Dr. Kalas’ Flashback: Back to School
By Dr. Ellsworth Kalas (February 14, 1923 – November 12, 2015)
Dr. Kalas would have been 94 this past February, the same age as Asbury Seminary, as many have delighted in pointing out – both born in 1923. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (BA 1951), Garrett Theological Seminary (BD 1954), and did additional graduate work at the University of Wisconsin and Harvard University. He was awarded four honorary degrees, including one from Asbury Seminary (1986).
In the Fall of 2006 Dr. Kalas became interim president of Asbury Seminary, and in 2008 the Board of Trustees voted to change his title to president.When he retired from the presidency of Asbury Seminary in 2009, Dr. Kalas continued to teach homiletics. He was renowned for preaching without notes and for insisting that his students do the same. In March 2015, he preached his last sermon, which was, fittingly, in the Seminary chapel; his message was about the Sabbath.
I want to report that I’m back in school and that it’s good for me. I hadn’t planned to sign up for this course but this is a school (as some of you know) where the students sometimes have little to say about the curriculum.
This is hard on the human ego. But when it comes right down to it, this is the very nature of the school. Sometimes we sign up for a course because we sense our need for it. That is, we know we need to do something for our devotional life, or we’re stirred to make some old wrong right, or we take a vigorous new attitude toward prayer or the scriptures, and the initiative for the course seems all in our hands.
But sometimes the assignment comes from outside ourselves and we’re left to cope with what the Master Teacher has in mind.
I’m sure you’ve guessed by now that I’m talking about the magnificent wonder of our walk with Christ our Lord, and with it the journey of fullness of life in Him. Here’s my story.
I’m a fellow who has been blessed with extraordinarily good health. I had a tonsillectomy when I was ten years old (that’s a long while ago, when tonsillectomies were all the vogue); I had a crucial surgery in 1979 for a diverticulum in the esophagus; and in 1996 I had the bad judgment to slip on the ice and break a ball in my right hip. But for general health, I’ve lived with wonderful victory, and, if I may say so, with what I think is a proper Christian attitude of gratitude.
Last fall things began to fall apart and my body began to confess that the calendar knew more about things than I did and that I was indeed wearing out. I’ll not bother you with medical details (I know you’re grateful). I knew that I needed to have repair work done on my hip if I were to walk effectively again. In the process of preparing for that surgery (which is yet to come) I went through those multitudes of tests which are common ground to many of you. I learned, in the process, that I had a prostate cancer that needed immediate attention. With the help of our personal physician (an admirable Christian) and the skills of a surgeon, this matter was taken care of, and I’m doing well.
And that’s where the whole new course of study has begun for me. I was a pastor for 38 years, and I like to think that I was a pretty good one. I was part of the old school where pastors made hospital calls faithfully and followed up with all kinds of personal home calls as well. Even though I was serving larger churches, I tried to know all of my people: their joys, their defeats, their hopes, and their pains. In those instances where I failed, it wasn’t for lack of trying. I especially sought to be empathetic, to feel life as my people felt it.
In those days I often listened to people who were suffering very real and almost unceasing physical pain. I sympathized. I really cared. But, bless your heart, I didn’t know anything about that kind of pain.
Then came this new period of schooling. For perhaps the first time in my life I knew what it was to hurt, hurt, and hurt with no real relief and I came to understand how all the other problems of life seem inconsequential compared to the simple fact that you hurt.
That’s where this new education began. Some of you will tell me that there’s nothing revelatory about this; you‘ve known it for years. But that’s the wonder of our school in Christ. It’s a little like basic education. I had courses in American history when I was in the 5th grade, again in the 8th grade, and again in high school. When I was an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin, I made American history a minor, and I covered some of the same material I had in those previous years. Then, I went on to graduate work in history and covered the same material again.
It’s like that in our walk with Christ. Some of these lessons we’ve had since the day of our conversion. It’s grade-school stuff, we say. We’ve always known this. But in graduate school, we discover depths of knowledge about some era of history that we never knew before. So it is in this walk with Christ, this wonderful, humbling, upsetting, exciting business of being what God wants us to be.
I want to tell you that this whole experience has made me more vulnerable. That’s good for a stiff-necked fellow like me, and humbling, too.
I’m also listening now with more heart: more heart for God, more heart for others. If I hear your problem now I’m likely to take it in a deeper place than I would have a year ago. In the process, under God, I can be part of your healing now in ways I could not have filled a year ago. Not because I’m measurably better but simply because I care for you and for God and for myself at a deeper level than was possible a year ago.
So I’m back in school. Some of this stuff will sound like kid stuff to you, but this course is tailored to me by the Great Teacher, not to you. It’s no longer the 4th grade, though some of the lines of knowledge look familiar. I just want to report that I’m wonderfully happy to be where I am just now. I am humbled before God and before you, and I’m so grateful that my Teacher never loses patience with this poor student.
Oh how I miss this dear man!
I was at a conference I believe in early 2015. I had a brief chat with Dr. Kalas outside of the chapel. I had him for preaching in licensing school in the East Ohio conference in 1979 as I was just getting started and for numerous classes after. He told me he wasn’t feeling well but that he hated to complain because God has been some good. I remember that last brief chat with him and the many that took place before. What a great man of God and a role model to all.
I remember Dr. Kalas in gratitude. He was mindful of international students. He gave me more time to read text books saying, “it is hard to come up with reading as a foreigner.” when I was a student at the Asbury Seminary in 2003. I feel warm as I remember him.