Beeson Podcast, Episode #
Jacob Patton
Date

>>Announcer: 

Welcome to the Beeson podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University. Now your host, Doug Sweeney. 


>>Doug Sweeney:

Welcome to the Beeson Podcast. I'm your host, Doug Sweeney, and I'm joined today by my friend, Jacob Patton, a recent Beeson alumnus who just completed a cross-cultural ministry practicum in Tanzania. We want to hear all about Jacob's trip to Tanzania and Beeson's MDiv requirements in cross-cultural ministry. So thanks, Jacob, for being with us here today. 

>>Patton:
Thanks for having me. 

>>Sweeney:
So let's just introduce you to people who might not know you out in the podcast audience. What's your background? How did you become a Christian? How did we get you to Beeson? How did you decide the Lord was leading you into some kind of ministry?

>>Patton:
Sure. I became a Christian in middle school. Really I was following a cute girl to church, you know, as many middle school boys do. But heard the gospel, preached, and ended up just kind of growing my faith in high school. My family's kind of in and out of church, so my faith was really kind of my own growing up.
And in high school, just felt a call towards ministry. Ended up going to Samford University for undergrad and then of course Beeson for seminary. And I really feel called to ministry and specifically like academia and Christian academia and how that especially that serves the church. A big draw for why I came to Beeson is because of the connection to being academically rigorous, but also a real minister, you know, not separating the church and the academy, but realizing the need there for, you know, academically trained Christians connected to the church. 
So I would love to be a professor one day, specifically a professor maybe in the global south, part of why I was drawn towards Tanzania. But, you know, God often reveals His steps for me just one step at a time, you know, His will for me.

>>Sweeney:
Sure. Let me ask just one quick follow-up on your personal life. How have you discerned that this is what the Lord has for you? A lot of people come to seminary and they're just not sure yet. They feel a tug towards serving the Lord in a significant way. They want to grow in discipleship. They want to learn more. They love their churches. They want to be involved in church in some way. They're wondering, am I going to be a pastor someday? Am I going to do some other form of ministry? How has that discernment process worked in your own life? 

>>Patton:
Sure. I would say that that really happened a lot in undergrad when I was studying biblical studies at Samford. That's when I was drawn, when I was introduced kind of to biblical scholarship. That's where I felt a real calling there. I think God has given me gifts and talents to be good at doing that type of thing and have a heart for it. And again, specifically for thinking about there's a great need in the church, in the global church, for American trained or highly trained professors for the global south as Christian higher education is on the rise there.

>>Sweeney:
How did you learn about that? I know Dr. McGinnis at Stanford teaches a class on world Christianity. 

>>Patton:
Yeah, I did take that class. 

>>Sweeney:
Okay, did that help the discernment process a little bit or? 

>>Patton:
Yes, yes. And part of what even really bent my heart to that, which this might be a good segue into talking about Tanzania, is I heard a lecture in undergrad by Rachel Higgs. Professor of social work who leads this trip to Tanzania. She's been going there for over a decade now, since her old PhD days. She basically gave a lecture on the state of Ucurewe, the island that I went to for my CCMP. And the lecture was just kind of about global health regarding the global South, but I felt such a calling and conviction for going to where, like, you know, the real least of the least of these are and thinking how I could be a part of what God's doing. And I really think Christian academia is a great way that he might've called me to do that. 

>>Sweeney:
Yeah, fantastic. All right, we've used our in-house acronym CCMP a few times. A bunch of people listening already know what that means. For those who don't know what that means, what is CCMP? 

>>Patton:
Yeah, it's Cross-Cultural Ministry Practicum. 

>>Sweeney:
And you were required to do one.

>>Patton:
That's right, that's right, from your institution, from Beeson Divinity School. If you have an MDiv, you have to take a cross-cultural ministry practicum. It's meant to expose you to a different culture and just get a little taste of what ministry in a different culture is like as part of MDiv requirements. 

