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A Conversation with Richard Thompson about Wesley Center Online · The Holiness Today Podcast

• 0:01
  Welcome to the Holiness Today podcast. On this episode, I have a conversation
• 0:05
  with Richard Thompson, Professor Emeritus of New Testament at Northwest Nazarene
• 0:10
  University, about the Wesley Center online.
• 0:14
  Dr. Thompson works with this repository to engage scholars, disseminate material,
• 0:19
  and expand the online collection.
• 0:25
  Well, usually how we get started, if you don't mind, just asking a little bit
• 0:29
  about how God has put you in the role that you're in today.
• 0:32
  So you are a professor emeriti of Northwest Nazarene University.
• 0:36
  So that means there's been a long history of teaching before that,
• 0:38
  but how did God call you into the role that you're in now?
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  And tell us just briefly, and we'll ask some follow-up questions on it,
• 0:44
  what you're doing with Wesley Center Online.
• 0:47
  Sure. Yeah. Well, it's great to talk with you, Nate.
• 0:52
  It's been a long journey. It started at Olivet as a student.
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  I was sensing God calling me to teach, even though I was also called to be a pastor.
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  I still remember talking with one of my professors on the way to chapel.
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  And I remember Dr. Hendricks saying to me, he says, Dick, put the idea out of
• 1:12
  your head. You're not called to teach.
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  And, you know, which kind of depressed me after that, but I couldn't get that out of my head.
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  And so, you know, even through seminary and taking my first church,
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  I just sensed that God, you know, was still calling me to teach and,
• 1:31
  you know, and even into my second pastorate.
• 1:33
  And that, you know, doors just kept on opening up and, you know,
• 1:37
  so, you know, ended up, you know, getting my doctoral degree at Southern Methodist.
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  And, you know, before I was done, all of that was knocking at my door.
• 1:47
  And so, you know, so it was just how, you know, how God opened the doors and the like.
• 1:53
  So it's been a great journey, taught 30 years, 10 years at Olivet,
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  three years at Spring Arbor University, and then the last 17 years at NNU before retiring.
• 2:07
  And so, yeah, it could have taught longer. And in fact, I'm still teaching.
• 2:13
  People ask me when I'm actually going to retire, although I'm supposed to be
• 2:18
  retired. You know, but, you know, so I half-jokingly say that I retired from my full-time position.
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  I'm still doing my overload that I had with NNU every year because I really
• 2:30
  was teaching about a position and a half, really. And so...
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  So, you know, was chair of the undergraduate department as well as the last
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  several years also director of the Graduate School of Theology,
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  you know, and also director of the course of study online that we had there
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  as well, you know, and also, you know, director of the Wesley Center online.
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  So I was doing a lot of administration.
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  So I'm still doing the Wesley Center online and have been doing that for,
• 3:05
  I guess, about 10 years now since the founder of the program, George Lyons, retired.
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  And so that's been such a fun thing to be a part of because it's been such an
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  interesting history with that and how that came about.
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  And what that continues to do.
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  For sure. Sounds like that's like two jobs, maybe three jobs there,
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  not a job and a half that you were doing. So that sounds pretty busy.
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  Yeah. Well, it was funny when I retired.
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  At NNU, they have a celebration of service. And so there are a number of us retiring.
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  And so my colleague who was taking over as department chair gets up and he had
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  a script he was supposed to read.
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  And he turns around and he says to me, he says, first, I can't do this.
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  And he started to cry, got all of us crying.
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  And then he says, I also have to say one thing.
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  He says, the university was doing some cutbacks and so they weren't going to fill my position.
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  He says, what's wrong with this picture?
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  We're not filling your position, but it's taking five people to replace you.
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  Well that just shows how fruitful your career was then so that's that's so but
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  so it's yeah so but that means a lot of people including myself because i'm
• 4:31
  still feeling some of that still doing some of those roles.
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• 4:39
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• 4:43
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• 5:25
  Thank you for being a listener and sharing in the ministry of the Church of
• 5:29
  the Nazarene. Now back to the rest of your episode.
