Preface: I wrote this not long ago for another project. I thought I would share.
My story of faith in Jesus as both Lord and Savior begins at a young age. By his grace he has grown me in ways unimaginable. Most notably, his calling on my family to live and serve as career missionaries in Haiti since 2007 has been the most notable dimension of my spiritual development.
My wife and I came to Haiti in August of 2007 only one year after graduating from college (and after living for 4 months in Quebec to learn French in the dead of winter). We were assigned to Emmaus Biblical Seminary of Haiti by our sending organization (One Mission Society, formerly, OMS International). I was to teach Old Testament and Stacey was to be the director of international marketing and public relations. Now, 8 years into the journey, I’ve been serving as the President of EBS Haiti for more than three years, and prior to that, I was the Provost of EBS.
While higher education executive administration has filled much of my professional and ministry schedule over the most recent years at EBS Haiti, the Lord continues to keep me deeply rooted and in touch with my first calling and passion to teach the Old Testament. Through all the changes and positions shifts at EBS, I have always held on tightly to my call to develop Old Testament literacy and theological competency among my students.
Our time in Haiti has broken my heart and life wide open for service to Jesus. Serving and living in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere for nearly a decade has challenged me, my ego, and my calling in ways that I could never imagine. The sanctification process has been nothing less than a purifying fire of cross-cultural challenges, and hard blows to human efforts.
This is no human kingdom that God is building.
As they say, culture eats strategy for breakfast. Not only that, but living and serving in a (very) different culture than my own has taught me that Haiti and ministry is simply a gift—a gift that belongs to him. The world, Haiti and others, need only Jesus. If I don’t have Jesus to give, then I’m rendered void and bankrupt.
God, through his Holy Spirit, has grown me to a place where there is nothing that I cherish more than intimacy with Jesus. Whatever it is that will facilitate this is where I will be, in my instruction, my home, Haiti, or in the US. This precisely leads me into my philosophy of Christian higher education.
All of my professional career and ministry has been spent in higher Christian education. I have wrestled with the question of what God wants to do through this institution (EBS) to glorify his name. Not only this, but I’ve also wrestled with how God wishes to make Christian higher education his holy instrument to reproduce Christ-like agents of change for a broken and decaying world.
There is no other place of ministry like higher Christian education simply because the traditional model is set up beautifully for mentor/men-tee context. Christian higher education is so much more than transmitting impersonal data. Christian higher education is the place of a truth encounter. It is the place where the student, the disciple, can engage scripture at a heightened level of sophistication within the context of having a personal guide (the professor). Students not only find Jesus in the text, but also themselves. I highly prefer the Rabbinic approach (dialogical, personal) to teaching over and above the didactic approach (lecturing). It is in the context of relationship that the truth encounter with the Scriptures must occur.
