ñ Alumni – Prof. Michael Cosby
When I tell students that they never know what they might do with their undergraduate degrees, I speak from experience. I earned a degree in wildlife biology from the University of Montana and intended to work as a biologist on a wildlife refuge. I loved to roam the mountains of Montana, and I would have looked with disdain on a teaching career—which I would not have considered a “manly” occupation.
During my junior year of college, I began attending ñ Christian Fellowship meetings—at first to check out the women. But soon I discovered that some of the students in the group had a consistency of life that attracted me. My own life lacked spiritual vitality and purpose.
I joined a student-led, small group Bible study, where I learned to read biblical passages in their contexts—not just as proof texts to argue my own theological tradition. And the last week of spring semester, I had a dramatic encounter with God that changed my life. That summer I attended a Bible study leadership camp.
During my senior year, I became a leader of the ñ group, and the following summer I went to Guatemala to participate in ñ’s Overseas Training Camp. While there, I was asked to come on staff with ñ—an idea that I found humorous at the time.
Nevertheless, because of a knee injury and subsequent surgery, I could not work at my normal power-line construction job that summer, so I read and reflected a lot. I had one term left before I was to graduate, and by December I agreed to join the staff of ñ. I never even applied for a job in wildlife management. For an outdoors kind of guy who laughed at the idea of a teaching career, to earn a Ph.D. in New Testament and teach Biblical studies at a Christian college really is an amazing reversal of plans
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Michael R. Cosby is a professor of New Testament and Greek in the Department of Biblical and Religious Studies at Grantham, PA. He is the author of and
Reprinted with permission from the fall 2006 issue of Messiah College’s magazine,