>>Sweeney:
Yeah, that's great. And how did yours come to take the shape that it took? How did you get interested in going to Tanzania? Was it because you had Dr. Higgs as an undergrad and you thought to yourself all the while between her class and your CCMP experience, if I can go do something with her in Tanzania that's what I'm gonna do? Or did it come about in some other way? 

>>Patton:
Yeah, I'd known about it since hearing that lecture from Dr. Higgs and I was involved in International Justice Mission, Samford's chapter of that, an undergrad, and she was the faculty sponsor for that. So I was very well acquainted with her and knew about her work in Tanzania. And so then I knew I'm going to Beeson, but my senior year of undergrad.
And then I learned she takes, along with her social work students, she takes Beeson students. And so I think I knew even from then that I was gonna go with her. Then the pieces didn't quite align until I had already walked graduating Beeson and then my final requirement was the CCMP. That's funny, I took it to the very end.

>>Sweeney:
Yeah. I was going to say that seems to happen with a small handful of people every year. They just like the way they are able to pull it off if they wait to the very last summer, summer right after they graduate. All right. Well, tell us a little bit about what you did. 

>>Patton:
Yes. The main thing we did, again, Dr. Rachel Higgs has been going there for over 10 years now. She did a master's of social work and she's been a professor at Samford and a lot of her research and writing is involved. It's a little island in the middle of Lake Victoria in Tanzania called Yucarewe. And it's just really just a no other way to say just a brutal place for especially women to live. It's just very poverty stricken and a lot of social challenges especially for women.

>>Sweeney:
Tell us what that means just a little bit. We don't need maybe super difficult details, but what does that mean that it's especially difficult for women there?

>>Patton:
Well, it's really I guess anecdotally is the best. Just from Rachel's research. Like the example that she goes to I think is indicative is when she was first there doing her PhD studies. They had to go to the well and get water and walk back. So her husband is carrying the water from the well,
and they just are getting yelled at and cussed at and jeered at because he was carrying the water instead of her. It's a woman's place to carry the water, not the man's. And so you can see how that kind of cultural idea can go in all sorts of spheres of life from just general social challenges to really the most profound suffering. 
And so she has been working for a long time with the African Inland Church, which is a denomination prominent in Africa and in Tanzania, and ROC International, if you're familiar with that organization, they do a lot of humanitarian stuff, to create essentially a secondary school for young girls. Think of that as like a middle early high school, and the idea is to give them, these girls in this island, a really good education that's Christ-centered so they can go and succeed in life spiritually and just in all areas of life.
And so that's taken a long time to get off the ground. And three years ago, the school opened, and it's been open for three years, and it's going very well. And she just, the most recent edition of Samford Seasons, Samford University's magazine, there's an article about the school in there that you can read, that listeners can read. But so most of what we did at the CCMP was helping out at that school. We brought them some supplies for the teachers. We brought some laptops and other supplies.
This summer, she goes every summer just about, and she brings social work students, sometimes more business students, sometimes just one or two. This time she went with her church group, Christ Fellowship, and they brought, again, some supplies for them. They had a professional photographer come, just kind of like as volunteer. I think he had a sponsor, but to give them professional pictures and really just encourage the girls and I got to do a lot of teaching. They do devotionals every evening. 

>>Sweeney:
All the girls speak English? 

>>Patton:
The school is in English. All secondary schools in Tanzania are required to be in English, I believe, but most of them, especially the younger girls, speak Swahili. So the primary schools are in Swahili, or they can be in Swahili or English, but most are in Swahili. But then there's sometimes challenges because then you have to go from Swahili to a secondary school in English, and so the older girls definitely spoke very, very good English. And some of the younger girls, they were still kind of learning. But we did devotionals where I got to just preach to the girls and encourage them. And there was a translator. We just did that in English and had a translator in Swahili just to help them.
For that part, we just want to help them, you know, make sure that they understand what we're saying for the devotional part. 

>>Sweeney:
Yeah. What are you seeing God do there? I mean, on the one hand, you said it's just three years old, so this is early days, but you made it sound like things are going pretty well. I mean, ways you can see already. My hunch is, if they have people like you there doing Bible studies and preaching sermons, the discipleship component of it is pretty significant. Are you also seeing that these girls' lives are being improved just in regular kind of secular ways as well as a result of what's going on at the school? 

