Psalm 119:127-128 Because

Why do so many deer run in front of cars and cause collisions?

A Google search found several answers for this, all of which are part of the explanation.

The deer's instinct is to focus almost exclusively on whatever it's doing at the present moment. As the deer approaches a road, he or she may be focused on a food source on the other side of the road. Or maybe the focus is on following the other deer in the herd or family grouping. Or, during rut season, the focus is on deer of the opposite gender.

A car coming down the street is no competition for whatever has the deer's attention, until the very last moment.

In that last moment, when the deer's peripheral vision picks up on the approaching vehicle and recognizes a possible threat, the deer's instinct is to leap in a random direction. That randomness serves him well if the attacker is a mountain lion, causing the predator a moment's confusion while the swift deer runs away. It doesn't serve the deer well if the random direction it leaps is into the path of the oncoming vehicle.

If a deer turns to look at the car, the headlights are apt to blind him. The front of the deer's eyes are heavy with photo-receptors and the bright light will temporarily blind the animal. Since the majority of deer-vehicle collisions take place at night, the deer's excellent night vision actually work against it when faced with such a blinding artificial light source.

Someone who sees everything through the lens of evolution would say the deer evolved that way as the best way to survive in a pre-headlights world. It makes more sense to me to appreciate that God designed deer to survive.

In short, deer are prone to collide with cars and trucks because, well, they're deer. They're acting like the Creator designed deer to act.

Because I love your commands more than gold, more than pure gold
and because I consider all your precepts right, I hate every wrong path.

Psalm 119:127-128

Because I'm God's servant, I love his commands and I value righteousness.

I also hate unrighteousness. The more I become the person God intends for me to be, the more I will instinctively avoid the detours on the one road of life. I'll remain focused on the path God lays out before me.

 It's who God designed me to be.

Writer's Notebook: Dave Embree, part 3

This is part three of "extras", the parts of my interview with Dave Embree that didn't make it into the final version as published in the August issue of Christian Standard magazine.

This final post features some random quotes and comments based on Tim's 41 years in the campus ministry.

***************

The need for campus ministers

We currently, among the associated college ministries associated with Christian Churches, have roughly a hundred fifty ministries. If those were evenly dispersed, which they are not, that would be three per state in the U.S. And in the two states with most college students, California and Texas, we have virtually nothing in the way of campus ministry.We have some new plans, I think, going on in those states, but nothing much.

Right now I’m not aware of any Christian Church schools offering a specific program in campus ministry. Even if it’s only one occasionally traveled, there could be a concentration of classes that I would be happy to help set up with anybody, just with existing offerings at a particular school.

Reaching college students today vs. 40 yeas ago

Some things we do really differently, some things we don’t.

 A while back I came across a copy of one of the newsletters we used to photocopy and hand out to students, whereas now we do it digitally. I went through the whole thing – it was from 25 or 30 years ago – a lot of the events we do are very similar.

We do a lot of back to school stuff. Students now are used to professional looking stuff and if it doesn’t look professional they won’t give it the time of day. We put a lot more emphasis on design because students get thousands of messages online every day, and trying to distinguish one message as being relevant to you among all that noise, is really different.So we try to be professional, we try to be present.

Over the years, one of the benefits of being here along time is that we have sort of a favored status. We have the benefit of getting to do some things on campus that other groups don’t. I’m not gloating against them, but we’ve proved ourselves to be good partners with the community.

We want to be present with the students every place where we can. We’ve always wanted that, it’s just harder now because, again, they stay in their rooms.

We try to do electronic marketing, which is difficult. We provide of lots of venues for people to connect with us, via Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest.

But one of the things that’s really changed, we have to put a lot more really personal appeal on things. Broadcasting is almost worthless. Narrow-casting works.

We used to put out clipboards for people sign up for stuff. That hardly happens anymore, even for things like mission trips. We took a group to Kenya last summer. I think every single person who went on that trip went because I asked that person if they would go with us.

