Hi, I’m Dr. Larry Lacher. My connection to NBC right now is as an adjunct faculty member. I teach a couple of different classes. In ministry, I’m currently the District Superintendent of the New Mexico district churches. I oversee the development of pastors preparing for ministry and watch over them from the start as they get ready to enter into the field of ministry from their call, all the way until their ordination. So it’s my responsibility to identify their passion and their call and help them fulfill that call. I support them in getting through their educational preparation and see them all the way through that process.
I wasn’t an NBC student personally, but I’ve been involved with NBC for my entire career. I’ve been a faculty member for NBC since teaching at the Nazarene Indian Bible College as a young pastor. I’ve been teaching online for NBC almost since the very beginning of their online education. So I’ve had the opportunity to engage literally hundreds of NBC students — I’ve found that it’s a real privilege to engage the students as they come to NBC almost universally in response to a call to a second career.
One of the things I enjoy the most is reading the autobiographies you get on the front end. So many of them, as you read their autobiographies, speak of something like this:
When I was a teenager, I was called to the ministry, but I ran from it. I made a lot of mistakes, and I got someone pregnant, or I got into college, and I started drinking, and I got into drugs and then left the call behind. I went into the military or went into a career, or something to that effect, and got married and got divorced, and got married and got divorced again. I have kids here, have kids there, and then I found the Lord again and found that the Lord was still waiting for me, and he renewed that call, called me back, and restored that call in my life. Now I’m back doing what God asked me to do years ago.
It is always so amazing that God is faithful, even when sometimes we’re so faithless.
Now they’re so passionate and driven: the students just gobble up the information. Yes, they’re busy, and so many of them are working at one job or even two, and they’re pastoring or involved in some other kind of ministry, yet they’re so driven and eager to learn. They bring all that stuff they’ve learned through all those different careers into the classroom. They become both the student and the teacher because they bring that leadership information they’ve learned or all those other skills they’ve learned. It makes that classroom experience so much more rich and dense than it would have been if they’d taken that class when they were 18 and didn’t have any real-world experience to draw from.
For me, working with adult learners is so much more energizing than working with people right out of high school because they have so much more to bring to the experience and to contribute. Yes, you know they’re exhausted, and sometimes I read a post, and I know that the poor student just barely got it posted at midnight. You read it and feel for them because you know they weren’t even thinking straight at the time, yet they’re still doing it. You have to love that they’re so committed to this thing God has called them to do.
I always write a note to the students at the very beginning of a new class, saying they have chosen the hardest way possible to get their education. I had a real privilege; I could stop my life and go away to school — but they can’t. They have to build the wagon while they’re going.
They’ve chosen the hardest way to get their education, and yet they’re doing it, and God is helping them. As an instructor, it is just so wonderful when you see in that exhaustion — in that delirium sometimes — the lights come on, and then the insight happens. The Spirit breaks through, and they have this wonderful moment. You can almost see tear stains on their electronic posts as they write and respond to one another and as they respond to me.
As an instructor, I’m able to help them connect the dots. I can see what they put in this post up here and in this other post down there and say, “Let’s put those things together.” Then they say, “Oh,” and you see that all happen. It’s just a wonderful experience as students come not simply to informational knowledge but formational knowledge, and you see their hearts light up.
That happens even in our online experience when we’re not even all in the classroom at the same time. You see the students early on as they greet each other, and you can see already who’s been in class with each other in previous courses. There’s community and fellowship as they ask, “So how did that work out, that thing that you were talking about in the previous class?” or “Did you get that job?” or “I’ve been praying for your child, ever since that class three semesters ago” or “How did your surgery work out?” Or they’re able to say, “You’re finally at your last class, congratulations!”
They’re so connected to each other; it’s just wonderful! There’s such a connection with the students; it’s so much fun to watch and see that community develop in an environment where many people would say it’s impossible to experience a real community. That’s one thing I have loved watching over these years as I’ve been teaching online with NBC.