Learning how to Teach

I am almost at the end of the first module of this semester: “Creative Teaching”. It is a topic that is very dear to my heart as I believe it is an important function of the church and a role that I have been personally called to play. Just one and a half years ago, I would never have imagined myself to be a teacher as it is not in my nature to speak publicly to large groups of students about what I believe. However, upon receiving God’s call, I am trusting that he can work through my imperfections to impact lives around me.

One of my key takeaways from this module is from reading the text book by Israel Galindo. Reminded me that teaching is really more than the impartation of truth, but it is to help students to know God in a deep and personal way. And often times, it is the way the teacher acts and behaves that leaves a greater impact on the student than the content of the lesson. When the students observe Godly qualities in the teacher such as patience, hospitality, faithfulness and servanthood this leaves an impression on the student and encourages them to also be likewise. When our lives contradict what we teach, we lose all credibility. Now and then, statements such as “we teach according to God’s standard, not according to the standard that we are living in reality”. And while such statements are true as we are not perfect vessels and yet Christians should be taught God’s truth as it is. However, it becomes bad when teachers see this as an excuse for living less than perfect lives as our message is only credible when it is backed by the life of the messenger. Even if we are not able to fully live out the fullness of what we are teaching, we need to be authentic in our struggles and not be seen as hypocrites. As such, we become more effective teachers not only when we expand on our knowledge, but more importantly, when we draw closer to God in our daily walk with Him.

The second thing I took away was to include more learning channels in my teaching. By nature, I am an auditory learner. Visuals and diagrams rarely help in my learning process, and I rather hear points delivered in full sentences rather than in short punchy phrases. Back in university, I never printed notes for lectures and learned effectively from just hearing what the lecturer says. Subconsciously, this has also become the main way that I deliver my lessons – through verbal communication and seldom, if ever rely on visual aids in my teachings. To become more hospitable in the classroom, I should teach not as how I would want to learn, but rather in a way that would benefit the students. Though this currently seems like a lot of effort to me, it is really the easiest part of bringing hospitality into the classroom. To be an effective teacher, we have to understand the students’ needs and how our lesson is able to speak into their lives. This allows our lessons to be relevant to the students and helps us to be able to speak into the lives of the students. Of course, we as human teachers could never fully understand what would be relevant to a student and how we can help them in their walk with God. As such, we have to rely on the irreplaceable work of the Holy Spirit, and trust that He will be able to work through our human efforts.

Lastly, I like the Hook, Book, Look, Took model that helps me to organize my teaching. The first segment, the “hook”, draws the attention of the student into the lesson. The second, the book, is where the class analyses the text and interprets it. In the “look”, having derived the original message of the author to the biblical audience, as well as God’s eternal message to all believers, the class will discover the modern day implications of the text. Finally, the “took” is where students explore how they can apply the learnings into their lives in a personal and tangible way. Left to my own instincts, I am inclined to leave out this portion of the lesson and jump straight into the lesson. Also I tend to spend most of the time on book and look segments, leaving little time for personal reflection. