A Visit To The Party Table

Yesterday I e-mailed the syllabus for the classes that I will begin teaching on July 25 for evaluation. Sending them made me think about teachers who impacted my life. The Lord has given me the opportunity to be taught by great men and women of God. But one professor from Bible College stands out in my mind. If my teaching style can closely resemble that of any teacher I have ever had it will definitely imitate his.

He was a passionate teacher who showed great amounts of emotion while teaching. He was also one of the colleges most demanding professors. The exams in his classes where one of the few that could not be passed by frantically studying for a few nights. To get a good grade you literally would have to think through a book of the Bible, and sometimes more than one! But what makes him so special to me is something he didn't do in class.

It was during my Sophomore year in college when I took his class. I had a lot of friends, and enjoyed spending time with them every day. So every day we would all spend about an hour eating lunch. Actually we were some of the first ones to get there, and the last to be thrown out. Very little of that time was spent actually eating of course. We would tell stories, laugh at stupid jokes, and just have a good time. Not surprisingly we were very loud while this was going on. After a few weeks our lunch table became what was known as “the party table”.

Normally the professors would eat with other faculty and staff. That was why I was so surprised when the passionate demanding professor walked towards the party table. I was shocked when he asked if he could sit down and eat lunch with us. No professor had ever done that before! We let him sit down, and before long he was laughing at our jokes and sharing his own stories. In the weeks that passed I noticed that he almost always sat with the students. Before long students actually started coming to him when they needed advice. A lot of his lunches turned into counseling sessions. But that didn't seem to matter to him.

When my class graduated we asked him to give the commencement address. We did it because he was not just a professor, but a close friend. He took a risk and became actively involved in our lives. And by doing that he became a mentor instead of a professor. God has given me an incredible opportunity to teach doctrinal truth to Australian nationals. And I am looking forward to teaching them how to practically apply those truths. But I am praying that God would allow me to do more than just that. I want to find, and minister to the needs of their hearts. For what good is it to fill a mind with doctrine while the heart is broken?