Persons Of Interest

*I don't know when I originally wrote this, but it was found in draft form and would seem that it was some time ago as the names mentioned belong exclusively to my schooling in Texas. Reggie Moore is an addition to the original post.

For some reason I believe the phrase "person of interest" to have great comedic value depending on how it is said. With that in mind, it was recently mentioned to me that my blogs have become relatively quiet, which is pretty quiet since they weren't ever that loud to begin with. So here are some persons of interest. I am going to to ATTEMPT to present the top 5 professors of my academic career..... IN ORDER! That's right folks, ranked. Given this information, this blog post reserves the right to be edited and amended as many times as the author sees fit.

In descending order:

5) Dr. Rainey is possibly the kindest and most sincere man I have ever known. Catch phrases like "It may be Greek to you, but its life to me" are phrases I would have no qualms about being written on my tombstone. Though your time with us was short Dr. Rainey, your legacy continues.

4) Dr. Arterbury makes this list in unique fashion. My primary categories for consideration are personal character and academic prowess. To make the list you typically must excel at one of these. Dr. Arterbury is a rare breed of individual who casually and soft-spokenly achieves both. While Dr. Arterbury makes mysteries of New Testament scholarship seem as simple as matters of simple text study, he also does so in a way that transcends academia and is personal and welcoming.

3) Reggie Moore taught, not as much through the sharing of information, but rather the cultivation and sharing of a moment. Reggie, charged with the task of helping young counseling students grow into healers, possessed an unrivaled ability to simultaneously create both comfort and intimacy in a moment as well as invite the adventure and risk of self exploration. I don't know if the word "courage" was ever spoken in any of my classes with Reggie, but it was generally the primary lesson.

2) Dr. Gramling comes in at second with very mixed emotions. Dr. Gramling is perhaps one of the finest educators I have ever known. Dr. Gramling managed to teach me, an admittedly terrible and lazy student, more about Biblical Greek than many people manage to learn over years and years of study. Beyond this, Dr. Gramling managed to challenge me as well as any other student in his classes to recognize the sanctity and importance of each moment while also managing to keep life in perspective of the long haul.

1) There can be only one, and this highlander is none other than Dr. Wallace Roark. Everything I know about thinking I learned from Dr. Roark.