In the twenty-eighth episode of the third season of the “Saturdays at Seven” conversation series, Todd Ream talks with Todd Martin, the President of Trinity Western University. Martin opens by reflecting upon his expertise as a family studies scholar, exploring the ways that channeling theory and family development theory can prove beneficial to educators striving to understand the students they serve. However, Martin is also quick to note that God is sovereign and, as a result, parents and children do not always have to make optimal choices in order for flourishing to be possible. Wise, prayerful choices as highlighted by these theories are valuable but leaving room for God to act also proves important. Martin then shifts to discussing his own vocational discernment, how his service as a minister intersected with his growing interests in the sociology of religion and the sociology of family, and then how he began to discern adding administrative roles was part of how he was called to express his vocation. Along the way, the underlying theme Martin stresses in terms of vocational discernment is a willingness to be used by God and be of service in whatever context one is called to live. As a result, part of the joy he derives from serving as president is solving problems. While serving as provost, Martin shares that he led an effort to develop what came to be known as “A Faculty Vocational Career Guide”—a guide that seeks to help all faculty members at Trinity Western live their fullness as they were called by God. As he closes, Martin returns to his experience as a family studies scholar, cautioning fellow scholars not too make too much of their previously experienced field work residing with their respective families of origin but also to seek to understand the family as existing in a much larger story as ordained by God.
Todd Ream: Welcome to Saturdays at Seven, Christian Scholar’s Review’s conversation series with thought leaders about the academic vocation and the relationship that vocation shares with the Church. My name is Todd Ream. I have the privilege of serving as the publisher for Christian Scholar’s Review and as the host for Saturdays at Seven. I also have the privilege of serving on the faculty and the administration at Indiana Wesleyan University.
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Our guest is Todd Martin, President of Trinity Western University. Thank you for joining us
Todd Martin: Thank you, Todd.
Todd Ream: As a family studies scholar and a university president, in what ways, if any, have the questions stemming from the families of origin of the students coming to college changed over the course of your career?
Todd Martin: That’s a good question. Uh, when I did my master’s work in family studies, my thesis was on the intergenerational transmission of religiosity. And in that work, I focused on a theory called the channeling hypothesis. And the channeling hypothesis is essentially what you would expect from that name. It’s a socialization strategy in which parents have historically invested in their children in a way which would replicate their own belief systems, their own values, their own status and place in society.
And so I do think it is a good theory that continues to apply today. It’s a good heuristic to try and understand how do we get from being our own individuals, our, our own entities with our own belief systems and values, partner with somebody, produce offspring, and then how do we help to ensure those offspring replicate what we think is most important in a way in which is consistent with our, our beliefs and values.
And so something as simple as where you live we tend to live in areas that provide us the opportunity to socialize around neighborhoods that also replicate what’s important to us. Schools are often embedded in neighborhoods and, and parents move to those neighborhoods specifically for those schools. They get them into the kinds of schools they want to, whether that be in a preschool or an elementary school or high schools because they see each of these as sequential steps in preparing them for their own independence or, or interdependence from their parents.
And, and that’s where Christian higher education comes into play as well, because often parents are the ones who are the prime motivators and directors of, of their children to go into Christian higher education. Often those children and are enrolled in private Christian education at, you know, K through 12 levels. And even from a church integration point of view, we tend to attend churches where our children can thrive and when they can have a social network where their friends are reinforcing it. So we’re constantly trying to channel them into the ways in which we think our best equipped to help replicate what we want them to, you know, embrace and, and value and live out.
So I think from that point of view, it hasn’t really changed. I will make an argument that, that I think the duration and the intensity of that channeling has increased over the last number of cohorts of parents from the builders, the boomers, and the millenials. They’re investing in incredibly more detailed amount into the lives of their children.
I have a great story for you, but I’ll stop there if I can give you an illustration of what I mean.
Todd Ream: Yeah, absolutely. If you would please.
Todd Martin: Sure. So last night I went to try and pick up a set of used chairs that I found online that my wife and I have just moved. And I went to this house, which was a very, very large house. It’s probably five, 6,000 square foot house. Obviously the people were quite well off. And when I went to, and, and the furniture was quite nice. That’s why I was going to look at it.
And when I went there the husband and wife said, yes, we’re selling all the furniture in the living room, including a grand piano and a number of other items because our daughter doesn’t want to play the piano anymore. She wants to be a figure skater. And what we wanted to do was create the main floor as an area in which she could practice her figure skating, obviously on roller skates, but the whole idea was we’re willing to sell all our furniture sell a grand piano we bought a year before because now our child is going to be, you know, Olympic figure skater in 10 or 15 years, and so away we go.
That’s an example of parents wanting to invest in their children to the point in which they’re willing to do anything. And obviously it’s an extreme example, but I was thinking about it while I was picking up these chairs yesterday.
Todd Ream: I, I was hoping you were going to go with that they had figured out, technology-wise, how to scale things so that they could have an ice rink in that living room.
Todd Martin: Well, I think they could afford it, but they were, they were willing to use the hardwood floor surface of this huge house as a makeshift practice skating rink.
Todd Ream: As those that, the rates in which they’re investing and the intensity in which they’re investing has changed, how, if at all, would you estimate that the questions that family studies scholars need to be asking, but also for those of us whether we’re curricular or co-curricular educators on campus, in what ways do we need to be adjusting our practice in terms of working with students?
Todd Martin: It’s a good question. Um, one of the theories that I’ve worked on and, and published in is a theory called family development theory. And what this is, is essentially a life course approach to development, but rather than individual human development, it’s imagining development in the context of diads and triads and, and, and smaller clusters. And so family development theory is really about timing and sequencing and historical context and how that later shapes outcomes or choices or life choices.
And, and as much as I’m enamored with that theory, this idea that you know, we, we’ve got to play classical music to our children when they’re in the womb, that way they’ll appreciate you know, classical music when they’re born, or we need to make sure they’re in just the right preschool, or we need to make sure they’re in just the right kindergarten because if we don’t, that may really negatively affect them being able to get into this elite school that we want 15 years down, down the road.
Even family configuration of birth order or number of children, or the status of parents and intact, caring, loving married families versus multiple cohabiting non-married relationships, all of that we know has a correlation to later individual choices and outcomes. And so the, the idea of how do we you know, how do we do that well, and, and knowing that as educators, we receive these children after many, many, many, many life decisions that their parents have made, that they may have made, that peers may have made, and then we find ourselves, okay, what do I do now? Like, how malleable are they? How pliable are they still at the stage?
And, and again, as much as I think that there’s some merit in looking at it that way, I think we also have to, as Christian educators and Christian scholars, not diminish the power and presence of God, even in our classroom, even in the life of of, of one of our students who could have some sort of transformational experience, could have, I like to say to our students because even our students can sometimes become preoccupied with, oh, if I don’t get in this section of this class in my first semester, my degree is going to be off kilter. I’m not going to be able to graduate when I want and everything is going to go sideways. My life is going to be ruined.
Or if I don’t find in my field, if I don’t find exactly the right partner that God has prepared for me, um, you know, among the 8 billion people, and, and, and, you know, we whittle that down to eligible partners. If I don’t find that right person, then my, my, you know, my relational life is going to be ruined. It’s going to be subpar, it’s probably going to end up in a broken, you know, whatever.
And I, and I think the trouble with that is, is if we’re not careful, we really diminish the power and the authority of God where like God doesn’t say, oh, rats, you didn’t get into the right preschool. Or, you know, now, now my plan for you is diminished. Or a student not getting into the right, you know, they have to wait till the second year to get into that course they wanted, now everything’s a little off. God, God is not thwarted by all of this.
Um, and and I think sometimes, we take too much upon ourselves, whether we be educators or whether we be parents, or whether we be even students to say, well, if I don’t get it just right, I’m, I’m going to end in some pathway that’s going to take me off into, you know the wilderness and, and you know, it’s going to be that disappointing and discouraging. So I think what we’re really trying to do is we’re trying to balance, yes, you want to have good plans and you want to have good strategies and, and you want to make good investments in your child’s life and, and, and who they’re friends with and, and, and where they go to school.
And as educators, the way in which we interact with our students, the way in which we maybe even structure our courses all of those things are important, but ultimately I think God is God is sovereign and God is in control. That’s not an excuse to just say it doesn’t matter with any planning anymore than getting up and saying, well, I can wing a lecture here because God will take care of it. You know, that, that, that standing on the, the temple mount and saying, you know yeah, jump off. I don’t think it’s a biblical strategy for success.
Todd Ream: Yeah, yeah, thank you. I’ve been in higher education now for almost 30 years, and have witnessed a shift in terms of how colleges and universities create points of interaction with parents. So when I was a young professional, we often worked with the approach of we welcome parents to campus for move in day. We vaguely offered what was commonly now called parent orientation, had a service, and then we welcomed them back for five, six years later for commencement depending on how long it took the young person to travel through.
Then we moved to having parent councils, which were well-meaning parents who’ve walked this path, who served as oftentimes, you know, wise guides but perhaps also ombudsmans between the university and parents.
And now on a growing number of campuses, we have offices of parent relations. As you look at, you know, these and other sort of ways we’ve interacted with parents, is there a point in time or a way that you think we’ve found where we’ve met their needs well, but we’ve also, as educators met our needs and their students’ needs well?
Todd Martin: Yeah, I think it’s an interesting question. I think it’s a difficult question. I think universities’ responses are always contextualized to the history that it finds itself in. And so when you, when you talk about changes over the last 30 years, well social contexts have changed around parenting, around parenting strategies, around you know, parenting goals.
And, and certainly as you look at parenting, let’s say in the 1940s or the fifties or the sixties or the seventies, there, there’s, there’s a variety of, of different strategies and different approaches. Certainly the size of families I think is incredibly important in this. If you have, if you have six children, your ability to invest in those six children is going to be radically different than if you have one child, which is much more the case now. Uh, or even two children, you can invest a lot of, not only just economic resources, but time and energy and focus on those where again, in, in previous generations it was often, you know all the best. You know, write me, write, write me when you get there and, and tell me what it’s like. And maybe you come home once a year.
Or I, I often reflect on what a different experience it was for me to go to university. I don’t remember a single parent being there when I went to university uh, and now it is, it’s very much, as you say, very parent-centric. I think part of that is, is also related to the and I’m going to be kind of blunt here, the transactional nature of, of, of university where it has become very much an economic exchange, an economic transaction, and, and often parents are the ones who are economically investing. And certainly, it might be a combination between parents and students and financial aid.
And I’m not trying to make this monolithic, but when you think of particularly private Christian education and, and in Canada, private, uh, education is considerably more expensive than the more dominant public school education uh, mindset and institutional landscape here. And so to, to be able to pay three or four times what you might pay at a public institution is a significant investment and you’re investing both in, in the environment, but you’re also investing in a particular outcome that you want to see those children have.
So I think what I see, and I alluded to it earlier with the channeling hypothesis, is that parents, parents are increasingly investing longer and, and, and more robustly in their children, which can translate into, we talk about helicopter parenting, we talk about you know, I, I have parents in my office who come and, and will say, I have concerns about what’s going on in my either my children’s classes, the curriculum, maybe their dormitories, you know, a number of issues which historically, parents would’ve not been involved in. Um, and, and I don’t necessarily see that as a negative or a positive. It’s a reality.
And so when I said it’s a difficult question, I think that the better question is, as society changes, as and, and as parenting expectations and practices change is there any real significant mismatch between what parents are expecting and what we’re doing? Uh, because I think if, if we’re ships passing in the night, if we think parenting support doesn’t matter, but parents think it really does matter, then that’s where I think we are. We’re going to have more of a problem. If parents want to be intimately involved and obviously there’s developmental and there’s legal pieces here.
Uh, we didn’t get into it at length, but you know, Jeffrey Arnett’s a fairly well-known social psychologist on the elongation of young adulthood and, and the exploration of identity during that time period. I think parents are really wanting to, if I can use a, a, a track and field analogy, they’re, they’re wanting to pass that baton, but they’re not necessarily wanting to let go of it immediately in the exchange zone of that relay race.
And so, you know, this, this move from total dependence to interdependence to ultimately, all parents need their children to be independent because in a natural life course, parents would, would predecease their, their children. And so they’re, you know, they, they need to be ultimately independent, but it’s that interdependence area that can be quite enriching.
And so how I think can we invite parents into the university context in a way in which essentially ministers to their needs to care for their children well, but also not in a way that may negatively impact their children’s development. So it’s trying to find that balance between, you know, we want you to cheer your children on, we want you to be supportive, but we don’t want you to negatively impact, you know, their university and developmental experience as well.
Todd Ream: Thank you. I want to ask you now about your own development through your collegiate, your years, and then on into graduate school and the development of your own sense of vocation.
You earned a bachelor’s degree in theology from Ambassador College and then a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Wilfred Laurier University. Then, you earned a master’s in family studies and a PhD in sociology, both from the University of British Columbia.
At what point did you discern family studies would play a critical role in how you understood your vocation?
Todd Martin: Great question again, and, and these are all tied in together. And my experience graduating from high school in Southern Ontario, Canada I went to grade 13. At that time, you could go to grade 13 if you wanted to go to university, in Ontario. So I did that. I really didn’t know what I wanted to do. And, and I knew you know, I had a few opportunities, but I chose to go to a small liberal arts Christian institution in Southern California. Uh, there were some very good things about that school. There were some things that were not so good about that school, but they exposed me to some, you know, delving into the Bible. Um, I had some good theology, theology profs ultimately that school wasn’t accredited at the time. It became accredited, but then it dissolved and integrated into Azua Pacific University, so there was a wing there.
And it was in that first educational experience that I actually went into pastoral ministry and this is a piece that is an important part of the story. I went into pastoral ministry for, for 25 years and not necessarily because I felt vocationally called to ministry full-time ministry. I did feel called when I gave my life to Christ to say, okay, here I am Lord, right. I mean it, I’m going to say it all started with me turning my life over to Christ. And in that early season of pastoral ministry, like many young people I did a lot of youth ministry. And, and so you, you come to understand that, hey, I don’t know a whole lot uh, you know, a general B.A. even with a theological and biblical focus. Um, I didn’t know a whole lot about family. I didn’t know a lot about relationships, a lot about dynamics.
My own family of origin was, you know, fairly checkered to be polite and so here I am trying to figure out how do I be helpful? How do be true to the calling to want to be supportive?
And so I ended up finding out that Wilfrid Laurier, a good university in Ontario would take some of my credits. I went on then to do, I, you know, my choice was going to be between psychology and sociology. Um, I was always much more of an observer than I was, I think, from a good practitioner’s point of view, so sociology seemed a little safer, right?
And so I went and did my undergraduate degree at Wilfrid Laurier in sociology while I was working full-time. And I was fascinated with both sociology of religion and sociology of family. For those of who don’t know, those tend to be the, the, the lowest on the, on the status rung of sociology, which, for, for good reason, they’re not, they’re, they’re not overly popular. There’s not a lot of jobs in those areas. People don’t see them as, as, as overly relevant, but to me, they were incredibly relevant to what I was what I was doing, and that was in, in, in pastoral ministry.
So I think when you bring a deep desire to know what God is all about, and you have the ability to combine that with some tools to observe, not necessarily to prescribe or to endorse, but to observe patterns and behaviors in society I think it makes you better at whatever you do. And at that point in pastoral ministry, I think it made me a better pastor.
Todd Ream: Yeah, thank you.
In addition to publishing more than a dozen referee journal articles, you’re the co-author of as you echoed earlier, Families Across the Life Course, published by Pearson in 2012, and Family Systems published by Sage in 2014. Now for a detail I must admit that I somewhat covet, Family Systems is currently in its fifth edition, so it’s done very well.
But when you look back over the arc of your career as a family studies scholar, what question or questions were most important for you to pursue answers?
Todd Martin: Yeah, again, I think in family studies even in psychology and sociology in general, the social sciences, a lot of questions that academics later go on to ask and explore typically they have some relevance to their own life course, their own family of origin, their own experience. And, and I, I would say that I was highly influenced as a pastor to kind of retrench a little bit as, as a pastor with a, a couple volumes that came out while I was doing my degree in sociology.
One was by the then InterVarsity Press, academic lead Rodney Clapp. Uh, he, he wrote a book that was quite, quite influential on family not modern or, or contemporary, but, you know, kind of questioning a lot of the models that were out there from a biblical perspective. And I think it was it, it was quite, quite helpful. Family at the Crossroads was what it was called. And, you know, it’s sort of beyond the traditional modern options. And I found that wow. This caused you to move away from I’m right and you’re wrong kind of thinking to, let’s dig into this a little bit deeper.
Um, and another book I read around the same time was a book by the individual who followed Rodney Clapp into that role at InterVarsity Press. Uh Gary Deddo. And Gary Deddo wrote on his dissertation, later published it, Barth’s Theology of Relations. And, and it was subtitled, Trinitarian Christological, and Human, Toward an Ethic of the Family, so very, very influenced by Deddo and his deep theology.
And then I was also very, very influenced by Jack and Judith Balswick, who spent many years at Fuller Seminary. I think he was the sociologist and she was the social psychologist. And, and, and they’ve written some very good books, combining theology and, and family studies together. So I think what I was always interested in was the influence of religion on family and family behavior.
Um, you know, just sort of jump ahead a little bit, something that I’ve written recently was on theologically informed family theory. And so I’m combining these two things. It took me a little bit of a while in my journey to get there, but it was something that was quite quite important to me.
But I, as I said, I’ve always been interested in these links between family and, and religion. Uh, doctoral work, I was fascinated with union formation, fascinated with fertility choices and, and impact. Uh, I ultimately did a lot of research on non-marital cohabitation, and I was interested in how that influenced later relationship stability, particularly marital stability. Uh, because at that time, we’re living in a world where in Canada, less so in the United States, but in Europe it was the dominant pathway to people who got married.
And a lot of people don’t get married now, they just live together. But a lot of people would live together and then get married and thinking that this was a great strategy. And the research was showing this is not a great strategy. And, and certainly theologically I would say this is not a great strategy, but I think from a research point of view, like why is that, why is that the case? And so I delved into that in a lot more detail.
So and, and I think some of my later work, I was really intrigued with the definition of family, what is family and, and the reason that’s important is because this is a discipline that has a lot of interest outside of any sort of theological or religious roots. And so it has more social and ideological influences. And so what does it mean to be a family? And I, again, I’m fascinated with the fact that a lot of family research has varying definitions of what is a family and what constitutes a family. How do we count families? So that’s where my research has been.
Todd Ream: You served as a faculty member for a number of years, then you were appointed dean of the faculty of the humanities and social sciences, and then eventually, also provost at Trinity Western. And now you serve as president.
Can you talk about the discernment process that led you to embrace administrative roles and then eventually your willingness to embrace appointment as president?
Todd Martin: And again, this is probably not going to come across as a incredibly well thought out strategy and plan because I’m going to say it, it’s probably anything but that. I already mentioned I was in pastoral ministry for 25 years, not because, you know, I like to joke, it took me that long, it took that long for God to actually minister to me in that particular role before I could move on to, to, to do other things.
And, and, and obviously I’m not a, you know, 110 years old because I overlapped and did a lot of things concurrently and so one of the privileges I had was to teach at a large public school for 15 years, this same material family studies material in a, in a secular context, while concurrently doing it in a a faith-based context. And that was always quite encouraging to use the same material, same textbook that I was involved in, in writing, but how do you contextualize this for the different audiences? So that was always quite, quite helpful for me.
So I came in as a faculty member here at Trinity Western University and part-time, sessional, full-time, I worked as an assistant dean and then dean and then an interim provost, provost, interim president, and now president. And all of those, the short answer has been, as I alluded to earlier, gave my life to Christ at, at 22 years old. Uh, wrestled with him for a while wanting to sit in on the fence, wanting the best of sort of a the both worlds. Uh, you know, I always knew God was, was, was real. And He had a very tremendous influence on my my life. But eventually it got to the point where He pressed upon me and said, well, you got to make a choice. You can’t keep trying to straddle the fence. And so at that point I just said, okay, here I am, whatever you want.
And since then, I’d like to say I’m along, this is going to sound trite, but I’m along for the ride very much a participatory theology in which God is sovereign, God is in charge. Um, and when it comes to vocation the vocation is the call from God to follow Him and, and to be led by Him. And, I really said, use me as you see fit and my entire life, I was always, you know, taking more education. There’s a one piece there that I also did in between my undergraduate degrees and my graduate degrees, is I, I spent a year at seminary.
And it was while I was at seminary that I took a course on pastoral families by a very well-known evangelical instructor and scholar who did a lot of work at a public university, but on pastoral families, particularly evangelical pastoral families. And he was the one who encouraged me to go on and do my master’s in family studies because of my interest in it.
So it’s a bit of a joke now because um, I’m the president of that seminary but I never finished, so, I’m trying to see if maybe they’ll take credit for some of my life experience and see if I can finish that degree.
But I’ve said yes to opportunities along the way. I’ve constantly said, here I am, Lord, use me. Do what You see fit. And when, when opportunities have been presented to me, I typically say yes. And, and in that, I discern, am I making any positive impact? Because if I am, great, if not, I’m totally fine going back to do whatever I was doing or I was making an impact. So I’ve stayed active, I’ve stayed busy and trying to be good at what I’ve been doing, but I’m under no false pretense that my life has been anything but God’s goodness and God’s grace and, and, and by God’s design.
And I take that same approach here, this was never on my radar. This was never something that I would’ve ever conceived in my wildest dreams. And probably anybody who knew me when I was in high school along the way, probably would’ve agreed with me on that point. But here I am. And while I’m here doing this I want to do it in a God-honoring way to the best of my ability.
Todd Ream: Yeah, thank you.
Would you describe, if it’s even possible, what responsibilities command your attention on any given day or realizing the job that you have, it goes well into the night sometimes. And of those responsibilities from which ones do you generally, you know, derive the greatest joy?
Todd Martin: Yeah, it’s a good question. People ask me on a regular basis do you like your job? Do you like what you’re doing? And because I’m a family sociologist and I look back, I love the historical context at agrarian times and, and, and, and even early Industrial Revolution times where most of the time when you would ask somebody, do enjoy your job, the typical response would be, well, I didn’t know I had a choice. I didn’t know I had a choice, right? Uh, I’m, I’m trying to feed my family. I’m trying to survive. I’m trying to find out where the next meal is, keep roof over my head and, and hopefully have some clothes on, on, on myself and my children.
Uh, you know, we live in a time and an age where sometimes we think, oh I need to love my job or else I’m not in the will of God, right? And, and again, I think that, that is, is again a kind of interesting approach. But yeah, obviously I love my job. I love my job, but I’ve loved every job that I’ve done. Um, and I’ve tried to apply myself along the way.
Uh, what I particularly enjoy about this job is I would say the thing that’s intrigued me and, and, and woven as a thread throughout the different roles I’ve fulfilled over the years is I like to solve problems. I like to be a problem solver and, and so I like to assess what’s working, what’s not working, how can, how could we maybe restructure the pieces in a way that allows whatever problem it is to be solved, I, I like to joke, I love getting organized. I just don’t like being organized. I spend a lot of time trying to figure out, okay, what does it look like organizationally? And then I look for something else to organize or to, or, or to structure. Um, and so that, you know, I think is what I love about the job.
I’m, I’m reflecting back because I don’t want to diminish the call of God in discerning how I ended up in the role. Uh, it was, you know, there was people who were supportive and, and you’re trying to assess you know, am I, am I able to make any you know, impact? And I think I wouldn’t have taken the role even in some sort of chronologically limited way to say I didn’t think I had something to offer. Uh, and, you know, discerning this in prayer my, my wife’s support was probably the most crucial in, in moving forward and, you know, my family support.
So all of those things I think are critical in making the decision worthwhile to believe that this is something that God would want to support and endorse and and, you know, give me support throughout.
Todd Ream: Thank you. Trinity Western’s main campus is in Langley, British Columbia. As the president, what’s your greatest hope for the university in particular, in relation to the students it serves, but also the external constituents that it serves?
Todd Martin: Well, Trinity is located in one of the most beautiful places in the world. And yesterday it was sunny and it was about 14 degrees Celsius for our European listeners. Uh, you know, about 58 degrees Fahrenheit for our, our American listeners. And I had just flown back from Chicago where it was quite a bit, quite a bit browner and you know, quite a bit saltier and grittier and et cetera. And certainly much of Canada is cold and lots of snow. But this is a very beautiful place. It’s green, it’s slush. The flowers are starting to sprout uh, on a sunny day you see the snow cap mountains. It’s quite beautiful.
So I think that lends itself to an appreciation for the grandeur of God and creation and His creative capacity. So that, I think is an easy connection to that. I think from a theological point of view, Trinity has a very humble pietistic origins. Um, it was founded by the Evangelical Free Church of America which wasn’t known for their academic prowess, although it planted Trinity International University, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. I mean, there’s a lot of amazing things that did, although it came from very humble background.
And, and I think we understand that we are who we are by God’s good graces. And, and I like to say often in spite of ourselves, right? Uh, that we’re, we have a beautiful campus in a beautiful part of the world. And we don’t take it for granted that we don’t deserve this, but it’s something that allows us to minister to not only in Canada, but now increasingly in the United States and around the world.
Todd Ream: Yeah. Thank you.
As our time begins to become short, I want to ask you now about your sense of the academic vocation, especially drawing from someone who started as a faculty member, served as an academic administrator, and now serves as president. How have you come to understand it and perhaps even define this vocation?
Todd Martin: I’m a big fan of the term vocation, right. Uh, and, and I, you know, whether you go back to Luther or, or, or whether you look at some more modern adaptations of it, when I was provost, we developed a framework called A Faculty Vocational Career Guide. And it was really, how do we help faculty who come in often new, fresh out of the academy their PhD training, and what does it mean to be in academics. And, and in our institution we’re we, we value high quality teaching, but we also value high quality research. And we also know that we need we need high quality administrators administrators.
And, and the last thing we want is to sort of say, you know again, again, I, I joke, how, how did you become president? I, well, I wasn’t paying attention when everybody looked the other way, right. And there I was. Well, the, that you don’t want, oh, it’s my turn to be the in, in administration because that doesn’t lend itself to the kind of leadership that you want. And so we try and help our faculty early on, be successful in their early years, moving towards tenure and, and promotion.
But, but we also want them to begin to discern, you know, where do I fit into the academy? Do I want to be just a pedagogical expert, right? Do I want to be just known for my lectures and my presentations and the creative nature of my courses? Or do I want to be a, you know, outstanding a highly published researcher, with lots of grants and being able to focus more time on that.
