A. Time Spent this week: 4 hours total (S.S.=1 Worship= 1.5 Youth small group Bible Study= 1.5)
B. My Class this week:
1. Commends Students for Participation
Mike started the class period off by thanking all the students for their participation in the past couple weeks, because of their discussion. His philosophy is that if the students are talking more than he is then he’s doing something right. The past couple weeks had been really great in terms of discussion.
2. Is Faith Something you can Measure?
After a really short recap of the past weeks’ discussions, we began to try to deal with a term that had come out multiple times in the past weeks. In their descriptions and answers, some of the kids had used the wording, a “better Christian”. Mike wanted to really dive into what this meant, and he asked the class to explain what they really meant. The students knew that what they were saying wasn’t favoritism, but that when they said better they meant more mature. After that was finished, Mike asked if faith is something you do or don’t have, and if you can have more faith than someone else? This provoked a lot of strange answered, so Mike went on to the next step of the lesson.
3. Defining Faith
The students were then asked to define what faith really means. Before the discussion began Mike clarified that he wasn’t going to give them an answer, and that they would most likely be blurry on this until the next week. Some answers that were thrown out were that Faith is a belief in something greater than themselves, faith is belief in something that cannot be proven.
4. Dismissal
Right before the class time was to end we quickly read the passage for the day, James 2:14-21. It is a passage in James discussing the importance of works along with faith. Mike introduced the fact that this idea may be a confrontation with Paul’s writings on faith. Then he encouraged the class to read and think about this passage for next week.
C. My Questions for the week
1. How long can a teacher continue to teach without giving any definitive answers about what they are teaching?
2. And if this type of teaching continues, how can you be sure that Biblical truths are being understood correctly when the Bible isn’t brought in as a form of evidence or guide in the discussion?
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Re:definitive answers
ReplyDeleteIt depends. When I was in high school I had a teacher who really answered the questions we had to ask. Instead he just fixed the problem and we moved on. This was frustrating to me because I never learned anything in the process. I think it is important that a teacher start off anticipating that questions will be asked and he or she needs to be able to answer them. Without a clear purpose, the person teaching can't teach effectively.
re: biblical truths
If the person teaching isn't using direct scripture, I think you need to find a way to lovingly bring that to light. Every teacher needs to have some sort of accountability to another person to make sure they are teaching the truth of the Bible.