Yesterday, after my Worship Studies class, I went to the office to get coffee andwas told that it was pay day for the professors and staff of Faith Bible College!
I got my first fruit! And since I only teach one course per week, I received the equivalent of I'd say 0.5% of my "day job" pay! But it's a great blessing and is still something to thank God for! After setting aside the tithe, I spent the rest of it on an afternoon snack- that was all it could afford! Yeah, it was that small! No, not really. It was good enough to buy four large-sized pan pizza and a few bottles of soda for about, I'd say 18 people!
The pizza party was at the prodding of the registrar and the administrative assistant saying that there has been a long standing tradition at Faith that new professors treat other staff and some students for pizza when their first salary is received! When the pizza's all gone, I was told that such tradition never existed!
What a bunch of liars! Haha! Albeit a lie, I had a great time interacting with people at the pizza party.
With all that comes with this new professorial stint on my days off while I maintain the post in the local church to which God directed me, I'm led to think of ways in which I could be a blessing to my students and co-faculty; how in some ways, I would engage in the discipleship of some future church leaders.
I found three statements that I feel applicable, not just in my life as i teach adjunctively.
The first was a quote attributable to C.S. Lewis that I’ve shared with you on other blog entries: “What you do screams so loud I can’t hear what you say;” in other words, whatever you say you think or believe, will always be trumped by your actions.
The second thought: Be thoughtfully intentional; as in, if you’re an effective teacher you spend a lot of time with lesson plans, if you’re a successful financier of one sort or another, you spend a lot of time with business plans, and so on. Even more than these, focused intentionality is required of loving, nurturing and enduring relationship.
The third thought: Do the harder thing – go the distance. Relationships that really matter require sweat and sacrifice, truth-telling and forgiveness, time and attention, humility and perseverance.
The fourth thought: Spiritual matters should not be separated from routine life. Spiritual matters should be completely and fully integrated into regular life and not relegated to compartmentalized moments or people. If you manage to identify yourself as a follower of Christ on Sunday, the next six days of the week should be no different.
Jesus said in Luke 6:45, “The good person out of the good treasure of the heart produces good.” And I got to thinking: Are we committed to producing good? What else can we do? Until we act, the good that might be accomplished remains in a frozen state, inert, unrealized, unborn, only so many words.
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