1-3-10-Target Your Teaching

Teaching and Learning

Good teaching comes from good learning-and Proverbs has more to say to students than to teachers.  Proverbs is concerned with the learning of wisdom.  The book makes it clear that there are no good alternatives to learning wisdom.  We are either becoming wise learners or refusing to learn and becoming foolish failures.  Proverbs encourages us to make the right choice.

Leadership Challenge

In Christian Leadership, there are three kinds of leadership aims:

1. To impart knowledge

2. To change attitudes

3. To change conduct

The highest aim of leadership is to change conduct.  As a result of Christian leadership, the power of God should be working in the lives of people around you, leading them into new spiritual experiences.

Effective leadership, then impels the follower to allow God to change attitudes and conduct-life.  God's Word affecting daily conduct - attitudes and what is done, is Christian leadership.

A persons greatest need is the need for God; and what God can do for and in and through them.

Teaching what is relevant-that meets a recognized need-assist them in their spiritual and day-to-day growth.  People participate when they engage in significant discussion, when they answer questions, share life, and brainstorm.

Target Your Teaching

Opportunity Unlimited

No phase of the Church's ministry today is more important than teaching.  People today desperately need a mature under understanding of God's Word, will, and purpose.  Nothing else will enable them to live wisely, serve the Lord effectively, and find the serenity of mind and heart so essential to a "good" life.

To teach the Bible, then, is a high privilege and a great responsibility.  Don't undertake it lightly!  It deserves the best effort you can put into it.  Prepare thoroughly.  Pray about your lessons--and for your men and woman.  Use proved teaching principles and methods.  Be satisfied only when you can see spiritual growth taking place in lives.

How would you define education?  Some teachers are firmly convinced that if they have told their classes a truth or a principle, they have taught it.  By the same token, they are sure that if a student has memorized or remembered something, he has learned it.

is it true that telling is teaching?  If not, what is teaching anyway?  And what is learning?

No Learning, No Teaching

What ever you are teaching, you have not taught unless your students have learned.  Education, or the teaching-learning process, is a conquest, not a bequest.  It cannot be given; it must be achieved.

John Milton Gregory, a former president of the University of Illinois, points out that "teaching is arousing and using the pupil's mind to form in it a desired concept or thought.  No matter how well you have said something, it does not necessarily follow that you have taught it, for learning takes place in the student's mind, not in his ears.

Suppose you wanted your class to memorize the Beatitudes or to learn the various events of Christ's life in chronological order.  These would be knowledge aims.  You would have achieved them when your men and women had committed to memory all of the necessary information.

Or, suppose you wanted to encourage greater loyalty to the home, or more fervent love for Christ.  You would have achieved such an aim (sometimes called an "inspiration" aim) when your men and women had developed appropriate attitudes.

Knowledge and inspiration, however, are not the ultimate aims of Christian education.  Webster defines "to teach," in part, as "to train or accustom to some new action."

It is good and necessary to teach doctrine, for right doctrine is both the source and motive for proper conduct.  However, mere intellectual apprehension of doctrine is not enough.  Some Christians who are perfectly orthodox in their theological beliefs are attracting no one to Christ by their lives because they are self-satisfied and unloving to others.

A good many Christians have acquired a fine set of "verbalized concepts."  They know what they ought to be and to do, but they don't live up to what they know.  They are like the person who mastered an instruction book on how to drive a car.  However, when he actually drove his car, he lost control of it and crashed into a tree.  He knew the theory, all right--but had he learned to drive?

You have not begun to teach your men and women unless they have begun to learn, and they are not learning unless the truth of God's Word is affecting their daily conduct--their attitudes, their words, and what they are doing.

The Holy Spirit and You

You can't change the attitude and the conduct of a person in your class.  In fact, he can't do too much to change it, either.  Only the power of the Holy Spirit can transform a person.  The Holy Spirit will do it too as your adults step aside and let Him.  Someone has defined teaching as "meeting human need," and a person's greatest need is his need for God.  As a teacher, your function is to motivate your men and women to allow God to do for and in and through them what only His omnipotence can accomplish.

