Turning Point Education Prep Year Commencement Address
The Firestone Files: Letters to My Grandchildren — Dr. Chris L. Firestone
May 25, 2026 · Episode 41 · 41:52
https://drchrisfirestone.com/episode/turning-point-education-prep-year-commencement-address/

Transcript is auto-generated from YouTube captions and lightly formatted; it may contain errors.

Hi everyone, Dr. Chris Firestone here with the Firestone files. I have a special episode for you, my commencement address for the first iteration of Turning Point Education prep year. That's coming at you today on the Firestone files. All right. Well, I am so sorry that I could not be with you guys in person today. Life is sometimes mysterious in this way. We think we know the direction that things will take, and then something unexpected happens and you're set on a different pathway. An unexpected journey, a direction you did not anticipate, but that you have strangely been preparing for your whole life. It all began on Labor Day 2025.

I arrived, the staff arrived, you arrived, your parents arrived, and everything was perfectly placed as we had come to envision it over the course of the last 3 years. 10 days later, a storm would strike. Our worlds would be turned upside down, and the journey was only just beginning. This is my graduation address to the students of prep year. I did not recruit you directly, but I was instrumental in developing the idea that attracted you, and I was there with you for the first half of the journey. I want to tell that story from my perspective with as much truth, goodness, and beauty as I can muster in light of all that has happened.

This is my story told from my role in the development, direction, and execution of prep year. Your stories are nested within it, and if I am successful in capturing some of its highs and lows, and the emotional depth that we all experienced together, then my tribute will be complete. I hope by now you know just how much I have grown to love you, and the extent to which Beth and I would go to help you on life's way. It all began as something of a dream. My school of 25 years was failing and I was looking for new horizons. I saw an upstart organization establishing itself in the halls and offices of the McLennan building.

That building may sound like an unusual name to you, but that was the building for as long as anyone could remember was a center of learning at Trinity International University in Deerfield, Illinois. It was a shadow or a shell of its former self and in its midst was this bright new light, Turning Point Academy, soon to be renamed Turning Point Education. At its helm was Dr. Hutz Hertzberg who had been the chaplain of Trinity some 25 years earlier. He was a friendly face in a breath of fresh air in such a difficult time. We met for the first time in a long time in that staircase in the back of McLennan.

I was going up, he was coming down. We talked about the state of the nation, the culture, the society. We both lamented the way the country was headed, its embrace of strange philosophies, social contagions, and its growing hatred of itself. He told me about the mission of Turning Point and the person at the head of it all, Charlie Kirk. Charlie, as we would affectionately call him, was a leader of this growing youth movement. And although I did not know him at the time, Hutz convinced me in that conversation and over the course of the next weeks and months that he was worth following. I had my first chance to meet him in the those subsequent months in a home in the northwest suburbs of Chicago.

I believe it was a donor event that he was speaking at, a very intimate environment there. Charlie struck me immediately as a kindred spirit. He was an articulate and powerful speaker with an apologetic edge and a desire, a deep desire, to change the world for Christ. He was also from my neighborhood and seemed to be from my people group, north and northwest suburbs of Chicago, Christian conservatives who are highly skilled, battle-tested, and eager to make a difference in America and for America. I had other brothers cut from the same cloth. My buddy Nathan Jacobs comes to mind. We've written a number of books together over the years and made a movie together and so forth.

And of course, my buddy Hutz Hertzberg, an old friend who had reemerged, who had introduced me to this fellow. And really, all of my students who'd come to Trinity over the years were sort of grafted into this network. I was, of course, smitten here at this point. I saw Charlie as as the way forward for Christian higher education, or at least a hope for a new beginning. It was in the course of that first conversation with Hutz that I shared my best observation of Turning Point Education. I'd been kind of reading the materials there on the table that he had in McLennan.

It seemed to have a good presence in the K-12 space, developing curriculum and conferences that supported a foundational education in the five C's: classical, Christian, conservative, cost-affordable, and collaborative. But it had no brick and mortar, no established location, no telos, really. Ultimately, only what I considered a kind of nebulous connection of collection of motifs pointed toward something it was struggling to utter. I proposed a gap year program, a foundational experience that students could use to advance into college or to head in some other direction. Hutz loved the idea immediately and said he'd been thinking something similar. We opened up discussions almost at once. I started pelting him with ideas for what such an educational experience would have to look like to be effective.

