by David Melton
Last month, I was traveling in Egypt with a bunch of our students, and, somewhere out in the Sahara desert, we stopped for a break. This Egyptian “truck stop” consisted of a gas generator that powered the one gas tank and a single light bulb inside a shed. The fire for the grill wasn’t propane but a good old-fashioned fire. You could tell what the snack bar had on the menu — it was hanging up there skinned for all to see! We Americans just stood out in the desert sun trying not to look as out of place as we were. Then I noticed a huge produce truck headed from the Nile valley farms toward Cairo. The driver kept jumping in and out of his cab, looked under the hood a few times, and then started trying to shove his huge truck by himself.
Now, I don’t speak any Arabic, but I do speak fluent “bad battery.” Car trouble is in my DNA. So I ran over to get behind that huge truck. My effort didn’t change the situation much, so I called to Tim, Davey, and Nick. I think Ryan and Eric jumped in too! I wouldn’t swear to it, but I even think a couple of our Boston girls joined in! There we were, a bunch of Americans, shoulder-to-shoulder with a couple of Egyptians pushing for all we were worth. We rocked it, we grunted, we strained, we won. Our new friends waved as they jumped in the cab and headed out across the desert.
I stepped back, wiped my sweaty forehead, and swelled my chest in spite of myself. Sometimes you just know you’ve made a difference. There would be salads in Cairo — thanks to a few people from Boston.
We are building a great Baptist ministry college here in Boston. Most Bible colleges are built in the middle of a large constituency of churches that can feed them students and cash. Our founders, in the wisdom of God I believe, situated our college where there was no constituency. We were founded as a Great Commission idea. We have great spiritual needs in the Northeast, so what better way to attack the problem than to channel young people right onto the playing field? When I talk to locals about Boston Baptist College, usually the response I get is, “I never knew there was such a thing here.” Well, there didn’t use to be. But there sure is now.
Right now we are raising our annual offering. We have never been able to do this without help, and we can’t do it now. If you value the idea of some of us determined to educate a new generation of Baptist leaders, who believe that biblical studies never go out of style, where evangelism is everyday business, where serving means more than any celebrity…this is a truck you ought to help push. This has always been a group effort. Still is. I can’t do it without you.