Cybercolumn by Berry D. Simpson: Changes_80904

Posted: 8/06/04

CYBERCOLUMN: Changes

By Berry D. Simpson

I once heard a motivational speaker say he gave his sales consultants hand-held spotlights for their cars, powered from the cigarette lighter, so they could find unknown houses on new streets by shining the lights on the curb to read the numbers. He said that in sales, if you weren’t lost in a new neighborhood looking for an unfamiliar house at least once a week, you weren’t serious about your business because you weren’t pushing out beyond the familiar.

What he said was true for more than just sales. If I’m not occasionally lost and unsure, I’m probably not growing as a person.

Cyndi and I have made some big changes this summer of our 25th year of marriage, especially in our teaching ministry. We’ve taught an adult Bible study class on Sunday mornings since 1990, and from the very beginning we were teaching our own peers—couples about the same age as us, with kids about the same age as ours, who grew up with the same music we did and lived through the same national and world events.

Our next teaching assignment will be a new class of young adults, age 20 to 29, the age-group of our own children. These youngsters grew up in a significantly different world, with strange influences and unusual music. Most of them don’t even have a favorite song by the Doobie Brothers and don’t know any names from the Watergate hearings.

I’m a little concerned that my cultural references and 1970s hipness won’t translate. Of course, what I don’t worry about is energy and creativity, since Cyndi is on my team, and I have no doubts about her skills and talents.

I guess I want to be Superman, able to perform at a high level anywhere and everywhere. Superman was super wherever he went. His crime fighting took him all around the world and even into space, yet no matter where he went, he was still faster than a speeding bullet, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, could bend and crush steel with his bare hands, and still had X-ray vision. That is the kind of teacher I want to be.

But I am afraid I am more like Spider-Man. I have useful skills, but they depend on my surroundings. Spider-Man has a problem if he ever leaves New York City. His greatest asset is his mobility—his ability to fly through the city swinging on his webs, or climb vertical surfaces using his barbed hands. But what would Spider-Man do if he suddenly found himself fighting crime in Monahans, Texas? He’d have to shoot his webs across the street and then just run over to the other side. He couldn’t do much swinging in a one-story town.

He wouldn’t be helpless. He’d still have those barbed hands, but they would give limited advantage in a town where the highest structure can be climbed with a tall stepladder. And he’d still have his spidey sense, so he might be able to anticipate trouble before it started and be in place to catch the bad guys and wrap them up in a sticky spidery web. He’d still be useful, but definitely dependent on his surroundings.

Our last Sunday teaching our present class will probably be Aug. 15. This change should be a simple who-cares move, but it is painful. We are leaving people we love. 1 Thessalonians 2:8 says, “Having so fond an affection for you, we were well-pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God but also our own lives, because you had become very dear to us.” Cyndi and I have poured our lives into our class, and they are some of our closest friends.

But I’m not really worried about all this. A better word to describe the way I feel is excited. Not excited to leave the people I love, but excited to begin a fresh, new work. Excited to pull out my spotlight and find my way through a new neighborhood.

I may need to learn a few new cultural references, but I don’t expect teaching this young group to be so much harder. I, like all teachers, am at my best when I don’t worry so much about hitting a specific target but instead focus on projecting from my heart. The source is more important than the aim.

C.S. Lewis wrote, “No man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. The principle runs through all life from top to bottom. Give up yourself. Lose your life, and you will save it.”

Berry Simpson, a Sunday school teacher at First Baptist Church in Midland, is a petroleum engineer, writer, runner and member of the city council in Midland.