A Sunday School teacher’s goals should include reaching, teaching, and assimilating students into church life. Truly impacting students’ lives will take more than showing up and teaching a lesson. A Sunday School teacher’s life will teach as much, if not more, than skillfully crafted lessons.
How a Sunday School Teacher’s Life Teaches
To systematically teach God’s Word, we need to be students of the Word ourselves.
We aren’t going to take students beyond where we are ourselves. As Jesus said, “Can the blind lead the blind? Will they not both fall into a pit? The student is not above the teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like their teacher.” (Lk. 6:39-40) — We need to spend time with God in His Word outside of lesson preparation so we’re personally learning and growing.
Adequate lesson preparation, by studying God’s Word, not only leads to accurate handling of the Word (2 Tim. 2:15) but also frees us to be more flexible in fielding questions without aborting the lesson. We know where we’re going and can transition back to the lesson when interruptions to the lesson plan happen.
It’s going to be difficult to keep the Gospel central in our teaching if it isn’t in our own lives.
The Gospel touches the deepest needs of our hearts. If we haven’t grasped how encompassing it is, how are we going to help others as they grapple with their need for Jesus? Unless we’re gripped by its significance, we probably won’t be impassioned to keep it central in our teaching.
Further, the Gospel’s power extends beyond salvation. When we forget what Jesus did for us on the cross, we fail to appropriate its power. If that happens, so many of the qualities that make us effective teachers will be missing from our lives. That includes qualities we need to properly address people’s questions and doubts, maybe even antagonism. Read 2 Peter 1:3-9 and 1 Peter 3:15-16.
If we’re verbally encouraging students to relate with one another and the Body as a whole as Christ-like servants, but our actions contradict our words, we’ll see minimal, if any, effect. We’re unlikely to foster a caring and outreaching environment without modeling it.
How we interact with students from the moment they step through the door to when they depart leaves an impression. Whether it’s the way we greet them, exercise discipline, or respond to questions, we’re either underscoring or negating Christ-like communication.
Think about the impression students get from the way we interact with other teachers, helpers, or ministry leaders. Is it all about us and our needs or do others within the Body truly matter to us?