In years past we had exciting mission trips where we had people turn in applications and we really went through the applications and some people didn’t get to go. But now that’s not happening, even with Kenya – how exciting is that – people want to be asked, they want know that’s relevant to my life.

When I first started in campus ministry, a guy told me three sure ways to gain attention on campus: sex, alcohol, and food, and since we could pretty well eliminate the first two, we had to focus on the food.

Food isn’t a draw anymore. Universities have recognized that if students were complaining about the food, they needed to make the cafeterias really good. In the dining halls students usually have about 10 different options. Always have burgers, always have pizza. Last time I ate there, I had Moroccan food.

We had a freshman outreach program that was really successful for about 10 years and then it just faded out in a matter of two years. It involved a meal on a Wednesday night, building a freshman community. We talked to them about freshman stuff.  When we investigated why this went from boom to bust, the respond we got was, 'Well we can go there and kind of hang out, but you’re only going to give us one option for food. Sometimes we don’t like that option. Over here at the dining hall we get 10 options. So Thanks, but we’d rather have options.'

Which is also one of the things that has reduced participation in out Spring mission trips. 'If we go with you, you’re driving. You decide when we stop, we don’t. Over the course of the week, if we decide we’d just rather not work today, you’re still going to want us to work. So we’d just rather go home.'

And I talk to good kids in our ministry who didn’t go on our Spring Break trip, kids who love Jesus. I asked them what they did for Spring Break. 'Oh, you know, I went home and just chillaxed for the week.'

You know, you could have gone down with us to the border and spend time in Mexico. 'Yeah, maybe I’ll do that next time, I don’t know.'

We ask people to pretty much go social media free. They hate it. We’re asking them to leave their 'home town', which is their online community.

We do more pop up events on campus. Last week we did a Make Your Own Slime event on campus. I asked the guys who did it, how do you think it went in terms of real outreach? Most of the people just made their slime and left. We had CCH info taped to every bag, but about three people wanted to talk to us about why we’re doing this and so on. So it was get what I want and get out of here, rather than I want to get to know you guys and what you're about.

Our students are growing smaller and smaller worlds for themselves instead of bigger ones. One of the corollaries of social media is people will say, I’ve got friends all over the world. But because of the metrics of social media, which are primarily binary, over time you expand your connections to more and more people who believe exactly what you do. And so you have more connections but less choice, less options. Those things are very age, socio-economic, to a certain extent, socio-political and ethnically stratified. And so you have 5000 Facebook friends, but the majority of them look like you, watch the same things, listen to Taylor Swift or hate her, just like you, and shop at the same stores.

Preparing students to be leaders in the church

The students who will get engaged in our ministry or any other campus minsitry are going to know way more scripture than you think they might otherwise know.

That’s another big change. Students in the mid 70's to the 80's at lest had a modicum of biblical knowledge. The students now in many cases have had very little exposure to the Bible. In many cases they’ve had more exposure through Veggie Tales than anything else. And whereas I think VeggieTales are marvelously cleaver and hysterical, that’s not a great way to teach the bible.

But students who come out of a campus ministry are going to know more about the bible that you might think. They’re going to know more about serving than you might think , and as a matter of fact they're going to see how integral serving others is to the Gospel. They’re probably going to have a much better view of of their responsibility to the rest of the world, in the United States and beyond. Some of them are going to have really particular leadership skills.

I’m taking roughly ten students through our small group leadership program called Pipeline this semester. I do usually five to ten per semester. Those guys are going to be really valuable to local churches and they’re going to be better trained than you might think.

But we need a whole lot more leaders than we’re producing, and we need a whole lot more leaders from among our churches who can be getting that training through campus minsitry, but who don’t know about campus ministry, so they’re not going to get trained.

