Another Year Of “Ministry”

WED., AUG. 18, 1993, 12:30 PM
OFFICE, PULLIAM HALL

Yes, o son, perhaps it is a bit early, but you are here in your office, and the students are in the process of returning. Tomorrow your new department has its orientation meeting, your course outlines are completed, and you even have the lawn at the Interfaith Center looking… mowed at least. Another year of teaching, which is your primary “ministry,” is soon to begin, your 45th in total and perhaps 14th since you and I have been in relationship. Naturally you would expect some words of advice from Me, your friend, Holy Spirit. (Sometimes I wish I had a name!)

You are well prepared for these classes, and each year you have a more complete sense of how spirit is a part of each class, an influence on what learning approaches you use, and a part of the subject matter for each. The more natural you can be as you offer spirit as a factor in health, the more easily it will be accepted. You need have no apologies for your perspective. It is the one I want you to have and develop, and that is sufficient reason, even as it not particularly academic.

You were reminded this week that though you well know the name of each student in each class within 2 weeks, the memory of name and face fades rather quickly with those you have only once. This is unfortunate but true, partly from age, but mostly because without reinforcement something learned may be forgotten. Be sure you remember this in your teaching and in your testing. Repetition and reinforcement, when it is of important content material can increase learning that lasts. You are remembered as a teacher because students “get more of you” than you do of most students. You are harder to forget because of who you are to them and how you direct the learning process.

And yet don’t expect to be remembered by more than a very few who have you for a professor. Cherish the few, but don’t be disappointed that the numbers are not great. A small number in each culture, in each business or profession, in each portion of My Body, the Church, are outstanding enough to be remembered and revered. You would like to be in such a van, but you have accepted, pretty well, your not being in this Outstanding category. I, as Jesus, am very well remembered, but it was “touch and go” for awhile after My death, resurrection, and ascension. As Holy Spirit I am remembered, but more as part of ritual and rhetoric than as true companion. Only a relative few know Me as well as you do… because of this special gift I have laid upon you.

It is hard for you to imagine being in some other place, and even more difficult to imagine doing something other than teaching. You can project yourself as one continuing on the Punahou faculty, over these years. The deanship would certainly be a worthwhile ministry, but could you have enjoyed the years at that level, responding daily much more to needs as defined by others than by you. You can think of some benefits, but you would not have developed, probably, the perspectives you have, as a result of your repeated teaching of these special courses.

Stanford, from My perspective as well as yours, was more of a means than an end in itself. Your ministry of teaching had some development there, but not like that at Punahou, or, especially, here. It was a good time for your family and family life, and it provided the status that made you valuable here and hastened your rise to full professor. That made it quite worthwhile. Accept it as that.