Courses that Need to be Taught

The courses that would make the most dif­fer­ence in life are sel­dom offered. In fact, most of them do not exist. I have yet to see a sem­i­nary cat­a­logue of courses that actu­ally applies to what a min­is­ter really does. If those courses were offered, they would be titled: How to Do Small Plumb­ing Jobs on Old Church Build­ings; How to Safely Tow Church Mem­bers’ Bro­ken Auto­mo­biles; How to Work Alone and Stay Moti­vated; Mate­r­ial Things You Do and Do Not Need to Get Through Life.
The same cri­tique applies to all other uni­ver­sity lists of courses. For them, I would sug­gest the fol­low­ing: What a Divorce Actu­ally Costs; How Much Each Child Will Cost from Birth to Inde­pen­dence; Which Auto­mo­biles Will Keep You Broke; Stu­pid Hous­ing Mar­ket Mis­takes to Avoid; Hid­den Costs of a High Main­te­nance Mate; How to Get Along with Other Human Beings; What Mat­ters Most in Life.
Through the years, I have taken some really weird courses. Most of the really worth­less ones began with the phrase, “The The­ory of…” In ret­ro­spect, I did not need “the the­ory of” nearly as much as I have needed “the real­ity of…” I had two grad­u­ate level sta­tis­tics courses that I have yet to con­struc­tively use. One of them had to do with polit­i­cal sta­tis­tics. That course could have been titled: How to Use Num­bers to Make Any­thing Look Real.
Some of the most help­ful courses I took had lit­tle to do with the actual course con­tent. They had to do with the teach­ers. I had some really inspi­ra­tional and prac­ti­cal pro­fes­sors that have made a huge dif­fer­ence in my life. It was not what they taught as much as how they would take even the most obscure topic and open up worlds of thought and imag­i­na­tion. Church his­tory can be the dullest chron­i­cle under some teach­ers, but the most excit­ing glimpse into the move­ment of the Holy Spirit on earth under oth­ers.
In ret­ro­spect, I have found value in every course I have taken and in every book I have read. I have also found great insights through every mis­take I have made. Some of the most insignif­i­cant events have had the great­est impact. It seems that noth­ing is lost in human expe­ri­ence. All we do can become courses in the art of life. Maybe we do not need courses about life, maybe we just need to real­ize that life IS the course.