Remembering A Great Professor

Seminary was a wonderful time of my life. I sat, listened, and learned from some brilliant men and women over a span of three years.

Some professors I remember fondly. Some professors I remember less fondly. I admit they were all smart folks, but what made them great or poor in my eyes is how they treated their students and what they thought of themselves.

God is good. When I started seminary, God placed me under the supervision of one of the smartest and humblest men I have ever known—a professor I would have recommended to anyone. He graduated with a PhD from Princeton Theological Seminary. He did additional studies at the University of Edinburg in Scotland. He was a smart man, and he was my supervising professor for three years.

Every class I had with him I loved and learned more than I could ever hope to learn from someone. He brought the minor and the major prophets alive.

He made the book of Psalms easy to understand and easy to preach. After one exam, he laughed and said he believed I regurgitated every word he had spoken during the semester on that particular exam.

I don’t have a photographic memory, but he made remembering easy because he was a humble, smart man who valued and loved his students. I think there is a saying: People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. He cared; his students knew this. I remember what he taught because I knew he cared about me as a student.

At the first of July, his earthly journey came to an end. When I read about it, I had a big lump in my throat for days. This man drove two hours from home each day to teach. Why did he drive so far? Because he loved living on his farm as much as he loved teaching.

I could pick his car out on campus a mile away—tobacco juice down the driver’s door, a bale of hay or a bag of range pellets on his back seat. I could walk into his office and he’d have a can of Vienna sausages and his pocket knife out, eating lunch.

He would walk into class and give us all an RC Cola and a Moon Pie. He told us about his dog jumping through his car window and onto his lap when he arrived home each day. He told us about how his cows ate out of his hand.

Yes, he was a farmer and an Old Testament scholar. This is a combination that few will ever find in a great professor of theology.

Dr. John Hayes, you were the best. It was a blessing to be your student for three years. May those who follow you, do as well as you did at educating theology students.

Humility trumps inflated egos any day of the week if your goals are to care about others and to teach students.