A few years ago, I remember pacing in the dark outside our home in Green Bay. I was sharing with my dad this crazy notion of possibly going back to school to receive my Master of Divinity and then possibly, my doctorate. At the time, I thought, I needed the MDiv before entering a doctoral degree. He asked me about the idea of teaching and if that was a path that I was thinking about. Yes, it has always been on my radar; but something I would do late in my life as I have felt the desire to train up the next generation of leaders.
We moved our family to Kansas City at the beginning of 2017. Everything after that snowballed into place. I took a year of master level classes and planned for many years of studies. One day, I stopped to check how a professor’s family was doing. The conversation took many turns till we were talking about my desire to have a doctorate someday. The individual in charge of doctoral admissions overheard our conversation and by that afternoon, I found that I was one class away from entry into a doctoral program. The next semester, I received an acceptance letter into the doctoral program. As I write, today was the last day of my first doctoral class. I am a doctoral student.
Blue Ridge Christian School had their own story. They have been working closely with Calvary University on a variety of things. One was introducing several opportunities for duel-credit classes. This is where our stories would merge. After multiple conversations and emails, it looked like a possibility for me to teach duel-credit Old and New Testament Surveys classes. Calvary looked at my transcripts and gave me the green light to teach this area as I had the needed amount of credits in the area of study. This past Monday, I taught my first high school class.
Today, I taught my second class. I was up till 1:30am preparing, I had high expectations for this class as we were to dive into the book of Genesis and set up a strong foundation for the course. That class period will go down as one of the best life stories of this year. I had so much fun teaching and interacting with the students. Throughout my life, I have had people ask if I would teach. I pondered the desire to teach for over a decade and today as I left my class, reality sunk in and I realized I am a teacher.
I never imagined that in less than two years of leaving Green Bay, I would be in a doctoral program and teaching young leaders in a classroom.
