How's It Going?

Since August I have answered the question, “So how do you like Baylor?” or some other version of the inquiry about a thousand times. “How’s Waco?” “How’s the new job?" (Or the puzzling version of that: “How do you like retirement?” Retirement? Turns out being full-time on the faculty of a seminary at a major university is a job.) I’m glad to have been asked those questions, because having friends who are interested in the changes in your life is a good thing.

I love being at Baylor. It is an intellectually and culturally rich environment. In the thirteen weeks I’ve been here, visiting scholars and musicians have paraded across the campus regularly. Tonight, for example, the NPR series, “From the Top!” will be recorded from the Jones Concert Hall in the McCrary Music Building. A few weeks ago I met David Crowder just outside my classroom. Dr. Haddon Robinson, one of the most influential preachers and teachers of preaching spent a couple of days with us at Truett, as did Dr. Lamin Sanneh, an expert on world Christianity and missions from Yale. I have enjoyed the collegiality with faculty from other schools at the university that those teaching in stand-alone seminaries do not experience. Two professors in the Hankamer School of Business gladly brought their thinking on leadership to my classroom and enriched the learning of a couple of dozen seminary students. Within five minutes of my office I have access to Starbucks, Big 12 baseball and basketball, and a top-notch fitness center. The Moody Library is only two blocks away, but when I need a book or journal article, I simply go on line and order it and it is delivered to my office or inbox in a day or so.

I love teaching at Truett. The colleagues I work with are amazing thinkers, prolific writers, and devout followers of Jesus. Besides daily lunches with several of them at Penland Food Court, I enjoy hallway conversations, the exchanging of ideas about theology or teaching, and even faculty meetings.

The students are young, bright, passionate about life and ministry, and far more sophisticated about the world and the mission of God than I was as a student. The sense of partnership and collegiality that develops between professors and students is remarkable. I travelled to Abilene with a half-dozen of them last weekend and learned at least as much as they did from the two informal three and a half hour seminars held in my Hyundai.

The facilities at Truett are lovely. The Truett building is new, LEED Certified, and conducive to community life. The technology we have to work with is amazing. A program called Elluminate Live! allows me to have guest lecturers in my classes from anywhere in the world via an Internet connection, or to meet my class when I am not on campus. (Haven't tried that last feature yet.) Most scholarly journals and many books are now electronic and available to me on my laptop wherever I might be. When I was last full-time in a classroom, blackboard was literally a blackboard. I went home each evening with chalk dust on my clothes. Now Blackboard is the means of connecting with students and sharing all kinds of resources.

Every Tuesday the community of Truett gathers for worship in the beautiful Powell Chapel. The worship is student-led and the preaching is done by faculty or visiting speakers. The faculty has been preaching a series on “Texts That Have Shaped Us.” I get my shot at that on January 19. It is a bit intimidating to think about preaching to a group that includes Drs. Joel Gregory and Hulitt Gloer, professors of preaching, and a list of biblical scholars and theologians the sandals of whose feet . . .. And their students.

On Thursday mornings students gather in Covenant Groups for spiritual formation practices. This is required of them. The faculty voluntarily gathers in two such groups. We sit in silence for a while, read Scripture, and share our reflections about it. Then we pray together.

The semester is nearly over and I’m beginning to feel less awkward in the classroom, gradually discovering the ethos and culture of this place. I’m making adjustments to the way I will teach my classes next semester. Students have been fairly patient with my first semester awkwardness.

I like Waco. It is small, uncrowded, and friendly. I have not yet missed anything about the City of Houston itself. I drive to work in ten minutes through a rural setting. I can get used to that eventually. I have been blessed with a place to stay. Jerry and Judy Wilson, Kyle’s parents, have graciously opened their home and permitted me to stay in the “grandma room” on the back of their home. I walk out to my car each morning and see the longhorn steer across the fence in the 150 acre pasture. The drive back and forth to Waco over these past thirteen weeks has not been bad. The first hour of it coming to Waco and the last hour returning to Houston is through the big city and its traffic. The remainder of the drive on Hwy 6 is, for me at least, relaxing and pleasant.

I miss my family. I am eager beyond words to be back to living in the same house with Melinda and Jenna. Phone calls, Skype, email, and crowded weekends do not make up for the daily, face-to-face time with them. I truly sympathize with those who make their living by travelling all week long or who for various reasons live and work at a great distance from their families. That doesn’t work so well for me. I’m looking forward to the closing of the parentheses. We have located a home in Waco we think we would like, but ours has to go first. Selling a house takes time, and I easily grow impatient.

I miss my church. I miss friends and coworkers. Serving at UBC is one of the great privileges and shaping experiences of my life. Continuing to preach there on weekends has helped some with this, but the number of Sundays remaining in that role is dwindling rapidly, and I do miss the interaction with people during the week.

So, how’s it going? As with most of my 57 years so far, I’m blessed well beyond anything I deserve and am living in a kind of slack-jawed amazement most of the time. I'm confident that the remainder of the transition of home and family will take place in God's time. It is going well.