Dr. John Beck is the dean of The Master’s University’s School of Business and Communication, where he also teaches classes. Beck brings a dynamic combination of love for Christ and business acumen to his roles, having held leadership positions for decades in the video game and media spaces.

We recently caught up with Beck in the latest edition of our faculty Q&A series.

Q: How did you come to know the Lord?

My parents were transplants from Illinois to the South. My dad took a job as a university professor at the University of Alabama in Birmingham. There was a woman in our neighborhood, a sweet, sweet Christian woman who was running a vacation Bible school for kids in the neighborhood. One of my earliest memories is actually kneeling down and asking Jesus for forgiveness.

Q: Where does your passion for business come from?

I was a broadcasting major as an undergraduate, in a management emphasis, and it was very interdisciplinary. So it dawned on me that business is really an interdisciplinary field. That has always appealed to me. Accounting is very different from marketing or business law. After grad school, I got connected with a startup that was doing educational PC CD-ROMs, and I was amazed at the variety of skill sets that were there. We had composers, sound designers, programmers, artists, and illustrators, and I was just won over by the interdisciplinary aspect. As I got involved, being the person on the team who had a master’s degree in management, I naturally gravitated toward supervision and organization of the elements necessary to produce a product on time and on budget.

I also discovered that it was amazing preparation for general management to have a background in communication, because communication is really a medium of influence and leadership. It’s the pathway of organization. And that kind of led me into being a CEO and then being a founder of a business in the media space.

Q: Tell us a little bit about your family.

I like to say I’m married to my high school sweetheart, but it’s not exactly true; we were huge friends in high school, but never dated, much to my chagrin. But we both landed at Ohio University and got involved in what was then Campus Crusade for Christ and our relationship just blossomed from there. We were married between the first and second year of my master’s degree. We have two kids, both of whom are graduates of TMU.

Q: How does a biblical worldview play itself out in business education at TMU?

Business is a showcase of character like nothing you’ve ever seen. There’s no place to hide. If I see you in a business context, it reveals a lot about the content of your character. It’s a marketplace, and it’s a ministry. So what we’re essentially doing is equipping students for a mission field called business.

I really have two goals for students that I’m investing in. The first one is I want them to take the opportunity, before they get into the working world, to deepen their core identity in Christ, to understand that they are first kingdom ambassadors and have a stewardship for the gospel. And then the second thing is really to understand that excellence in work has eternal significance. Work is a communication medium that proclaims the reality of the gospel in a person’s life.

Q: What do you love about teaching at TMU?

I get to equip kingdom ambassadors who are going to have far-reaching influence beyond anything that I could imagine. And I hope that the students we’re investing in here get to benefit in some small way from the challenges and struggles I’ve had in entrepreneurial or business settings.

Q: What do you enjoy about being a member of the faculty at TMU?

There is an alignment and relationship among faculty here that I truly appreciate. Being aligned on the most important things of life creates a collegiality and platform for relationship unlike any workplace I’ve ever been a part of.

Q: What would you tell a high school junior or senior who is thinking, “I want to pursue a career in business, but I have no idea where or how”?

I’d probably try to gather information from them. What aspects of business interest them, and how does that intersect with the way they’re designed to serve God? Because you can direct a student into a particular area of business that is suited to the way that God has equipped them. You have students who are more on the creative side, and we have quantitatively gifted students. I would want them to understand that business is interdisciplinary and there’s something in it for everyone.

Learn more about TMU’s School of Business and Communication here.