hills. I mentioned her a lot. Because, you know, being in ministry, you know, well enough if you're a spouse is right next to you. It makes the journey so much makes all the difference. And so after that 16 years there. I got all that went off and went to the life Christian church with Pastor Terry Smith. Before I left a Christ church, remember I started there when it was 500 members. And I say this not because of me at all. But when we left, the membership was 8,800. I think it's up to 10,000. The largest church probably in Jersey. Yeah. So it keeps on. Keeps on growing. Sure. And so, you know, went off to the life Christian church three years as executive pastor. And then, you know, some, there's another story in there that maybe I'm not sure if we will get to it or not. That led that was kind of tied to my wife significantly. And if you don't mind, I can share that story. I'm a left brain guy. I run through walls. I get things done. You know, I'm like Joe Friday. Just the facts, man. Just the facts. I don't care about anything called emotions and all that kind of good care less. Well, my beautiful wife is the one that's the right brain. She comes into her room and she loves and everybody. Everything is great. For me, I just went around the room and just go sit somewhere. But what happened there before I get to my. My university or higher ed story is that I was at Christchurch. And again, being one guy runs through walls. Daniel Goldman, who's one of the key founders within emotional intelligence, give different kinds of leadership style. My leadership style is what we call a pay setting leader. Pay setting leader. Somebody has just run through walls and getting things done. There's command and control leaders that says, okay, be quiet. Let's go. There's coaching leader that comes alongside. But I'm a 100% pay setter. I run through walls. There's a danger with pay setting leaders. You run through wall, you get to the top of the hill, but there's dead bodies behind you. Yeah. And in, but you might think about it. I mean, a Christian religious space as a pay setting leader trying to get things done. And knowing how the sausage is made back there. And so I'm running and I'm doing things and not realizing on the left side, but not really conscious of the right side. And so an incident happened with an assistant. She was responsible for something. She didn't get it done. And I, you know, they call it in emotional intelligence, emotional hijacking. You've been in a place where you do something. I just like out of body experience. You come back and say, that wasn't me. That couldn't be me. But it wasn't me. Because I really kind of yelled at her. Why didn't you get this done? How could this not get done? And I remember at the time, David Allen said, you know, when anybody was with Jesus, they never felt less than themselves. And so, you know, it requires some soul searching, but what really made the soul searching pretty significant was that I got a 360. Leadership 360 evaluation done. And so just imagine, remember I told you, you know, all the background, you can't have the whole biggest, you know, best things with the sliced bread. You think, okay, I can do a 360. Let me just tell them who I am. I'm a fear. I'm great. Well, there's 13 other people that give you input as to who you are. Your managers, your supervisors, your peers, your direct reports, even your family and friends, kind of give input as to who you are. And so when you get this results back, it's an out-of-body experience. Because you think, man, I'm up here. I am great. I am good. And then you get the results back. He says, you're not so good. You have some deficits here. You know, it says, Rupert needs to get out of his office and go make friends. Rupert doesn't know how to connect with people. I know, surely. Rupert is running too fast. I need to solve all these things. And some of these statements were like written verbals statement. And if you're not careful, you're trying to, you're saying, well, this sound like Adam. Adam wrote this. You're missing the point. If you're trying to figure out who wrote it in the 360. But when you get a results like that back, there's two things you have to do when you get the results back. You have to say, one is this true. Then the next thing you have to say is, what do you do about it if it's true? So when I got it back, I would say, you know, John did this. John wrote this. John doesn't know anything about the AI. Adam did this. Adam is from New York. What does New York know about it? And then I'll just go through every name. But if one person tells you something, you can probably ignore it. Two, you cannot pay something. But when three, four, five, six, don't do 13. Sure. And then what you do, you'll go to God and say, God, is this really true? Sure. And nine times I'll tell you what God is going to say. I've been trying to tell you this for a long, long time. Remember I said, listen to God. Sure. You do listen to your wife. She was like, answer the prayer. Praise God. Right? And so that was the journey there. Because now I really got into a situation where I had to dig deep. Some of it was based on trauma. Some of it was based on things that I haven't dealt with. That led me to that. So I was really smart over here. But emotionally deficient in connecting with people. And I think for the audience that, you know, it's on faithfully, the people