• 5:35
  So was your area of study a new testament at southern
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  methodist methodist and that's you're taught so what uh i
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  saw that you wrote the book on acts for the foundry but uh
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  right is historical or what was your
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  area of study with that so yeah so luke and acts in particular especially acts
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  so you know so i've done two foundry books on acts so the commentary on acts
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  and then the recent one in the reading and interpreting the bible series i just
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  did that on Axe in the last year as well that came out I guess last summer,
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  summer or fall I guess so that's it was another project as well so my original
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  plan was to write in Paul but,
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  You know, before I finished my program,
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  I was just, I just kept on hitting roadblocks with my dissertation.
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  And the whole time I had a paper I was presenting on Acts for a Society of Political
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  Literature meeting and asked my professor, do you think this might be a dissertation idea?
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  And he says, yeah, that's very, very possible.
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  So he said, let's see how it goes. Well, it went so well.
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  I've never gotten out of Acts since then.
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  But it was rather serendipitous because that really was, and I really mean this,
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  I'm a product of the Church of the Nazarene's Bible quizzing program.
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  My best year was the Book of Acts and made the regional team that year.
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  Even as a pastor, when I would preach on Acts, I knew Acts like the back of
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  my hand because of those Bible quizzing years.
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  And so it was kind of sent chills down my spine when I finished my paper.
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  I knew that I was switching to Acts beyond my dissertation.
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  And it was almost 20 years to the day that I had started studying Acts as a Bible quizzer.
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  And could just see how God's hand, unknown to me, was with me as a teenager,
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  through college, through seminary, as a pastor.
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  Now at that point as a PhD student, was taking all those pieces and putting them together.
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  And then to be able to give that back to the church with commentary,
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  with another book as well, that's something I feel very fortunate to be able to do.
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  That's wonderful to see God's guiding hand through all of that.
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  Exactly. So what was the research area of Acts?
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  What was the paper presentation that turned into a thesis? What was your angle of study on Acts?
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  Yeah, the paper was looking at the characterization of Paul,
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  you know, and how that, you know, in some particular ways and how that related
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  to the description of the church.
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  And that led to my dissertation then, which focuses on the characterization
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  of the church, the description of the church as a literary character in the book of Acts.
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  So looking at it more in terms of not just how does Luke describe the church
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  in Acts, but why is the church described this way and not some other way?
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  So why is it that the...
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  That the author focuses on these certain characteristics when there could have
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  been a gazillion other things that he focused on. So why these?
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  Because it's not just a kind of historical recording because he had to pick and choose.
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  So there's something more at stake. And so what was it?
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  Yeah. Well, what was it? What did you settle on there?
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  Yeah. Well, yeah, I, yeah, yeah. And it was, it was so interesting because when
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  it started falling into place, it, it kind of scared me.
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  It was like, well, this is too simple, you know, but no one had ever put it
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  down on paper before, you know?
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  And so it really seemed to be that, you know, that there are two different descriptions
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  of what it means to be the people of God.
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  Yeah. And the Jewish religious leaders are consistently described as not caring for one another.
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  Trying to squelch the gospel you know you know
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  and in several other sorts of things whereas the the
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  church is constantly described as they care for one another
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  they are worshiping god they're they're proclaiming the
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  gospel in particular the resurrection of jesus you know and and just consistently
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  it's always you know here's here's the believers here's the religious leaders
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  yeah you know and it's just always here's one then here's the antithetical you
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  know and it's you And the author never says,
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  so here's what you should do.
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  It's almost like, okay, it's like the old NFL commercials that they used to
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  have where they would say, you make the call.
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  Is it this or is it this?
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  And you get that in the book of Acts. But that's what narratives do.
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  Gives you those two options, that dialectic throughout the book.
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  Yeah. Yeah, so if you think that here are the things that should be a part of
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  the people of God, then what's it going to look like if you start really thinking
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  about it in these sorts of ways?
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  If we are to be the church, then we're not going to necessarily just say,
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  okay, well, we're going to do those things just exactly because we live 2,000 years later.
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  But how would we imagine that in our day? Yeah, that's good.
