CBTS Potential-Student Interviews

On Saturday we spent the day interviewing potential students for CBTS. There are many of these interview sessions, all over the country. This was only the first of many, and it was almost 8 hours long. Thankfully it took place at CBTS, so we had only a short walk home, where we collapsed afterwards. When it comes to admission, I think that this seminary (as with all, I'm sure) lives in a tension of both exclusivity and inclusivity. On the one hand, a seminary such as CBTS is not an ideal place for unbelievers to come to study. Hence exclusivity, and this needs to be sensitively discerned through these interviews. On the other hand, in these interviews we want to be understanding and sympathetic toward those who simply struggle with articulating how they are believers, even if they may be. So when someone says that they became a believer at their baptism, it takes some drawing out to see whether or not they mean what we perceive. My interviewing group heard this phrase a lot, and often we were surprised to find out that what the interviewee meant was simply, "I became a believer, and immediately thereafter I was baptized" (not unlike Paul's use of the phrase in the NT!). So in the process of interviewing candidates, I found myself having to articulate the gospel in terms that were familiar to your average Cameroonian. It was difficult. I found myself somewhat tongue-tied as I spoke with some twenty different candidates about their conversion and their spiritual growth thereafter. The theologically-nuanced vocabulary of Incarnation, Divine Impassibility, Hypostatic Natures, Soteriology, Imputation, Sanctification, Ecclesiology, Escatology, etc., was non-existent here. It's not that the ideas are absent, but simply that the vocabulary is very different from that of the West. The struggle to articulate precisely what it means to "believe," what it means to "be saved," what it means to "grow," and what it means to "hope" brought out different emphases from those with whom we spoke. Ellen Davis says that "[t]he church would be hugely blessed if its teachers, preachers, and theologians were to suffer a loss of fluency in speaking about how things stand with us, before God." Struggling to discern with each candidate how things stood with them, before God, did just this for us.

Two stories in particular stood out to me as I listened to the stories of these people. Each of them challenged me to be a bit less "glib" in how I speak about the bedrock truths of the faith. I hope they do the same for you.

1.) Our first candidate in the second half of the day came in and sat down, with the help of a friend. He was blind. As we spoke with him, we found that he had been blind since birth. He could read brail with ease, and had jumped through some of the governments most difficult academic "hoops." He was genuine, heartfelt, and very sharp. Only he couldn't see. When we asked him how he came to know Christ as his savior, and he told us an amazing story of how he had always blamed his parents for his blindness. Something they had done had resulted in his condition. God was not even in the picture. But then a pastor had met with him and had shared with him Jesus' encounter with the blind man in John 9. Our friends blindness wasn't a result of his parent's sin, but was God-given so that God's works might be seen. If he believed in Christ, then Christ would open his spiritual eyes to see him. In John 9, the blindness is healed. With our friend, he trusted in Christ and God opened his spiritual eyes (his language). He wants to come to CBTS, so that he can share Christ with other "blinds" (again, his language).

2.) Now, don't let this account be a source of information on Islam. I don't know any Muslims who would agree with how it was represented at this interview, but nonetheless, it is memorable. The man had lived his entire life as a Muslim, having been raised in a Muslim family. A pastor had visited his house, on some kind of evangelism tour. The pastor left his family with a tract—yes, a 4 or 5 page tract—and it landed on this Muslim. Soon after he asked for a Bible from his father. That was a no-go. So he saved his money and bought one himself, which meant that he owned both a Bible and a Koran. He started to read the Bible, and to listen to preachers when they would come to his town. Slowly he began to see what were, in his mind, two vastly different claims from the Bible and the Koran. He told us, "Mohammed says that if you worship him, you will get to go to Mecca, and then you will get many wives forever, and just live with those kinds of things. But the Bible," he continued, "says that if you believe in Jesus, and ask him to take away your sin, then you will go to heaven, and will be with him forever, not with many wives." Jesus is our everlasting possession, I was reminded by this threadbare, toothless, simple man.

Two very different accounts, though one person is central in both: Jesus. And the process by which he came to be central in the lives of these two candidates is different from what I have been used to. I was challenged. And that is why, though physically exhausted, the three of us were refreshed in spirit after the interviews. We saw, again, that the Church is alive in Cameroon, and though it may need help articulating what exactly it means to believe, I found myself thinking, maybe the West does too.

Charlie



P.S. Why this picture, you may ask? Well, this post was first going to be called "A Nice Finish to a Long Day." It was a nice finish to a long day. The sunset was enormous and brilliant. And as always, our token African tree is in the picture. There you have it.