that participate in it, these are ministry leaders. So pay setting leaders. We call them lead pastors, senior pastors, right? Sometimes there's a strewn of dead bodies laid out behind them. And it doesn't matter as long as the numbers in front of them are bigger than the numbers behind you. And there's all that. But self leadership is the most important form of leadership. Yeah. How do we lead ourselves? Well, the thing that, and, you know, the folks back at Roberts, Weston University, hear me talk about it. The students even do memes with me on this. Because I, John 21, is a scripted that means so much to me. Because in it was Jesus challenging Peter. And he said, Peter, do you love me? And Peter said, yes, I love you. And he said, feed my lamb. And he said, Peter, do you love me? And he says, yes, Jesus. He said, take care of my sheep. He said, Peter, do you love me? And Peter, I'm paraphrased. Peter, go outside. God, you know everything. Right. And you've got to read it. And God said, take care of my sheep. Feed my lamb. Feed my sheep. Take care of my sheep. You see, the context around that was, God will be sending sheep into your midst. It's your job to take care of them. It's your job to feed them. It's your job not to hurt them. And so from my perspective, if God is showing me something, where it is a deficiency there, and that deficiency is going to hurt one of his, beware, show about the thing around, put the stone around the neck, if you hurt one of these. And so it means a lot, especially for me, with the people that I'm serving that you take care of them. But here's the key thing, though. You might think that what happens to you is about you, but it really has nothing to do with you. It has to do with the people that God is going to send to you, because Christianity is one beggar helping another beggar find food. And so for us, it's, you know, I could be sitting as a, you know, why did such and such say this? If I didn't listen, and if I didn't hear what God had to say, and if I didn't engage with that to make sure there's change in my life, sure, I would not be sitting where I am today. I would not be able to write a book. I would not be able to say to myself, because after I went through all that craziness, and I got better here, they did a post-eval. So after 18 months, they did a post-eval. And the post-eval came back, oh, Rupert is more sensitive. Rupert cares more about people. On the friend's side, remember, it said Rupert didn't know how to make friends? I would get out of my office and just go into people's office and do this. They're like, why are you here? I just wanted to be friends. It was pathetic. But I really, really wanted to learn. Because guess what? It's not data said it. God said it. And so for me, I really wanted to engage, get better at it. And as I got better at it, a conundrum occurred with me. And the conundrum is this. If I was a Christ follower for up to 40 years, and I was doing that, if you think about Christ's followership, and you think about believers, there are things attributes that they should have. They call them virtues. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control, Galatians 5, 22, 23. These are the things that you should have. So when I'm, you know, beating up someone or taking advantage of me, nothing, love is a deficit. And so here's my little struggle though, because on the emotional intelligence side, attributes like self-esteem, and self-regard, and empathy, and stress tolerance, and impulse control. When I started to look at the attributes, it's for the spirit, the attributes, for EI, I'm saying I got better in EI, and that affected for the spirit. I became a better follower. Because at the end, the feedback that came with Roberto is better. And I use, I joke with people, I use this on my bumper sticker. He says, Rupert is a kinder, softer, gentler person. Wow. I mean, someone literally made bumper sticker. That says all that. Somebody, somebody literally wrote that. And so, you know, your question is well taken at him. For me, it's understanding not just that you need to do this. Because then, you know, my PhD research, your research areas on trying to find out if there's correlation between the fruit of the spirit, attributes, virtue, and emotional intelligence. It so happens that if you break up the fruit of the spirit into three parts, there's a relationship with God, relationship with self, relationship with others, a reason for other reasons. A lot of joy and peace is a relationship with God. And kindness, goodness, patience, kindness, goodness, goodness, no other, and then goodness, faithfulness, and self-control with me. So him, you, me. The research came back that every single component of EI is 100% correlated with it components of fruit of the spirit. What that says is empathy goes up on the EI side. Love is going to go up on the fruit of the spirit side. There's impulse control on the fruit of the spirit side. If that gets affected, then what we call self-control. And so there's these correlations like, wow, these correlations exist. My dissertation here pushed me a little further. It says, correlation is not prediction. Can it predict? And see, you run regression in the asusasa. It came out three things, predict EI. Three things. It turns out to be love, joy, and peace. Predict every component of EI. Wow. What that is saying is, if you think about it, your