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  So how did you get connected with Wesley Center Online? How did you work with
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  George Lyons on that? What was the inception of the idea?
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  It looked like 1993 is when the idea or when it was created.
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  Tell us a little bit about the history of that program and how you got involved. Yeah.
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  Well, it was probably more in the latter 1990s.
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  And what George Lyons in particular and others at NNU started thinking about
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  was, and it's hard for us to imagine this now.
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  Let's face it, we're talking with Zoom online and stuff like this.
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  But if we can go back even 30 years, I remember when I started teaching at Olivet
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  in 94, just to put it in perspective.
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  I had a computer on my desk, but I had another terminal, and that terminal was for email.
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  Yeah yeah and so yeah you didn't
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  do your email for the most part you know on the
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  computer you did it through the separate terminal terminal wow
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  yeah that was monochrome yeah a nut color you know it was it it sounds so ancient
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  and that's 30 years ago of course i had brown brown hair i had i had gray sprinkled
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  through it so yeah so maybe that puts it in context yeah yeah Yeah.
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  So, you know, for us, you know, we can do so much on the Internet,
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  you know, but in the 90s, it really was this fledgling idea,
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  you know, in many respects.
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  And what George and others started thinking about was, you know,
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  in the mid to late 90s was, what are the kinds of things that we can start imagining
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  doing with the Internet?
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  At libraries were starting to put their card catalogs
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  for instance you know again we don't even talk about card catalogs
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  today you know but but libraries used
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  to have you know all their all their books on on
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  cards in drawers you know on the first floor of
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  their libraries yeah i mean you don't even see that today you know although
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  we still kind of call them card catalogs but increasingly no one knows what
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  a card catalog is you know but i i remember even then working on my dissertation
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  and being able to access the library catalog.
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  On one computer but i had to then use another
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  computer and type it in i couldn't even link the
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  two you know uh in that regard so
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  so they started imagining you know could we you know how could we use the internet
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  to share resources you know again nobody not even libraries were were thinking
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  about putting resources online,
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  they were only sharing more like the basic,
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  here's what we've got,
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  not let's share our resources in that regard.
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  So they started dreaming about the possibility of just being able to,
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  to scan, you know, and, you know, you know, and put, and put things up.
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  Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and they went crazy. They, they really went crazy,
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  you know, and, and by the way, for, for what it's worth, you know,
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  what, one of the departments,
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  their headquarters actually was funding, you know, you know,
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  through like the, a department, you know, in charge of like church growth research or something like that.
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  They were funding at each one of the universities for a number of years,
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  you know, some funds to have a kind of church growth center at each one of the universities.
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  And the university has had some flexibility in terms of what it would look like.
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  And NNU spun it more in the direction
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  of what became the Wesley Center for Applied Theology. and then NNU.
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  Multiplied the funding in that regard.
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  The president at that time, Rich Haygood, bought into it and funded way more in that regard.
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  So George utilized teaching assistants to scan resources.
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  And again, this is before any kind of
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  copyrighted material was put
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  online or things like that so they had to obtain you
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  know approval from uh from publishers and things like that as well and and they
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  were putting up as as much as they possibly could but the goal was was to make
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  available as much as possible resources from the broader wesleyan holiness tradition.
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  Yeah yeah and by broad it really was broad you know so you know so you have
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  from the wesleys On the one hand,
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  when you get to the 1900s, the broader Wesleyan holiness tradition here in the
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  U.S., even in the 20th century,
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  no distinction in terms of some of the battles that you have in terms of what
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  kind of holiness tradition is it.
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  George basically said, if it's a holiness tradition, we'll include it.
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  If it leans heavily just to Wesley, that's fine. If it's more American holiness, that's fine.
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  We include those kinds of materials.
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  And so there's materials that, quite honestly, I think their interpretation
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  is not a good interpretation.
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  But it's a part of the tradition.
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  And so we include it.
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  Yeah, I'm looking at the section, Holiness Classics Library, and it is huge.
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  I mean, it's just a ton of, outside of Wesley, a ton of writers. Yeah.
