The BibleMesh Institute welcomes Dennis Greeson as its new Dean. For the past five years, he has worked with BibleMesh in various capacities, including curriculum and course development, administration, and teaching. As Dean, he will lead the BibleMesh Institute in pursuing its next phase of development. We are pleased to present this Q&A to help you get to know Dennis.
Q: Tell us about you – where you’re from, what family you have, and what you enjoy doing outside of theological education.
I am originally from Texas, though I was raised in South Asia, and currently live in North Carolina with my wife and three small children. When not working or researching, I’m often training for cycling races, running, or working in my garage-turned-woodshop. I also enjoy hiking and shooting landscape photography.
Q: Tell us about your upbringing and how you came to faith.
I was raised by missionary parents, from whom I learned the core tenets of the gospel and the importance of participating in God’s mission in the world. However, it was not until my teenage years, in boarding school and away from my family, that I came to embrace the Christian faith as definitely my own. Though I had come to be converted while still young, it was not until that time that I came to know more fully the implications of knowing Christ as King.
Q: Can you give us a sense of your calling to ministry and detail your academic pathway?
My growth and formation in the Christian faith has always reinforced a sense of calling to directly participate in God’s mission in the world, though I’ve not always known what that might hold. Initially, my wife and I felt called to serve as missionaries, and so we enrolled in seminary to pursue further training for that type of ministry.
However, while in seminary, I caught a vision for God’s mission through shaping and teaching others to know him deeply and to think well about life through theological education. I therefore enrolled in a doctoral program to prepare for teaching and writing, and along the way discovered a love for academic administration. I now see clearly that the Lord has been leading me into impacting the growth of his kingdom through teaching the faith to others and training them to think well after him through my research and writing, as well as leadership, especially in the BibleMesh Institute.
Q: What are your particular theological research interests?
I’m captivated by the question of how our Christian faith informs the way we inhabit life in the midst of various societies and cultures. This has led me to spend much of my time considering the doctrine of creation—what God has created this world and humanity for—and how this relates to our theology of culture and social ethics.
I’m particularly interested in the contribution made to this area by nineteenth century Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper, and the Dutch neo-Calvinists who were influenced by him.
I wrote my dissertation on Kuyper’s socio-cultural ethic and philosophy of history, and have published essays and book chapters on Kuyper, Herman Bavinck, and Klaas Schilder. I’m currently co-authoring a book on the theology of culture, due to release in 2023.
Q: Broadly, what does the BibleMesh Institute offer students?
The BibleMesh Institute offers students an entry into theological education that capitalizes on the best that virtual learning has to offer, while pairing students with live professors to guide them in their studies. We offer a flexible and affordable model that lets students study on their own time, from anywhere in the world, at a price lower than many traditional programs. Additionally, our programs are anchored firmly in the Great Tradition of Christianity, with a firm commitment to the inerrancy and authority of Scripture, with a focus on how their studies are directly applicable to preparation for ministry. Through the quality of our courses and our many institutional partnerships, the BibleMesh Institute also provides pathways to accredited degrees from trusted schools.
Q: What have been the most encouraging moments during your time so far?
I’m thrilled to be on the frontline of training students who are either currently serving or are preparing to serve as ministers of the gospel in the least reached parts of the world. Especially exciting for me is showing students how the Christian faith, handed down to us from the apostles through the ages of church history, is directly relevant for preaching the gospel, planting churches, and learning to live as Christians in a world that does not know Christ.
Q: What is your vision as Dean for The BibleMesh Institute?
The BibleMesh Institute has always been a place for people to get started in their lifelong journey into theological education. My vision is that as we continue to serve students at the beginning of this journey, we also become a place where we shape experienced leaders and rising scholars for service to the Great Commission and faithfulness to the Great Commandment. I desire to see the BibleMesh Institute fill a gap between the pews of the church and halls of the academy, offering creative ways to study the basics of the faith as well as contribute to the current conversations in scholarship.
Q: What do you see as some of the challenges/issues with theological education, particularly online?
The spring of 2020 witnessed the world of theological education coming online in ways never before witnessed. Though BibleMesh has long embraced the possibilities of virtual learning, we’ve become all the more aware of its challenges and liabilities as well. Many of those challenges are technological: as embodied creatures, we’re designed by God to learn with and from each other face-to-face. There are many good and necessary dynamics of this that online education cannot replicate. This is always at the forefront of my mind as I shape curriculum, delivery models, and program design, and I desire to engage in online theological education with firm convictions about what it means to live in God’s physical creation made in his image.
However, I do think there are ways that we can study together and learn from the historic Christian faith that take advantage of the technological developments afforded to us today. By creatively using the way the internet allows us to transcend time and place together, I believe we can meet specific training needs for individuals and organizations that can sharpen their effectiveness for ministry. In doing this, we can also reimagine the format, costs, and timeline for engaging in theological education, which may offer on-ramps to students from around the world that they may not have had access to otherwise.
Q: Finally, what are you most excited about in the field of theological education generally?
I consider myself to be within and shaped by the Protestant evangelical tradition, which for most of its short history has had a troubling relationship with the broader history and tradition of the Christian faith. Many evangelicals were taught that all one needs for discipleship and faithfulness to God’s calling is to be alone with their Bible and a heart open to hearing from God.
While these are essential to knowing God as he has revealed himself, this approach lacks a certain wisdom that comes from desiring to learn from those who have gone before and to inherit the richness of their legacies while avoiding the folly of their shortcomings.
I’m excited that there is a new current in evangelical theological education to introduce students to the Great Tradition, and to be about the work of theological retrieval in order to contextualize wisdom from the past for today. The BibleMesh Institute was begun with this orientation to the past and to Christians from other cultures as one of our defining priorities.
For most of my life I have been immersed in cultures different from my own, which has led me to see the world in new perspectives I could not have seen otherwise. Living with those who think or value things differently from your own worldview forms you to inhabit life with an openness to learning from others and to think critically about your own habits and convictions. I am excited to lead the BibleMesh Institute to intentionally lean into this way of inhabiting life in God’s world, as this provides an approach to theological education that is much more robust and deeply rooted in God’s Word and prepared to meet the complex realities of life in the world.