Teaching Sunday School

This Sunday I start teaching 6th graders at First Baptist Church. It should be an exciting experience to say the least. I’m really looking forward to growing spiritually. I agree with the statement that you learn the most when you teach. It forces you to study the material in depth; you have to have an organic understanding rather than just a base level or picture understanding.

I really enjoyed the training class and am excited about the team I will be working with. Everyone was just so excited and passionate about it. And I realized that is one of the benefits of participating in volunteer activities; every single person wants to be there. I couldn’t help to think how this translates over to the business world. There are days when I don’t want to go to work, but of course I do because I have an obligation. When it comes to volunteer activities though I am there because I want to be. A business where every single person in your organization wanted to be there would be amazing. Creating this culture is obviously not easy. And it’s a huge post to even scratch the surface, but feeling that energy is always exciting.

Almost everyone teaching is married including the young people. Prior to this training I was only involved with the singles group. I was excited to find out that 2 of the people teaching were members of Christian Business Leaders with me. We had a lot of time to talk during training; I especially enjoyed talking to the married guys. All of them were within two years of me, and during conversation they mentioned that they envied me being a single guy. They said they enjoyed talking to me because they get to live vicariously through me. I probably take for granted the level of freedom being single allows. It’s great to know you have the freedom to make decisions without consultation. You are responsible for you. It seems obvious, but I didn’t realize that it was something that was missed. Made me want to be a little more cavalier with my bachelorhood.

An idea I have wanted to implement was a blog for the youth ministry. I had shared some ideas with the youth leaders, but didn’t bring it up during training. I was surprised when someone else brought up the idea. I wrote three posts for the blog yesterday as a test run in my excitement. Blogs are great for developing accountability and my hope would be that eventually it would be taken over or heavily contributed to by the students. If you want to develop someone you get them involved in the planning; let them make it their own. I’m excited for the possibilities.

Finally, I’m excited about exploring what motivates kids and how to convey a message in a way that has an impact. I have a lot of theory; with little practice. So I’m curious to see what kind of affect I can have. Sixth grade was an extremely tough year for me. My parents got divorced and my support system fell out from under me as my mom moved us to the other side of town. My parents were harboring so much anger toward each other that it left me with little guidance or direction. I really want to be a rock for someone else.