My Story Talk 25 Our Relationship with the Students
A key to the success of any organisation, whether it be a business, church, school, or college, is the quality of relationship between those who work, worship or study there. St. Paul's use of the human body as a picture of the church is a great illustration of this principle. Each member of the body is unique and has a different function from the others, but all the members are equally important. Whatever our role, our aim should be to edify others rather than ourselves. And it's the responsibility of those in leadership to encourage and facilitate the harmony that makes this possible.
As I have already indicated, my relationship with staff and faculty members was, I think, a fairly happy one. Of course, there were times when I got it wrong, but I am sure that the success we enjoyed at Mattersey was due to the favour God granted us by giving us a team who were willing and able to work together in achieving the vision he had given us for the College.
But what about our relationship with the students? This inevitably varied as the college grew, and although I shall be referring mainly to my personal relationship with the students, much of what I say will apply to other members of faculty and, to a greater or lesser extent, to members of staff too. For a body to be healthy, all the members must be in a good working relationship with each other.
And this biblical principle applied to every area of College life. It was expressed in the example we set in our commitment to Christ, in our pastoral care and discipline, in what we taught and how we taught it in the classroom, in our worship and ministry in morning chapel and at church on Sundays, and in our social and recreational activities.
Pastoral Care
Before I became Principal I thought that it would be great to develop a personal relationship with every student, maybe by seeing each of them for about ten minutes each week. But I soon realised that this would be completely unworkable with even as few as the 48 students we had when we started. I also began to understand that not every student would appreciate having to see the Principal once a week! Relationships can't be forced. They have to develop naturally.
My first contact with the vast majority of students was when they came for their interview after they had applied to come to Mattersey. Some were understandably quite nervous about this, but this was an opportunity for me to reassure them, advise and encourage them. And as many of them came by public transport, either Eileen or I would often pick them up at Retford Station and the ten-minute journey back to Mattersey helped to break the ice and reassure them that we were human!
And, of course, developing any kind of relationship with someone requires at the very least remembering their name. My father had been the headmaster of a Comprehensive School with a thousand boys, and he once told me that he knew the name of every boy in the school. I was fairly sure that such a feat was way beyond my capability, but I did make an effort to remember the names of all our students.
I began by spending the first lecture period I had with first year students asking them one by one to remind me of their names. We did this going round the class two or three times and by then I was usually ready to repeat their names by memory. I'm not really sure how valuable this was, but at least it showed them a basic level of personal interest in them.
A far better way, however, was what we eventually did once our children had moved away from home. We invited all new students, in groups of about a dozen, for a pizza evening at our home, which was on the College campus, and got them to wear a name badge to jog our memories. We played games like Jenga and Twister with them and tried to make them feel at home and to set an example of balancing academic studies and spiritual fervour with taking time to have fun together.
And of course, these were not the only times we had fun with the students. Our annual Christmas concerts, preceded by a traditional Christmas dinner where faculty members served the students, were hilarious times together when we learned things about each other that would never be learnt in the classroom. Which was also true of the occasion I challenged the winner of the student table tennis competition and, to the delight of the students, narrowly lost by two games to one.
But if such activities might not normally be considered as pastoral care, they were certainly helpful in forming relationships, which is surely a prerequisite of pastoral care providing at least some understanding of the person you are caring for. Nevertheless, it goes without saying that these activities were clearly not enough for us to form a significant relationship with students that would last throughout their time with us at Mattersey.
And that's where we began to realise afresh the value of team ministry. We knew already from pastoral life in church that an individual member might well relate better to one leader rather than another, and it was just the same in College. This was particularly true of the girls, many of whom, quite understandably, related better to Eileen than to me. In fact, so did some of the boys!
As Principal I was ultimately responsible in maintaining discipline in the College which, for some at least, might have inhibited too close a relationship with me. And Eileen as matron was more easily available and did a great job in lending a listening ear, giving wise counsel to all who came to her.
