When the senior pastor of your church is also the chancellor of Dallas Theological Seminary certain unique opportunities become available to you.
One thing that happens is many seminary professors teach adult fellowships at that church.
I have the privilege of sitting under the teaching of Dr John Hannah, professor of church history at DTS. It’s like getting a free mini seminary class each week he’s there.
A requirement of the students at DTS is working an internship somewhere while getting their degree. Dr. Hannah is our class’s source for some amazing interns to introduce the preliminary activities each week, among other things, I’m sure.
In the ten years I’ve attended A Grace Gathering adult fellowship I’ve known two of these interns closer than the others.
One of them is now back in Romania planting a church that is growing faster than they can afford a place for them.
Ben and Anda Mogos will probably read this blog post on Facebook. I don’t know how to say Hi in Romanian so I’ll just shout out Howdy Y’all.
The other intern I’ve grown to know well is our current one. Paul Surya is from Indonesia.
I spoke to them after church one Sunday last fall. They said they hadn’t eaten fried chicken, yet. When I got scheduled to deliver mail during the month of December I had enough money to take Paul, Dini and their three girls out to a fastfood joint that specializes in fried chicken. They loved it.
He’s involved with the main seminary in Indonesia that needs a PHD prof on staff to keep their accreditation intact. This became urgent when the only one they had died.
Since Paul spoke the best English he was called upon to be “it.” So he’s at DTS doing the best he can to fill that role.
He just graduated with his Master’s Degree…after he took a written and oral exam to fulfill those requirements two weeks ago.
Then the bottom appeared to drop out of their plan to become “it.” Between the government visa requirements and DTS’s scholarship committee going through an overhaul and policy change it appeared Paul would be heading back to Indonesia last week.
When Barb and I decided to move to the Dallas area almost eleven years ago I told her I knew where we were going to go to church at.
She said, “You know Chuck’s getting pretty old. He might not be there much longer.”
I replied, “I know, but I want to sit under every sermon I can hear from him as long as I can. Besides, just think of the people who will be attracted to that church.”
I’ve never been more glad to be proven right about that second statement.
Paul and his wife Dini explained to our class what they were up against. It was a mountain the size of $51,000 in pledges they needed to pay their tuition at DTS in order for the government to approve their visa to continue studying here uninterrupted.
When I told the Apainter Paul about the situation he said, “That’s more than even Grace Gathering can come up with.”
I can’t wait to see that Paul on Monday morning.
When I talked to Paul Surya this Sunday he said DTS told him they had never seen anything like what happened before in the history of that storied institution.
I couldn’t pledge much but I did what I could. Apparently so did everyone else because we did it.
We did it in less than three days.
That counts as a miracle in my book.
They say the average church is about 150 people in size. A Grace Gathering is just over that on a good week. There were very few empty seats there this week. Summer time is usually slow for us, too.
The Holy Spirit is on the move amongst us me thinks.
The Suryas are apparently in a bit of a celebratory mood. They invited me to come over to their place for some authentic Indonesian cuisine. I’m definitely looking forward to it.
Dini promised to not make it too spicy for me.
I can’t think of an application to give y’all. I just had to share my miracle participation story here.
I hope you have an opportunity to be part of a miracle soon.
I’ll see you later. Wade