relationship with God predicts EI. And we know the research that EI, a strong leader with EI, then is a better leader. So your relationship with God is going to make you a better leader. He told us this 22,000 years ago, we're just getting caught up to it now. It's stuff like that throughout that journey that led me now. My wife and I said, hey, we're going to jump into this thing. We're going to, you know, she loves the emotional part of things. She deal with inner healing. She deal with trauma. And then here's an ear of my technical right brain side sauce, eating together. We said, we're going to go into the center for emotional and spiritual development. And we're just going to go crazy. And then some folks from Pillow College call up and they said, you know, you know, I know you want to teach, go and teaching a signal for some time. Why don't you come over here and help us? We need some help. And so I said, you know, really my wife and I are going to jump into this center. They said, well, what will do? You can, you can do all the things you want to do. But we also want you here. Sure. So it was kind of one of those. But even when they were saying that, I know they know that once you get into that, I read for those of an I read, it's an all consuming thing. You know, this is the thing that's amazing. I'm sitting here with the two of you who both were in finance. Yeah. And then found your way into ministry. And in church work in faithfully and all that you're doing in Navigate this space. In a Christ church, the life Christian church, Pillow College, now president of Roberts, what was the biggest hurdle going from secular finance into the ministry world? And then I want to jump to you and how you're using all of that as you're leading this university effort. Well, I've just been sitting here taking in your words, taking in your story. It really resonates with me when you talk about mine to run through walls and setting the pace and like, yep, I know something about that. I used to work on the trading floor at a Wall Street bank. And so for me, coming out of that and going into the ministry world, going into the church world, things don't can't necessarily move at that pace. I had to learn a new pace. I had to learn that in the ministry world, things actually move at the pace of relationships. And once I sort of relaxed into that, I think I was able to tap into joy in what I was doing and peace love all of that. But yeah, your story really resonates. And for me, that was the biggest challenge. So now you're leading president of Roberts West University, Pillow, now Roberts West, and you're leading this charge. How are you leading it through the lens of self leadership? How do I lead this university? And then of course, we'll talk about now why we're sitting here in Manhattan, in New York City at the hub right here in the middle of Midtown Manhattan. You go into this lane, you're the president of Roberts West University, 150 plus year old university in Rochester. How does the lens of self leadership and all that you're applying help you lead that day to day and 1600 plus students that are part of it? Well, before I came to Roberts, my wonderful, a wonderful person taught me in the show and then say, Robert, you think about Rochester and what goes on up there? I don't. I'm sorry. I feel like, you know, watching outside the five girls, I have no idea what's happening. It was my wife, Mary Ann said. And so I said, you know, I said, okay, let's take a look. And Roberts West University started in 1866 by BT and Helen Roberts and the court were there were Methodist church members before, before they formed the free Methodist church. And it was founded on a few things, it was founded on freedom, freedom of the individual. So there were abolitionists, freedom to worship and you could worship anywhere, freedom of women in ministry at that time 1866 and leadership. And the last one was freedom from classism. Meaning, you know, in those days the more money you pay, the closer you got to the front. Right. So he did not like that. The fact that he didn't like that got him kicked out of the free Methodist church. And so he decided to find it, he got sent out of the Methodist church and he ended up founding the free Methodist church. Part of one of the requirements of being president of Roberts, because I'm kind of hostile to non-denominational, to assemblies of God as Mary and I looked at some of the requirements that you have to be part of the free Methodist church. And so we started looking for Methodist. And so, okay, so what's this all about? And we are freedom of this, freedom of death. I'm like, that's, these are scriptural. Yeah, they fit the Bible pretty well. And so there was a name of the court values that you might have. And so that just made it so much easier for me to say, okay, yeah, where this looks like a place that we should go to. But one of the things that captured my attention when I was looking at all the requirements and what Roberts was about was this thing called education for character, where the number one institution for character education in New York. What does that mean? You can come to Roberts and you'll get a degree in nursing, get a degree in biology, you get a degree in accounting. You can go up the street to Rochester Institute of Technology and get the same thing. You can go to the University of Rochester and get the same