Before we say anything.  Let us give thanks.  “Oh God, from the fullness of Your grace we have all received one blessing after another.  We thank You most especially for all that You have given us in Christ – the forgiveness of our sins, adoption into Your family, the indwelling of Your Spirit, an eternal inheritance with You, purpose in this life, the promise of Your presence, and SO MUCH MORE!  Thank You, Gracious Father!  Amen.”

Well, Part 2 was long!  But I felt it was necessary to give you a full picture, and if it seemed too long, I hope you skimmed the surface and dove in at the points that really caught your interest.  Part 3 will be shorter, though I still intend to serve up the meat, potatoes, and pumpkin pie.  If you need to graze, I’ll try to provide lots of headings and draw your attention to key text to make it easy for you.

We’re going to talk organizational “vision” in a moment.  But every good vision discussion flows from mission.

The mission of Montana Bible College is to glorify God through Biblical higher education by training men and women for a lifetime of dynamic Christian living and service.

This mission guides all we do!  And I’m excited to unveil for you next time in Part 4 newly updated mission statement language our Board approved this year to sharpen and more clearly articulate our mission.

Our mission is about people, about Christians, it’s about training, it’s about effective service for Christ, it’s about His Church and the Church’s mission in the world, and it’s about doing all that as a Bible college.

The VISION fleshes out the mission into practical terms of what mission accomplishment looks like in the coming weeks, months and years.

Allow me to zero in on the most critical and urgent aspects of MBC’s vision as we step into the future.  (Check the breakout box to see all 8 items of MBC’s current strategic goals.)  When you boil it down, like Jesus did with the Law and Prophets into “love God; love others”, MBC’s vision for the near-term future is to achieve sustainability for mission fulfillment in complex and changing times with many challenges.

Below this graphic, we’ll break that statement out into simple terms of “What we need to accomplish” and “How to get it done.”

What We Need to Accomplish:

Jesus’ mission revolves around people.  In The Great Commission, it’s the followers of Jesus – people – making disciples of all nations – people.  Similarly, the mission of Montana Bible College is a group of people – staff & faculty – training a group of people – students.  It makes sense that what we need to accomplish revolves around those two groups of people.

For sustainability and mission-accomplishment, MBC must focus on affordability and services for students plus care and resourcing for our workers. 

Affordability and Services For Students

We have a number of excellent strengths in this area. 

• By God’s grace, we have an excellent They are highly qualified, they care for the students, they are motivated and love what they do. 
• We also have strong academic programs that are getting even stronger. Our core Biblical studies curriculum fuels all our degree programs.  Our degree options include vocational ministry degrees (Pastoral Ministry, Missions, Biblical Counseling, Next-Generation Ministry and General Ministry) and workforce degrees from a Biblical worldview (Business, Communication, Criminal Justice, Healthcare Management, Marketing, Sports Management), a unique Workplace Ministry Degree, and an additional degree in Classical Christian Education coming fall 2023.
• From an affordability standpoint, our students have been graduating debt free. It’s challenging to say the least, and nearly every student works significant hours on top of a demanding academic schedule.  Yet students are graduating debt free.

But we also have improvements to make in terms of affordability and services.

• Our students are struggling to work enough to pay for college and keep up academically. The challenge often slows students down, and some don’t make it.  Additionally, we have not been able to offer much by way of scholarship help for students.  Coupled with the fact that we have not participated in federal student aid, the lack of scholarship help has meant that paying for college has been a huge challenge.  Most of our students come from families who can’t afford to pay their way through college, so the students must pay their own way.  We don’t want economic challenges to knock hard-working, eager-hearted students out of training for life serving Jesus!
• Resulting from many societal factors, we see a greater need than ever before for us to provide additional academic help and guidance plus life help and guidance for a variety of issues more students are experiencing. Students today are grappling with a world more complex and challenging than students 10, 20, and 30 years ago.  True, there have always been challenges in every generation, and we aren’t minimizing those, but there are absolute and concrete differences between the world our students are navigating and the world of decades past, and we can’t minimize those either.

Care and Resourcing for our Workers

• MBC believes that God would have us take proper care of the people He has entrusted to us (Matthew 10:9-10; 1 Corinthians 9:14; Colossians 4:1, 1 Timothy 5:17-18, etc.), and we need to do better in this area. We believe we need to pay our workers a truly living wage and to provide them with some health and retirement benefits.  Believe me, there’s not a hint of “prosperity gospel” mentality around MBC.  Our people have been incredibly sacrificial, and they’ve done it because they are so committed to the mission.  But we don’t want to lose more employees who can’t afford to live here.  We don’t want more employees working extra jobs on the side to try to make ends meet.  We don’t want employees forever stuck in the home rental market. 
• I compared our current personnel budget with industry standards using the Bureau of Labor Statistics to benchmark each position of ours against other education institutions. For each position, I even selected the low end.  I also added national average healthcare and retirement benefits for full-time employees.  Here is the result:

• But more than just paying our people effectively, we need to make sure we’re staffed appropriately. We have a couple of part-time positions that need to be full-time.  We need to add a couple of part-time support positions.  We need another full-time faculty member.  We need to add a full-time enrollment person.  (Of course, the wish list would be much longer!)  Adding critical staffing makes the numbers look like this.

