Unexpected

You ever hear the old saying, “funny thing happened on the way to work today. . .?” Well, this actually applies to me, which was funny for many that I minister with, but not as funny to me at the time. I can laugh about it now, but it was quite a learning experience.

We hosted another Ph.D. seminar at the Seminary that I teach at and since I was teaching 3 Seminary courses already, I was not scheduled to teach at this Seminar, or so I thought. I was part of the committee and helping with coordinating it and making sure everything was running smoothly, but truthfully I was relieved to know that I was not to teach at this one for a couple of reasons. The first being I was already teaching three courses and the second being that I have no expertise in Church Planting, which was what the Seminar was to be covering.

I was looking over the schedule of the speakers that were to come in and speak over the next two weeks and I noticed on the last day that my name was on there, but I did not think much of it because a man by the name of David Bosch was on there and his topic was the Theology of Mission. I never thought twice about it, just thought I was to be present to help Dr. Bosch in any way I could, which would be little in the way of teaching, as I have no experience planting a church.

What I found out the first day of the Seminar was that David Bosch was a dead author who wrote a book entitled “The Theology of Mission,” and I was to lead a discussion on this book for 8 hours. If you are following along, you probably have figured out that I have never read the book, as I thought the guy was still alive and just teaching the course.

I explained to Dr. Jayakumar that I have never read the book and do not know this Bosch guy. He says, “no problem,” and goes to his book shelf and pulls down this book that is probably the thickest book on his shelf. I flipped to the end right away just to see that it was 653 pages in length. Somehow, I was to read a 653 page book in 13 days and be prepared to discuss it at a Ph.D. level standard. I believe that with God all things are possible, but with Alan they are not.

Needless to say, I started reading immediately and kept reading every free moment for the next 13 days, while at the same time teaching and trying to correlate my thoughts on how to discuss this book, which was not impressing me very much. Meaning that I had to work even harder to keep my attention and not have my mind wander to everything else.

If that was not bad enough, on Thursday a call was received by us that the scheduled speaker had an emergency and had to leave and would not be able to make it. Guess who took his place? I was going to use Thursday to prepare my notes, as I had read the book by then. No chance.

God used it in the end and we had some great discussions in class, but one thing I have learned, is when you see your name on any sheet make sure you know why it was put on there and do not assume anything. You’d think I would have learned that by now.