thing. But we have a distinctive. There's a difference. We are a Christian university. So at the foundation of it is Christ. And so the differentiator that every single student will leave, yes, they'll be on the smart left brain, they know all that stuff. But the right brain part of it, the character part of it, character part has to do with ethics, has to do with integrity, has to do with us. That's a differentiator. And in a world like this, these differentiators matter. Now, how are you going to get to ethics? Are you going to get to integrity? Are you going to get to all those things? It's not the left part of the brain. It's the right part of the brain. It's the emotional part. It's the relationship part. It's the getting to understand people. It's the getting to know people. It's the getting to understand, okay, when you're going to do this, is it right or is it wrong? Those things kind of resonated with me. And it's not by accident that my research area is in emotional intelligence, because if you're going to train young folks, one of the things, if you think about when you were a young child and you got your report card home, you know, Adam, what did you get in that? It was probably bad. I didn't want you to answer that question. I didn't want you to answer that question. That's the only question for you. That's the only question for you. What did you get in English? What did you get in social? What did you get in science? It was always left side. Never did you come home and they said, you know, what did your report card said about how did you get along with Billy? What did they say? How did you get along with Tiffany? How did it, it didn't say anything like that. But as you grow along, and you become a better leader, and it's not about the left side as much as it is the right side. Right. It's more about the character. Character matters. Yeah, character matters. I mean, the bottom line is, if we look at society today, we see very successful people, billionaires people that are successful if they can check all the boxes, but there's a dearth, a lack of character. I just got to hear your state of the university address. I got to watch it. You asked all of the faculty, asked all of the students to be in chapel, while you gave this address, and you stressed the importance of character. Why chapel matters? And we're in a day and age where, why does the cultivation of their relationship with God, their character, being in the presence of God, for a university president that should be wearing about funding and enrollment and expansion? And why does that stuff matter so? Because I heard a lot. I mean, we'll talk about expansion. We'll talk about New York City. But what I heard was presence of God matters, being at chapel matters now, developing godly character matters. Why is that so important? Why is that a passion point for you, Dr. Hill? It's a passion point for me because, you know, again, thinking of the left brain, right brain. If you think about left brain, you're thinking you just mentioned, okay, you know, how are we doing financially? How are we doing enrollment-wise? How are we doing with creating the students and making sure that we have proper measurement? All of those things are technical things. And for me, that's under what I call the financial end of things. And one of the things when I went to Roberts, I indicated there was a difference between financial and culture. Culture matters. And so, but here's the other interesting part. Culture impacts your finances. Right. You might think, okay, I'm just going to run over the end of this. This matters. So went for students or for who we are, making sure our identity is clear matters. Because if our identity is not clear, then people are going to be confused as to who we are. If our identity is not clear, then people are going to say, well, let me just go to University of Rochester. Why do I need to come here? If they're not clear, okay, you know, RIT off of this, what makes the difference here is that we are making sure that when the student engage with who they are. Again, remember my story was, you know, this thing came up to me and then what do you do with it? Hey, God, is this true? God is in the changing business. He's in the transformational business. And so for us, we want our students when they leave to be transformed, because we know that Matthew 28 go into the world and make disciples. How are you going to make disciples? The definition of leadership is influence. You're going to have to influence. How are you going to influence them? More than likely that you'll get their attention with the left side, but it's your relationship side that's going to get them. When you engage with someone, if you're going to bring them to Christ, you do the work, the Holy Spirit, that's the rest. And so for me, it really matters. The cultural part is a significant, if not more important, than the financial part. So when we're training our students, we're saying, okay, yeah, you get your degree. You make sure that you, you know, I said, when you go on an airplane, you go to the pilot, and you say, okay, the pilot loves everybody, so it doesn't matter whether you can fly the plane. No. No. You have to fly the plane first. So the technical part matters. Right. But what's going to make it that you can get along together and work together and understand what the difference in right and wrong and