by David Melton
I live in a city of more than five million people. That city grew long before city planning had ever been given much thought. Many of Boston’s roads were old oxen trails and followed the courses of rivers. And while that leaves us with modern streets that frustrate tourists, I think of it more as a reality video game of sorts. But I can do that because of maps.
When I first moved to Boston, I decided I wanted to know how to get around the city. I got a map, studied it, and drove around for months, always trying to figure out where I was going. I know this is the age of GPS, and I’ve got a map app on my phone like most of you do. So if I want to take my life in my hands I could be staring at my phone driving through traffic, or listening to a voice on my dashboard say “re-calculating” … but I just prefer to know where I am going — up front.
This all kept going through my mind last week as I sat in a meeting with about a half dozen of our staff members. We were working through our curriculum for ministry training, as we have done regularly for years, determined to be current, thorough, realistic, and biblical. “Getting better” is just the Boston way. So we hammered away looking at current classes, organizing new ones, tackling issues old and new, “mapping” out plans of study for our students — tomorrow’s leaders for our churches.
I looked around that room last week and saw over a century of church leadership experience in a single academic subcommittee! Years of pastoral, youth, and worship ministry experience — all wrapped together with a wealth of academic degrees and hearts for Jesus. Two of the people in that curriculum committee meeting were Boston alumni. In that one room I could see the whole cycle of what God has given us to do here. The more I looked around that room, the longer I listened to the banter back and forth, the better and better I liked our map. I just kept thinking, “Students who use this map will get where they need to go!” Now, as we do every semester, we will work through that improved academic map with each of our students — individually. Academic advisors in Boston listen to what God is doing in the lives of our students and help them map a plan to get into ministry and stay there for a lifetime!
After a full day and with a pretty tired brain, I headed for home. I-95 was tied up with traffic so I took a short cut I learned years ago. On my way, I saw a pitiful site. Some poor lady was just sitting in the middle of a rotary with her hands ups in the air, glaring at a Garmin on her dashboard. I zoomed around her and laughed thinking, “She needs a map!”