Hindsight is normally 20/20...Day 7

It was the fall of 2003, and I had just begun attending the School of Ministry at Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa. It was a very surreal time in my life. Not only had I begun working what I considered at that time to be my dream job, but I was beginning a course of studies that I was pretty sure would result in my being a Calvary Chapel Pastor.

If you remember, I had mentioned on Day 6 that the School of Ministry was pretty much a full-time job. We attended classes Monday through Friday from 7-10a.m. We also had to spend an hour or two each week in the front office of the church answering the prayer lines. The homework and reading requirements typically meant that we would have to put in a minimum of three hours of study a day. And then there were the Chuck blocks. You're probably scratching your heads asking, "What's a Chuck block?" Chuck blocks were pages filled with questions that were directly related to Chuck Smith's, Thru the Bible teaching series that we had to listen to. The purpose of these questions were to verify that we had listened to all of the teachings, although they never really did check our answers. 8) Gotta love the honor system.

If you've ever listened to any of Chuck Smith's teaching you know that his pace is pretty deliberate. Some people might even say slow. 8) But fortunately for us they had a special series that were at 1.5 times the original speed. The best part of the whole series was when Pastor Chuck would tell a joke. Listening to people laugh at 1.5 times the normal speed was enough to almost make you fall out of your chair the first time you hear it. And then finally by the end of the series you can pretty much finish any sentence that Pastor Chuck starts when he's in the pulpit or on the radio.

So between the hours of school, the reading and homework, working the prayer lines and doing our, "Chuck block's," the School of Ministry was a full-time job. Which pretty much meant that there was no way you could have a full-time job as well. That is unless God decided to work out those details for you like He did with me. You see...God provided me with a job working in the same building as the School of Ministry. It also was a job that allowed me all the time I needed to do my homework and reading while on-air, between breaks. He also worked things out so that my work hours were from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. Which left me just enough time to gather my books...Run down three flights of stairs and grab a seat.

Oh...And did I forget to say that working for the church meant that all of my tuition was paid for by the church?

I don't know about you...But as far as I am concerned God's hands were all over this, inside and out. There is just no way I could have planned this all out much less worked out all the finer points and details.