We worked over this idea in in ad hoc conversations for months. I got It got to the point where we realized we had to start writing it down. He hired me to begin drafting the curriculum and for the better part of a year I drafted the backbone of Turning Point Education Prep Year. This included the three pillars, the Bible, the Western Intellectual Tradition and the Founding Documents of the United States. Absolutely. You know, you and I had some great conversations about what could be included in this program and it's wide-ranging. You can do a lot of things. But as we continue to talk about it, realizing the problems in the universities that we encounter today, the Bible and Biblical Literacy, understanding it as foundational, became very important in our thinking.

Uh the Western Intellectual Tradition, which as you know, I come out of, you know, as a as a philosopher studying the Enlightenment and so forth. I've seen firsthand how it has been sort of systematically secularized over the last, say, 100 years and that whole revision of history that's gone on and you and I thought, what a treasure trove that we are kind of giving up with that narrative. So, we thought it was important to do the Western Intellectual Tradition and hit some of those highlight great books that you were talking about. And then, of course, the Founding Documents, which are in a sense, reliance upon those two other things, the Bible and the Western Intellectual Tradition.

And if students have a year to prepare to go to the academy, to to college or to some other field of life, they need to know who they are. That's right. And there's no three better things than an for an American Biblical citizen than those three things. And so, we're going to focus in on those things and make sure that it's a Oh, sorry. Make sure there's a bridge between their high school experience and whatever they decide to do with the rest of their life. It also included the five pathways, military, ministry, vocational, academic and civic. Any professor who has been in the you know, university life knows we get a lot of students and some of them just aren't meant for college and college isn't for everyone.

This program allows them to dip their toes into college like life but do so with a view to understanding themselves. And we've got these five different pathways we're going to be bringing in embodied representatives, what we call mentors in these areas to help students see what it would look like to go down those pathways. One of them is academic. That's right. I expect the students who come to seriously consider the academic trajectory, going to college and getting a degree. I have a college degree, you have a college degree, there's nothing wrong with that but there's also nothing wrong with politics, there's nothing wrong with ministry or the military or white and blue collar jobs.

So, we would like to bring in Christian professionals who are successful to help them kind of see what those pathways would look like and then while they're doing that, they're going to survey their own life. What was their life like before coming to prep here? What is it like now and what do you think it could be like in the future in the context of seeing those other pathways? And our hope is after 9 months with in the program, they'll have a much clearer sense of who they are and where God might want them to go with their life. I developed the weekly module format and the curricular, co-curricular and extracurricular components that would define each day.

The idea was to provide students real skills, gun shooting, public speaking, videography, computer applications and more. We would have experts in various fields address the students on a regular basis and the strongest possible proponents of every pathway present early and often in the program so the students would know their options and be prepared for them. I remember the day Charlie called me. Huts had been prepping the organization for the idea of a one-year college like experience that had all these components condensed into a foundation for life's various pathways. This resonated with Charlie Kirk's vision, which I kept constantly in mind as I was writing the program.

Now was the time to sell it to Charlie and to the organization. Charlie called and I answered. For 30 minutes, which I will never forget, it's kind of in my mind and in my soul, we got to know each other and I had the opportunity to share the design of the program with him. At one point in the call, he asked me to riff on the program. I honestly did not know what that meant. I've been around a long time and I had not heard that term before, but I thought it was basically giving me the floor to sell the idea to him in one momentous verbal speech act.

So I did and his response echoes in my mind to this day. Chris, I love it, he said. If we can do this in one year, that is condense the essence or foundation of the college experience into one year, I think it will be an eternal good and something we have to pursue. It needs an intellectual driving force behind it and I am confident you are that person. Kluts was on the line as well and he will recall Charlie's next words. They were like a celebration for us at the time. Let's do this, Kluts. Get me the details and we'll make this happen.

