Tyler Klein: Week 6

A. Time Spent this week: 6 hours total (S.S.=1 Worship= 1.5 Youth small group Bible Study= 1.5 Youth Groups Worship 2)
B. My Class this week:

1. A reflection.
Mike began by asking everyone to think of a time that someone over them, like a teacher, advisor, coach, or whomever, said something to them that really made them feel good. After a few minutes he then asked them to remember a time that a superior said something that really cut them to the core. With those experiences in mind he then threw the common phrase “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me” out into the discussion. He then said that the phrase was not really true, because they had experienced words hurting.
2. A warning
He then explained that the lesson for the day would be about how to make sure that we didn’t hurt our fellow Christians with our words, and that there was a fine line where you cross over from joking to hurting someone’s feelings. With that brought up he had everyone open their Bibles to James 3:1-12, the passage on the tongue.
3. Dissection of James 3:1-12
In verse 3 Mike asked what they thought about the statement by James that if you could master the tongue you would master the sins of the body also. A couple of good points were brought up: 1) that there may be a connection between what we say and what we do and 2) that by the way that is said that taming the tongue may be extremely difficult. Then everyone just listened to the examples of how the tongue guides the body like a bit in a horse’s mouth and that it is like a ship’s rudder or a spark in the forest. At the end of the passage Mike asked the students to respond to his summary that “our inability to control the tongue is most damaging to a Christian’s witness.” He got many varied responses, and then he challenged them to start building the habit of building other people up in random acts of kindness through their tongue instead of saying hurtful and mean things. Like James 3:6 or 9 says, the tongue can be used for good or evil, so Mike was challenging them towards good.
4. Dismissal
With that it was 10:00 and it was time to head over to service, just a quick word of prayer and we were done, ready to tackle the next passage of James the following week.

C. My Questions for the week

1. How can you get rid of distractions that kids are playing with without drawing attention to it and completely knocking the discussion off track?
2. Are “challenges” really worth doing? If there isn’t a specific goal, then will high school students actually remember it? Should we as teachers try to focus on one particular task that is easily attainable rather than go for some overarching goal like “practice giving random acts of kindness to each other each day”?