Weekly Email: April 20, 2026

Weekly Email

Apr 20

We are now in Week 3 of the Spring 2 term. I hope your rhythm is settling in and you're finding your stride with your courses. This week I want to share something that's been on my mind after our Preview Day this past Friday, along with a great resource from our Jenkins Center that I want to make sure is on your radar.

In this email:

Student Tip: It's Not About Your Ability
Program News: Engaging Muslim Neighbors with the Jenkins Center

Student Tip: It's Not About Your Ability

This past Friday, we welcomed almost 150 people to Southern's campus for our spring Preview Day. It's always one of the highlights of the year, getting to meet so many incoming students. We also got to meet several of you who are currently in our online programs and just wanted to come to campus, see the place, and meet some professors face to face.

One of the things I get to do during Preview Day is a breakout session for people interested in the online program. If you've been in one, you've heard me talk about what makes a successful online student. A lot of what I share there is the same stuff I write to you about week after week.

Over the last month or so, I've been doing some research into our master's students. I've been pulling together enrollment data, demographic information like age, GPA, even how many assignments students missed or turned in late. The whole gamut. I wanted to put it all together and see what actually separates the students who finish from the ones who don't.

The answer wasn't what you might expect. It wasn't GPA. Not the grades they were getting. Not their age. Two things stood out. First, how many hours they took in their first year. Students who took 13 or more hours in year one were in the highest category for graduation. Second, and even more important, was persistence. Students who took classes consistently, with either no breaks or only minor breaks like a single semester off, were the ones most likely to finish.

Even when I controlled for age, grades, and GPA, those never came back as significant. Persistence did.

If you're taking fewer classes per year, or if you've had longer gaps between terms, it doesn't mean you can't graduate. Plenty of students in that group still finish. Honestly, the odds are stacked a little more against you because spreading the program out over more years means you have to keep up your momentum over a much longer stretch. Which means persistence matters even more for you. Not less.

One more thing for those of you who have stepped away from the program and are wondering if it's worth coming back. The length of time you've been gone doesn't really matter. What matters is the decision to come back. In the data, students who returned after a long gap graduated at essentially the same rate as students who only took a single semester off. Coming back is what matters.

So there's good news and there's bad news. The good news is that you can do it. I've known this from the start. Finishing your master's is not about some special ability you inherit, or being the fastest reader, or being the best writer, or any of the other things we tend to measure ourselves against. The bad news is that it's hard work. It's about whether you can keep showing up over a long period of time.

This is part of the reason I keep telling you that grades don't matter the way you think they do. They don't. Not for those who are finishing. What matters is consistency.

So take this as an encouragement. The master's program you're working on isn't about your ability. It's about doing the hard work, not taking shortcuts, and staying in it. A lot of life is like that.

Program News: Engaging Muslim Neighbors with the Jenkins Center

I want to share a recording that Dr. Ayman Ibrahim and the Jenkins Center put out from an event called "Answering Muslim Objections to Christianity: Real Life Testimonies and Apologetics." I also just want to highlight the work of the Jenkins Center more broadly. They are consistently holding events and prayer gatherings, and they do a lot of good work here on campus. It's worth following along, especially if Muslim ministry is part of your context.

For this event, the focus was on how to think critically and biblically about being faithful witnesses to our Muslim neighbors and speaking the truth in love. Topics included the credibility of the Bible, the divinity of Christ, and issues involved in ministering to Muslim women. The conversation also covered real-life experiences of engaging Muslims, practical lessons learned, and testimonies from actual Christian-Muslim apologetics conversations.

Watch the full recording