I remember the context was the budgets were decreasing, not increasing, but Charlie felt so strongly at the end of that phone call that this is something we had to do that he said we're going to find the money. Kluts, let's just get this thing rolling. We all know the rest of the story. Prep Year was eventually approved and a donor was found. Unfortunately, Turning Point was unable to get this funding in time to hire me. As I mentioned earlier, Trinity was on its way out and I was looking to keep my family stable and to keep my career on track. We weren't quite where we needed to be to get the program off the ground.

So I took a job, a job I currently have at Champion Christian College. This place, as you guys have come to know, is down here with my dad, who's quite older now, and it's a place that my family has been has lived and died in in in the past, particularly on my mother's side. And so, I was ready to invest in the place, and I when I got to know Eric Capaci, as you guys did, you can see why I felt like it was a viable pathway forward for me and something I could really stand behind. This, of course, plays back into the story of the fall of 2025 in very specific ways.

President Eric Capaci would first allow me to leave on special assignment to start the program in Fort Worth. He would also come to Prepper to teach us on rebuilding the walls of our ministry through the book of Nehemiah. And he would later on lay out the red carpet for us in the service project in Hot Springs in January of 2026, providing mansions for us to stay at while we were serving here at in Hot Springs. Before jumping into the highlights of the fall of 2025, I would be remiss if I did not mention Matthew Swift. He was an intern at Turning Point Education in the early days of the development of the program.

He helped He helped me research the curriculum and did due diligence on many of the possible sites for the first and future iterations of Prepper. He also became the personal assistant of President Jean Croom at Judson University. He was the one who connected Turning Point Education with Judson, making possible the relocation of Turning Point Education to Judson, where they have resided ever since. He also connected Turning Point Education with its most prolific donor, making the dream of a Prepper at Judson University come to life. His part in this story cannot be overestimated. All right, well. Whoa. Matthew Swift at Prepper, along with a few students. This is kind of stuff you come to expect around here.

Oh, I don't know if you can see President Erica Pacey there in the background. Well, it's December. I guess this is Christmas music. See if we can get them to play something else. But why would we? Those are some of the key people in the early days, but I wish to tell that the story that I wish to tell is in honor of your graduation. It's your story. When I joined Champion, Hutts brought on Ty Gooch and Stephanie Stapler to lead the charge of getting prep year off the ground. Collectively, along with the rest of TPE staff, they started recruiting across the country for the first students in the program.

You are those first students. We had gotten started late in the spring of 2025, and little did we know that God was preparing you to join us in this inaugural endeavor. I had little to do with the recruiting. I was a champion guy who was greatly invested in the prep year program. Beth and I arrived about a month early to Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and its Riley Center. We were given the residence director's apartment and at the north entrance of the Riley Center. It was a key location because it was the place students had to walk past to go for food, to go for a walk or a run, or to get their cars, which had the better parking spots, or to get their bicycles.

Those were parked in a little closet right behind our apartment. Right outside our door was the lounge with paintings of Jesus and his 12 disciples on the wall, kind of up above the lounge area that had kind of six interconnected lounge-like areas there with chairs and sofas and lamps. Later this space would be officially voted by the students as the fireplace. We came to love sitting late at night in that area to discuss life and to get to know one another. Just down the hall was another area right outside that I affectionately called the Firestone Garden because I love to study there before I was while I was preparing for class and right before class.

As far as I know these names have stuck to this day, at least the fireplace name has stuck. We arrived on Labor Day weekend with the highest of hopes for the program and I got to meet the parents and lay eyes for the first time on you the students. We were fast friends. The opening day ceremony was a joyous event that featured everyone from Turning Point Education, the parents, the students, and key personnel from the local host institution. We outlined the months ahead, distributed the syllabus, the books, the journals, and the supporting documents that would come to define the fall semester. The parents soon departed and the first week I taught on how to read the Bible.

We used a a classical kind of flipped classroom approach and you jumped right in. I was in my element with you. I can't express highly enough my joy in teaching you. I was used to having classes with divided attention spans. Typically my 25 years at Trinity, I could divide my class into three groups. Those who were engaged and attentive, another third was present and a little bit curious, and another third wished they were somewhere else. Almost to a person, you guys you were all in the first category. When I lectured in the grammar portion of the class at the beginning, you were attentive and asked great questions.

