In part two of Dr. Stan Norman’s conversation with Steven Nelson, Director of Housing and Intramural Sports at Williams Baptist University, Steven picks up the story as a young electrical engineering student at DeVry in Kansas City, still wrestling with God’s call to ministry. He recounts the decisive moment in a trigonometry class when he stood up, told his professor “I’m not supposed to be here,” withdrew from school, and returned home to work on the farm and in a factory while saving for Bible college. 

Steven shares how the Lord used those seasons of struggle, along with the support of his grandparents, to lead him into formal theological training at Spurgeon College and Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary—including archaeological digs in Israel—and ultimately into his current role shepherding students at Williams. 

If you missed last week’s episode, be sure to go back and listen to part one so you can experience the full arc of Steven’s journey from farm fields to the WBU campus.

In this episode of the Lifework Podcast, host Dr. Stan Norman welcomes Steven Nelson, Director of Housing and Intramural Sports at Williams Baptist University, to share how a boy from rural Missouri found his way into shaping campus life at WBU. 

Steven reflects on growing up in a large farming family, learning perseverance in the fields and factories, and navigating complex family dynamics that forged his character and faith. He introduces how those early experiences prepared him not only for future ministry training at Spurgeon College and Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, but also for his calling to invest in students’ lives through housing, intramurals, and teaching. 

Stay tuned through the end of this conversation as Steven begins to wrestle with God’s call on his life and the tension between an engineering path and ministry, setting up part two of his story coming next week.

In part two of this conversation, President Stan Norman and Caleb Garner pick up Caleb’s story as he moves from Mississippi State into the world of sports media and, eventually, the classroom at Williams Baptist University. Caleb describes discovering that work is both service and worship, and how roles in sports information, media relations, and communications became avenues for telling stories while God was quietly reshaping his vocational path.

He shares how graduate studies, long hours in a “24/7” athletics environment, and mentoring student workers awakened a love for teaching that ultimately brought him to WBU to lead the growing Sports Management program. Caleb also unpacks what a sports management degree can prepare students to do—from coaching and athletic administration to sports business and media—and why he believes Christ-centered leaders are desperately needed in today’s multibillion-dollar sports industry. Listeners will hear how he is pursuing his doctorate in sport management, investing in students as future leaders, and viewing every role—from cutting grass to teaching—to be an act of worship under the direction of the “Master Storyteller.”

Learn more about the health & physical education department: https://williamsbu.edu/physicaleducation/

In this episode of the Lifework Podcast, President Stan Norman sits down with Caleb Garner, Chair of the Department of Health and Physical Education and Assistant Professor of Sports Management at Williams Baptist University. Caleb shares how growing up in the “boondocks” of Brooksville, Mississippi, in a close-knit, church-centered community and a hardworking family shaped his view of vocation and calling.

He reflects on watching his parents persevere through job loss and tough seasons, early experiences working in his grandfather’s feed store, and the formative influence of camp work that taught him to see even unseen tasks as service to Christ. Along the way, Caleb talks about his lifelong love of athletics—right down to his quirky gift for “chasing mascots,” memorizing college teams and stats—and how God used that passion, together with key mentors and campus jobs, to begin steering him toward a future in sports management.

Learn more about the health & physical education department at WBU: https://williamsbu.edu/physicaleducation/

In last week’s episode, Janna Himschoot shared how farm life, family, and faith in Hardy, Arkansas, laid the groundwork for her calling as a wife, mother, and future educator. If you missed that conversation about lifework, you’ll want to go back and listen before jumping into this powerful continuation. 

This week, WBU President Dr. Stan Norman welcomes Janna back to trace the next chapter of her journey—from corporate accounting during the tech boom, to an unexpected pivot into healthcare, to the humbling season of tutoring alongside her dad. 

Janna describes how God used a missed job opportunity, long commutes, and an online MBA to reshape her understanding of success and to deepen her desire to pour into students, not just bottom lines. She tells the story of arriving on the Williams campus and sensing, almost immediately, “Now everything makes sense,” as years of work experience, motherhood, and ministry converged into a clear sense of lifework and calling. 

Janna also reflects on helping shape Williams Works, why her most fulfilling work now is “being a mom” to her students, and the simple phrase she shares with them—and would share with her younger self: trust the process.

Learn more about the business department at WBU: https://williamsbu.edu/business

What if your sense of calling started with a cattle loan at age 12 and evenings spent checking cows with your dad? 

In this episode, WBU President Dr. Stan Norman sits down with Assistant Professor of Business Janna Himschoot to explore how God used small-town Hardy, Arkansas, hard work on a 300-acre farm, and deeply rooted family faith to shape her lifework and purpose. Janna shares why motherhood was her first calling, how a Girl State workshop pointed her toward accounting, and why she never wavered in her resolve to build a life that put faith and family first. Along the way, she reflects on growing up in a multigenerational church her great-grandparents founded, meeting her husband in the cattle barn at the county fair, and learning that simple, steady obedience is often where God forges our true vocation. 

