SENIOR YEAR & GRADUATION

Dan & his roommate entertaining themselves

Being a senior in a Bible college for the second time around meant that I had another opportunity to give a senior message in a chapel.  At Prairie Bible Institute my chapel message was given to the entire student body.  Though we had a chapel every school day at Columbia Bible College, once a week we had a class chapel.  My senior message was shared with my senior class.  I've forgotten my exact text, and I don't know what I did with my sermon notes.  The point that I sought to make was that we should not try to be a copy-cat and seek to imitate another preacher, missionary, etc. but that we should be ourselves and be what God made us to be.  We will reach and interact with people that no other classmate will ever meet.  In my ministry over the years, I have tried my best to be me and not someone else.  I studied other preachers and learned from them, but I'm certainly not as clever or as studious as many of them.  I am what I am by the grace of God.

A memory of my senior year was a night just before graduation.  There was a meeting for the entire student body, staff, faculty etc.  When you entered the chapel, it was in total darkness except for one lone lighted candle sitting on a table on the platform.  I think that our senior class was all seated on the platform.  One by one we stepped forward, picking up a new candle, lighting it from the initial candle, holding it while we gave a one minute testimony and then placing it on the table with the the original candle.  The chapel gradually brightened with each additional lighted candle until the table was full of lighted candles, one for every senior.  At the close of the service the chapel was extremely bright.  

The lesson that night was that one by one, we, as seniors, would be going out from that campus in a few short days to a world that sits in darkness.  I'm reminded of the chorus that we used to sing in Sunday School when I was a kid. The first stanza and chorus are:

Do not wait until some deed of greatness you may do,
Do not wait to shed your light afar,
To the many duties ever near you now be true,
Brighten the corner where you are.

Brighten the corner where you are!
Brighten the corner where you are!
Someone far from harbor you may guide across the bar;
Brighten the corner where you are! 

Mom, Dad, Barbara and David came down for my graduation in June 1957.  I should add here that I also had two summer schools (the month of June - two nights each week) at the Detroit Bible Institute in Detroit, Michigan.  In June 1954 Dad and I attended DBI, both of us taking two courses each.  In June 1956 Dad, Barbara and I attended with two more courses each.  It made for a long day.  Dad was working in Windsor and on those school days he caught a ride with someone else, leaving the car with me.  I drove to Windsor in time to pick him up and then we crossed over into Detroit.  The evening session was about two and a half hours in total.  Fortunately it only took us about an hour and a quarter to drive home to Chatham.    

Well, with twenty years of schooling (kindergarten through to my senior year at CBC) behind me, plus the four additional courses which I took at DBI, I now needed to be moving on into ministry. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
OTHERS WHO HAD INPUT INTO MY SPIRITUAL & PASTORAL JOURNEY There are many people on planet earth that have heard the gospel or the scriptures explained from only one person.  It may be the single lady missionary that visits their village.  It may be the one program in their language airing from a Christian shortwave radio station.  There are undoubtedly millions of Christians whose biblical knowledge and learning has come from very few individuals or limited sources. I don't know why I have been so abundantly blessed or privileged when it comes to having biblical input from so many.  From my early years to  the present, I have personally heard hundreds of Christian leaders, pastors, evangelists, missionaries, Bible college professors, musicians and Christian business people who have helped, encouraged, challenged and convicted me in my spiritual journey.  It was always a thrill when I had the opportunity to hear some of the days outstanding Chri...
Read more
Image
ADDITIONAL MINISTRIES PASSED ON TO ME Dan in his first office at Sevenoaks Since Sevenoaks Alliance Church had grown from about 400 to 2,000 under the leadership of Pastor Bill Goetz, secretaries and pastors were scattered all over the church building.  Rooms which had been designated for other purposes were made into offices.  My first office was tucked away under the balcony of the youth centre.  My desk was immediately under the balcony risers.  Padding had been placed over my desk, lest I hit my head on a riser when getting up from my desk.  My room was quiet, out of the way, with hardly anyone ever walking by my door.  Al Runge was pastor for four months, before he ever found my office.  Sometimes when I needed a 20 minute power nap, I would stretch out on the floor and I was never ever discovered. I learned early in my years at Sevenoaks that I should never point out a weakness or a need in the church, as I would be asked to fi...
Read more
Image
 EAGLE BAY CAMP   Eagle Bay Camp - Shuswap Lake I had only been in Kamloops about six or seven weeks when I joined several other men, one Saturday morning, and went to Salmon Arm, BC to a storage place to retrieve camp equipment and stuff that had been used at the C&MA camp at Arrow Lakes campsite. For a quick review let me say that in early 1964, when I was pastor at the Vernon Alliance Church, we six Alliance pastors of Revelstoke, Kamloops, Vernon, Kelowna, Penticton and Oliver got together and agreed to rent Maple Springs Bible Camp for ten days.  This camp was on a hillside a few miles west of Peachland, BC.  Our first year for a camp program was July 1964.  That year and several succeeding years, we operated a teen weekend, which usually dovetailed into the Canada Day weekend or close to it.  We had a teen camp from Thursday supper time to Sunday afternoon at which time we began a children's camp which went until the fol...
Read more