What about your day jobs?

Jeff writes:

With all the posts dealing with hiking, infected elbows and poisonous snakes some of you may be wondering about whether we are still active in ministry here. We are.

I am currently teaching three courses: cell group leadership, discipleship and Colossians.

My students in the Colossian's class get to write a paper on what the Colossian heresy or syncretism was. We have spent the last week or so learning a lot about first century pagan religious practices and philosophical systems to try to shed some light on what problem Paul was addressing in the church. The study is particularly relevant to my students because they face similar issues in their cultures today. Just like the Colossian believers my students deal with the fearful reality of facing a hostile spirit world. Hopefully, our study will help them to hold fast to Christ to win these kind of battles.

Sue is reprising her History of Missions class. She has but eight weeks to cover the history of Christian missions from 33 AD to the present. She does a remarkable job combining lecture, student presentations, and missionary biographies to teach her course. It has been a stretching experience for her, and she has really grown in the process. Needless to say, I am proud of her.

Both Sue and I are cell group mentors. As such we are members of a student cell group. We participate with them in their meetings, and go out on ministry outreaches with them to a local village church.

My other duties include planning the graduating students' retreat, and I am in the process of ordering graduation regalia for some of the students. I recently became a member of the faculty executive team. As such I get to go to a meeting every other week and discuss and hopefully resolve academic matters.

My boss, who is the Dean of Studies, wants me to go through all of our course offerings to determine whether they are truly written at the college level or not. This last assignment is important because of our recent accreditation. We need to make sure that our courses meet not only our internal standards for excellence but  those of the larger academic community here in Papua New Guinea.

So as you can see we are both busy. Pray that we do all things well and that we do not grow weary in well doing.