To be an adequate Sunday school teacher requires knowledge in three directions
Teaching That Produces
Anum ber of years ago a cartoon appeared in many of our evan gelical periodicals. In the cartoon there were two frames and in each frame a Miss Smith and a Mr. Brown. In the first frame Miss Smith was an applicant for a teach ing position in the public schools and Mr. Brown was the superintendent interviewing her. Mr. Brown was saying, “ I’m awfully sorry that we can’t consider your application, Miss Smith, but you only have one year’s experience and we require at least two. Furthermore, I notice you only have an A.B. degree in education and we would like to have people who have at least a master’s degree. As a result I’m afraid we can’t even consider your application.” In the second frame Mr. Brown is a Sunday school superintendent and Miss Smith is someone he is trying to talk into teaching in the beginner department. Miss Smith is saying, “ But, Mr. Brown, I haven’t been a Christian very long. I’ve never taught this age before.” Mr. Brown quickly replies, “ That’s all right. All we’re interested in is willing workers. The best way to learn how to teach is just to teach.” What was said in that cartoon is far truer than most of us are willing to admit. In order to teach that two and two are four, you need a master’s degree. To teach a child that he is supposed to say “ I don’t know anything” in stead of “ I don’t know nothing,” you need years of experience. But to teach a child how to be saved, to teach him how to live the Christian life, you don’t need any training. Anything is good enough for God!
Is that what the Word of God says concerning teaching? In writing to Timothy, his young son in the faith, Paul says, “ And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also” (2 Tim. 2 :2 ). Paxil is saying, “ I’ve committed something to you, Timo thy, among other witnesses, and I want you to take that which I’ve given to you, and pass it along to faithful men who shall be taught in such a way that they’ll be qualified to teach others also.” Here you have a chain reaction set up — a ministry of multiplication. Every time I stand before a class at the seminary where I teach, I feel a sense of overwhelming in adequacy. It is indeed sobering to realize that I’m standing before 50, 60, 70 young men whose lives, thinking and ministry I am mold ing either for better or for worse. Their lives, the whole course of their ministry, will be affected by what I teach. That’s why it’s so staggering, so challenging. That’s why just anything is not good enough for God! Now if we are going to erase this concept of a ministry of medi ocrity, of ineffective te a ch in g , we’re going to have to change our teachers. W e won’t require an M.A. degree but we must require knowledge in three directions — knowledge guaranteed to result in teaching that produces change. Know Your Pupils I want to ask: Do you know your pupils? That’s the first thing you
will have to know if you are going to teach. When I talk about know ing your pupils, I’m talking about two things. First of all, you need to know their age characteristics; then you need to know them as individuals. Are you a teacher of beginners? If so, you ought to be an authority on beginners. You ought to know all that is humanly possible to know about a beginner. What is he lik e p h y s i c a l ly and m e n ta lly ? What are his interests? What is his attention span? What is he like socially? What are his spiritual needs? The more you know about the characteristics of your children or young people or adults, the bet ter able you are to teach them. I’m personally convinced that 85% of the discipline problems in our Sun day schools and in our Christian teaching situations arise because teachers don’t know the people they are teaching. I was asked some time ago to observe a teacher in the beginner department and give her an evalu ation. I sat there for 50 solid min utes while that lady lectured, or tried to lecture, to that group of about 25 beginners. Most of the time was spent in trying to keep the little children in their chairs. Afterwards during the evalua tion I said to her, “Do you realize that in teaching, you are compet ing against the Holy Spirit instead of cooperating with Him? Did you know that the Lord made a begin ner with an attention span of about four or five minutes? All the time you were saying to the child, ‘Keep quiet,’ God was saying to him,
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