I got back last night from my first two days of classes at Huntington. Here’s a little summary of my experience.
I left Romeo at 2:00 AM on Thursday morning for an 8 AM class. I had to leave at such a detestable hour since the other alternative would have had me leaving town after Light Force and getting down there at about 2 AM. There were so many unknowns with that. Where would I stay? Would it be acceptable to sleep in a parking lot? What if I fell asleep at the wheel? On and on. Rightly so, I decided on leaving after a few hours of sleep.
The drive down wasn’t as bad as I had imagined. It took a little over 4 hours and was uneventful. For the most part I listened to the radio and when that got too annoying I listened to my mp3 player. Perhaps the best time was when I listened to two sermons on Moody Broadcasting. Now that I am not a Moody student, I actually enjoy listening to Joe Stowell! He gave a pretty good talk on something important. (Code language for I can’t remember.) Then Erwin Lutzer came on with a strange and pointed attack at homosexual marriage. I’m against it but I don’t take the same vigorous stance that so many do.
I arrived on campus at about 6 AM… Two hours early. I drove around for a little while so that I would feel comfortable, then explored the town a bit. It’s a nice little town, not the kind I’d want to live in, but a nice town to visit. [I think after our times in Horrorville we are ruined on small isolated towns and we want to live in a small town near a major metropolitan for the rest of our lives.]
I was very nervous about starting. I went in the graduate school half hoping that the class was cancelled or that I messed something up so that I could go home. But the ladies in the office were extremely pleasant and I felt welcome right away. A few students were early, but most arrived after 8 AM. I was a bit relieved when the prof showed up since I didn’t know what to expect. He walked up and introduced himself as Dave… A good manner of comfort that I wouldn’t be using titles any time soon.
We started our class off with a lengthy time of introducing ourselves. There were a total of 6 students and the professor. That’s it. Actually, before the introductions we were instructed to write a little about our expectations and use that as an introduction of sorts. I wrote one thing and used another. I wrote that I didn’t know why the hell I was even there. That I wanted to take the class since I felt so self-conscious about myself and was seeking some sort of validation. In the end I just said I wanted to get both a micro/macro understanding of what student leadership was. It was all BS on some levels.
The rest of the class was pretty normal. There were portions of semi-lecture and lots of discussion. I like the informality yet dislike the slow pace. It was strikingly different from the undergrad norms at Moody. At MBI all classes spend time in prayer on the front end. There was none of that. All classes at MBI use Scripture as a basis. This class referenced Scripture regularly but I never cracked the text open. (For the record, I forgot my Bible on my desk at the office!) I felt like I often pushed something back to the Bible, perhaps in vain hopes that we’d examine passages but was a little disappointed that it never went that direction. But that’s a little too much commentary.
After class I found a local golf course and enjoyed being outside. I played at a little crap course called Norwood. It was a shadow of it’s potential. Great layout, terrible maintenance and even worse administration. But for $10… How can I complain? I struck the ball very well and even places where I missed badly I recovered better than average. I loved the ups and downs on the grounds. (Michigan course mostly don’t have this) The greens reminded me of the muni that I played a lot in Mishawaka. Hard, firm and fair. On the first hole I landed my approach 20 feet below the hole and expected it to trickle up. Instead it hopped and rolled uphill off the back. Leaving me with a nasty 15 foot snake coming down the slope. I never made that mistake again and routinely ran the ball up. With only a couple of problematic drives on 5 and 9 I finished at +2, 37.
A lot of the grad students crash at a local monastery in Huntington. Since it was dark when I finished my round and I didn’t really know what I was doing, I never found the monastery. This was a bummer since I was looking forward to that part of the experience. Instead I ended up at the Super 8 across from campus and crashed at 8 PM.
The next day was better in class. The morning was dominated by a visit from Bart Compollo. Although he had some good things to say I didn’t really think he added much to the class. But since there is something like hero-worship on campus, he’s considered some kind of an expert in the field since his dad is Tony Compollo. But Bart did spur on good conversation for the next segment. Later, we went to a coffee shop followed by lunch at Los Amigos and the final session back at the grad school.
All in all. I am pleased to study under Dave Rahn. We have some similarities in background and have an equal passion for influencing others for Christ. I look forward to sitting under his teaching some more in the future. To date, the Huntington experiment is going very well. We’ll see if this is something that I can realistically continue. I will need some more financial help for that to happen.
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