>>Patton:
Yes. I would describe it as kind of like a holistic gospel being seen. I would so encourage myself of just seeing like, man, just everything Jesus tells us to do, they're doing over there. And especially in looking for girls that are from the most vulnerable families to give them scholarship and means to again come to the school. And you talk to the girls and they all want to be, you know, what do you want to be when you grow up? And they say lawyers, engineers, pilots, you know, and they're scoring extremely high in, they're scoring number one in their area. I think top five, if not top, maybe number one in the island if you go way, way, very high in their region, very high nationally. And so they're scoring well to go on to university and then get an education. 
And again, all of the education being the foundation, being Christ, being the gospel, so they can hear about the gospel. And the name of the school is Tumani Jipya, which is in Swahili means new hope. So the idea is to give these girls a new hope, both spiritually and just in their lives in a holistic way. I was encouraged also one thing we did for the trip, part of why I was there is they're very connected to the local church there. It's a little village called, I have it written down here, I don't have my Swahili quite by memory, Kalanzakanda. It's a village in the kind of central location of the islands. The idea that people from all parts of the island can come. Most of them have to have to walk. They don't have means for it. Some of them have like, you know, bicycles or little motorbikes, but most people have to have to walk to the island. So a centralized location is really important. And it's right across the street from the local African Inland Church there. We get to go to church that Sunday. So an elder from Christ Fellowship came and he preached that Sunday, which was very encouraging.
And they had planned while we were there to have ... Rachel Higgs did like a women's conference. And then she said that they were like, you know, you do all these things for women, how about something for the men too, you know? So they had a men's conference in conjunction with that. There was, I think there was 30 women and 15 men, so maybe a little less men. But that was in conjunction with the church. The pastor came to the men's conference. He was awesome. He was very, very humble and great guy. And we got to do kind of a, we got to do like a Bible study. We went through First Peter. And it was a good discipleship, good teaching, good cross-cultural moment for teaching, for me teaching Bible. 
And that discipleship element connected to the local church, helping people spiritually, financially in their education, socially. Even the Bible study, you know, and we talked to the pastor and the teachers of the school, and they said there's a lot of social issues people face, like in that region, like family planning is a big social issue that we want to be a presence to help. But you can't just come and say, as foreigners coming to America and say, hey, you're doing this, this, and this, you need to do better. Even the solid Christians of that church wouldn't be receptive to that, of course. But what we do is go through the Bible, of course, and we really planted in that, when we got to the part of 1 Peter where it says, husbands, treat your wives with understanding as the weaker vessel. And we get to talk about that.
What do you think about that in your culture? What does it mean? And just sort of like draw out from the Bible how the Bible can speak into your culture. And the conversation kind of became like this weaker doesn't mean in this case less than like and these are their words kind of thinking reflecting on scripture that weaker doesn't mean less than because we know the rest of the verse says because she is also an inheritor of the of the of the promise and so weaker in that case means like you know physically weaker perhaps and so then there's a temptation to use her physical weakness against her and you should treat her with understanding as opposed to that because she is also an inheritor. And so again that's them reflecting on their own culture they said things like you know in our culture women are treated kind of like children.
And this is saying we should kind of go against that. And it was really awesome for just the CCMP standpoint because the bend of the Bible study, the men's conference, for our teaching, the women's conference kind of, you know, I wasn't there for that, but the men's conference, the bend kind of turned to we have to have courage to be counter-cultural, that there are cultural issues that we face in America and in Europe and China and wherever, that the world is always opposed to biblical principles. It takes courage to go against that, to stand for the Bible's principles instead of whatever any culture's telling us. And that was really powerful just for everyone there and for me. And so that was a really impactful part of the trip also.
And in connection with the school, just the school being in connection with the local church and the discipleship you talked about, I think is really important and was meaningful for the holistic gospel that I was mentioning.

>>Sweeney:
So did you have any favorite students?

>>Patton:
I did, certainly I did. 

>>Sweeney:
Will you remember some of these people, especially well, a long time from now? 

