Rebecca Moan, Mt. Carmel and Trinity Free Lutheran Churches, McIntosh, MN
Are you a Sunday school teacher in Tioga or Arlington or Kalispell or Camarillo? Wherever you have put down your roots, teaching opportunities may come your way in one of many beloved congregational ministries such as VBS, Wednesday night children’s ministries, youth group, or WMF in addition to our cherished Sunday schools. Regardless of whether you are currently teaching or if you’ve never taught a class in your church or if you’re not sure if the Lord is nudging you to consider teaching, the question begs to be answered: Why teach?
Proverbs 22:19 was our theme verse of sorts as we homeschooled our five sons over the course of twenty-three years. “So that your trust may be in the Lord, I have taught you today, even you.” I would write that Scripture verse on the first page of our boys’ brand-new notebooks at the start of the school year. It expressed my heart, my desire, and our ultimate goal as parents. That verse really applies to all teaching opportunities that come our way. Ponder for a moment a few other reasons why the Lord may be calling us to teach:
- What a joyful opportunity to share the Gospel!
What better news is there to share than the gift of forgiveness and eternal life with Jesus through His death and resurrection? (See John 20:31)
- It’s an eternal investment in eternal souls.
“This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” (John 17:3)
- It’s an opportunity to use your God-given gifts.
“As each one has received a special gift, employ it in serving one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.” (1 Peter 4:10)
- You will be confronted with your weaknesses.
It’s humbling, but it’s also healthy for us to acknowledge our inadequacies.
There have been seasons of my life in which God has led me to teach in a number of varied settings to a variety of age groups. At other times I didn’t formally teach in congregations or schools outside our home because the eternal investment in eternal souls took the form of pregnancies and baby care. Maybe like you, sometimes my contribution to teaching ministries was focused on background administration or prayer support.
But whatever our station is in life, we are all teachers. We teach by our example, our daily lives, our attitudes, and our actions. I wonder what lessons I have communicated when I was grumbly about a lack of sleep, irritated that a meal that took me over an hour to prepare disappeared in ten minutes, or complained about a mountain of papers to correct. How good to know we can come to our loving Father for forgiveness and be reminded that though our sins are many, “His mercy is more.” Ultimately, the truth of God’s forgiveness is one of the most important lessons we can teach our children and our students, vividly demonstrated through our own failures.
Let us thank God for forgiveness day after day, and for mercifully cleansing us and using us for His purposes. Let us also ask Him to give us willing hearts to be faithful teachers of His Word in our homes, congregations, and communities.
WHAT ABOUT LESSON PLANS?
You’ve been given an opportunity to teach. Do you start preparing your lesson by delving into the teacher’s guide, making a teaching outline, or prepping your visuals and activities? May I suggest that the best starting point is praying for your students by name? Acknowledge your dependence on God to teach. Ask God to give you a love for your students. Ask God to give you wisdom to prepare the lesson. Thank Him for His guidance.
Years ago, when invited to teach at an academy, my contract stated that I was to pray daily for my students. How ashamed I was when I reviewed that contract sometime later and realized I had not been faithful to do so. Well, there’s no time like the present, so then and there I embarked on a prayer journey for my flock of fourth graders. What a blessing! What answers to prayer we experienced! Fast forward several years as I helped FLBC summer team members prepare their curriculum, lesson plans, and teaching strategies. What did I ask them to prioritize? Pray daily for their students by name.
Once the foundation of prayer has been laid, your heart and mind will then be ready to make your lesson plan. Read and reread the Scripture passage first. Then consult the teacher’s guide before making a brief outline. Depending on the age level of your students, it may look something like this:
- Welcome and prayer
- Attention-getter
- Scripture lesson
- Written activity
- Scripture memorization
- Hands-on activity
- Closing prayer time
And then, right there in the middle of all those nicely laid plans, you may want to add this: five minutes of jumping jacks and running in place! A revered Christian educator, Howard Hendricks, was once doing an evaluation of a kindergarten teacher. It makes me smile how he honestly confronted the instructor in her ongoing battle to get the children to listen. Hendricks quipped, “Every two to three minutes you tell the kid, ‘Keep quiet!’ Every two to three minutes God tells the kid, ‘Wiggle.’ And guess what? The kid listens to God every time.”
Have you found it helpful, as I have, to allow your Sunday school class to have a five-minute recess to help them focus better for the other forty minutes? To realize that well-chosen action songs can be spiritually impactful with the bonus of helping children release some energy? To take your class outside or on a walk during their Bible lesson?
To summarize, remember to pray first, asking God to prepare your heart and the hearts of your students. Then do the work of preparing and organizing your lesson, keeping in mind the needs, age level, attention span, and spiritual maturity of your students so you can communicate God’s Word to them in an effective way.
May the Lord richly bless you as you read and study and treasure Bible passages, and then “teach them diligently…and talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up.” (Deuteronomy 6:7)