Strangely enough, I have to say that when I attended seminary, my favorite class may have had nothing to do with doing the Lord’s work.

It’s not that I did not like my other classes at Golden Gate (now Gateway) Seminary.

The truth is, I loved my three years at that little school, living on the isthmus of Strawberry Point near Mill Valley, experiencing life in the Bay Area, and studying so many different topics. The peninsula the campus was located on rose into a tree-circled mound, one arc of which was shaved off by a descent to private properties below it, and where the trees could not grow, the campus sported a fantastic view of San Francisco across the bay. By that hilltop clearing beside the cover of trees, the old academic buildings stood- the two long halls where teaching was done, and administrative meetings happened.

When it was winter, the campus hill was often cloaked in by cold white as fog settled on the coastlands. During the summer, the daylight was usually bright and yellowy, amped and golden by its cleansing in the surrounding sea.

The main reason I went to seminary, besides that deep felt desire I had to be qualified to teach the Gospel, hoping to share it with others who might find life in it, was a desire to also learn more about the faith I embraced. I was principally interested in studying theology- systematic theologies, at that, due in part to my genetic disposition for engineering and analytical thought. Besides theology, then, learning more about philosophy and philosophical views on living had my interest. And with those two, having an interest in church history made any course I took within those three areas easy to grab and hold my attention.

When I began seminary, though, I learned that a professor on staff was also new to the school. Barry Stricker was the new professor in theology, and when I began taking my first class with him- Theology 101- I made it a point to take everything from him I could. Short and gesticulative and Harry Potterish in his large circular glasses frames, Stricker appeared boyish and youthful, but when he spoke, the Harvard graduate with the Golden Gate graduate degrees was clear, concise, logical, and organized in his teaching and thinking. Unpretentious and casually thorough, he gave me the theological background I hoped I’d get in graduate classes. Golden Gate had a number of fine professors, actually, when I was there. But Stricker was the one I connected with the most and learned the most from.

And because I made it my goal to take anything he taught while I was there, one semester he offered a unique elective. He taught a short course on a book he said had helped him to learn to think when he was a young student.

The book we studied in that short course was “How to Read a Book” which was written in 1940 by Mortimer Adler, a classic on how to critically approach and comprehend good literature.

As with any other course of Stricker’s I enrolled in, I took careful notes in this class as well, and have broken them out here and there over the years as a reminder about how to think better.

Stricker’s class in the classroom hall was in the evening during a winter month, and often the light of the moon reaching through tree branches glowed outside the wall of glazed glass to our right. The class was small and intimate, and Stricker was casual and conversational, speaking often as he did, with physical movement of his hands. The rest of the rooms in the academic hall were empty and the building was otherwise sheltered by white quiet, unless a shy shower tapped on the panes outside.

That is the class at seminary I took and loved a lot that had little to do with church leadership, church growth, evangelism, or church administration.

Years later, I miss Stricker and think fondly of him from time to time. I sat in his classes nearly 30 years ago

Thankfully, I still have all that he taught us in note form in a binder on a bookshelf nearby. And some rich memories of him teaching close by in my heart.