>>Patton:
Hoping to go back again. So hopefully I'll see them again. 

>>Sweeney:
How did the one or two or three who you would say, you know, really stand out in your memory? How did they stand out for you?

>>Patton:
Yeah, there was a student who, she was, you know, there are some people that, like when we were leaving, everyone was really sad. And she's the type of person to kind of like, turn her back and say like, yeah, okay, I guess you're leaving, but she's the one that cares the most. Yeah, you know what I mean? And she, I have a video of her because she's a really good, great singer.
And they did kind of a worship thing at their church, and she's an excellent, amazing voice. And so she was kind of, again, acting like she doesn't care. But then the day before we were supposed to leave, she goes, “Maybe you could record a video of me singing just to keep it.” And I was like, sure, I'll record a video. And then she said, “Have you heard of Hillsong Young and Free?” I have heard of it.

>>Sweeney:
Everywhere. Every corner of the world, they've got Hillsong.

>>Patton:
Yeah. (laughs)

>>Sweeney:
Nice. All right. So I'm sure the Lord used your service in the lives of those you went to serve, and that's far and away the most important part of what happened this summer. But I'm wondering also, did this experience teach you anything? Are you coming away sort of edified or encouraged or strengthened or changed in any way that you could identify? 

>>Patton:
Yeah, well I told you that Rachel Higgs, that lecture I heard in undergrad from her, it was about kind of global health in general in the global South, you know, but not Tanzania specifically. Of course, her experiences would influence that. But that lecture, I really would say changed the course of my life to have that kind of calling conviction to want to go somewhere like, you know, you could right away in Tanzania and help where I can. And so this experience, it kind of got to be a little taste of what that would be. And I was thinking going in this, this is either going to affirm my convictions or make me feel some other way. And it certainly fanned the flame to that to where the whole time I was there, I was, yeah, those convictions were just affirmed more and more. And so, yeah, it definitely was impactful in drawing more and affirming those.

>>Sweeney:
I'm so glad you got to go, and I'm so glad it's going to shape your outlook now as you follow the Lord into the future. Let me conclude by asking you how our listeners can be praying for you, and maybe this will also involve asking you, so what do you feel like the Lord's doing next in your life? What are the next steps for Jacob Patton? And how can we be praying you through?

>>Patton:
Sure. Well, I'm hoping to do PhD studies, specifically in ancient Near Eastern studies. It looks like I may, it would be helpful to get maybe a second master's almost like a THM specifically in Ancient Eastern studies and so I'm kind of taking a year in between I'm going to apply for some PhD programs probably apply for those master's programs and then get a PhD in Ancient Near Eastern Old Testament backgrounds. And so I'm kind of taking a year I'm teaching adjunct core text over at Samford University, freshman class, and I have a pastoral residency at my church, Mountain Brook Community Church, for the sort of emerging adult ministry, just for that year. They were really kind to kind of fill a need for the church and fill a need for me just in this year. 
So just pray that things will line up for PhD studies, that it'll go well, and then pray long-term that doors will be open and God's provision will happen so I can serve in that way in the global south, hopefully maybe even in Tanzania, maybe even in some capacity in Uruguay, but just praying that those doors will open and that things will work out in that direction.

>>Sweeney:
All right listeners, this has been Jacob Patton. Please pray for him as the Lord takes him into the future. This year we've got some ministry at Mountain Brook Community Church, we've got some teaching at Samford University, and some thinking and applying to do when it comes to the next academic steps in his life and his ministry. Thank you Jacob for being with us. Thank you listeners for tuning in. We're praying for you too. We love you. We say goodbye for now. 


>>Mark Gignilliat:

You’ve been listening to the Beeson podcast; coming to you from the campus of Samford University. Our theme music is by Advent Birmingham. Our announcer is Mark Gignilliat. Our engineer is Rob Willis. Our Producer is Neal Embry. And our show host is Doug Sweeney. For more episodes and to subscribe, visit www.BeesonDivinity.com/podcast. You can also find the Beeson Podcast on iTunes, YouTube, and Spotify.