There’s an old saying that you can’t give away what you don’t have, and college pastors, I think, understand what this means better than many.

A college professor can get a PhD and spend the next few decades reading from his notes, semester after semester. The notes may yellow, but the knowledge stays golden. That’s because knowledge is a durable and recyclable product. You gain the knowledge once and you can keep passing it on, again and again. You only have to stay ahead of your smartest student and you can remain the teacher.

The best professors, of course, convey more than knowledge. They convey a love for learning, and learning is very different from knowing. Knowing is possessing, having, owning. It is a satisfaction, a destination. Learning is desiring, seeking, cultivating hunger and thirst … not having rather than having, and it is a journey, a quest.

Like professors, college pastors can, I suppose, content themselves to pass on knowledge – about the Bible, about the Christian life, about theology, about religion and philosophy, about apologetics and so on. But the best ones know that this sort of knowledge is easy to come by, and while it informs students, it doesn’t form them. What students really need in terms of formation corresponds to the love of learning. They need to catch a quenchable desire, an insatiable thirst, an undeniable hunger.

Unless the college pastor herself or himself is experiencing this inner vitality, this love of learning and growth … the passion of it, the frustration and delight of it … the students won’t be able to “catch” it contagiously. But if the college pastor has it … the students will sense it, and it will sneak into them and form their inner world. They will contract, if all goes well, an incurable case of it.

What, again, is “it?” It’s the love of learning and more – love of God, love of neighbor, love of growth, love of service, love of unmastered mystery.

Which is why, if college pastors are in the habit of putting post-it-notes with Bible verses on their mirrors or computers or refrigerators, a good starter verse would be the one from Proverbs about guarding or tending your heart well, for from it flow the springs of life.

In my travels in recent years, speaking to lots of college pastors, youth pastors, and other kinds of pastors too, I’ve noticed that we all face the same hazard: of becoming so busy in running programs and passing on knowledge that this more elusive and precious quality is undervalued. That’s why a couple of years ago I felt I needed to write a book on “simple, doable, and durable” practices that would help leaders keep their inner lives truly alive. Underneath all the layers of complexity, that naked simplicity matters most.

Students have a lot of professors, and if some of them are in the knowledge business more than the love of learning business, it’s sad but OK, because other more vital professors will pass on both knowledge and the love of learning. But students have few (if any!) college pastors, and if they don’t catch the love of spiritual learning and growth from them, the loss is harder to compensate for. So remember, in all your busy schedules, it is not a luxury to invest time and energy in your own inner life, to keep that love of learning and growth alive, to keep that contagious and unsatisfied love for God, neighbor, and life alive.

Because that is your greatest treasure to pass on. It can’t be faked with good results. Nor can it be hidden when it is there.

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