Or, and, you know, this often is foreign to them, because as, as I was joking with you before we started, I just returned from a conference that you and I were both at and it was a faculty esteemed, highly published faculty member speaking to a bunch of administrators, concluded his presentation by starting off his prayer and said, thank God I am not an administrator. But thank you to all of you who are, and, and sometimes in the faculty, we, we think, you know, oh, not, not the dark side. I want to go over to administration, but we need administrators who understand the academy.
And I think not that every university president has to come through the faculty, but certainly that’s one of the main ways in which individuals come into this role. And I think it provides a lot of value where faculty know that, you know you know, sort of who they are and, and, and what they’re, what they’re dealing with. So, so from that point of view you’re, you’re, you’re really trying to see vocation as where can I use the gifts and the talents and the experiences in a way that help others to flourish? And so that would, you know, be the litmus test I would use around this concept of vocation and not pigeonhole yourself or back yourself into a corner to say if I’m not this in, in five years, I’m a failure.
I’m going to share another example, and I know we’re short on time, but I, you know, I, I look back on my own trajectory. I was a faculty member here and, and I had a new dean who invested in me and said, “Hey, would you be an assistant, would you apply for this role of assistant dean? I need help in finances.” I had background in that and, and I said, yes, one of these sort of situations where I said, yes, I’ll do that.
After his second year, he realized he really didn’t like administration. He really loved research and he said, look it, I want you to know, I’m going to be putting in my notice that I’m not going to be dean anymore. I’ve already talked to the provost. He says, but I think you would be a good dean. So consider applying for it. And, and, I, I said, you know, thank you. It wasn’t ever on my radar, but I will. I’ll, I’ll apply for it. I, I, I got the role.
He has gone on to be an outstanding, world class researcher, seven figure grants and is really living the fullness of his call from God. I’m grateful that he saw that early on and made a choice to say, administration’s not for me. Uh, and, and those are the kinds of, I think, important decisions that God is involved in our vocational journeys.
Todd Ream: Yeah, thank you. The virtues then one needs to succeed and to flourish in terms of the academic vocation, as you’ve come to understand it. Would you offer a couple of those, but then also, what vices do we need to be prepared to confront as we follow this path in terms of our vocation?
Todd Martin: I, I think the fruits of the spirit would, would certainly come to mind. Uh, Galatians 5. You know, this idea certainly of long suffering of, of patience. I like to think of sort of resting in Christ from a theological point of view, that there is peace in Christ. Um, the academy can be a very anxiety inducing environment, right. Am I, am I good enough? Am I advancing soon enough? Or, you know, am I publishing enough, and I see everybody getting awards all the time, but what about me? It’s very, you know, hierarchical and there’s a lot of meritocracy to it.
And and, and you know, we can talk about, oh, you know, we’re all in this together, but it is, it is very competitive. And that can be anxiety inducing. Be who you are, rest in Christ, allow Him to guide you and to lead you and to participate in His redemptive work. I think you know, that would be my sort of high level virtue that I would pass on.
I think from a family scholar point of view the vice in, in family scholarship is, I think, and, and, and all I’m doing here is as I’m applying what I would describe as a general concern of human nature and applying it to the discipline. I think you could take this same idea and apply it to any disciplines, but in family studies it’s very, very easy to try and create the ideal family in our own image.
And so when we, when we think about whether we’re talking about philosophy or business or any other discipline that you have in the university we tend to say, well, we’re doing it the right way. Well, the thing about family scholarship is everybody has extensive field work, right. Everybody has a family. Everybody’s experienced a family. They might not have their own family of origin, but they come from a family of origin. They can have a family of procreation.
And so we all have a lot of field work and a lot of experience, and whether that be I’m going to react to my experience or I’m going to idealize my experience, I think that can really creep into your research. And, and you can, you can find exactly what you’re looking for, which is not good scholarship and it’s not good research and you’re not really contributing to the academy in any shape or form. And so to be able to not worship not only your own family, but maybe what you believe to be the family.
And family scholarship has this problem as well. It’s historically been embedded in time and place. And, and it has been highly influenced by what some might describe as, oh, well, this is the right kind of family structure. I’m going to argue that might be the right kind of family structure at that time and in that place, and with that socioeconomic status and with that privilege and with that, you know, opportunity. But, you know, you’ve got to be very careful that you’re not generalizing your experience and saying anybody who’s doing it differently, and I’m not talking about biblical directives and theological clarity here, but I’m, I’m talking about well you know, anything from worshiping you know, the nuclear family and saying, oh, this is the, the right way.