When we moved to the logic section, breaking uh the class into groups, you dove in and engaged the material with passion and intellectual integrity. When we moved to the rhetoric section, you stepped forward courageously to share your best ideas publicly. Not always perfectly, but charitably and with reverence for the material. I remember Amber sitting up in the front row, set the tone for leadership in the classroom as she always held my feet to the fire in terms of the curriculum and and and the scheduling and making sure that uh we had turned in what we needed to turn in and that we were covering what we needed to cover. I remember just a couple rows behind her, Ben, being there as well, watching the clock and making sure we had breaks at our appropriate times.

And uh you know, quite a few of of you others that I could call out as well, but those were amazing times and a great uh classroom experience for me and uh hopefully for you guys as well. We moved into week two with a special speaker. That was Scott Phelps on healthy relationships and the importance of abstinence. It was in the middle of that week that our world was turned upside down by the assassination of Charlie Kirk. I'm so thankful for Scott and his pastoral care during that time. Super grateful for the SLC's Gary Ferris came forward and showed great leadership and even contacted local church leaders who joined us as well.

Isaac Elliott also remains etched in my memory forever really because of these events. His musical and pastoral care during that time went way above and beyond the call of duty. I've no idea how he held his emotions in check, expressing them through song and music perhaps. And he was able to lead us with the music, with song, with verbal processing to the glory of God. I personally would never ever emerge from that experience with in anything close to a healthy manner without his student leadership.

That week became a sad a memorial to our great leader, but was saved by a gracious God working through his church, his staff, and his students. I haven't cried that much since my mother passed away 8 years earlier. Charlie meant that much to all of us. I ended up doing a four episode series on his life and work, the life and work of Charlie Kirk. Something I wasn't planning on doing. I really had everything scheduled out, but uh how could you not? And it was as much therapeutic for me as it was a memorial. Uh I knew of no other way of honoring his name and legacy.

Yeah, still carry with me the wristband from that from that uh memorial experience that we had soon thereafter. And uh it's kind of worn out now, and uh I plan to take it off when um when we do the a special series for Charlie September 10th later this year. The whole experience was traumatic, but soothing in a way that only Christian hope could possibly maintain. Eventually Scott had to leave, and we had to get on with the program. Um I I I will say that uh one of the things that carried me after that was the fact that we had broken up into Bible study groups.

And during those Bible study we we we we had smaller groups. I had seven guys in my group. I remember it was Ben and Cashman and Riley, Gavin, Joedell, Ryan, and Moises uh along with Caleb Phelps. We met up in Caleb's room for the most part. We met in a variety of places, but we ended up meeting up there in his room and uh we read scripture, we and we really talked about what was happening in our lives. It was one of the most beautiful things I did at prep year. Uh I expect I'll be thinking about those seven men for the rest of my life and how we uh traversed that time together.

Uh thankfully, we were also moving directly into the second pillar, the Western intellectual tradition. This backbone of the program is one of the main reasons I was hired to teach it. We started with the sophists and the pre-Socratics and we moved throughout the semester to Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. I built the program so that the ancients and medievals were handled in the fall and the moderns and postmoderns were planned for the spring.

I think this is something that Charlie really um really wanted to see integrated in program having watched many of his presentations over the year we over the years we understood that the Greeks and the Romans and the and the early church really foundational to this to America, to the American experiment, to the Constitution, and to the freedoms that we enjoy today.

And so we wanted to spend that time in the fall focus there. Then we would turn our sights to the moderns and postmoderns and there's some really foundational material there as well. Those who know American history know how the founders had been influenced by the moderns, particularly John Locke, Immanuel Kant, and some of the great personages and philosophers of that period. The spring, however, took a different shape under Dr. Dave Arnott, who brought economics, leadership, and his own deep network in the Dallas-Fort Worth area to bear on the second half of the year. I can't tell that story because I wasn't there, but you lived it.

What I can say is that we had a fantastic time experiencing and experimenting with the classical education in the Western intellectual tradition that fall. Charlie was very big on this topic and we spent about five weeks diving into Plato's writings and some of Aristotle's writings and the sophists and and others in the early church and it was a great time that we had together. The teaching of the Bible was eventually taken over by Ty Gooch. He would fly down from Turning Point Education headquarters at Judson University and teach on the Old Testament. Providentially, Southwestern was engaged in a chapel series with chapel speakers in the fall semester focused on the prophets.