understand how you, that's the other side. And so that really resonates. So it's both. If you're going to go into all the world, then what better place to go into all the world than the melting pot of the world of the world? New York City. I mean, we are sitting here, some call time square, literally the epicenter of the globe. I mean, we are here. What happens in New York is a megaphone to the rest of the world. And we've got a lack of Christian higher education. We have a lack of character, biblical character, higher education here in New York City, where the largest public school system in our country, 1.2 million students. We've got universities that have closed down here in the city. There's a lack of it. And I have been saying for the last several months, Dr. Rupert Hales is championing Christian higher education here in New York City. And you want to plan a flag for Roberts, Wesley University. Why are you passionate about that, Dr. Hales? I'm passionate because for many years that you know Adam, you and I were in New York City. And I did a leadership development in New York City. We trained pastors and they did in New York City. And you just said, well, whatever happens in New York goes to the rest of the world. Absolutely. So it's the most influential city in the world. Yes. The next thing I have to ask myself the question is, and there was a study done, a current study, a long, long time ago, 2006, where they talk about the five stubborn facts in New York. One of those stubborn facts has to do with understanding and Christianity within the city. And it was low. And so just think about it. Two of the most important higher institution that a Christian institution is gone. In my mind, there's a void. And there's a void in New York City, the most important city in the world, where if you do stuff, it's going to change the world. And we're up in Rochester, New York. So we're saying, God is saying to us, okay, I need you and I need a presence, my presence down here. And all we want to do is be vessels of what Christ wants, which is to come to New York City. As you say, plant a flag, but more plant a flag is the ability to influence the next generation of people because there are young people here probably or looking for, okay, how do I get training? How do I understand more about Christianity? How do, what does that mean? There are young people who are in dire need of that. And so for me, it's just like, okay, guys, God is calling us down there to make sure that we can share what is given us up there down here. And again, I want to make sure I'm clear on this. It's not that we're the only one that can do this. We have to be clear about that, because we have this thing called intellectual, and spiritual humility where, you know, we can't assume that we're better than everybody, but one thing if God calls you to do something, I highly suggest to our audience if he calls you to do something, do it. Because it's not going to be about you, it's going to be about the people that he's going to be sending. Because one thing I really realize on know about God's kingdom is that it's kingdom grows. Anything God gives you should grow. If we think about the power of the talent, you know, gave one five, gave one one, gave one ten, went away, I'm shortening the story here, to came back ten. Okay, I gave you, you know, go take your ten cities, came back five. You did great. Go take your five cities. Came back one. Yeah, I know you're a hard man. I buried it. And what he says, you should have taken that one and put it in the bank. That was 2000 years ago. There was a bank in Israel. That's another, that's a whole, another ballgame. But what the story was saying was, God expected to grow. And so is kingdom is expected to grow? We are Christ followers. We want God's kingdom to grow. Whatever way we can do, however we can do, this is just one of the instrument ways for us to come into New York City so that we can assist in helping should make sure that it's thinking. So September? Yes. Our plan. Yes. Your plan, Robert's Western plan, is to have online hybrid and cohort classes begin and have students right here in the five boroughs of New York City as soon as the fall of 2025. That's a goal. That's a goal. That's the intent. And I think with folks like that you have been very helpful in helping us connect with people in the city, I think we, does that kind of look at it? You'll love this, because I'm thinking more from the financial side. You have a product. And that product needs to get out the door. And that product needs to get in people's hands. And New York is a distribution channel so we're getting our product into other people's hands. And the way we're going to do it is make sure that the product or the service or whatever is in good shape. Again, accreditation, making sure that middle states and all these kinds of things you're doing, all the things right, then you bring that product. Give it to the folks and hopefully we're meeting their needs. Okay, I want nursing. I want biology. I want chemistry. I want, you know, accounting. We want to make sure all these things people have the ability to do. Then you made something so, so important. It made an important point, Adam. Prior to COVID, I remember sitting in a board meeting at a previous institution. And I remember when I said, we'll never go online. We're in person all the time. And then this thing