Show Me the Money

I received a phone call last night from a former professor of mine from my wild and crazy Bible college days (they really were fairly wild a crazy-but that’s a different story). I wasn’t able to get to the phone in time, but he left me a message. He said that he just wanted to check-in and see how I was doing and ask about any prayer requests that I might have that he and the alumni association could pray about. It was nice, considering my not so tight relationship with the alumni association.

Shortly after graduating from Bible college I received a nice letter from the association, which said two things: 1) Congratulations of graduating, and 2) Please send in your dues right away. Now, I’m not sure if that’s how it was supposed to work, or if all alumni associations do business this way, but I couldn’t help but notice that there was never any invitation to join. I remember being so caught off guard by the tone of the dues request (there was a definite sense of “you owe us this money”) that I even looked through past mail and asked around to see if I or anyone else had been asked to join, or if they had simply been asked to pay up. I think it wouldn’t have been such a big deal had we (me and my small merry band) ever been invited to join anything at the school. As I neared the end of my time there I met with the academic dean who commented, rightly, that we had always been a bit of a separate group. I told him, “At the risk of sounding juvenile, they started it.” You see, before being invited to join, we were told to conform, but my long haired, New Living Translation loving self couldn’t do it. (I realize there is probably more than one side to this, but it’s my blog so it’s my side).

I never did send in any dues, and after several attempts they stopped asking. I check-up on the college from time to time, but we never really hear any news from them, I don’t know if all the good dues payers hear more information than us. I have always been a little sad that I didn’t have a closer relationship with the school (though in saying that I’m not sure how a human and a school have a relationship, but I think they can), so it was nice to hear from them the other day.

The problem is, he kept talking. “We’d like to hear any prayer requests you might have, and don’t forget that we still need help finishing the new men’s dorm! You can send……” Thanks for the call, guys.