One of the best things one of our alums said, was, 'When I came to the university it was to get a degree, so I’d know my way around the classroom and know how to be a teacher. What I didn’t expect was, I figured out my way around the church and I figured out how to serve there. I figured out what it’s about and how effective I can be. This is the most important thing I learned in college.

We want to produce as many people like that as we can.

Years ago IVCF advocated that churches should work towards not just trying to prepare students to survive the university campus, but to prepare them to go there with the goal of making a difference themselves, to see themselves as campus missionaries. And Intervarsity even encouraged churches to have a commissioning service where they would essentially set aside their recently graduated high school seniors who were heading off to college as that church’s missionaries to the campus where they would be studying.

I love that

Staying excited about campus minsitry

Here are some really good characteristics of students these days: they are innovative; they have remarkable (and remarkably useful) tech skills.

When they catch a vision, they are capable of great investment and sacrifice and impact.

They are capable of great compassion, especially when they encounter real pain in real lives.

What does it take to engage them? You've got to start with the "why" regarding anything. If they become convinced of the validity of an idea, or ministry, or spiritual path, they will go all out, and though they tend to have short attention spans, they really do value the sort of longer-term relationships with older believers who can keep them pointed the right direction.

As with all believers since the original disciples, they often figure out the truth through serving others, though they have to learn the difference between serving in love and "mandatory volunteer hours".

I speak often of how all the great awakenings in American history have happened at times when the "nones" were in the ascendency, and I have great hopes that this generation will get really excited about Jesus as have previous generations when other pursuits turned out to have no real glory.

Psalm 119:126 Not My Job

It is time for you to act, Lord;
your law is being broken.

Psalm 119:126

The book of Psalms is a textbook for prayer, in the form of David's trip diary of his conversations with God along the 1 road of life.

Sometimes David sounds like a child who is petulantly remind a parent of what they said they'd do.

You promised! You said you'd do this for me!

Is it OK to scold God?

Well, no. Of course not. He wants me to be open and honest with him. Express my frustrations. But need to always remember who I'm talking to.

The real lesson here is not that David is mouthing off to God. Far from it.

David is actually submitting wholly to God, acknowledging there are some things that are God's responsibility, not David's.

If I see someone breaking a law of God's, how should I react? Should I excoriate them, giving them a tongue lashing that puts them in the place and cuts them down to size? Should I put every other priority to the side and make it my mission to pass laws that criminalize their actions and strip them of freedoms because they've sinned?

If that's how I'm going to respond, I need to make sure I take the same approach to every person who brings a law of God. I should be vilifying every person who sins. I should be taking steps to criminalize lying and laziness and disobedience to parents.

Or not.

Perhaps instead I need to humbly turn as a servant to the God whose righteousness is the very foundation of those laws. I need to turn it over to God as Judge to judge and deal with law-breakers. And if He wants to use me as part of whatever action He chooses to take, He'll let me know.

My job is to be a servant, not to take things into my own hands.

Psalm 119:125 Discernment

I am your servant; give me discernment that I may understand your statutes.Psalm 119:125

Over the decades of my working life, I've helped to train dozens of new employees. They tend to fall into categories.

There are the ones who want to write everything down and need to be told everything multiple times. Even then, they don't seem to ever fully put it all together. Their problem is not that they're stupid. They just haven't ever learned to see how all the little rules and procedures fit together to former a larger overall plan. No matter how much I try to help them see the big picture, their minds refuse to focus on anything more than "what do I do next."

Others are able to see the big picture as well as learn the important details, but their attitude is terrible. Some of them are just too lazy to care to do it the right way. Others are easily distracted by interactions and conversations with other employees. That includes both the ones who are overly gregarious and the others who are obsessively contentious. To me, these are the worst type of new employee.

Another frustrating type of new hire is the person who has a lot of experience in a similar job in another place. This could be and should be a positive. Every supervisor loves getting that person who has been there and done that and catches on quickly. Unless they're the type who has been there and done that and immediately, on day one, is telling everyone - including the boss - how they did it a different, better way back at his previous job.

