Kay >> Hi. I’m Kay Daigle of Beyond Ordinary Women Ministries. I’m here today with Nika Spaulding. Welcome, Nika.

Nika >> Thanks, Kay.

Kay >> And welcome to all of you out there. We’re so glad that you joined us for this conversation. We’re going to be talking about theology for everyday people. And let me tell you just a little bit about Nika, why she is an expert in theology. She has a DMin in New Testament. And she also has a master’s of theology from DTS. And she is a storyteller and a theologian. And I’ve heard her described herself as actually a Bible nerd.

Nika >> That’s so true. Yeah.

Kay >> So those are things that I know about Nika. And she has been working on a new project, Theology in 10. I’ll let her tell you about that. But it is that theology for everyday people that she has come up with. And so I really want to talk about all those things. And I could but first, I really thought, particularly since we’re talking about you as the theologian and theology, that maybe some people don’t know anything really about you.

So tell us a little bit about your background and why you got into theology in the first place.

Nika >> Yeah, it’s such a good question. So I didn’t grow up in the church, so the fact that I’m like now a Doctor of Ministry in the New Testament is like more shocking maybe to me than anyone. So I actually have a science background. I grew up in a non-Christian home. My parents are believers now. I grew up in a great home. I loved my family.

But theology was this really foreign thing to me! This like I knew that books existed. I knew that theology was like a discipline, like zoology, which is my bachelor’s degree or like psychology or all of these things. But I got to college and I thought for sure I was going to be a doctor because I love science and I wanted to help people.

But to this day, if I see blood or vomit, I get weak in the knees and I pass out like till this day. And I knew this even going into college. So. Oh, yeah, everybody with common sense kept going “Maybe you should pick a different career,” but I didn’t have enough common sense at 18.

So eventually I realized, Okay, I’m not going to make it through medical school. So now what? And that started me on a journey of trying to figure out what is it that God was calling me to do. At that point, I was walking with the Lord faithfully. So it’s sort of like, “Okay, God, I guess you get a vote. I guess if I had been asking all along, maybe, maybe the fact that I can’t handle those things was your way of saying to me, That’s not what I have for you.”

So I worked at a residential care facility for troubled teens, and that really is what started me on the trajectory because these kids, they had faced, I mean, so much trauma and so much chaos in their lives. And they asked really important questions about the Lord. And I remember I couldn’t answer the questions. And I was like, well, that’s fine, because I hadn’t been in the church that long.

So that’s normal that I wouldn’t be able to answer them. But I would ask other folks who’d been in the church a long time, and either they would be really dismissive of these kiddos’ questions or they just didn’t know. And I thought, I think these questions demand an answer. And they didn’t seem like beyond my, you know, some questions people ask.

And I’m like, yeah, we’ve been asking that for 2000 years. Like, no one’s quite figured that one out. But some of these questions, I thought, “No, I think there’s probably an answer to that.” So that started me down the path of going to seminary. And I don’t know if I’ve ever told you this. I always said I went to DTS because it was warmer than the other seminaries and I didn’t want to be cold, and I always said I would just drop out when I got all my questions answered.

And then if you go to seminary, you realize all you do is leave with more questions than answers. And I fell in love. I fell in love with the study of theology. I—this whole field that I had never even dipped my toes in. Once I got to seminary, I was hooked.

And so pretty quickly on, I thought, I want to do this the rest of my life. I want to pursue the Lord with my mind. And I want to make that available to everyone else.

I’ve always been that person that can take really complex things and make them simple. And when I got to seminary, I thought, everyone needs to know what I know now. How do I make it available to everyone?

And so was it similar for you when you got there? Did you think, Oh, I have a lot of people that need to know this stuff?

Kay >> Oh, absolutely. In fact, I talked two or three of my friends and to go on to seminary. Oh.

Nika >> I love that. Yeah.

Kay >> Because they were also Bible teachers and I was learning so much and, you know, they were kind of like me. We kind of felt like we knew quite a bit, but not really. Yeah, not really.

Nika >> You think you do. And then you read and you go, Huh? So much I don’t know. I still feel that way. I mean, I’m finishing with a Doctorate of Ministry and going, I there’s so much, there’s too many, but I’m surrounded by books. As you can see, there are thousands more I want to read. And one of my favorite stories, actually, during COVID, one of my roommates was living with me, of course, at the time.

And she would see me preparing sermons for Sunday morning. And one day she came in, she goes, “You know, it’s really interesting that we’re both working from home during COVID because I really never knew what you did with your day.” And I go, “What do you mean?” And she goes, “Well, I didn’t know you prepared sermons.”

And I thought, “You think I just walk up there on Sunday and just, like, open the Bible and like, a sermon comes out?

She goes, “Well, yeah, that’s what I thought you learned in seminary.”

And I thought, “Oh, no, no. You learn ho