But as the College grew we began to feel the need to provide a facility for pastoral care that was readily available to every student with clear information on how to access it. We began by appointing a personal tutor for every student. This responsibility was shared by every full-time member of faculty and appeared to be successful until it became clear that it wasn't working for everyone.
Some students did not feel able to share their personal problems with the people who would be marking their academic work, and although the fear that it might affect their grades was in my view unfounded, it was clear that we needed to think again.
What's more I soon discovered that other Bible Colleges were facing similar problems. I learnt at a meeting of the Association of Bible College Principals that to overcome this problem some colleges were considering appointing chaplains who were not part of the regular teaching faculty to be available to give confidential advice to students and, after discussing the matter with the resident faculty and the Board of Governors, we decided to do the same at Mattersey.
We decided to appoint former students who had both experience in ministry and understood what it was like to be one of our students. Our first chaplain was Roy Turner who did an excellent job for a few years until he left us to train for the Anglican ministry despite my efforts to dissuade him. Roy was followed by Steven Jenkins, another former student, who shared the chaplaincy with his wife Deborah so that the girls could have access to a female chaplain if they so desired.
This arrangement worked well and by no means detracted from the relationship that those of us had who were part of the faculty. Until she retired in 1999 students continued to seek advice from Eileen and other staff members, and there was always the opportunity for faculty to have a chat with students in the lunch break or between lectures. So overall we enjoyed a friendly relationship with our students, but that did not mean that there was never a need for discipline.
Discipline
A happy relationship in any society is dependent on mutual consideration and respect. Jesus taught this when he said:
In everything do to others what you would have them do to you (Matthew 7:12).
When I started as Principal I naively thought that there would be little need for rules. If everyone behaved as mature Christian ladies or gentlemen rules would not be necessary. I soon discovered that I was mistaken! Our students came from such a wide variety of backgrounds. They came from different families, different nations, different cultures. They had very different ideas about what was appropriate behaviour. And when you're all living under the same roof in a remote country village, there are bound to be problems unless clear guidance is given as to what is acceptable behaviour.
So, as a result, we produced a set of rules which I explained to the students at the beginning of the College year. They covered a range of topics including attendance at chapel, lectures, meals etc., and especially relationships with the opposite sex. (Same sex relationships were rarely an issue in those days). Most of the students accepted these regulations without complaint, but one overseas student refused to do so and chose to leave College immediately.
I had no regrets about this but decided that in future we would send all new students a copy of our rules and say that their acceptance at College was dependent on their agreement to abide by them. This we continued to do throughout my time as Principal. It may have had the disadvantage of giving some students the impression that we were becoming too legalistic, but more mature students realised the line had to be drawn somewhere and that our rules were not unreasonable.
Perhaps the main exception to this was with regard to relationships with the opposite sex. A situation arose early on in my time at Mattersey when one of the girls who had formed a relationship with another student was devastated when the boy suddenly terminated the relationship. She was so upset that she felt unable to return to College to complete her course.
As a result one member of faculty who knew the girl very well suggested that it was time for us to make some ruling that would stop such things happening. This was clearly impossible, but I did realise that we had a responsibility to protect the vulnerable as much as we could. This resulted in a series of regulations including things like not forming a relationship during your first six months at College, informing your personal tutor when a relationship had been formed, and so on.
The fact that we felt the need to vary these regulations over the years in an attempt to improve them shows that none of them were entirely satisfactory and in some cases did more harm than good. Towards the end of my time at Mattersey I apologised to a couple for the distress these regulations had caused them when, in their final year at College, they came to me and confessed that they had formed a secret relationship two years previously and had been feeling guilty about it ever since. I know the fault was partly theirs, but I really wondered if we had made a mistake in the first place by possibly overreacting to the situation I described earlier. And anyway, there's no point in making a rule if you have no reasonable means of enforcing it.
So, looking back on it, I'm not sure that we always got it right, but right or wrong our motive was always to do what we felt was best for the College community as a whole and I am grateful to all our Senior Students who played a great part in informing me of student opinion and, where necessary, reminding their fellow students of what was expected of them as men and women preparing to serve the Lord Jesus.
