On Challenge and Growth Among Faculty and Students

by Stephanie Crumley-Effinger, Director of Field Education

Teaching is for me an ever-expanding experience wherein students'challenges deepen my growth as a professor. In this vein, two relationships from fall semester 2003 come to mind, both from the class on Discernment and Calling of Gifts for Ministry.

One of the class members has been involved part-time in ministry in the community, and this past summer I became clerk of the committee that oversees this ministry. We talked about what it would be like for me to work with her in these two very different roles, and I assured her that, if there were ever a conflict between them, my being her teacher was primary. As the course went along, she experienced a dawning realization that the ministry work was not a good fit for her gifts. The committee clerk part of me had to work hard at being non-anxious so that I could respond to her as if I had no stake in the outcome of her discernment about this position. Finally, she did become clear to leave the job, which I approved as an important part of her work in the course, but which made things more difficult in my responsibility as a committee clerk !

A second important part of my teaching/learning this fall came out of my traditional mid-semester meeting with another student in the course. She spoke of her frustration with how much she experiences people at ESR being more eloquent about what is wrong with things than about hope and the power of God. I referred to the verse from I Peter on how we are to be prepared to give an account of the hope that lies within us. After our conversation ended, I found that this verse began to live in me in new and powerful ways. The final week of the semester I brought the message at ESR worship on this theme, and witnessed to some of what gives me hope. The student was present at worship that day, and I think she was proud of how I had responded to her challenge.

I find it a tremendous privilege to serve in ministry as a member of the faculty of ESR. The power of our encounters with one another continues to be a source of God's work in the lives of students, staff, and faculty in new and exciting ways.