We were able to attend several of those chapels and benefited from them greatly. We also had the unique opportunity of hearing from William Federer for two weeks and his son Michael Federer for a few days during that time as well. These two were a great change from our standard way of approaching the classroom. Bill Federer, as you know, is like a firehose really of information about American history that I think students really enjoyed. Michael Federer, his son, a very different approach, more conversational, but together they made a a great impression on us and you guys were doing your micro lectures on American history as well.

A lot of you wanted to present for Bill Federer and Michael Federer during that time and so you were able to do that. And I know Bill Federer really appreciated your insights into these areas as well. He's a great change of pace having those leaders and having that flipped classroom where you guys gave the micro lectures and that was a really special time. Well, the classroom generally took place in the mornings and the co-curricular and extracurricular activities took place in the afternoons and evenings. I'm so glad that we had preloaded Dr. Marlin DeBlasio's week on engaging culture through the op-ed writing process.

He was able to share his experiences on the business pathway working for Allstate insurance, very successful insurance agent, and also his transition to a new career in engaging culture by writing op-eds for the Christian post. He spent several days with us and was a great contributor to the program. I think one of the things that would really added texture to the fall was having people like Marlon DeBlasio who was on one of the pathways and moved to another of the pathways during his life experience and I think that was very instructive. We had a similar thing happened with another pre-loaded speaker, Matthew Firestone, my oldest son. You many of you recall I interviewed him not just a few weeks ago on the Firestone files. He's currently a Green Beret in the Army with a fifth company in the special forces there.

And those of you know the Army know that that's the group focused on the Middle East with all the things that are going on there. He's also a medic and was able to share about the academic pathway which he had started on before joining the Army and then had this calling who spinning his wheels and he and he felt like he needed to go into the military and he joined the Army about a year and a half into his college experience.

A number of you seemed interested in that angle and he was able to speak over the course of a couple of days to you about that and a lot of a lot of you guys asked some great questions and and then we got a chance to learn about those two pathways, the academic and the military pathway. He was also slated to teach us country swing dancing along with his partner but that event was canceled. Some of the highlights of the fall semester included biking, public events, intramural sports, and getting to know one another through games and other activities locally. Gavin, Miley, Riley, and Jodelle and others would regularly go on bike excursions with me through the greater Fort Worth area.

We especially enjoyed riding to the river and exploring new places in Fort Worth. This was a welcome relief to get out of the campus for a while to see the big bad world all around us and I greatly enjoyed those a couple times a week we would go out on those trips together. It was a good chance for us to unwind and get to know one another and uh do something fun in the city. The public events were perhaps the most impactful of all the things we did together in the fall semester. The first one came right after Charlie's death, the memorial service in Phoenix, Arizona. Turning Point did not recommend that you guys join us for that event, but six students took it upon themselves to fly to Phoenix to be involved in the memorial. It was a historic moment and I certainly understood why they did that.

These students included Samuel, Ben, Jude, Riley, Cashman, and Adam. Hey Samuel, so good you guys made it. Super excited to have you here with the team. I'm just asking all the young people, what did the person Charlie Kirk and his mission mean to you? Yeah. So, Charlie was someone who was genuine in his faith and someone in politics I could look at and say, "Hey, he loves the Lord and I can follow him." Paul talks about how follow me as I imitate Christ and that's who Charlie was for me, someone I could imitate because I knew he was following Christ. And so, I still have that imitation to follow even after his death with his legacy.

So, I'm just wanting to carry that on and and do what I can for Turning Point and for the Lord. Amen. Hey, thanks for coming, my friends. Super excited to have you here. All right. Thank you. At the memorial I mean that that whole experience was quite something special and it took all of our ingenuity even to get into the place and you can find that in one of my Firestone File episodes. At the memorial service itself, Samuel became my wingman. We decided to to leave our seating on the floor toward the middle back of the floor area, which was reasonably good seating anyway, but Samuel and I took it upon ourselves to move to the front between the red and white section. It was during those experiences that we really got to know one another very well and met some of the most influential people in conservative in the conservative Christian world. We also had front-row seats for all the major political figures who were speaking at the event.