• These numbers seem . . . scary? . . . or God-sized?
• With a very tight budget year after year, there is a great tension between keeping the education affordable for students and taking care of our people. I suppose it’s easy to see that the solution to BOTH student affordability and services AND appropriate staffing and personnel budget cannot be to drastically raise tuition.  That would destroy student affordability!  Nor is perpetual austerity a real solution.  That’s how we have been living.
• For next year, 2023/2024, our Board’s Finance Committee has recommended a tuition increase that is necessary because of inflation coupled with a staff wage increase that takes a significant step in the right direction.  We believe God would have us do the right thing and trust Him to provide.

Does a pathway to sustainability even exist?  Yes! 

MBC has been working toward long-term sustainability for a few years; much groundwork has been laid; much has been accomplished. We identified three key pillars to a sustainable model – enrollment, financial partners, and alternative revenue streams – and we have strategic plans and action items tied to each.  Here are a few example highlights:

• We’ve re-structured our administration to get our President role much more externally focused, as it needs to be.
• We’ve carefully added academic programs to better serve and recruit students without adding significant overhead.
• We received a “capacity building” grant in 2019 that enabled us to develop our board through great training, get executive coaching for me as president, implement a constantly updating strategic planning process, and start connecting with our financial partners.
• We launched a task force that has done initial work toward alternative revenue streams.
• We’ve re-structured and expanded our enrollment team.  

Still, we’re at a critical juncture where much more needs to be accomplished, and soon.  We’ve hit our reserve funds hard the last few years, especially coming through COVID.  But those funds have been depleted and cannot sustain us moving forward.

What Actions Are We Taking, and How Can Our Friends Help?

Enrollment

The Objective

The easiest way to think of enrollment is to think of Total Credits Taken.  Fall Semester 2022, we’re right at 800 total credits.  We need to see this number get to a minimum of 1000 credits by Fall Semester 2023 – an equivalent increase of an additional 13 students above the current student body taking 15 credits per semester.  So we need to see a solid incoming class plus good retention!

MBC Action

1. We’re continuing to serve our students through excellent academics and personal care. Retention is critical to building enrollment, and it’s critical to our mission of training!
2. We’re recruiting for all our academic programs, longstanding and new.
3. We’ve added two part-time Student Ambassadors to our enrollment team and freed up additional time from a couple of key staff members in order to give more capacity to be out connecting with prospective students.
4. We’re improving our enrollment processes in every way we can.
5. We’re in process of implementing additional scholarship help for students.
6. Thanks to COVID, we also have the capacity to teach our courses online. 

What can YOU do to help with enrollment?

1. Spread the word about MBC! Talk to prospective students.  Talk to their parents.  Talk to their grandparents.  Point them to our web site.  Ask us for literature to put in their hands.  Remind them of all the wonderful MBC characteristics such as our solid Biblical teaching, our discipleship focus, the individual attention we give to our students, our great location, our apartment style living, and our affordability (Next year for an incoming student – $16,000 for all tuition and housing for the full year, minus about $4,000 through scholarship opportunities.)
2. Make an impact online! Write good reviews on Google.  Follow MBC on social media.  “Like” us.  Re-post and share our posts. 
3. Give to scholarships! Just go to our giving page and give.  Or give to our International Students scholarship fund.  Or tell us you want to “adopt” a student.  Or challenge your church to support scholarships.
4. Help people take classes online!  There are many wonderful classes that can benefit you, your family members, or people from your church.  You can print a PDF class schedule right from our web site.  You can fill out a simple application to get in the system.  And you can be benefitting from a course as soon as January when second semester begins!

Financial Partners

The Objective

If MBC is to be sustainable without dependence on the government, then we simply must see this college become a Ministry of MANY!  Together, we can accomplish a LOT!  The goal here is to increase the base of financial partners with the ministry of MBC.  Each gives joyfully according to their means.  Some give $25 a month; some give $1000 a year; some give $10,000 or $100,000.  Here is what we envision for future financial partners.

• MBC Action:

  1. We have submitted a grant application to fund the start-up of a “Development Office”. This would give MBC the ability to really begin a MINISTRY with current and future financial partners.  We view financial partnerships through the lens of Biblical stewardship – helping God’s people put His resources to work as He motivates them joyfully.  These are sacred relationships built upon great trust and integrity.
  2. We continue laying the groundwork for the Development Office through our communications, our Giving Page, and our relational connections with our dear partners.
  3. We have continued structuring our administration to allow me, as President, to spend more and more time connecting with all the people and churches and organizations that are so vital as partners in the work God has for us.
  4. We are working right now to produce literature for churches to help them take the simple steps of connecting with us as we seek to serve them in training the next generations of lay and vocational leaders.