Stay tuned—next week, Janna returns to talk about corporate accounting, doors that didn’t open, surprising pivots into healthcare and tutoring, and how God ultimately led her to discover her lifework in the college classroom.

Learn more about the business department at WBU: https://williamsbu.edu/business

In part two of our conversation with Belina Dulaney, professor of mathematics at Williams Baptist University, she shares how God redirected her carefully laid career plans and revealed a surprising calling to the classroom. From orientation day at ASU and dreams of becoming an actuary, to discovering a deep sense of ease and joy while teaching as a graduate assistant, Dulaney traces the moments when God clearly overruled her “never going to teach” resolve.

She reflects on her year in a high school classroom in a low-income community, the emotional toll and deep fulfillment of investing in students’ lives, and the leap of faith that brought her to Williams Baptist University. Dulaney also explains why she sees God as the ultimate mathematician, pointing to patterns, harmony, and design in both creation and the golden ratio that she highlights in her contemporary math classes. This episode invites listeners to consider how God weaves gifts, personality, and unexpected opportunities into a clear sense of calling and purpose.

In this LifeWork Podcast episode, host Dr. Stan Norman sits down with Belina Dulaney, Assistant Professor of Natural Sciences – Mathematics at Williams Baptist University, to explore how God uses numbers, work, and hardship to shape a calling. From growing up in a single–parent home in small–town Arkansas to becoming a valedictorian with 52 college credit hours and eventually a college math professor, Belina shares how her mother’s unwavering work ethic and faith created a culture of consistency, integrity, and perseverance in their family.

Mrs. Dulaney opens up about becoming pregnant at 15, the loneliness that followed, and how the unconditional love she experienced from her mother and her church family became the crucible where her trust in Christ became real. She and Dr. Norman talk candidly about disappointment, expectations, and what it means when someone tells you, “You were almost perfect,” and how God meets us when our image of perfection collapses.

The conversation also dives into why so many people have a negative experience with math, why she jokes that she teaches “all the math,” and how she helps students see that “everybody does math every day” and that creation itself reflects a God who is a kind of mathematician. This episode will encourage anyone who has wrestled with failure, felt written off by others, or wondered how their work, their story, and even their struggles can be used by God in His larger equation for their life.

In Part 2 of this Lifework conversation, host Dr. Stan Norman picks up Dr. Trevor Babcock’s story right where the cliffhanger left off: a clear, lifelong plan to become a chemical engineer—and the slow-motion collapse of that plan in the real world of co-op work, panic attacks, and an unexpected loss of desire for the career he had built his identity around. Trevor describes how God used that work experience not to confirm his calling, but to clarify that engineering was not it, leading him through psychology and, finally, into an English degree that fit his loves more than his family legacy did.

From there, Trevor walks through a winding path of substitute teaching (including the one memorable job he was fired from), a move to New York City and graduate school at NYU, and a season of spiritual drift in the “big, crowded, lonely” city that culminated in a shocking cancer diagnosis discovered only because he was worried about the health consequences of his own bad choices. He reflects on how God used that lowest point—his worst behavior and deepest rebellion—to literally save his life, reshaping his view of God’s providence, anxiety, and control.

Trevor then traces how “just do the next right thing” became his practical theology of calling: adjunct teaching in Texas during the recession, a PhD at Indiana University, and eventually a faculty role at Williams Baptist University, all discerned not by dramatic signs but by biblical wisdom, community, prayer, and ordinary obedience. Finally, he opens a window into his day-to-day vocation in the classroom—using world literature, Augustine, Boethius, and Shakespeare’s Hamlet to talk about virtue, suffering, depression, and hope—and explains how sharing his own story of darkness and redemption helps students see that they are not alone and that God can also work through their pain to shape their lifework

In this first part of a two-episode conversation, Lifework host Dr. Stan Norman sits down with Williams Baptist University English professor Dr. Trevor Babcock to trace the unlikely path that shaped his calling and character. From a childhood that bounced between Kentucky, Cincinnati, and the suburbs of Sacramento, to a home marked by Naval Academy discipline on one side and pastoral ministry on the other, Trevor reflects on how family, frequent moves, and church life quietly formed his view of work, faith, and responsibility.

Trevor candidly revisits the darkest season of his adolescence—an isolating mid–seventh grade move back to snowy Cincinnati, deep depression, and even getting kicked out of his church youth group—and explains why, even as a cancer survivor, he still calls that winter the worst experience of his life. He then shares how God “turned the lights on” at a Young Life camp before his freshman year, transforming a sullen, self-loathing “little goth boy” into a student leader eager to bring others to Christ.

Along the way, listeners get a glimpse into the Naval Academy–shaped work ethic of his father, the quiet, faithful labor of his stay-at-home mom, and the early clarity that he was destined to follow the family engineering legacy—even as God was preparing to redirect his gifts toward the classroom and the study of literature. This episode sets the stage for part two, where Dr. Babcock’s story moves from chemical engineering dreams to an unexpected vocation in English and Christian higher education.