Renaissance Man

I was blessed with three passions in life: history, teaching and religion.

I came from a faithful family of educators—Dad, my brother, both sisters. So to say that my professorship in history at Evangelical Theological Seminary in the rolling green hills of southeastern Pennsylvania was my dream job would be the understatement of a lifetime. It felt more like the familiar and assuring hand of the Lord guiding me on the path I’d been destined to follow.

Surely, then, you wouldn’t blame me for wondering how on earth I came to be dressed in tights, coarse tunic and feathered cap, uttering things like, “Hark, yon Dumpster is full!” while two actors dressed as medieval knights staged a sword fight over the rights to a fair maiden, herself a recently unemployed waitress.

But you would be just as surprised to discover how I learned that this job seems as much an answer to prayer as any job I’ve ever had, and in some ways more so.

Excuse me just a moment here while I change yonder lightbulb at the ticket booth to our Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire. We’ve got to see to be able to collect the ducats at the entry gate. There.

What got me to this place in life was a shocker of a conversation I had several months before with the dean of faculty in his quiet, wood-paneled office, the walls lined with book after revered book. I thought we’d be discussing my curriculum proposal for the upcoming semester. In fact, I launched right into it.

The dean stopped me. “James, you understand the financial challenges that this seminary faces. It’s dire. We have to make moves no one really wants to make. Yet make them we must. As of July first your full-time position will be eliminated.”

Shock stretches time. I felt like I sat there for hours in dead silence, but it was only a couple of minutes. I’d been a professor for 10 terrific years. My family was just about to move into a new house. Losing your job, they say, is second only to the trauma of losing a loved one. To me, it felt like attending my own funeral.

“James, you were a good teacher, and the faculty and students all loved you; it’s just that…” It sounded so eulogistic, like I was being lowered into my professional grave. The economy was bad. Schools were hurting. If I couldn’t hang on to the job I was perfect for, what prospects did I have?

That night I sat with my wife at the kitchen table. Lore had recently been let go from her job as a receptionist. In a very short time we had gone from being a two-income family with two kids to a no-income family and a new house to pay for.

“Why would God take away the job he led me to?” I asked.