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  Well, and that particular segment of it, the person who has done all that, Dwayne Massey,
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  is an individual who lives down in Arizona who has done all that work and has shared that with us.
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  And, you know, and he's had an incredible ministry, you know,
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  over the last couple of decades and has partnered with us.
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  And, you know, so, you know, that's been a great addition, you know, to it as well.
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  Yeah. So the, you know, so the idea has been to, you know, to make,
• 18:14
  you know, as much available as possible.
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  And in addition, then, George also being a New Testament professor,
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  in fact, he was my first New Testament professor here at Olivet before he went to NNU.
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  So there's also a section on basically New Testament studies,
• 18:35
  intertestamental period, and things like that.
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  And so George was even one of those first persons in those areas to be putting
• 18:44
  text from non-canonical text online as well,
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  before many others were even doing that as well.
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  So that even broke some ground in that respect too.
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  So even though it's Wesley Center for Applied Theology,
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  there's some additional materials in that regard that some people would be rather
• 19:10
  surprised to see in that regard.
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  And George utilized students that he had in class.
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  He taught a course on non-canonical literature and how that helps with interpreting Scripture.
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  So he would he would utilize those students to you know they would write as
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  an assignment you know an introduction for one of the texts and you know that
• 19:35
  became a part of the website you know as well yeah it's I mean I'm just looking
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  at that now you got Ignatius,
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  Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Didache,
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  it's pretty impressive all of these resources yeah so the idea was to create
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  a repository for Wesleyan students,
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  students curious about Wesley and Wesleyan studies to just access material.
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  Without having to go to a library and look through index cards and whatnot, that was the idea.
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  And so did you start with just breaking out John Wesley's writings?
• 20:09
  You mentioned all these different sources, but what was the most robust area that you covered?
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  Was it John Wesley's? John Wesley is probably the most, yeah, right.
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  Yeah. One of the things that, you know, with it was, you know,
• 20:23
  to, again, was just making these writings available.
• 20:27
  You know so you know so there's no pagination you
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  know in in that regard or anything like that it's just
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  you know the texts are just out there yeah yeah
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  and so you you've got it it's available what's what's interesting is is is how
• 20:43
  you know how all this has exploded beyond what the original vision was you know
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  there are people now who go to it yeah and and by the way there's even though it's broken right now,
• 20:56
  there's an internal search engine. So you could search.
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  So if, you know, if someone would say, well, I've heard John Wesley said X.
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  You know, I can, you know, you could search and see if, you know,
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  from what we had, whether or not, you know, even though we don't have everything
• 21:12
  of Wesley up there, you could, you could do a search and, and see that.
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  And I often, often will get emails, you know, where someone will say,
• 21:21
  can you help me find this, this quotation?
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  Because I, hey, I have other search capabilities here on my own computer in
• 21:29
  that regard. So you have those sorts of things. What...
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  What we have now is, you know, people turning to us and say,
• 21:37
  well, how do we cite this?
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  Because, you know, because we don't have the pagination, you know,
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  and so we have people now, 25 years later, turning to us and saying,
• 21:48
  we're using this for our research, you know, how can you help us?
• 21:53
  And, you know, which has, you know, kind of turned this upside down because
• 21:58
  that was never the intention for it.
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  But but we realize that that is something that is has become increasingly important
• 22:06
  you know and so you know so as we're looking into the future those are you know
• 22:12
  those are things that you know that we must consider well and i don't know how
• 22:17
  i became aware of this maybe at all of that but.
• 22:21
  My first experience with arminius was through this website i wouldn't have i
• 22:26
  mean he's hard to find i mean i wouldn't have had access to his materials had
• 22:30
  it not been for your website So, you know,
• 22:31
  it's, it's been, that's helped out in my personal research, but,
• 22:35
  you know, just being able to get in and look at, we were doing a,
• 22:38
  so that was a while ago, but recently in the last few years,
• 22:41
  we were doing a, an issue on,
• 22:44
  you know, Jesus, the Messiah, prophet, priest, and king for Holy Sade.
