Reflective Essay: A Career As A Christian Education

I am not just a teacher; I am a student. For example, in January 2017, classes began for a Perspectives on the World Christian Movement course, being held at a local Christian college. I was not taking the class for college credit or because I needed the certification for some Missions requirement. The reason I drove the 60 miles round trip, one day a week, for 14 weeks, and completed the hours of weekly readings and assignments was for personal growth and the “experience”. Simply because a college mentor, years ago, talked so highly of the course and recommended that every Christian, that has the opportunity, should take this course.

For further illustration, by the end of 2017 I was reading multiple books—Spiritual Warfare by Jerry Rankin,

When I add up the years from primary school to graduate school and include work-related certification courses along with classes of personal interest, I have been a “formal” student for over 35 of my 46 years. After hearing this some may think that I enjoy learning, but truthfully learning is not something I have always valued. As a college student, I transferred schools and changed majors multiple times before withdrawing a semester and a half from graduating to get married. Then six months after getting married, my wife asked what I planned on doing for a living. I really did not have a plan, but knowing it would be advantageous for me to find a career, I decided to do what every former aviation/general business student opts to do. Be a firefighter! Now, at the time, I had no idea what the qualifications were to get hired as a firefighter. So I stopped by a local firehouse, spoke with a firefighter and asked him what I should do to start down this path. He laid out the classes for me that I would need to take and where I could take them. That next semester, I enrolled in the courses at a local community college and within two years of making the determination to be a firefighter, I began my 12.5-year career as a full-time firefighter/EMT. An added bonus of taking the fire courses was that I earned an Associate of Arts degree from that community