I'm always glad to hear fresh ideas from knowledgeable employees. But not if they come in a condescending manner, clearly signaling the new guy thinks he should be in charge.

What he really needs is discernment. He needs to be able to not only see the details of the job, but also to see the reality of the situation. He's not in charge. He might be someday, but right now he's been hired to do a specific job, not the one he wants to get next. So he needs to demonstrate his skill at performing the job he has, according to the rules and procedures laid down by his supervisors.

He needs a servant's attitude. The best leaders and managers are the ones who got there by being the best servants, helping everyone be better by the way they do their job.

As servants of God, we need to make sure we're not being a "bad employee."

Are you so focused on the lists of rules that you aren't grasping the overall scope of God's righteousness? If so, practice seeking God's heart, not just his laws.

Are you more focused on the church culture than on serving God? That can lead to being distracted by the social aspects of church life rather than being on mission for God. Or it can lead to becoming too entangled in church politics. If so, practice spending quality and quantity time with God, on your knees and in the Word. Spend as much or more time one on one with Him as you are spending with church activities.

Or are you the type who thinks you know better than God how things should be done? You've got your own ideas of how God should be going about His business, and you're going to run with your own ideas about spirituality and "cutting edge" Christianity. If so, ask God for discernment, to embrace His righteousness rather than your own self righteousness.

Writer's Notebook: Dave Embree, part 2

This is part two of the rest of my interview with Dave Embree, the parts that didn't make it into the final version that's available in the August 2019 edition of Christian Standard.

TR: How are students different today than they were in 1978?

DE: Students are pretty much different in every way.

Although, just this past week I was talking with a student who I had lunch with, and he was wearing tennis shoes, blue jeans, and a t-shirt, and had kind of a scruffy beard, and I said, You know what? You could have been one of mys students in 1978. You look exactly the same.

When it comes to things like lifestyle and expectations of the university experience, everything is different.

In the 70’s, when we still had the tail end of the baby boomers coming to the college, then we went through Gen-X and the Baby Busters and Millenials and now we’re getting Generation Z. So four different transmutations of youth culture.

Let me give you four changes.

In 1978, up through the mid-80’s, there was real meaning to the term “poor college student.” Students left home expecting to have virtually nothing when they were in college. We had people who were staying someplace for 50 bucks a month, and it might be a basement that occasionally flooded.

One guy I knew lived at the top of a stairway that didn’t lead anyplace except to an attic, and had put sheets of plywood out in the rafters of the house, where he had a mattress on one, a small dresser on another, and I think he had a hot plate on another. And he was proud of the fact that he lived on 50 bucks a month.

In the 80's we started using the term ‘premature affluence’. There was this assumption that when you went off to college, that should not reduce your level of comfort. So residence halls at the university got nicer and they started developing more suite-style housing.

It suddenly became big business in Springfield. They switched away from from converting old houses into rooming houses, now instead building nice apartments. Over the years I could point out to you which apartment buildings were the hot student housing at the time, but each successive set of complexes that was built was more and more luxurious.

These days our ministry houses are a little enclave of 1-story buildings in a sea of four and five story apartment complexes, most of which have been built within the last 10 years, all of which are set up with suite-style living. Students rent a bedroom with private bath, and then they have access to a common space. So it sounds like the old boarding house, but these students spend 600 bucks a month per person, so a 4-person suite is $2400 or more. Some are $750.

How is that possible? It’s student loans! So the student loan burden becomes heavier and heavier.

The two reasons why students who have made commitments to God about missions or other forms of ministry are marrying the wrong persons or student debt.

The second way students have changed is academically.

Students have always grumbled about general education requirements. They’ve always grumbled that college is too hard. These days we even have parents who say college is too hard. You shouldn't fail students. And some of these students are coming from ‘no fail’ high schools, so they come and they’re not academically prepared for college. When they don’t do well, they’re angry at the institution or at the instructors.

