Well, my first day teaching my new Sunday School class turned out OK, in my opinion. I've heard that some folks liked it and there's no major uprising to have me removed just yet - at least as far as I know yet... Besides the expected off-topic question, things went pretty smoothly given that I really don't prefer teaching topical lessons and that it contained some VERY challenging passages.
Before I get to the passages (and the request for response), I'll say that I managed to accomplish a few things...
- Most importantly, I think people got something out of the lesson, which was on the importance/significance of baptism. We'll get to some of the content later.
- I think people got a flavor for how I instruct. I'm very methodical, process oriented, logical. I practice the Inductive Method of Bible study (How to Study Your Bible by Kay Arthur) which is all about abstracting the facts and details into a logical order before you attempt to make relationships and application from the text. It's the bomb.
- I think people got an idea on the difficulty of getting a complete understanding of a verse's meaning when taken out of context. When you remove a verse from it's context, how can you understand the surrounding events; the political climate, oppressions, prejudices, etc?
- I encouraged them to prepare if they wanted to discuss and argue with me. I don't claim to know everything (by any stretch of the imagination), but I WILL be prepared each time we meet. I won't be able to argue on stuff that is outside what we are studying ('cause I'm not that good), but I'll bring my game on the stuff we're slated to talk about.
Today's lesson was, as I said, on the significance of baptism, or lack thereof. The references were Acts 2: 36-41 and Romans 6:1-10. Now, the Acts passage was pretty straight forward (in typical Acts fashion). But this passage of Romans was a little harder. I made it through it, but it was challenging.
Anyway, all things considered, I think things went OK. We'll see what happens. We're discussing how to continue the class and set a direction for the class.
I'll start on next week's lesson tonight. Some how, I'm supposed to do justice to The Lord's Supper topic in a single hour. Puh-leaze!
Later.