• 22:48
  And just be able to get in there and just get Arminius' disputations on each
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  one of the offices of Christ.
• 22:53
  You know, I mean, because, you know, you pick up a book, I think I have one
• 22:56
  right here because I'm nerding out on him right now, but I mean,
• 22:59
  it's, it's just a little difficult.
• 23:01
  You know piling through that but to be able to just get to the materials pretty
• 23:03
  quickly is yeah i find it very useful and
• 23:06
  like you said 10 even 10 years ago it was
• 23:09
  more difficult to do these kind of things but you guys were kind of cutting
• 23:12
  edge on that so thank you for that work well research would be much more difficult
• 23:17
  without it so i appreciate that well and and i can't take credit for it you
• 23:22
  know i'm you know again george george lyons and you know his his colleagues.
• 23:28
  You know, who preceded me, you know, they, you know, they were thinking of this.
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  It's interesting just, you know, as I think of what they were thinking in the
• 23:39
  late 90s and, you know, starting into the early 2000s, it was about that time
• 23:45
  that they started thinking,
• 23:46
  before anyone else was thinking about this, about doing theological education online.
• 23:53
  Again, you know, again, And nobody was doing that. In fact, they were saying it can't be done.
• 24:00
  And George basically said, okay, I've got a course that's coming up.
• 24:07
  I'm going to do it online, and I'm just going to see for myself.
• 24:11
  And he came back, because he was going to talk himself out of it.
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  And he came back and said, I can't believe it.
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  It works. And now we're at about 800 graduates later.
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  We're the first graduate programs to receive ATS accreditation,
• 24:37
  Association of Theological Schools, that were online from their inception.
• 24:44
  So basically, we set the standard for ATS. And that's kind of on my mind right
• 24:50
  now because we're finishing up our revalidation report, self-study report for our March visit.
• 24:58
  But it's, you know, all of that was happening in about this five-year period,
• 25:05
  you know, at NNU in the late 90s to the early 2000s, where the Internet was
• 25:13
  really this kind of fledgling thing.
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  And they started saying, what do we do with this for the sake of the mission of the church?
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  Because especially for NNU, unlike, let's say, Olivet or Mid-America.
• 25:32
  It's hard to get people to drive to us in Nampa, Idaho.
• 25:37
  So, you know, although the Boise Valley is growing exponentially,
• 25:42
  it's still in the middle of nowhere, you know, in many regards.
• 25:48
  And so the issue becomes, how do you make resources available for people to
• 25:55
  get wherever they're at?
• 25:57
  Because, you know, for NNU, the educational field includes Alaska to the eastern
• 26:06
  edge of Montana and all the way down to Utah.
• 26:11
  It's a huge area. And so we can't really go to them and they're not going to
• 26:18
  come to us, but the internet changes everything.
• 26:23
  And so making it available.
• 26:26
  Do some of the classes, the online classes at NNU integrate,
• 26:30
  are some of the research projects kind of not pushed towards,
• 26:33
  but kind of curated out of the Wesley Center Online?
• 26:35
  Is there a lot of synergy between those two? There's a pretty fair amount in that regard.
• 26:41
  One of the things that we know also is that there's quite a few institutions that really rely on it.
• 26:50
  You know, so that, you know, as we are working on what I would call Wesley Center 2.0,
• 26:58
  we're really working with that in mind because we know that,
• 27:06
  you know, and we're told this all the time, you know, people are saying,
• 27:09
  you know, we've got this link, you know, to this sermon or that sermon or whatever.
• 27:17
  And if we just completely recreate things, there's going to be a lot of people
• 27:25
  with a lot of broken links that are going to be unhappy.
• 27:28
  So one of the things that we're doing as we're recreating is we're recreating
• 27:35
  with the idea that it won't be a broken link,
• 27:38
  but any link will automatically go to the new document.
• 27:46
  You know, that, that we have, but we're literally, you know,
• 27:49
  because, because the site is 25 years old, our original documents are, are becoming archaic.
• 27:57
  And so, you know, it means that we're literally having to redo every document that we have.
