A Doctor in the House (Don’t worry, I can’t write prescriptions!)
On August 21, Anderson University in Anderson, South Carolina, officially awarded me the Doctor of Ministry degree. I'll walk across the stage in December, and I suspect my family will cheer louder than the moment deserves. I'll let them.
I don't say that to brag. I say it because I'm still a little amazed. I'm a first-generation college graduate. Nobody in my family had walked this road before me, and there were plenty of days I wondered if I'd taken a wrong turn somewhere. Somewhere between the bachelor's degree, the seminary years, and this doctorate, I figured out that education isn't about proving how smart you are. Mostly it's about finding out how much you don't know, and I've found out plenty.
My dissertation asked a simple question with a not-so-simple answer: to what extent does preaching shape a church's evangelistic culture? I studied it right where I serve, at Mountain Chapel Methodist Church. In January I preached a series called "Everyday Evangelism," and our folks filled out surveys before and after so we could measure what changed. They didn't have to do that. They did it anyway, and I owe them a debt of gratitude I can't repay. Any credit for this degree belongs to them as much as to me.
Right on the heels of graduation, I had the privilege of serving as an alternate clergy delegate for the North Alabama Annual Conference at the Global Methodist Church's General Conference, held August 30 through September 5 at the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg, South Africa. It was the first time our young denomination's General Conference met on the African continent. Clergy and laity gathered from around the world under the theme "the beauty of holiness," drawn from Psalm 29:2 and Psalm 96:9, to worship, pray, and make decisions about our Book of Doctrines and Discipline and a new confession of faith. Those are weighty matters, and I didn't take the responsibility lightly. Sitting in that room, I was reminded that the church is a whole lot bigger than any one of us, and that God is at work in places I'll never see.
I've thought a lot about the road that got me here. We live in a great country, where a kid whose parents never got to finish college can earn a doctorate and end up in a convention hall in Johannesburg. That doesn't happen everywhere. It happens here because of opportunity, and because a lot of people along the way believed in me before I believed in myself.
So here's my two cents, and it's worth about that much. Set goals. Write them down. Follow your dreams, even when they seem too big for where you started. Don't let anybody, including the voice in your own head, tell you that where you come from decides where you can go. It took me longer than most, and I stumbled more than I'd like to admit, but by God's grace I got here. You can too.
"I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me" (Philippians 4:13). I've leaned on that one more than once.