I’ve taught at the university part time in the department of religious studies since 1984. In the early days the students might shine about this or that, but these days I’m just as likely to have students come to my office and say, I was a straight A student in high school and I’m getting a D in your class. You tell me what’s wrong. 

Well, let’s look at the grade book. We’ve had 5 pop quizzes, you’ve had zeroes on all five.

Well, you expect us to read. I just don’t read. 

Well, if you want to get an education, you need to read. Also, you didn’t turn in this assignment.

You didn’t tell us it was due.

We read through the syllabus on the first day. I assigned it to you on the first day.

Well you didn’t remind us. 

It’s in the syllabus. Everyday we have a full teaching schedule, why would I take time out to remind you of something you already knew about.

Well that’s unfair. 

Socially speaking, this is where things have dramatically changed. Let me recommend a book. An acquaintance of mine named Tim Elmore, who has a ministry called Growing Leaders, has written a book called Marching off the Map, in which he has really nailed Gen-Z, a lot of what they’re about.

One of the big issues the university faces is getting students to come to class. Studetns like to stay in their rooms. One of the things you’ll hear frequently on campus is, Over the last 2 days I binge watched Game of Thrones or binge watched Breaking Bad for the 3rd time. Maybe they’ll go down to the dining room, or maybe they’ll just call out and have food delivered to the room, once again paid for with college loan money.

There’s a ridiculously high number of students who believe they’ll never have to pay off their student loans, perhaps based on what some presidential candidate said in the last election.

They prefer to have the buffering effect of social media. They prefer to have editing capabilities about themselves before they expose anything. A few years ago I read something that claimed the average student spent an hour a week polishing their Facebook profiles. So I bounced that idea off some of our students and the answer I got was, Oh, no. People spend a lot more time than that.

You’ve probably heard acronyms like FOMO – Fear of Missing Out. Interestingly, that’s more true of missing out online.

I get bad reviews from students because I won’t allow them to text during class. That makes me a bad professor. They’re afraid. What if somebody gets engaged? What if there’s a really good meme that gets around and they don’t know about it until after class?

There’s a corollary, FOLO – Fear Of Living Offline. Researchers use FOMIRL, Fear of Meeting in Real Life. Students have often so carefully constructed online versions of themselves that they believe that would be shattered if some of the people they know online were to meet them in real life.

Many of the "None of the Above" students grew up in a family that was practicing Catholic or Baptist or whatever, but they’re quick to deny labels. There is still significant popularity of the term spiritual but not religious, which in many cases means what I call a Chinese buffet approach to spiritual life. You pick and you choose whatever you want to add together.

Let me share with you my greatest disappointment in the campus ministry. When I began in 1978 we were still sort of the first wave. In 1963 there were exactly three campus ministries associated with the Christian Churches/Churches of Christ. When we established in 1977, maybe we were around the 60th. Still a pretty new phenomenon.

I thought, this is one of the best kept secrets. We need to get the word out to the Restoration church in general.

Many of our kids have been to big conferences or church camps where they heard about bible colleges, and praise God for bible colleges, praise God for the training they do. But 85% of our kids don’t go to bible colleges, and those kids are often never told about campus ministries.

We get 5 or 6 thousand freshmen at Missouri State every year, and many of them are from church homes. But in an average year, we probably have fewer than half a dozen students whose parents or youth minister or anybody. come to meet us before they come. That’s my biggest disappointment in campus ministry, the lack of networking with the church.

Psalm 119:124 Loving Master

Deal with your servant according to your love
and teach me your decrees.

Psalm 119:124

It's so easy to read this verse and picture my self sitting in my Father's lap as He lovingly teaches me His decrees.

Experiences tells me otherwise.

Sure, there have been many times I've felt snug and comfortable in my Father's loving arms as I study the Word. But most of my best learning experiences regarding the decrees of God have come the hard way.