• 28:06
  What is the new website? What are going to be some of the new integration?
• 28:09
  What's the new build going to look like? Yeah.
• 28:12
  One, it will look and have much more of a 21st century feel to it.
• 28:20
  So it's going to be brighter. We'll utilize more of the NNU colors.
• 28:24
  You know, so there would be a lot more reds too, you know, in it and everything.
• 28:30
  You know, so it's, you know, so it will just be more inviting,
• 28:34
  you know, in that regard.
• 28:36
  It's going to be much more intentional in terms of multiple platforms.
• 28:42
  So whether someone's on a phone or a tablet or computer or laptop,
• 28:48
  you know, it will just be much more friendly, you know, in that regard.
• 28:53
  You know, making sure that, you know, things like search engines and things
• 28:58
  like that, you know, our internal search engines, you know, are much better in that regard.
• 29:06
  One of the things that we'll have is we're going to continue to keep it where,
• 29:12
  you know, we'll, you know, we want to keep that search capability in, you know, in the site.
• 29:19
  And so we probably won't have the pagination for research purposes.
• 29:25
  But what we're also doing is, you know, we're also expanding a lot of our documents
• 29:33
  through the Wesleyan Holiness Digital Library.
• 29:37
  You know, so, you know, so in that regard, then what we'll do is we'll link,
• 29:44
  a particular, you know, let's say you're looking at a sermon of Wesley's, you know,
• 29:50
  and you're doing the searching, you know, on our site,
• 29:54
  because you can't do the searching on the Wesleyan Holiness Digital Library,
• 29:58
  what we'll do is we'll put a link to that specific document that is paginated and link it there.
• 30:06
  That'd be great. That way, someone who wants those kinds of additional details,
• 30:13
  all they have to do is hit the link and they've got that particular sort of thing.
• 30:21
  But we think that we need to keep the kind of usability and then that functionality
• 30:27
  of the site rather than it becoming.
• 30:34
  For lack of a better description, a clunky library that librarians would like.
• 30:41
  You know we want to keep that usability that i
• 30:44
  think the everyday person you know would prefer so
• 30:48
  we're trying to have our cake and eat it too but that
• 30:51
  but that means you know in many respects it's expanding you know as as well
• 30:57
  for sure i elaborate on that a little bit so how do you work with in in what
• 31:03
  ways is the wesley center line engage with people outside of nnu i mean i
• 31:08
  Again, I don't even know how I was made aware of it, but what are some of the
• 31:11
  engagement opportunities that Wesley Center Online gets into and broader outside
• 31:18
  of the Church of the Nazarene? What are the relationships?
• 31:21
  Yeah, yeah. Lots of connections, especially with Wesleyan Theological Society.
• 31:28
  You know, it helps when, you know, one of the least, some of the leading Wesleyan
• 31:33
  scholars, you know, in fact, most of them know about our site,
• 31:37
  you know, and point to it.
• 31:39
  You know, and one of the leading ones in the world, Randy Maddox, is an NNU grad.
• 31:46
  So you know so when he's you
• 31:49
  know whenever he has links he's always pointing
• 31:53
  you know to our to our site so
• 31:56
  that doesn't hurt us you know at all you know and get it done and and we've
• 32:00
  you know we've we've been fortunate because we were one of the first if not
• 32:04
  the first of its kind and and they're now you know randy's work at at duke divinity
• 32:10
  school you know so they have their own site,
• 32:13
  but they, you know, we link theirs and they link ours and, and the like,
• 32:18
  you know, you know, so that, that kind of, of synergy, you know,
• 32:22
  really, you know, really does help, you know, in regard,
• 32:26
  you know, and so, you know, so those, those kinds of connections,
• 32:31
  those kinds of, of help, you know, and, you know, and we continue,
• 32:35
  you know, we, we regularly hit a million hits a year, you know, on our site.
• 32:41
  So it's, you know, so there's, you know, there's more traffic on our site,
• 32:47
  you know, for NNU than at any other site. Yeah. Yeah.
• 32:51
  Has NNU, have you guys ever thought about monetizing that?
