Unbound Speaker

TRENT EMMACK

Trent Emmack was born in the Ozark mountains of Southwestern Missouri, but now lives in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. He brings energy and nonstop ideas to the table and is always ready to try something new or dangerous. Trent is a deep thinker, has a well-informed and unique perspective on current culture, and is passionate about distilling big ideas into easy-to-understand principles. When speaking, Trent loves to incorporate personal stories that make his sessions hilarious and energetic, but always with the purpose of reinforcing the bigger ideas he is trying to communicate. In addition to speaking, Trent is an admissions counselor for Unbound, a position he earned after several years of service on national student leadership teams, planning multiple events across the country. In what little free time he has left, Trent can usually be found reading dry history, lifting weights, riding his motorcycle, or getting up to whatever adventure he and his friends have most recently devised.

Sessions by Trent Emmack

How to Kill a Culture, and How to Save One

Lets face it, things out there are pretty bleak nowadays. Every time you turn on the T.V., pick up your phone, or see a billboard, you run the risk of being exposed to the corrosive outgrowths of a pathological worldview that has overrun our society. In the face of this sort of cultural pollution, it’s easy to despair, to resort to cutting oneself off from the culture at large, and in some ways that’s a perfectly reasonable reaction. However, it’s not a sustainable one. Our culture is a runaway train, and if we don’t try to stop it, we’ll just be the last ones to get hit. In this session, Trent takes a close look at the ideologies fueling our culture, identifying the thinkers and ideas that have undermined the western world and brought us to this moment. Through gaining an understanding of these ideas we also learn how to counter them, not just in the apologetic sense, but in a tangible cultural sense, so that we may build a new counter-culture for the future.

Resilience and Hope

Christianity today is so inundated with secular culture that it almost becomes a default to consider our circumstances and trials with a mindset incompatible with our faith. We live in churches and communities where the automatic response to struggles is despair. Why? In this session, Trent explores two key principles often missing from our worldviews: resilience and hope. The two are inextricably linked, so come learn how to equip yourself with these characteristics and use them to impact the world for Christ. We have a wonderfully solemn calling to face trials with divinely-inspired grit and to serve as beacons of hope in a society that has none.

Starting Small

Increasingly, we’re living in a world of shortcuts. Everything moves so fast today that often the most rewarding behavior is cutting corners, finding a faster and easier way to get to your destination. But what then happens when you encounter something for which there is no shortcut, no quick way to success? Unless you’ve prepared yourself, you just end up ramming into a brick wall – and many young adults are doing just that. In this session, Trent considers his own experiences and the examples of others as he offers perspective on the practices and tools needed to equip the next generation.

The Privilege of Action

How often recently have you heard the term YOLO (You Only Live Once)? Even if you haven’t come across the term directly, the concept pervades our culture. Our world consistently defines hard work as something to be avoided. So, what happens when our culture takes an ordinary vice that we all are familiar with and turns it into a virtue? Just look around. You’ll see a culture that is broken, spiraling, and directionless. In this session, Trent takes a critical look at our culture’s understanding of what work really is, then turns to the Scriptures to identify why it is so critical for us to strive to create value on a daily basis and how we can lay a practical foundation for doing so.

Beyond Reproach

What does it take to make a difference? Is it a matter of sheer indomitable willpower? Does it require abnormal intellect, erudite communication skills, or some other exceptional talent? Sometimes it does. There are plenty of examples of tremendously impactful figures who demonstrated phenomenal capability in one or all of these respects, and found themselves in the perfect time and place to make a difference. But is that really the only way one can have an impact? What if the difference we seek to make isn’t a matter of changing the world, the west, or the nation, it was instead about making an impact upon the ones closest to you? Upon the people who you randomly interact with on a daily basis and never see again? In this session, Trent asks all of these questions and more, with the aim of demonstrating how we can create a tangible difference in the places that we live. To do so, he relies on notable historical figures who lived in an exemplary manner, and whose hard work, attention to detail, and general magnanimity allowed them to make an outsized impact, all while starting small.

Media Inquiries

To request an interview with Trent or to invite him to your next event, email [email protected].