Committed Colleagues: Rebecca Poe Hays & Kimlyn J. Bender
Each year, Baylor University recognizes the best all-around professors with the Outstanding Faculty Awards. Faculty from across every college on campus nominate peers based on teaching capabilities, research achievements, effective committee service, time spent with students, and civic and church involvement.
In 2023, two professors from Truett Seminary were recognized–Rebecca Poe Hays, PhD, assistant professor of Christian Scriptures, for teaching, and Kimlyn J. Bender, PhD, professor of Christian Theology and holder of the Foy Valentine Chair in Christian Theology and Ethics, for scholarship.
Get to know Rebecca Poe Hays
Q: How did you find yourself at Truett Seminary?
“At the heart of my faith and my sense of call to vocational ministry is Christian Scripture. Through Scripture we learn who God is, who we are, and what it looks like to love God and neighbor. I’m the daughter of two Baptist ministers, the wife of a Baptist minister, and I’m a Baptist minister myself. I grew up in the midst of the controversy and division within the Southern Baptist Convention, so from a pretty young age I found myself having to work through some of these issues of biblical interpretation (does the Bible say women can preach and pastor?) and basic theology (what are the primary issues? How much do we have to agree to cooperate in ministry? Why does God keep using a human church when we are so contentious and divisive?). I’ve since served in a wide range of Baptist contexts—megachurch, small rural, SBC, CBF, parachurch—which has also given me opportunities to work through my faith and these questions for myself.
I have found that the Bible is so amazing and so complicated, and it’s so important for the church to read and apply well. Knowing that, I pursued a PhD in biblical studies so that I would be more equipped to read and apply Scripture and to teach others to do so also. That’s been the through-line in my ministry—the sense that God has called me to teach others to minister more faithfully, and I think that largely begins with teaching others to read the Bible well. I was never sure what that would look like, and it has certainly changed from one life season to the next (pastoring, curriculum writing, teaching), but I’m grateful now to be doing it as a professor at Truett.”
Q: What do you bring to the classroom from your background in ministry, and how does that work influence your teaching style?
“One very concrete example comes directly from a stint I did as a children’s pastor. Definitely the hardest ministry job I’ve ever had! Children are so curious and so insightful. They often ask the questions we are afraid to ask or are too familiar with the “right” answers to think to ask. We have to be incredibly thoughtful as we answer children’s questions—using words that mean something and analogies that are helpful. We have to think about the implications of what we say and try not to teach things that they’ll need to un-learn later in life. All that is really hard. How do you explain to a four-year-old, who has just learned that Jesus is God’s son, why Joseph on his Christmas coloring sheet isn’t God? What do you say to him when he asks you why God created jellyfish?
All that to say, every student who takes my Christian Scriptures 2 class gives a children’s sermon on one of the biblical books we study. It has to be short so the kids don’t run wild, it has to be comprehensible to elementary age kids, and it has to be faithful to the text. Not an easy task, especially for those students who pick Nahum or Song of Songs! But I do think we will be better pastors if we can explain things at that level. We should do more of that—even when teaching adults. And we all need to give way more credit to our children’s pastors.”
Q: Why is it important for students to have women professors at Truett Seminary?
“Our voices (women’s voices) are part of the church. We are at least half of those whom God has commanded to teach and make disciples. Women also have different life experiences that sometimes prompt us to see the biblical text and the life of faith in distinct ways—not better ways than men, but distinct, and we do sound different than men sometimes. Our pitch is different, our styles can be really different, and that can be jarring for people if they haven’t been exposed to it before. I have lots of students who have never heard a woman teach the Bible before—much less preach.
It’s important for me to model being a faithful Christian, minister, and teacher of the Bible who happens to be a woman. My mother, who has also been a Baptist pastor and is now a social work professor, preached at my ordination. Her charge to me then was the charge she’s been giving me all my life: “Keep your eyes on Jesus.” The second my ministry becomes more about being a woman than about being a servant of God, I need to step back. So, I am going to encourage and advocate hard for women to be able to preach and teach, but I want to encourage and advocate for them to preach and teach God—not their gender.”
Q: What research interests you and why?
“My biggest interest has to do with stories and the really powerful ways they shape our beliefs and behaviors. So much of the Bible is made up of stories. My first book is all about how the song-stories in Psalms work. My current research on trauma healing and resilience is really all about how learning to tell stories and see ourselves as part of a larger story promotes this kind of healing and resilience-building.
Broadening out a little bit, I am interested in studying stories because they don’t (or mostly don’t) give you a straightforward resolution: “therefore go and do this” or “and the moral of the story is this.” They are an important place for learning how to listen to what God might be saying when God’s not giving commandments. This helps us read most of the Bible, because most of the Bible is not straightforward commandments.”