• 32:55
  How do we make money off of that many hits? Yeah.
• 32:58
  You know, we, you know, we, we, we have kind of talked about it a bit, you know, but we're,
• 33:04
  Yeah. Yeah. There, there, there's a part of me that, you know,
• 33:08
  that says, yeah, we, we did this missionally.
• 33:11
  Yes. So to, you know, to, to, to start monetizing something that was missional,
• 33:17
  you know, just kind of rubs me the wrong way. Yeah.
• 33:21
  You know, but, you know, but that's where, you know, and we talked about this
• 33:25
  as we, we were, you know, just picturing what the, the new platform would look like.
• 33:31
  You know the the the current platform you
• 33:35
  know once you start getting into it you you really can't
• 33:38
  tell that you're on an nnu site so
• 33:41
  so one of the things that i've said is you know let's let's not be ashamed of
• 33:47
  the fact that this is coming from nnu let's you know let's let's brand it a
• 33:52
  little more you know it doesn't mean it doesn't mean that you have to put an
• 33:55
  nnu tattoo two on Wesley's forehead or something like that.
• 34:00
  But why not just make it clear that this is an NNU site whenever someone's on
• 34:13
  a page and make that clearer.
• 34:18
  And I think that's a good thing,
• 34:23
  you know just you know just letting people know
• 34:26
  that you know that we've you know we've been a voice for a quarter of a century
• 34:32
  you know a leading voice in terms of of putting out those materials and not
• 34:38
  that that makes us better but you know but we've we've been a part of this and.
• 34:45
  Yeah. And just having that out there. Yeah.
• 34:51
  So how are materials selected and curated? I mean, what are other areas or other
• 34:56
  theologians or areas of study that are being looked at and I'm putting up on the website?
• 35:01
  Is it still growing in that area as far as curation? Yeah.
• 35:06
  It's been stalled just a little bit with the development of the new site.
• 35:12
  So that's front and center right now.
• 35:17
  Once we have that, then I really want to pursue that again.
• 35:23
  You know, so, yeah, I would love for the Foundry to let us put Tom Noble's stuff
• 35:32
  up, but I have a feeling they're going to be very resistant for a while. Yeah, yeah.
• 35:37
  But, you know, how long would it be before they allow Ray Dunning's materials?
• 35:47
  Yeah, I would like us to be able to start doing that.
• 35:53
  You know, going ahead and getting those materials up, you know,
• 35:57
  and I realized that they would have them on the Wesleyan Holiness Digital Library,
• 36:02
  you know, but, you know, but again, there's no search capability there.
• 36:08
  So unless, you know, and the only way to do that is to download a document and
• 36:13
  then do it on your computer, that's just real clunky.
• 36:16
  So, you know, so to be able to, you know, to put the texts, you know,
• 36:21
  because people want searchability.
• 36:24
  So to be able to do that,
• 36:27
  Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I think the more we could do that, the better,
• 36:31
  you know, yeah, you know, same, same thing with, you know, you know,
• 36:37
  I, I know that we're going to keep the new beacon Bible commentary under wraps for a while.
• 36:42
  And I get that. That was a huge investment.
• 36:45
  But what about the Beacon Bible commentary, the old one?
• 36:51
  You know, what about going ahead and making that available, you know,
• 36:56
  to have a Wesleyan Holiness commentary that's online, you know,
• 37:01
  that people can utilize?
• 37:03
  You know, I think that would be a wonderful gift to the church.
• 37:09
  Church and and by the church the broader
• 37:12
  church you know so you know
• 37:15
  so those those would be some some initial kinds
• 37:18
  of things you know and it keeps me busy and semi-retirement so yes yeah it it
• 37:25
  looks like there's perhaps uh works of translations into spanish that are being
• 37:30
  curated as well are you is the wesley center online doing those translations
• 37:35
  are you finding those translations, how's that working? Yeah.
• 37:39
  Both has happened in that regard. Yeah.
• 37:43
  So being able to push that, especially given the fact that at NNU,
• 37:50
  we just started Doctor of Theology program in the last.