When in your life do you get to see the president, and the vice president, and the secretary of state, and the list just went on and on and on. We also had front-row seats for Erica Kirk's really momentous, amazing speech that she gave where she forgave her husband's killer. God bless all of you. We also had the opportunity to visit the Tuttle Ranch, which was put together by Matthew Swift and his role at Champion Christian College. It was a welcome relief and respite to a very difficult semester. We were able to shoot shotguns, ride horses, and even swim. I can't express enough my gratitude to the Tuttle family for making that possible.

Wait, Matthew might be telling me the same thing. They go and have You missed the easy shot and got the hard one. $10 if you hit the first shot this time. Yeah. Yeah. It was the only such event that we had in the first semester and it was much needed. It just was a lot of fun for everyone involved. I got a lot of footage from that event as well. People shooting shotguns, riding those horses, that was amazing. And then the impromptu swim that we had with the jet skis and so forth. Well, some things maybe we better not talk about. Anyway, um but those were fun. Those were fun activities and really really kind of a watershed emotionally for us given the difficulties of that fall semester. The intramural activities took two forms in the fall, flag football and volleyball.

I was the coach of the flag football team and while we had Cashman as our quarterback, we appeared unbeatable. But the playoffs took place in a weekend when Cashman had to attend a funeral and I encouraged him to go. I think he was speaking at the funeral and so Ryan took over at quarterback. And although a great athlete in himself, we didn't lose a little bit of our cohesiveness in in the loss of Cashman and we ended up losing the tournament. All in all, however, it was super fun and I think we learned something about ourselves. We learned that we had some good athletes, but we also learned that we would be competitive in whatever events we enrolled in in the year to come.

What you think of that, Captain? I I approve. It was good. It was Hey, good luck. Good luck. Okay. And the next thing on the on the slate was the volleyball experience and it was this was proof that that was right. We we seemed to dominate the intramural league in that in that sport. We had two teams. I think one was the A team and one was the B team. Probably appropriately named as our A team had quite a few good players on it. Our B team had me on it and we were competitive, you know, the B team was, but the A team, well, they were quite good.

I was on the receiving end of a number of Samuel spikes and Alyssa's sets and we gave them a battle, but in the end the A team went on to win the tourney as I recall. I ended up hurting my shoulder, an injury I'm still recovering from, by the way, so thank you, Sam, for that. Okay, anyway, the next memorial event that comes to mind is the No Kings protest in Fort Worth. Quite a few of you banded together to attend that event as observers. Turning Point administration wasn't exactly condoning the event, but you guys they allowed you to go and you guys took it upon yourselves to go.

I decided that I would travel there myself and keep an eye on you guys and to see see the event for for myself. I guess I got caught up in the experience and I ended up creating a Firestone file episode to capture the essence of the moment. It was one of those experiences that awakened me to the true cultural engagement potential of the students. I remember Alyssa and Joel Dell and others at the event. I understand that Samuel and Jude and others were at a different part of the event. I I don't think I ever saw them there. I think they were up toward the front had a totally different experience of it, but it was an excellent opportunity for impromptu community and kind of a shared experience that showed us what was possible if we just got out of our comfort zone. All right, well, I found the students. How's it going, guys?

I'm here here. Wow, this is quite the event. All right, we'll come back soon. The other event that comes to mind is the MFest 2025. This was a celebration really of Charlie Kirk's life and legacy in December. It served as a capstone event for the fall semester and Turning Point was so good to get all of us out there for that event. The entire group attended. And you will recall the chaos that we experienced together almost the moment we got off the airplane. Some of you were not even able to get into the opening days events and that really fell on us as leaders. We were a little bit overwhelmed by the sheer number of people that were there.