Some teachers are quick to "hitchhike" on this idea: "That's what I say!  The Holy Spirit is omnipotent and sovereign.  I depend on Him-not on methods!"

Perhaps this sounds spiritual, but it really isn't.  Right teaching methods are good not because some Christian education "expert" recommends them, but because they open the way for the Holy Spirit to do His transforming work.  God can and does use teachers who have had no formal training in "methods."  If you had to depend either on the Holy Spirit or on "methods," your choice would be obvious.  But it's not an "either... or" matter at all-one should use good methods in the power of the Holy Spirit.  You can prepare as though all depended on you, and teach in complete dependence on God. 

You Have to Start Somewhere

Some people try to teach discipleship, for instance, to men and women who are not yet Christians.  It is best to teach "from the Known to the unknown."  You must start where your students are, spiritually, and lead them on, step by step, toward spiritual growth.

You may have a wide range of spiritual perception among the members of your group.  From Sunday to Sunday it will be your work to provide something each member of the group can use, something that will contribute to his spiritual growth.

A learner's interest often determines how well he learns.  When men and women are interested in what you are saying, they are more attentive and more likely to be thinking along with you than when they have a "ho-hum" attitude.

What makes a teacher "interesting"?  Sound preparations, use of verbal illustrations and audiovisual aids, a sense of humor, and a lesson that meets the needs of those in the class are important factors in holding the attention of a group.  Variety of teaching methods will also do much to stimulate interest.

Teaching that is relevant-that meets a recognized need-is never dull.  A teacher who can provide class sessions that deal with the problems men and women face day to day is an interesting teacher.

Sometimes, of course, people are completely unaware of their real needs.  They know what they want-or what they think they want-but have no conscious awareness of their most flagrant shortcomings.  Your responsibility, as a teacher, is to awaken them to the deep spiritual needs of which they have been (perhaps blissfully) ignorant.  Then, by meeting these needs, assist them in their spiritual and emotional growth.

How Learning Takes Place

We know that learning takes place in the learner's mind.  Learning is facilitated and hastened by a process sometimes called participation.  People participate when they engage in role play, buzz groups, and brainstorming.  They also participate when they think along with the person who is lecturing them, following his train of thoughts closely.

An adult class member who participates understands the truth being taught, relates it to what he already knows, and applies it to himself.  He considers how he could make use of it and enters on a course of action that takes it into account.

When such participation takes place in your class, you are teaching.  If it does not occur-if no one except the teacher is thinking much about the lesson-learning is not taking place.  In such a case there is no real teaching.

Three Major Marks to Shoot At

In general, you have three major objectives in teaching men and women.

First, you will want to give every member of your group an opportunity to enter into a saving relationship with God through personal faith in Jesus Christ.  As you prepare, and as you teach, keep in mind those of your group who hhave not had this experience.  Give some attention to the plan of salvation, at least in capsule form, in every lesson, unless you are confident that all your adults are regenerate.

You need to be very clear in dealing with this truth. Don't think that by telling people they must "receive Christ as personal Savior" you are doing your whole duty.  many men and women haven't a clear idea of precisely what it means to "receive Christ," or to "believe on the Lord Jesus Christ," or to "have faith."  How about you?  Can you explain these well-worn phrases in your own words in such a way that they become meaningful to a person who has no evangelical background?

After an adult has come to know Christ as Savior, he needs to grow spiritually.  Your second major objective is to encourage such development.  This growth comes about in large part through mastery of and obedience to the Bible.

Your third objective is to encourage growing Christians to accept their responsibilities in the Lord's service.  Some He calls to teach, some to govern, some to give, and so on.  Bible study has a way of helping people find themselves and their places in the work of the church.

In addition to keeping in mind the three general objectives just mentioned, be sure you have a specific aim for each lesson you teach.  As someone has said, "The reason some folks don't git nowhere is cuz they wuzn't goin nowhere!"  Even though you aim at a target, you may not score a bull's eye.  But if you don't even aim, how can you hope to score at all?

