by David Melton
I teach. While the responsibilities of college administration give me plenty to do, not even to mention the privilege of pastoring MetroWest Baptist Church as well, I still teach every semester. I would love to tell you I teach because students beg me to do it! I thrive on the classroom experience, and I am gratified by some of the responses students give — but teaching at the college level is just in my blood.
But from Ken Gillming, our vice president for academic affairs, all the way down the line of our Boston professors, we push ourselves to get better all the time. What we did in the classroom last year just isn’t good enough to do again. Challenging the minds and hearts of young people to serve the Lord simply has no “autopilot.” If we are going to teach, we have to learn, and keep learning, and keep getting better.
While Phil Webber and I signed on to teach a course together this semester entitled “Baptists and the History of Christianity,” we had no illusions. We knew we had picked a pretty steep hill to climb. But both of us feel passionately that our next generation of church leaders needs to understand how the gospel came all the way down through the centuries … until it got to us. Phil and I knew that the perceptions are out there that history is boring. I’m a history guy, so I can’t understand that at all. And particularly when we are talking about the history of our faith! Then I remembered back to a couple of church history courses I had long ago. Ouch.
We also knew that the story of Christianity is complicated, challenging, confusing, and ripe with all kinds of superimposed “myths” perpetrated by all kinds of interests down through the centuries for all different kinds of reasons.
But Phil and I looked across a table at each other months ago, talked about the challenges, talked about what we would have to learn before we ever strolled into a classroom, and then we said, “Let’s do this!”
Every week is an adventure. Really, it is. I am growing in my awareness of the journey of the gospel through the centuries. I am renewed over and over again by our spiritual ancestors in the Baptist family who have individually and collectively served their own generations well — and then handed the truth on to the next generation. And there are plenty of laughs. Just yesterday one student laughed so hard her coffee wouldn’t stay in her mouth! Come on, can you talk about the “great schism” or what life must have really been like for naïve, unprepared crusaders without chuckling. Phil and I still have plenty of work to do — and our students do, too. But not only is everybody staying awake, learning is happening. And it all starts with those who teach.
I wish I could tell you all about the weeks ahead! We have courses on villains, mysteries, great brawls and wacky ideas, along with revivals, martyrs, and heroes. Not too bad for history, huh?