Back in the 50s when I attended Johns Hopkins University, I remember vividly a professor on the first day of class saying to us, “Now I don’t care whether or not you pass this class. All I’m required to do is to present the material and it’s up to you to get it or not.”
I suppose he meant well—trying to motivate us to study by that approach— but it was clearly not the Christian approach to teaching.
The original terms for teaching and learning found in the Old Testament are so closely aligned that to remove the one from the other is to destroy both. In Scripture, the teacher is one who facilitates learning; not one who merely lectures, leaving the learning entirely up to the student.
If you teach, you will want to remember this fact. God holds you responsible to so work at the way you communicate His truth that there is no reason (short of his own resistance) why a student doesn’t learn what you have to say. It is your task to teach people; not lecture about subjects.
That means you must work hard at becoming a good teacher—one who has spent time not only gathering facts, but also discovering how best to present them so that those who hear cannot mistake what God says in His Word. Too often, in Christian higher educational institutions there is much of the same attitude that the “teacher” at Hopkins had. Too often the goal is for accuracy in presenting truth—and that’s all!
We train youth who need help learning God’s truth (while unlearning error)—especially when they come to us from the watered-down, secularized, paganized, “education” that they receive in our public schools. This is a double task that requires extra effort on your part. To teach such persons well requires knowledge not only of data, but also of those persons to whom we communicate it. It requires special concern, extraordinary effort, and meticulous care to see that our students truly “get it.” If you consider yourself a “lecturer,” then consider again.
Students will come with minds that have been marinated in continuum thinking—nothing is right or wrong, true or false—ideas are on a continuum somewhere between such poles (if, indeed, they are even recognized). In contrast, you must attempt to inculcate an antithetical mindset in which they will be taught absolutes such as saved/lost, true/false, right/wrong, heaven/hell, etc. This biblical approach to life will clash with theirs, and it will take extra effort on your part to help them make the paradigm shift involved.
Because of such matters, Christian teachers carry an additional burden. We must not glean our teaching methods from the world. Rather, each must develop those approaches to teaching God’s truth that neither add nor subtract from it, and in such a manner that they rejoice in it! That, indeed, is a great responsibility. Are you prepared, and ready to bear it?
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