For every epiphany experienced while studying, there have been lots of lessons learned by stumbling into them.

As often as I've garnered sudden insight while deep in thought, I've just as frequently gained flashes of wisdom while up to my armpits in trouble.

This is because, as much as I strive to be a disciplined apprentice to the Master, I have a strong tendency toward being a stubborn student who earns my fair share of discipline at the hands of the Master.

There is one important nugget of insight I've earned through both studiousness and stubbornness.

Without the steady application of study, the school of hard knocks can too often teach the wrong lessons. The experiences that come from trials are best understood as they give flesh and life to the things I've learned from study of the Word.

Which makes the reverse equally true. Without the experiences learned by throwing myself out into the world to be tossed about, my book learning remains theoretical and sterile.

The Father loves to teach me to think like He thinks, and He loves to use any method available to make sure my education is well-rounded.

Writer's Notebook: Dave Embree, part 1

Dave Embree (cchonthe.net)

I've known Dave Embree for more decades than either of us wants to admit. I've admired his approach to campus ministry for just as long. That's why I was so pleased when Mike Mack, my editor at Christian Standard magazine, gave me the go ahead to interview Dave for the August 2019 issue.

I met up with Dave at the Missouri Christian Convention in late March and spent an hour talking about campus ministry. My wife had rattled off a list of other people I should keep an eye out for who I could also talk to if I needed to get quotes about Dave. She was concerned I wouldn't get enough from our interview.

"This is Dave Embree," I said. "He loves to talk!"

And he did. The transcribed interview notes came to about 6,500 words. My assignment was to produce an article with 1,200 to 1,500 words.

I encourage you to read the slightly-less-than 1,500 word interview at ChristianStandard.com.

Over the next three weeks I'm going to post some of the parts that didn't make it into the published piece. Starting with Dave's answer to my question about how he got started with the campus ministry in Springfield, MO.

Remember, I warned you. He likes to talk.

**********

In the late 60's, early 70's, Christian churches were planting campus ministries rather rapidly.

Based upon what they had seen take place at Columbia and what had already taken place at Rolla, Christians from churches around Springfield and the Lebanon area started coming together to plan a campus ministry. Woody Wilkinson had actually tried to do some things on campus himself and found out that at that point the university was pretty averse to particular churches doing outreaches on campus. So Woody kind of backed off and threw his support behind people coming together.

So initially people from probably five Christian churches in Springfield and the Southern Heights church in Lebanon came together to form a board of directors and charter in 1977.

At that point they started holding bible studies on campus. They wound up purchasing a house, because their model was Columbia, a couple of guys on the board having been Mizzou alums, and they just knew that’s what you do.

They decided they could at least partially finance the campus ministry by renting to students. So they had purchased a house, and renovated it in order to hold the maximum number of students in not all that really big a house.

In the 1977-1978 school year they had preachers coming in to do Bible studies on Thursday nights and had had maybe five students living in the house.

This was at a time when there was a lot of town/gown conflict and the neighbors didn’t really want students living there. And they technically were out of the proper zoning area, so the city came in and said you can’t have this many unrelated people living here, which made it less financially feasible.

 At the Missouri Christian Convention over Christmas break, I was going to school at Joplin at that point, and had come up to the convention because my parents were there.

I saw this display for the SMSU [Missouri State University was known at the time as Southwest Missouri State University]  Christian Campus Ministry, and a friend of mine from Ozark was actually setting it up. And I said, "Hey, I didn’t know there’s a campus ministry at SMS."

He said, "There isn’t really, we’re just getting it started."

I said, "That’s great, I really support campus ministry, having grown up near Columbia and Roy Weece having already impacted my life." And that’ all I knew about campus ministry."I think that’one of the best things going right now."

He said, "I think you should apply for the job."

I said, "Well thanks, but I’ve never really spent any time on a university campus and I’m going for a 5 year degree here at Ozark and I’ve only completed four years of it, and I just don’t think I’d be any good at that."

