True Students

In contrast to the previous post about learning and students (here, here, and here), I must brag about the students of Pikes Peak Bible Institute (PPBI logo on the left). I am currently teaching a class in Christian Doctrines and we were fast coming up on the end of the class sessions. Technically, we were supposed to be completed with the class in the last week of November. However, I was a few weeks behind in my instruction and needed one more week to really cover all the material I needed to cover.

The students said to me, "Can we have the class go one more week so we can learn all we need to?"

I stood there stunned not exactly sure what to say. This was great. I have never taught a class where the students said, "We would like the class to go longer." I have to laugh about my initial response because I thought, "What is going on here? Can I do that?!? Can I schedule the class around the students' desire to learn?"

So, as you can well imagine, we are schedule to go one more week than we are supposed to go. What an amazing difference!! I can see it each week. To these students, grades are almost incidental. What they desire is to become better equipped so they can serve God more effectively. They think of their class time as a application of Ephesians 4:11-16:

And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.(NASB)

These are true students, those who are truly interested in learning, those truly desiring education, those longing to be equipped from ministry. I will give my life in ministry to these type of students any time, for the rest of my life.

Part 4 of 4 (1 2 3 4)