The Old Professor-Man on Campus
Photo by wishymom
On August 1 of this year I began my thirty-third year of teaching for Lincoln Christian Seminary. A few days ago my wife and I were out with friends and they talked to me about my ministry and I observed that due to recent retirements, I have the most seniority of any professor currently teaching at Lincoln. There are one or two others that may have been teaching full-time longer, but not here at Lincoln.
Why? Why have I remained on the same campus in the same ministry for so many years? Is it because I have not had the opportunity to go elsewhere and do something else? No. There have been a few moments when I was ready to go. But something or Someone pulled me back.
Some would say the more important question is should I have stayed around for so long–stayed for so long at Lincoln and/or stayed teaching? My answer: I want to do nothing else or nothing less nowhere else, at least at this point with the life of one who will turn sixty this coming October.
Why? Should? Years ago I read one of the best books on teaching ever, Parker Palmer’s The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life. The three paragraphs on p. 1 spoke to my head and my heart:
I am a teacher at heart, and there are moments in the classroom when I can hardly hold the joy. When my students and I discover uncharted territory to explore, when the pathway out of a thicket opens up before us, when our experience is illumined by the lightning-life of the mind–then teaching is the finest work I know.
But at other moments, the classroom is so lifeless or painful or confused–and I am so powerless to do anything about it–that my claim to be a teacher seems a transparent sham. Then the enemy is everywhere: in those students from some alien planet, in that subject I thought I knew, and in the personal pathology that keeps me earning my living this way. What a fool I was to imagine that I had mastered this occult art–harder to divine than tea leaves and impossible for mortals to do even passably well!
This book is for teachers who have good days and bad, and whose bad days bring the suffering that comes only from something one loves. It is for teachers who refuse to harden their hearts because they love learners, learning, and the teaching life.
The night before seminary classes start, I find it hard to sleep. The minutes before a class begins–be it the first one or the last one in the semester–I am nervous. I don’t want to mess up! ”God help me!” I pray. God help me to remember James 3, that masterful chapter on the power of the tongue of the teacher. God help me teach in such a way that my students will be able to say about me what the psalmist said about his teachers: “I have more insight than all my teachers, for I mediate on your statutes” (Ps. 119:99). The joy of teaching students in the seminary is akin to God’s grace: I receive what I do not deserve; I am sustained by the joy shown by the students; and I am surprised in every class. In teaching my heart has been broken as well as blessed.
In teaching for more than three decades I have tried to model the importance of identity and integrity and integration and influence. Rather than stress the per-suasion that comes from teaching, I have desired to model moral-suasion.
I recently read that “Only when we have knelt before God and learned can we stand before students and teach.” It is not my tongue or my technique but the posture of prayer that brings power to my teaching. Before teachers can stand before a class or sit before a class, they need to learn to kneel before God.
I pray that my teacher’s heart will never harden and that my teacher’s heart will be a compassionate one and a healthy one and a God-honoring one. Amen.
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Happy Anniversay Bob!
I must confess, as I was reading this article the mental picture I had was amusing. In the 1994 film IQ with Walter Matthau, Meg Ryan and Tim Robbins, Matthau plays Einstein. At one point in the movie he has the chance to ride, for the first time, on a motorcycle. As they are speeding down the street he yells with delight “VAHOO”. This is one of my fav scenes in the movie. Here is an “old” professor who still takes great delight in new experiences.
You delight in the WORD and making it come alive in the hearts and minds of your students has kept you LCCS for God’s glory. I wish you and those who are yet to come, many more years of your delight, ahaaa’s and Vahoo’s. God Bless.
Thank you.
Thanks Dr.Lowery. Its an honor to be a student of yours. Looking forward to learning with and from you!
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Thank you for being my teacher. Thank you for respecting me as a co-laborer for Christ, from our very first meeting. Thank you for that mock interview you did with me in your office, that was tougher than any job interview I’ve faced! Thank you for praying with me before I preached in seminary chapel. Thank you for introducing me to Parker Palmer’s writings. Thank you for still getting nervous before class, and for reminding us that that’s ok — a good thing, even.
And thank you for posting this.
Wow, you’ve been teaching at Lincoln as long as I’ve been alive. Craziness.
Blessings to you.