If you want to learn, teach!

I agreed to be the "back-up" teacher for the College and Young Careers bible study class back the first of the year.  Now I've become the primary.  I taught 8th grade boys for 4 or 5 years some years back, but this is a first with adults.  I'm sure it's helping me more than them, but I was delighted (and gratified) when brainstorming for the next year produced a request that I continue to teach.

I'm not a "by the book" kind of teacher.  The Lifeway materials are ok, but they usually strike me as just a re-statement of the scriptures with some "Sunday-school" truisms thrown in.  [Apologies to all my Lifeway friends!] I can't say I've spent a lot of time in Bible study since I finished college, but I was an avid reader of commentaries, church-reform literature, etc. until that time.  I had a wonderful Minister of Education at First Baptist Church, Paris, Tennessee as I was growing up.   Charles Orr (in addition to talking me in from a second-story window ledge during Vacation Bible School as a child -- it's a long story) would talk with me and loan me his books.  Plus I had three sermons a week from Caroll Owen, a very bibilical preacher.  That, plus active BSU engagement in college formed the base of my knowledge of the Bible, theology, etc.

Anyway, I bring a fair amount of Bible knowledge to a lesson, plus all my other ife experiences, and my approach (based on my strengths, of course), is to start linking ideas, both biblical and other, and look for insights, theories, etc.  And I definitely try to gett folks to thinking!

This Sunday's lesson is on "Freedom in Christ" using Paul's writing in 1st Corinthians where he talks about being free to eat meat offered to idols, but choosing not to so as not to tempt a weaker believer.  I'm thinking about using the following questions to start discussion:

• What are some things folks say we should be free from?
• What are some things many people are trying to get free from?
• What would you like to be free from?

Then, I will change to:

• Folks want to be free to ...
• I want to be free to ...

Then I'll go from there.  We'll see how it goes!

Comments

[TJ Jackson]

I thank God my parents didn't bring me up to be protected from the world. I would ask that all people be free from:
-those who would shield them from risk or failure
-those who would elevate self esteem about achievement
-who know the cost of everything and the value of nothing
-those who find nothing of merit worthy of their own sacrifice
-those who value shiny things instead of their parents, family, community

Thats all.

[Dave Shearon]

Elizabeth, it went well. From memory, the list was freedom from:
fear, death, (I think sin, also, but not for sure) -- these are the "Sunday School" answers. Then, they or I (a little of both) added freedom from want (Live 8, etc.), pain (Paul prayed for this), despair.

On the freedom to side we had: "Do what I want", sin, abort a baby/embryo/blob of protoplasm, love, serve, respond to the Spirit's whispering (or whirlwind) movements around us.

I also pulled in, for example, the story of Jesus' disciples breaking off grain and eating it on a sabbath and Jesus responding to critics by noting that the sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath. Also David and his men eating the loaves of bread from the temple. And I pointed out how Paul, a Pharisee, had opposed those who attempted to put all the law on gentile converts before they could become Christians.

I enjoyed teaching the class; I hope they enjoyed being in it. My thinking about daily living is really being impacted by a story from _Synchronicity_. I want to post about it, but need to get the book again as I want to get it right.

[elizabeth]

Dave -- I look forward to seeing the answers to the questions you asked in Sunday school today --

ELizabeth