happened in March 2020. COVID. And then everybody was all right. Right. But coming out of COVID, one of the things we realized is there are people who wanted to come back in person. But then there are people who didn't want to come back in person. But there are people who wanted to come back part of the time, but wanted to be online part of the time. And it's hybrid. So what I realized is that we have to give people the ability for all three. It's not one anymore. Everything is in person. It's not one where everything is online. Those capabilities and the technologies are there for us to do that. But we want to make sure in New York City we can be here. But at the same time, we have online or seminaries fully online. And then we can also bring some of our professors down here to make sure that we can do hybrid back and forth. It's all I am so excited again. Well, I was just going to say, Dr. Hales, I think that will resonate with ministry leaders and church leaders who came to that same conclusion about their churches and then need to offer multiple options to bring people into the church. So you're bringing Roberts into New York City and it's going to be a distribution for you for product. For the church leaders and ministry leaders and we have so many of them in New York who are tuned into our podcast, they're going to love your vision. How can they help? What do you need people to bring to the table? What do I need people to bring to the table is one, an interest in not just higher it, an interest in making sure that God's kingdom can grow. That's the final. I need you to do that because what Roberts is doing is creating a facilitation for God's kingdom to grow. So if you're interested in that, fantastic. Remember I said before, everything in Christ grow. So you as an individual, whether you are a church faster, whether you're a church leader, whether you're at the youth ministry, whether you're, you know, it could be somebody who, you know, does housekeeping. You should be in the need to want to grow. And what we're doing is providing an avenue for people to grow. I might be interested in, you know, I want to go to seminary. We have seminary available. I might probably be interested, you know, at some point in time, I want to get out there and be a medical doctor. We have the ability to do that. I'm not becoming a nurse. Again, it's not about just the courses you're in an environment where Christ is a center. And if you're in an environment of Christ is a center, you can go out there. If you think about it, as a community of learners, we'll believe in historic Christianity. Robert's Wesleyan Seek, thoughtful, spiritually mature, service oriented people who want to change society. That's our mission. Thoughtful, spiritually mature, service oriented. But very first part is Torah Christianity. So Christianity is at the foundation. So what I want is for people who are interested in growing. People are interested in learning. People are interested in Christ master plan about, okay, things are going to grow because we just don't fight a physical battle. We fight a spiritual one. Sure. And so we want to make sure that happens. So if I could get folks who are interested in that, but on a personal level, I want to be a better leader. I want to make sure I can take care of Christ's follower or people who are going to come into my midst. I want to make sure that I can grow and learn a little bit more and develop myself a little bit more. My story, as we were talking about it, is one about how did I grow? I grew because God put something in front of me. And I'm sure for every single person who might be listening to this podcast, they say, hey, what do I need to grow in? What has God been kind of pointing and tapping at me saying, you need to take this up? Again, and I say, it's their time. It's not about you. It's about how God wants to use you to affect an office. If I can get somebody to... I can get chills, if I can get somebody to be interested in something. Dr. Rupert Hills, thank you so much for sharing your story, being so vulnerable, sharing your journey all these years and what God is doing in and through this new vision of Robert's Western University coming to New York City. Alicia, thank you so much for this platform and for faithfully and what you're doing. And if you want to find out more information or stay locked into this journey, and what God is doing through Robert's Westland, you're going to want to make sure that you find your way onto faithfully, onto our platform and engage there as we keep you updated on all that God is doing in this city and around the area through Robert's Western University. God bless you. Thank you for tuning in to the Faithly Stories podcast. We pray this episode gave you the encouragement you needed to continue on your journey. The Faithly Stories podcast is brought to you by Faithly, an online community committed to empowering church leaders, pastors, staff, and volunteers. The Faithly Digital Platform offers innovative and practical tools and resources to enhance connection, foster collaboration, and promote growth within the church and ministry space. Remember to subscribe, rate, and review our podcast to help reach more listeners like you. Stay tuned for more uplifting tales from the Frontlines of Ministry on the Faithly Podcast. Stay bold, stay faithful, and never underestimate the power of your own story.