He said, "It would really be good for you to go through the process of applying for the job, even if you don’t expect to get it."

And I said, "Yeah you’re right, I ought to do that."

But I didn’t.

I saw the same guy at a youth ministry conference on the OCC campus, and he said, "Hey Dave, I never got anything from you about the job."

I said, "Well, I’m doing youth ministry right now and I'm in school and I'm married and there’s a lot going on and I’m not sure I’ve got time to be applying for a job."

He said, "I've been talking to the board about you and how you do youth ministry, and we think we’re interested in you."

I said, again, "I have no experience in this. I know nothing whatsoever."

He said, "Why don’t you just trust God and submit an application and see what God says about it."

And I said, "That’s a really good idea."

But I didn’t.

And then in February, I see the same guy at the preaching and teaching convention at Ozark, and he said, "Dave, been waiting for your application."

I said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's been winter and I just haven’t gotten it done."

He said, "I’ve been talking to the board and they’d really like to meet you."

I said, "I’d like to talk to these guys and tell them what a great job they’re doing, but I just don’t think I can work it in."

And he said, "Would you think about applying?"

I said, "I’ll think about it and pray about it."

But I didn’t.

And about the first of March I get a phone call, and he said, “Dave, we’ve been pursuing people for the campus ministry, and every door we’ve opened has been slammed shut in our faces, except for you. And you keep kind of nudging it shut, but you haven’t slammed it. Would you come up and talk to us?

And I was really ashamed. I’d said to him three times I would send him something and I never had.

And I said, "Yes, I will come up and talk to you."

So a week later I drove up to Springfield and they were great people, and they had such a great vision and I loved talking to them. And they talked to me and asked my ideas about discipleship and pastoring and all sorts of things and they liked what they heard.

At the conclusion of that meeting I said, I think you guys are on the right track. I think you’re going to have a wonderful ministry here. I'm not the guy for it, but I trust that God will send you the right guy."

They said, "OK, OK. Could you come back next week and bring your wife?"

And I said, "You realize, I'm not the right guy for this job."

And they said, "Well can you come back and bring your wife?"

And I said, "OK."

I brought Joyce up the next week. And they talked to her and she talked to them and they we all talked some more together and at the end of that meeting, I said, " I just praise God for your vision and commitment. I will be praying that God will send you the right person."

They said, "would you pray about you coming?"

I said, "Well sure, but I don’t have any training for this.  I haven’t finished my degree at Ozark. I'm just absolutely not what you're looking for."

They said, "Just pray about it and talk to us again in 2 or 3 weeks."

Couple weeks later I get home from a church board meeting.

Joyce was gone, but there was a note on the table that said, "Had to run to the store. Will be right back. Oh, the board from Springfield called. They asked if you were still interested in the job. I told them Yes. They’re voting on you now. Call them back."

I thought, They’re voting on me? How can they be voting on me? I thought we had another week.

 About that time Joyce comes back and I said, "They’re voting on us?"

She said, "Yeah, I didn’t know if you’d talked to them and maybe told them something."

I said, "No. We've talked about this and prayed about it."

She said, "I don’t know if I can live in the middle of noisy Springfield right by the campus. I'm a small town girl."

I said, "I still don’t know that I know anything that I would need to know to do that."

About then the phone rang and he said, "Dave, we just voted unanimously to hire you. Will you come?"

I said, "Just a second", and I put my hand over the pine, and said, "Joyce, they voted for us, what do we do now? "

And she said, "If this doesn’t look like God railroading us into something, I don’t know what it would be."

And I said, "So you think we ought to go?"

She said, "I don’t think we have a choice."

And I said, "So I guess we’ll go."

So we came.  On July 1st, 1978, we moved to Springfield.

And all I knew was, Roy Weece is a good campus minister and I can try to do some things I know he does, and that’s it.