I took it upon myself in the succeeding days to get many of you into the main events. As you will recall, I used my staff badge and access to the executive lounge to make that possible. We had so much fun bending the rules and meeting people. I can hardly express the joy I had in seeing you guys blossom in figuring out how to navigate these complex and chaotic circumstances that we found ourselves in. You even took it upon yourselves to get up early in the final morning to make sure you got inside. I think you guys were some of you there, quite a few of you were there at like 3:00 a.

m. And I showed up with a few others that I'd met in the hallway at 6:00 a. m. and we went in and through the staff entrance in a different in a different place. The whole event will live in our memories for years to come. All right, we got out of that really crazy education session. room. And uh we're to throw up. Who are we going to see now? Alex Clark. Alex Clark, okay. All right, we're going to go to room 121. See if we can find her. My Firestone files.

All in all, through the curriculum, through the many shared events, through the extracurriculars, through the late nights, and through many conversations in class and outside of class, we grew close, and I came to love you more than words can tell. The only thing I ever promised you was that I would do all in my power to make sure that you found your way forward in life. At the very least, I would provide you with an opportunity to join me at Champion Christian College as a baseline offer.

Not one that you would be required to accept, but one that you could measure all your other opportunities against. I believe I accomplished that that goal by offering 20 covenant agreements for your consideration. These offers were given in good faith. They cover all your expenses for 1 year in exchange for 20 hours of service per week at Champion Christian College. Never expected all of you to accept them, but merely to know that you were appreciated and that a visible and inexpensive pathway was available to you to carry on in life. As far as the uh service project in Hot Springs, Arkansas, you will recall that the original schedule was for an entire week of service.

We had set up community service projects that would be life-giving and God-honoring, but very late in the process, the event was cut down to 2 days. This made the opportunities more limited, and we focused on cleaning up Hot Springs Creek and painting Park Place Church. You really can't uh we had to pick and choose from among the things we had to do, and Park Place Church is the center of our ministry right now, rejuvenating the old part of Hot Springs downtown, and it's also the center of our international program, which is growing. And so, you guys coming in and painting the interior of Park Place Church with, you know, uh was really, really super helpful.

The other thing was the cleaning up of Hot Springs Creek. That's a personal joy for me because I go there all the time. I like to swim in that creek and you guys uh helped to clean it up and really built some credibility with the local community, with the with the government, and with the political side, if you will, secular side of Hot Springs. And that was greatly appreciated. All in all, I think the experience for a 2-day event was quite special. We got to stay in those mansions and really just enjoy one another one last time right before you started in the spring semester.

I just loved loved that opportunity. From our perspective, that was a a promise kept to you and a great help to us. I want to close this graduation address by speaking directly to you. You know me. I've spent more than 25 years teaching philosophy in the academy at a Christian institution. I've dealt with students not unlike yourselves for a very long time. You are my sweet spot. I consider it an honor to have been able to commune with you, teach you, and learn from you over the course of an entire semester. We have forever inaugurated Turning Point Education Prep Year.

This is something no one can take away from us and the fact that you made it through the entirety of the first year when our great leader was taken from us so early on is a testimony to just how special you are. Right after his death, I gave a short speech. I didn't say much. We had some great Christian leaders who were leading us through that time right after his death, but I in that short speech that I gave you, I charged you with staying the course and you done just that. I know that this is not been easy.

Please know that Beth and I continue to pray for you. I'm here for you and I'm on mission with you. Please also know that I remain invested in Prep Year's future and I will do whatever I can to see it flourish in the years to come. You never know what God has in store. That's a lesson we have learned together in the fall semester of 2025. As the author of Ecclesiastes puts it, there's a time for everything under the sun. Time to be born and a time to die. Time to laugh and a time to cry. Thank you for completing what you started. Take time to regroup and collect yourselves.

And then, find your Jerusalem and rebuild its walls. Charlie would expect nothing less from us. May the Lord continue to bless all your endeavors for him. Goodbye. Goodbye, my friends. Thanks for stopping by to spend some time with me here on the Firestone Files. I hope today's reflections offered you some new insights and perspective on life. If you enjoyed the episode or found it valuable, I'd appreciate it if you'd take a moment to like, subscribe, and share it with someone you care about. I'd also love to hear your thoughts.

What resonated with you? What challenged you? Or what would you like to hear more about in future episodes? Drop a comment below or send in your suggestions to the email in the description. Your input helps shape where we go next. This has been Dr. Chris Firestone. Until next time, keep asking the big questions. And remember, the kingdom journey is always best with your friends. Further up and further in. Bye for now.