It’s education hour at Sonshine Community Church. In one room, preschoolers gather in a circle, singing with gusto; in another, teens work to create posters about being a good neighbor; in yet another, an elderly woman tells stories and shows artifacts from her days as a missionary in Asia.
What’s going on here? Sonshine Community Church believes in offering education programs for all ages to nurture spiritual growth. The congregation’s snappy motto proclaims its vision for the congregation: Love, Learn, Go! The education program supports this vision.
If you’ve been asked to teach in your church’s education program, you might wonder what it takes to be a good teacher.
A Teacher’s Basic Toolkit
The most basic tool is to be teachable yourself. The Christian faith journey is an ever-changing one. Be prepared to share what you’ve learned thus far, but also be prepared to learn and grow yourself. You do not have to know it all, and that’s a relief. To teach is to learn twice.
A wise person once said you only need three loves and two skills to be a good teacher.
The three loves:
- Love God. Be reassured that whether you love God a lot or love God a little but want to love God more, you have what it takes.
- Love others. If you are willing to be used by God to spread his love to others, you have what it takes.
- Love the subject matter. God’s love for the world as revealed through the Bible is the message you bring to every topic you teach.
These loves start in your heart and in your relationship with God. Your willingness to be used by God to reach others will be blessed as the Holy Spirit equips you for your task.
A good teacher has two skills in particular:
- Communication skills: Listening, asking good questions, storytelling, lesson planning, discipline, praying, and more are things you can be taught. Books, role models, workshops, mentors, prayer partners are ways to become more skillful in communicating with the people you teach.
- Community building: We learn better if we feel connected to others in our group. Seating arrangements, adherence to safety policies, sharing stories, and setting boundaries are ways we can ensure that learners feel safe, respected, and accepted. This is especially important if some of your learners are persons with disabilities or come from diverse cultural backgrounds. Experiencing hurt and rejection in a church setting can create long-lasting scars. Skills for creating community can be learned by attending workshops, reading teacher guides, and finding role models and mentors.
Specialized Tools
- The Bible: Church education is based on biblical truth. As you prepare to teach, be sure to start with the seed of God’s Word and meditate on it. What does it mean to you?
- Curriculum: A teacher’s guide can be a gold mine for inexperienced teachers. It’s like having a master teacher by your side, guiding you step by step. But curriculum is not a dictator. It is a tool. Be sure to personalize it for your own teaching style and context.
- Accessories: Pictures, posters, craft supplies, music, video recordings and sound clips, cartoons, and guest storytellers or presenters can all enrich your teaching as you engage your students’ senses of sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell.
- Guidance: Thrive is the arm of the Christian Reformed Church that equips churches and ministry leaders with the encouragement and tools they need to flourish. You are not on your own! Read about all the ways Thrive can help you at crcna.org/thrive/about. Refer to the chart about spiritual characteristics of children, youth, and young adults to understand more about your students, and also check out the resources about being a good leader of adults.
Teaching Children
Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them” (Mark 10:14). These tender seedlings in God’s garden need a lot of loving and gentle care, especially in a church setting.
In the 168 hours of a week, children and youth are exposed to a multitude of competing messages from TV and other media. They live in an increasingly busy, flashy, noisy urban world. You might wonder how you can compete with that in your allotted 45 minutes.
During this precious time, you are God’s representative, and you are inviting children to come and meet their loving Creator. What an honor! If the only message the children come away with is “God created you, God loves you, and God wants a relationship with you,” you have completed a supremely important task. Young children need safety and a secure attachment with loving adults as they explore the world around them and begin to discover who they are within God’s family.
Teaching Youth
As youth reach adolescence, they enter a whole new world. They are asking themselves three important questions:
- Who am I?
- Where do I fit and belong?
- What difference do I make?
They are spending an enormous amount of time online—some statistics say up to nine hours per day! This increases the possibility of exposure to harm, social isolation, depression, anxiety, and cyber-bullying. The opinions of their peers become very important too. As their world expands, they learn about varying viewpoints, and they have a lot of questions.
As a teacher, you can listen, encourage, and be a role model. You can say, “I don’t know all the answers, but we can explore together.” You are God’s conduit, and you can tell them, “You are God’s child, part of God’s family, and you can make a difference in this world. You are important to us.” Help them use their gifts in church life in whatever way you can.
Teaching Adults
Consider these aspects of working with adults:
- Safety: Learners need to know your class is a safe place to ask questions and to express feelings, both good and bad. Work together to set up guidelines for group participation, addressing issues of confidentiality and respect for others. This is the beginning of building community.
- Value: Your learners are taking precious time away from their schedules for a reason: they want to grow and learn. Ask them what they hope to get out of the class, and then make sure that your program includes these goals. Pray that you and your group will hear the Holy Spirit and learn to love and serve God and your neighbors better.
- Curiosity: We are living in a global community where we are exposed to many perspectives about life and belief. Questions about this are bound to arise. This is a good thing! “Be not afraid,” Jesus tells us over and over again in the gospels. Respect different perspectives and learn together.
- Mystery: St. Augustine famously said that if you think you understand God, then it’s not God you understand. Jesus often taught in parables, leaving his followers to puzzle out meanings on their own. Be OK with not having or knowing all the “right” answers. Allow for wonder.
So you’ve been asked to teach. Say yes! You will be blessed.