Never be satisfied with a lesson composed of rambling, verse-by-verse comments that begin nowhere and end in the same place.  You may tickle some ears with such a presentation and, thanks to the power of God's Word, they may get a blessing in spite of you.  But if you teach effectively, you must allow the Holy Spirit to guide you into choosing an aim for each lesson.  Then teach so as to reach that aim.

Make your aim brief, so that your class will remember it.  Make it clear, so that they will understand it.  And make it specific, so they can carry it out.

Focusing a lesson on the aim gives it unity, coherence, and emphasis.  For all the side issues, it moves in a single direction.  Mr. Jones may come away specially blessed by one particular truth, and Mrs. Brown may have been helped by some other remark someone made.  But when the class period ends, all your members should have a better understanding of one truth, a deeper appreciation for one facet of revelation, and a greater determination that in one particular respect their lives will be changed.

Values Clarification

Another important task of the Christian teacher is to guide adults in values clarification-to help them assess their own values in light of scriptural absolutes.  This is particularly important because even Christian adults absorb and are influenced by the attitudes and values of the peer culture.  And the values clarification exercises in which many young adults have been participants are the product of secular educators, and are not based on any scriptural or moral absolutes.

Because most adults have developed the capacity to think things through for themselves, they begin to discover the paradoxes of the Christian faith.  They begin to question what they've always accepted as true.  For example, an adult might ask: "If God is a God of love, why did He allow my husband (or wife) to suffer and die of cancer- and leave me to raise three small children?"  If left alone to struggle with this question, that person might eventually conclude that God is unfair-or perhaps doesn't exist!  If helped through the struggle and doubt, such a one can emerge with an inner system of Christian values and beliefs based on a deeper understanding and appreciation of who God is and how He is constantly working in our lives to accomplish His purpose.

As God transforms people through the renewing of their minds (Rom. 12:1-2), they will have periods of what some secular psychologist call "disequilibrium."  When adults have these periods, they need a supportive, caring Christian group that will allow them to express their doubts and feelings openly and honestly.  They need teachers and leaders who will accept them where they are in the various stages of their frustrations, pain, and growth.  They need the companionship of other Christian adults whose lives bear witness to the fact that the biblical truths being questioned are in fact worth believing and living!

Guided Discovery Learning

The goal of Christian education isn't merely to produce with unlimited Bible knowledge, but whole persons intellectually, spiritually, and emotionally transformed through personal relationships with Jesus Christ.  So the teacher's task is to lead persons onto disciplined, growing lives with the Lord.

Guided Discovery Learning is a distinctive approach to Bible teaching that involves each learner in actively studying and seeking personal applications of God's Word.  This approach involves the whole person.  Each learner is helped to master the Bible's teachings, and to relate his deepest personal needs to the Lord.

This simple but effective Guided Discovery Learning approach helps you get adults into God's Word and God's Word into adults.  This teach plan has three principle parts:

As you focus on one lesson aim, discover the corresponding Bible truth, and respond to the Lord in obedience to the lesson aim and Bible truth, you will be enjoying the benefits of teaching adults.

This consistently biblical, Christ-centered, and life-related approach should be at the heart of every lesson.

The Laws of Teaching

1. The Law of the Teacher.  The teacher must know the subject that he teaches, and must know more than those whom he teaches.

2. The Law of the Pupil.  The pupil must attend with interest the lesson to be learned.

3. The Law of the Language.  The teacher must express himself in language entirely understandable by the learner.

4. The Law of the Lesson.  The truth must be imparted in terms of what is already known.

5. The Law of the Teaching Process.  The teacher must stimulate the pupil to acquire knowledge and understanding for himself by the exercise of his own thought processes.

6. The Law of the Learning Process.  The pupil must reproduce the truth to be learned in his own mind, must relate it to his own experience, and must apply it to his own life.

7. The Law of Review and Application.  There must be constant review by the teacher and application by the Pupil in order to perfect knowledge, to confirm knowledge, and to apply knowledge.