On my return trip from Washington DC back to San Diego on the motorcycle, I had occasion to pause in Springfield Missouri while my riding buddy had some service done on his bike. I went over to the Bible College I had attended back in 1964 and 1965.
Still beautiful on its 66 acres, the serene campus was very quiet. A "For Sale" sign was posted adjacent to the stone identity sign that read "Central Bible College, established in 1922."
It is gone. I parked my bike in the empty parking lot, passing a small barrier at the entrance. Quickly a security guard drove up and we had a brief conversation that involved disappointment with the college's recent fiscal decisions on his part, and stories of old divine guidance on mine.
It was a pleasant exchange, he told me he has frequent visitors doing exactly what I was doing- pausing to remember and taking a couple pictures. He said most of these visitors were about my age! (70+)
I attended there for just two years, coming to the conclusion that I was not cut out to be an Assembly of God pastor. I took all the bible classes I could squeeze in, and every class taught by a remarkable old saint named Robert Cummings. I knew that while he was not a skilled professor, he was a man who had been in the presence of God way more than anyone I had ever met before.
The rest of the faculty had impressive credentials too, but more on the academic side.
Standing on the property filled my senses with memories from long ago, I was just 20 at the time. It was a time of learning, late night conversations, being philosophical about everything, convinced I was the smartest person to ever have been there.
That was before I went off to war, got married, had children, floundered through a series of careers, and came to realize I was perhaps the dumbest person to have ever been there!
Still, it was sad to see the old alma mater on the block, asking just 12 million for a complete college campus. The guard told me that while tuition had been running around $10,000 per year, the seminary course had been transferred to nearby Evangel College (also operated by the Assemblies denomination) and was now $25,000 per year. It is poorly attended- something like 50 students. A far cry from the several hundred who used to attend CBC.
The school, as birthed by the early Pentecostal movement, was a Bible Institute where ministers and missionaries could be trained and sent out to preach the gospel worldwide. Now with an education racking up a bill for a hundred grand, nobody is looking to preach on a forlorn mission field, they need a six figure income from a wealthy congregation to pay off the debt!
It is a whole new economic paradigm. Could it be that just as the school has closed its doors, so also foreign missions will wither as well?
Fortunately God runs that program, not denominational leaders. If missions were easy, men could saturate the fields with human driven nonsense. But when God sends them out, His power is at work. Always better that way!
My hat is off in reverence to the many who took their bible training at CBC and answered a call in the fields of God's harvest- there were many.
Wonder what God will do next?