Finally, I hope that the way we handled these matters showed the students the importance of discipline and the spirit in which it is exercised. Church leaders in the New Testament were described as both rulers and servants following the example of Christ who, though he was Lord and ruler of all, took upon himself the role of a servant and washed his disciples' feet. He taught by example, and nothing we say is of any value if it is not backed by the example we set. But that brings me to the subject of teaching.
Teaching
We usually associate the subject of teaching with what goes on in the classroom, and there was certainly plenty of that at Mattersey. There is, of course, less opportunity in the classroom to form relationships with individuals, especially when the class is large and the teaching method is the lecture.
I well remember in my first term at Oxford an Economics lecture attended by over 200 students. In something of a monotone, the lecturer read what he had written and there was no opportunity to ask questions at the end. In those days attendance at lectures was not compulsory and a week later student numbers had diminished considerably.
I stopped going after the third lecture and was not surprised when it was announced on the College noticeboard that the series of lectures had been cancelled 'due to an indisposition'! Needless to say, my relationship with that lecturer amounted to zero. There were clearly three reasons for this. The lecturer had inadequate communication skills, the class was too large, and there was no opportunity to ask questions.
Fortunately, at Mattersey all our lecturers were able communicators, and although at times our class sizes were larger than ideal, there was usually time for questions. I personally have always preferred to take questions at the end to ensure that I have covered all the material necessary. In fact, very often students who have wanted to ask a question earlier have discovered that the question was answered later in my lecture.
However, at whatever point of the lecture questions are invited, the value in doing so is undeniable. It not only gives the student the opportunity to get clarification on anything they have not understood but also helps the lecturer to understand a little more about the student, their personality, their needs, their aspirations and their concerns. Not to mention their level of intelligence!
And of course, the answer to a question can benefit not only the student who asks it, but potentially the whole class. What's more, valuable lessons may be learned from the way the question is answered as much as from the answer itself. At a recent EPTA conference I was delighted to meet up with a former College student who told me that although he was grateful for all I had taught him at Mattersey, the most valuable lesson he had learned was from the way in which I had answered a particular question.
He told me that on one occasion another student had asked a ridiculous question at which he and the rest of the class were groaning inwardly. Had he been asked the same question he would have dismissed it very quickly, possibly ridiculing the person who had asked it. Young people, even Christian young people, can be very unkind at times and Mattersey students were no exception. But apparently I had treated the student with respect, as I have always tried to do, despite the stupidity of the question. I confess I was greatly moved to hear this and am reminded that people learn more from our lives than from anything else.
So teaching at Mattersey was by no means confined to the classroom. I had valuable conversations with students when we were travelling together in my car or in the College coach. And of course, there were our Wednesday morning chapel services, which were longer than on other days, and when a member of faculty or a guest speaker would preach. Students could see us in a different mode than in the classroom and I'm sure they were learning, often without realising it from the example we set.
I was once preaching at an EPTA conference in Erzhausen, Germany, when I noticed that Don Smeaton, a colleague from another college, was quietly making comments to a young man beside him. After the meeting he came and apologised in case he had distracted me, but he was giving the young man who was one of his students a lesson in Homiletics using me as a model!
We do learn by watching and that's why it's so important that church leaders set a good example in these things, whether it be in preaching, or the exercise of spiritual gifts, or how they pray for people to be healed or receive the baptism in the Holy Spirit. Students often received the baptism under my ministry, either privately or in the chapel or classroom. And on one occasion a student listened to my teaching, watched me put it into practice in the classroom and, following my example, that evening saw several young people filled with the Spirit as he laid hands on them during the youth meeting.
I am so grateful to God for the great privilege I have had in playing a part in training and preparing so many such people who are now leaders in the church today. It is my sincere prayer that they will train others following the principles I have outlined in this talk. The precise details of how we did are not so important, but the principles taught in God's word will never change.
Next time: Life beyond the Mattersey Campus