  What can YOU do to help with Financial Partnerships?

  1. Of course, you can give – as God moves your heart in joy to make an impact. Last year, over $500,000 was given to MBC!  We couldn’t do this without our faithful financial partners.  And we thank YOU, Heavenly Father!  This fiscal year since July 1, $75,000 has been given so far.  We’re praying that God might again supply in His mighty way – even to hit that $500,000 mark again.
  2. You can spread the word and speak of MBC to others whose hearts love what God accomplishes through Bible college ministry.
  3. You can simply help us make “friends” – introduce your friends to MBC. Help them take the step of getting communications from us.  Help them become informed.  Tell them the stories of the transformed lives and the graduates sent out to serve! 
  4. You can help your church take on MBC as one of its “missionaries” or become a Church Matching Scholarship contributor.
  5. You can plan to use your estate (or help a friend or family member set up theirs) to advance the mission of MBC. You can do this through direct bequests in your will or through other means such as trusts, charitable remainder trusts, or required 401K distributions. 
  6. You can give creatively! Assets such as homes, land, and cars can be given.  A family recently donated a couple of coolers of meat to the students at MBC, and oh you should have seen how thankful the students were to receive those packages of frozen burger! 
  7. You can volunteer. We’ve had local people with handyman skills volunteer to help with building maintenance and repairs.  We had a man multiple states away volunteer his graphic design skills for projects.  We could use video editors.  Local people can disciple students or help with events.
  8. You can PRAY that God moves in the hearts of His people to give them the grace of giving.

   

  Revenue Streams

  The Objective

  Here, the goal is to see additional income streams besides student revenue.  This has been our area of least progress so far even though it is also an area of great potential.  Why?  Income streams generally take two things: investment capital and people to manage them.  The lowest hanging fruit for MBC would be fairly passive income streams such as a home or building to rent – the management for which could be outsourced.  Other income stream potentials could be tied in with a future building we could build.  There are many creative potentials.

  MBC Action

  1. MBC has already set up an LLC company under the MBC umbrella so that we can handle such income streams with appropriate accounting.
  2. MBC will continue to work to build its Task Force to gain more traction.
  3. MBC will work to identify additional grant opportunities and financial partners who might help good ideas become reality.

  What can YOU do to help Income Streams become reality?

  1. You might have an income-generating asset (or know someone who does) to donate – a home, building, piece of equipment to be rented, or piece of property. We know of a ministry where a significant portion of their income is generated from a few farms that were donated and are now leased out on behalf of the ministry.
  2. You might be able to “tithe” a portion of an income stream you have. A rancher might donate a calf each year for whatever profit God allows come sale time.  A VRBO owner might “tithe” the bookings from a certain day each month.  Any time the property rents on that day, the proceeds are given.  A business owner might tithe a percentage of proceeds above a pre-determined mark.  If the Lord so blesses the business, that portion becomes a gift.  An author might donate the proceeds of every 10^th book sold.  An artist might donate the copyright for a work produced. 
  3. You might have investment capital you could donate or pool with others to donate. We have the plans for a future building on our site that would be a huge campus improvement with classrooms to fully serve our needs and additional housing for students and other revenue-generating potential.  Such a building would be a roughly 8.5 Million dollar build.
  4. You might have the skills and desire to serve on our Task Force for revenue streams!

Conclusion

Are there additional things to do to accomplish mission sustainability even beyond what we’ve just listed?

In short, the answer is yes.  At MBC, we are committed to staying open to what God would have us do – things small and large.  If we need to change something to follow Him, then let’s get it done.

Our leadership is praying about and seeking what the Lord would have us do.  As we look at the current state of our culture and its trajectory ahead, we see a nation heading for more chaotic times as we are “given over” by God (i.e. Romans 1).  We see an increasingly hostile environment for those individuals and organizations who will hold unswervingly to Biblical truth and convictions.

We don’t aim to be alarmist; rather, we want to be like the “men of Issachar who understood the times and knew what Israel should do.”  We want to be, in Jesus’ words, “wise as serpents”.  We know that the mission MBC has – training and sending workers into God’s harvest field – will continue until Jesus returns.  But we also know that Bible college education as we have known it for the past 100 years or so might need to make some large adjustments.  Some of those adjustments are things we’ve just been talking about!  Others might mean we make creative changes.

So on this Thanksgiving Day, 2022, let us give thanks for all God has done in the past.  We are a people who remember God’s goodness, who remember God’s works in all redemptive history and in our own lives.  We give thanks for all God has accomplished through Montana Bible College.

And we look to the future with hope and expectation, knowing that we will continue to give thanks because God will continue to be good.  We will continue to express our unending gratitude for all God has done in Christ and how He continues to work in people, spreading His good news to the ends of the earth.

With love in Jesus,

Ryan Ward – President