So I was going to post each section of my paper on women in ministry as I wrote it, but that turned out to be a non-starter for a number of reasons. Instead, I’m going to adapt sections and perhaps expand upon them for the blog after finals week is over. I’ve still got some research exercises Marianne Meye Thompson’s NT Research Methods class to do for Friday. I’m writing right now to get my mind off work for a brief moment. I got a copy of my beloved quarterly Messiah College alumni magazine, The Bridge. I love my school’s alumni propaganda! Really. It totally puffs up Messiah, but it is so wonderful. It makes me want to go back there every time. I soak it up.

Anyway, in this issue there is a section on “Goals Set in Motion” about goals that Messiah professors had or have. I was very pleased to see my undergrad adviser, Mike Cosby, receive top billing in the article. He even got his photo on the cover of the magazine in a huge face closeup, with a slinky. Silly professors and their slinkies (is that the correct plural of slinky?). So here is his little snippet (I hope that he and The Bridge don’t mind me reproducing it here, it’s not too long):

An amazing reversal of plans
He began his career as a wildlife biology major, but soon a string of unexpected events led Michael R. Cosby into a different kind of wilderness experience

When I tell students that they never know what they might do with their undergraduate degrees, I speak from experience. I earned a degree in wildlife biology from the University of Montana and intended to work as a biologist on a wildlife refuge. I loved to roam the mountains of Montana, and I would have looked with disdain on a teaching career—which I would not have considered a “manly” occupation.

During my junior year of college, I began attending InterVarsity (IV) Christian Fellowship meetings—at first to check out the women. But soon I discovered that some of the students in the group had a consistency of life that attracted me. My own life lacked spiritual vitality and purpose. I joined a student-led, small group Bible study, where I learned to read biblical passages in their contexts—not just as proof texts to argue my own theological tradition. And the last week of spring semester, I had a dramatic encounter with God that changed my life. That summer I attended a Bible study leadership camp. During my senior year, I became a leader of the InterVarsity group, and the following summer I went to Guatemala to participate in IV’s Overseas Training Camp. While there, I was asked to come on staff with InterVarsity—an idea that I found humorous at the time.

Nevertheless, because of a knee injury and subsequent surgery, I could not work at my normal power-line construction job that summer, so I read and reflected a lot. I had one term left before I was to graduate, and by December I agreed to join the staff of InterVarsity. I never even applied for a job in wildlife management. For an outdoors kind of guy who laughed at the idea of a teaching career, to earn a Ph.D. in New Testament and teach Biblical studies at a Christian college really is an amazing reversal of plans