Emergency Teacher

The Mallorca Bible School students and faculty, on our day off.


Rafael Manzanares called me up Monday: "Man, I could use you on a plane here tonight."

Rafael was asking me to teach a concentrated class on Philippians at the Bible School at Santa Ponsa, Mallorca. He had lost a couple of teachers at the last minute. He also had fourteen paying students signed up for Philippians. His plan was for me to come over, teach in four hour blocks, and be done with the class in eight days. I had taught Hebrews like that before. It was not my favorite way to teach, nor the students' to learn. Not only that, at least I had taught Hebrews before.  With Hebrews I could grab four binders of notes and begin to simplify the basic themes and make it digestible. I had never taught Philippians. I had no time to even prepare anything. The only thing going for me was that I had memorized Philippians once. I had a strong sense of the red thread of logic going through the letter. 

Getting there was part of the teaching. Joanie dropped me off at Gatwick Airport early so she wouldn't get caught in rush hour traffic. The check-in desk wasn't even open. I sat down and tried to prep. When it was time to check-in, I found the desks empty, and a long line of people at the fix-it desk. All the flights to Mallorca had been cancelled by EasyJet. No flights tomorrow. I called Rafael to let him know. He worked on another flight. I trained home. All these things actually worked out for the furtherance of the gospel. I was able to share the gospel with all kinds of people around me. I was having fun.

Next morning I trained to Stansted Airport to take a Ryannair flight. When I got to Mallorca, Raf picked me up and floored his car to get to the classroom. We were half an hour late. I borrowed a Bible, opened it to Philippians, and began teaching, just like that.

The remainder of the time was pretty much organizing my thoughts, eating, sleeping, and teaching. Once I went along with the students as they had an informal "let's get to know one another" day.

I learned to turn off the student broadband before I taught, to stop facebook and video sharing during the lectures. Once I had all the students close their laptops for the duration of the lecture. That was the most successful as far as getting things across. I only had to privately talk with two students to ask why they were tuning out on me. Both told me they had ADD, but they weren't saying that's why they were tuning out. We worked on keeping the teaching to the point and ending when capacity was reached. I prepared a sheet of "fill in the blank" sentences for the students to fill in. We discussed the answers afterwards. Then we were officially done.

I was so glad to teach such a profound epistle to these students. The Lord helped me do it without killing anyone. Mallorca was sunny and warm. If I have to be an emergency teacher, it's a nice way to go.