Well, you know, I mean, you look through a biblical narrative and say, that’s probably not anywhere even in Scripture. Now, that doesn’t mean it’s not good and it’s not right for a 20th or a 21st century mobile society. But, you know, I’ll take an extended family living arrangement any day. I’ll take multiple families in one household, living and caring for and supporting one another any day. Even those are not typically Western ideas and values. So I think the vice is like any other discipline, to create it in our own image. And you know, humanity has a little bit of a history of wanting to do that.
Todd Ream: Yeah. Thank you. For our final question then today, I want to ask in what ways can the Church be supportive of efforts made by family studies scholars, but also can family studies scholars be more supportive of the Church?
Todd Martin: Yeah. And, and again, I’ll speak of this in a Christian context. Uh, I think as I alluded to just above, family research can, can be very personal, right. I think you could argue that a lot of people go into the therapeutic side of family research, whether that be counseling at the individual level or at the family level. Uh, you know, family studies tends to be more at the academic level and is looking at a research point, not necessarily in an interventionist perspective, although there certainly is some overlap between the two.
But many research questions often stem from personal experiences, I think. People have varied experiences. I think people need support. I think the Church can really be of value if it’s able to take a small step back and say there isn’t just one right way to do this. And again, I’m going to say there are wrong ways to do it, but that’s not the nature of this discussion.
But there’s not just one right way to do it. We also live in a world of brokenness and, and so what, we can, we can sometimes have a lot of pressure to conform about what the right family, how it should behave and, and how it should look and how it should function. And I think if the Church can have some grace, this is where the Rodney Clapp book really in influenced me early on. Um, even, for example, what does it mean to be single? Um, what does it mean to be, and, and I think this is an area we don’t talk a lot about, what about involuntary childlessness? This is, this has got to be one of the hardest things that people in the Church don’t want to talk about and people don’t want to talk about because we know that children are a blessing from the Lord.
And I don’t, I have a very strong theological view of why the family is important and how God reveals Himself in familial terms. And, and even how God reveals Himself as a Father and a Son, and then, and then the Spirit. Not necessarily, I mean, if evangelicals had their way, it would’ve been Father, Son and Mother, right? That’s the intact family. But you’re kind of know, doing some things with us there and stretching with us. And, and even the familial language about brothers and sisters in Christ and the wedding supper. I mean, he uses familial language throughout the prodigal son. I mean, you know, where I’m going with all of this.
But, but, but I think if the Church was, was able to step back and say, what does it mean to minister to people whose families may not necessarily fit this ideal type or this ideal phase or this ideal stage, I think the Church has become better at ministering to divorce because it’s become so prevalent. I think we can be better around issues of cohabitation. I think we can be better around issues of, as I said involuntary childlessness. I could talk about voluntary childlessness, but that’s again, another topic. And even, you know, caring for our, our, our elderly better than we do and so I think that, I think that the Church could be better there.
I think family studies scholars can, can help in showing different outcomes and, and, and different expectations that the Church can, can benefit from. Um, but I think the Church can help family studies scholars have guardrails around what relational flourishing really looks like from a biblical perspective. Um, because if we’re not careful, we can buy into ideologies and beliefs that the world says, well, these are just as good as anything else, and I’m going to disagree. I’m going to say, well, no.
And, and the reason I’m going to disagree, and, and I mean, you could, you could say, well, let’s look at the research. I mean, cohabitation will show you if you live together before you get married, you have higher divorce rates, okay. Um, I don’t believe that cohabitation is wrong just because that’s what the data says. I believe it’s wrong because that’s what God says. And, and, and so we have to be careful that we don’t worship the social science data, but that ultimately, God is still sovereign and, and God is in charge. And, and when God talks about what relational flourishing looks like, whether it be from the Garden of Eden or whether it be from Christ’s own words or whether it be in Paul’s writings, we have to believe that, okay, this is what God is saying about what flourishing looks like.
Um, and we can, we can observe and we can study what’s going on out there? I often say that sociology is very descriptive in what’s happening in the world, but a biblical theology is prescriptive or pro-scriptive, telling us this is what it should look like. In our brokenness, it’s obviously often in between, we have to be careful that we don’t worship social science. And I think that’s where the Church can help us in that.
Todd Ream: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much.
Our guest has been Todd Martin, President of Trinity Western University. Thank you for taking the time to share your insights and wisdom with us.
Todd Martin: Thank you very much, Todd. Appreciate it.
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Todd Ream: Thank you for joining us for Saturdays at Seven, Christian Scholar’s Review’s conversation series with thought leaders about the academic vocation and the relationship that vocation shares with the Church. We invite you to join us again next week for Saturdays at Seven.
