MISHAWAKA— On May 6, Bethel Col­lege will of­fi­cially be­come Bethel Uni­ver­sity, and Terry Lin­hart, Ph.D., dean of adult and grad­u­ate stud­ies and pro­fes­sor of Chris­t­ian min­istries, will launch a new pod­cast.  

“It co­in­cides with the launch of Bethel Uni­ver­sity,” said Lin­hart. “It was meant from the very be­gin­ning to do that."  

Lin­hart has been pod­cast­ing for five years. He first started do­ing it as a joint pro­ject with Michael Yo­der, a 2009 grad­u­ate who was a res­i­dent di­rec­tor at the time.  

“We just tried it, and out of that came his com­pany that he started for pod­cast­ing,” said Lin­hart. “When I moved to this job [as] dean of adult and grad­u­ate stud­ies... I wanted to help pro­mote the pro­grams here in a free and in­for­mal way.”  

Lin­hart said that the ba­sis for the name comes from his days in pas­toral min­istries when he ob­served that it was mainly stu­dents who wanted to go into min­istry or mis­sions that were min­is­ter­ing on the stage. 

“I think we need to have a con­ver­sa­tion about work,” said Lin­hart. “We were cre­ated orig­i­nally to work; God cre­ated us to work be­fore sin en­tered the world. It’s not like ‘Oh, the job is in the way of what we re­ally want to be about.’” 

Lin­hart also wants to help peo­ple be­come self-aware.  

“I think when we do work, we learn about our­selves,” said Lin­hart. “I just find peo­ple to­day, es­pe­cially around the col­lege... they’re get­ting de­grees from us be­cause they want to do a bet­ter work, and I think there’s this drive to want to be bet­ter at it.” 

Lin­hart said that while the topic may sound “bor­ing,” he’s very in­ter­ested in it and very ex­cited for the guest speak­ers.  

“One of the first guests we’re go­ing to have is with the Airbnb phe­nom­e­non,” said Lin­hart. “I think it’s a fas­ci­nat­ing trend, and it’s cer­tainly grow­ing. South Bend here is a big Airbnb com­mu­nity be­cause of Notre Dame foot­ball  games.” 

Lin­hart wants the pod­cast to be up­lift­ing for its lis­ten­ers.  

“I want it to be en­cour­ag­ing, I want it to be up­beat,” said Lin­hart. “I think what’s go­ing to sep­a­rate this is that it’s go­ing to be hugely en­cour­ag­ing.”  

The pod­cast is in­tended for any­one who is en­tre­pre­neuri­ally minded and feels a lit­tle rest­less.  

“That can be a 27-year-old, a 47-year-old and a 67-year-old,” said Lin­hart. “There are dif­fer­ent life stages where we all won­der, ‘Hey, what should I be about? What's next for me?’”  

Lin­hart also hopes that the pod­cast will help him grow.  

“I think we all ul­ti­mately do things be­cause we want to learn,” said Lin­hart. “I’m on a lit­tle bit of a jour­ney to learn and grow too, and so I want to grow along with the au­di­ence... and I just like do­ing it be­cause it’s fun; there’s a joy fac­tor to it.” 

Lin­hart will do the pod­cast for two years and then re-eval­u­ate it in the sum­mer of 2021.  

“I’m go­ing to work hard to make it grow,” said Lin­hart. “There will be 55 episodes, and then we’ll see where we land. If the lis­ten­er­ship is strong, then we’ll keep go­ing.”  

There will be three episodes the first week of the pod­cast, then one the fol­low­ing week; af­ter the ini­tial launch, there will be one new episode every other week. 

“If you have ideas, head to This Bet­ter Work Pod­cast web­site,” said Lin­hart. “It’s pretty ex­cit­ing.” 

You can check out the web­site at http://​this­bet­ter­workpod­cast.com/.