by Dave Melton
Having teenagers is a blast … uh, sort of. I will confess I love it when the kids are little — you only lose the games you throw, you’re still a hero, and they always want to ride with you wherever you go. Then they grow up and want to do their own driving. And in my house, I’m the driving teacher. In some ways, riding shotgun with your son after he gets his driving permit is sheer terror. That footbrake on the passenger side gets a workout, and staying calm is not a given! But helping my sons become drivers has always been a rite of passage for them, and it’s a lesson for me, too.
Driving is largely about being alert to where you are, and watching the road ahead. Oh sure, sometimes we need to peak in the rearview mirror, but driving is about moving forward.
Boston Baptist College is quite a vehicle to drive. In the end, we are trying to help our best young people “drive” into ministry. Our trustees were just on campus and led an interactive three-day workshop with our students entitled “Getting There.” The focus was on learning from the Scriptures, and from our own experiences, about the road to Christian leadership. It was a three-day driving lesson! It’s what you help us do in Boston; together, we educate our best young men and women to serve in our churches. That’s it. That’s what is in the rearview mirror (our past) and that’s what we see on the road ahead (our present and absolutely our future).
These driving lessons are not for the faint of heart. Parallel parking, merging into traffic, watching the speed, responding to that knucklehead who cut you off — in the car and in the college we have these kinds of challenges. But we can’t drive forever. The little ones grow up, and it’s our responsibility and our privilege to get them ready to take the wheel.