Teachers

Where would we be without them?

January 7, 2009 (Wednesday)
I have had the privilege of being a teacher for brief periods under limited circumstances, and discovered that it is something I enjoy. Reminiscing about such experiences caused me to think back over the many teachers who taught me.
Of course many people have taught me by example through the years. Life itself is a learning experience and I have learned many things from people who did not know they were teaching me. I have also been taught many things by people who have purposefully influenced my life.
I am thinking, however, about formal teaching. I owe a debt I can never pay to those who have taught me in the classrooms. From the First Grade right on through to the post-graduate continuing education seminars, knowledge was imparted to me that I continue to use to this present day.
I was taught the English language and how to use it. In addition to the textbook materials, my Second Grade teacher told the class, “Learn to express yourself well, using proper grammar. You show your ignorance when you use profanity.” That was 70 years ago, and I never forgot what she said.
I can’t think of any classroom subject that has had no practical application whatsoever, but I can recall several classes that have had extra special meaning to me. If he were living today, I would want to write a letter to Dr. Gordon Clinard, and thank him once again for showing me how to put a sermon together, and I would also want to thank Dr. Ken Chafin for his very frank and honest criticisms of my delivery of sermons. Both of those classes made a huge difference in the way I prepared and preached sermons. I would want to find Dr. Huber Drumwright and tell him how much I appreciate his passionate explanations of the Greek Text in the New Testament. I would want to thank Dr. Boyd Hunt for rescuing Systematic Theology from the scholastic freezer and making it dance joyfully in the mind of the young ministers in his classes. On and on I could go, talking about the teachers who made a difference in my life. At every stage of the process through all the schools, there were special teachers who left their mark on my life.
May God bless the teachers, every one of them, who care about all their students, rich and poor, male and female, gifted and challenged, of every ethnic group. Without our teachers, where would our nation be?