• 37:56
  In the last academic year. So, and, and the first, the first group was actually a cohort in Spanish.
• 38:05
  So, you know, so each year there's a cohort in Spanish and a cohort in English,
• 38:10
  you know, so the more, the more that we can have that's Spanish translated.
• 38:17
  You know the better you know because there's
• 38:19
  such a lack of of hispanic
• 38:23
  resources you know in that regard so so feeding you know that you know that
• 38:30
  need you know but again you know that the the start of our our spanish-speaking
• 38:36
  ph or thd program you know is is focusing on that missional need as well.
• 38:42
  So yeah, so that all fits together. It looks like all the sermons of John Wesley
• 38:48
  are translated, if I'm looking at that correctly.
• 38:51
  And then some various works of Weinkoop, Perkheiser. Yeah. So there's a lot
• 38:55
  of good resources on there. Yeah.
• 38:57
  Yeah. Just, it's just not enough.
• 39:00
  Yeah. Yeah. Always more. Yeah. It was interesting when I was at the Global Theology
• 39:06
  Conference, I had the opportunity, Dr.
• 39:08
  Jorge Hulco, to show me his library and just, and seeing what they had down
• 39:11
  there in Spanish, but again, I keep nerding out on Arminius,
• 39:15
  but Arminius was not available in Spanish, if I remember correctly,
• 39:17
  and I thought, oh, it's an opportunity.
• 39:19
  We'll need to move in that direction at some point, so there's always more work to be done.
• 39:24
  Yeah, well, and when we started our THD program,
• 39:30
  it's only the second PhD or THD program in North America or in the United States
• 39:39
  that is Spanish-speaking,
• 39:42
  which is shocking.
• 39:46
  But that was started, again, for missional purposes because there is such a lack.
• 39:54
  And so our first two groups, we've got people waiting in line for the program.
• 40:00
  So, you know, we're really excited about the possibilities.
• 40:05
  The biggest need, however, is in library resources, you know, because of, you know,
• 40:14
  that lack of Spanish translate, more than just Spanish translated,
• 40:20
  but just Spanish written, you know, resources.
• 40:24
  Because that's going to be even more important than the translation. Yeah.
• 40:28
  Yeah, that's what we're trying to delve into more and more with Holiness Today,
• 40:33
  but getting authentic writers in Spanish, you know, written content,
• 40:36
  but it's a good challenge. It's a good call and mission that we're trying to work on there. Exactly.
• 40:43
  Well, Dr. Thompson, thank you so much for spending this time with us.
• 40:47
  It's a pleasure to connect with you and very happy how responsive.
• 40:51
  So for context, for our listeners, I emailed Dr.
• 40:55
  Thompson and he got back to me probably within 30 minutes, I think.
• 40:57
  So pretty good response time on Wesley Center Online, but thank you for sharing
• 41:02
  this time with us and giving a glimpse of the work that goes into this great resource.
• 41:07
  I'll put obviously some links in the show notes for our listeners to be able
• 41:10
  to click on some resources and look at what's going on. But thank you for your time. Appreciate you.
• 41:15
  Appreciate you. And thanks for the visit. Yeah. It's been fun.
• 41:20
  Something I always like to ask our guests is how can we be, how can our listeners,
• 41:24
  how can I be praying for you in your mission here? What areas specifically can we be praying for?
• 41:29
  Yeah. Well, just continue to pray that we make progress on our redevelopment of the site.
• 41:42
  It's taking way longer than I had hoped.
• 41:48
  So I need more than patience. You know, I want to start seeing some good results.
• 41:55
  So, and we should be seeing that here shortly.
• 41:58
  When is the perspective launch date of the new website? I'm hoping, I'm hoping this summer.
• 42:04
  Well, Dr. Thompson, thank you so much. Okay. Thank you, Nate. We'll be in touch.
• 42:10
  Music.
• 42:16
  Thank you for listening to the Holiness Today podcast. If you enjoyed this production
• 42:20
  and wish to hear more, visit holinessoday.org slash podcast or find us on Spotify,
• 42:25
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• 42:28
  Music.