Q:How do you balance your role as a teacher with your research?
“I could give you nuts and bolts answers about how I divide my time, but really for me, my teaching role and my researcher role are always feeding into each other. My teaching gives me insights into my research, and my research gives me insights into my teaching. The voices of students and colleagues are a big part of this symbiotic relationship. I like to say that one of God’s first statements about humanity is that it’s not good for us to be alone, and that applies to reading the Bible, too! I think I read the Bible better when I read it with others.
As my pastor-husband and I have processed through the changes to our family with the addition of children and full-time jobs, one of the things we’ve come to realize for ourselves is that the “work-life balance” model isn’t the best analogy. That analogy implies that one of those things is always losing out if you’re giving time to the other. And in some cases, that’s what happens. But in our lives—as two vocational ministers—we are seeing more and more our roles as spouses, parents, and ministers are all mutually enriching. I’m a better researcher because of the teaching I do, and I’m a better teacher because of the mothering I do, and Josh is a better pastor because of being my husband, and so forth. So, I try to think about my life and calling very holistically rather than as having different compartments between which I need to divide my time.”
Get to know Kimlyn J. Bender
Q: How did you find yourself at Truett Seminary?
“I came to teach at Truett Seminary in 2012 having previously taught for over a decade at the University of Sioux Falls, a private Baptist university in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. I also served for part of my time there as Senior Pastor of Oak Hills Baptist Church. I have also served as a pastor and interim pastor in churches in California, New Jersey, North Dakota, and Texas.”
Q: What do you bring to the classroom from your background, and how does that work influence your teaching style?
“I suppose there are a few things of special importance in terms of background. First, there is my sense of God’s call upon my life and the conviction that teaching is a vocation in service to the Church. Second, I was deeply shaped by my background growing up on a farm and by my family and the rural church I attended. I also had the privilege of a truly wonderful education – I benefitted from excellent teachers all along the way from my college years, through seminary, and into my PhD program. I was fortunate to know that I wanted to teach in some theological area from my first semester of college, so my entire educational experience was directed toward this goal by majoring in religion-philosophy and history as an undergraduate. The most influential teachers I have had have shaped my teaching style which is based upon rigor in research outside the classroom and dialogue within it, with special attention to illustrations and to using just the right story at just the right time (some of my former teachers were masters of this). Lastly, as a pastor I bring a desire to communicate how theology both reflects and speaks into the life of the church and to show why theological reflection is unavoidable and necessary for faithful Christian service in our churches and world today.
In terms of style, I love Truett’s seminar format and the ability to read Scripture and theology with bright students and discuss them together. I try to allow the beauty and power of the subject matter to come through and help students to encounter it. I suppose another way to say this is that I always attempt to approach the theology we are reading with deference and openness to what it might teach us and speak into our current lives, and I always attempt to approach the students with a respect for their own call, desire, and ability to learn. I see them as persons created in the image of God, persons for whom Christ died, persons equipped by the Spirit for service in the church and the world.”
Q: What research interests you and why?
“One of the difficulties I have had in my career from the start is that I am interested in a lot of things. Graduate school forces you to narrow your focus, and I did that and became a scholar of modern theology–especially the theology of the past two centuries. I wrote my dissertation on the ecclesiology of Karl Barth, a Swiss Protestant theologian of the mid-twentieth century. So, I publish primarily in modern theology and in Barth studies. I also have a strong interest in ecclesiology, which is the doctrine of the church. I appreciate the fact that at Truett I am able to take up publishing projects in different areas. One of my most recent projects was writing a theological commentary on 1 Corinthians published in the Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible series.”
Q: Why is it important to incorporate your personal research into teaching, and how do you do that?
“I often tell my students that when they finish their seminary degree, they are not done being students. This must be true because most of us as pastors are not brilliant enough to write sermons over time with no input from others, and such on-going learning is important not only for pastors but for all persons in ministry of any kind. When I was a pastor, my wife once said she knew what would come out in the sermon on Sunday by looking at the stack of books on my nightstand, and she was not wrong.
The same is true for teaching. I must be a learner if I am to be a teacher. In this way, my research informs and shows up in my teaching. Most of the time this is incorporated indirectly, such that my research comes out in commentary and background material I might provide for the reading of the day. Sometimes it is directly incorporated, as when on occasion I have students read things that I have published.”
Q: How do you balance your role as a teacher with your research?
“While the current academic context in this country places pressure upon scholars to prioritize research ahead of teaching, I have never forgotten that the greatest impact my teachers in college, in seminary, and in graduate school had upon me was not their truly excellent published scholarship but their classroom teaching. It was the classroom more than their books that ultimately set my course for my vocation in theology and academia. For this reason, I try to do solid research but equally want to excel as a teacher.”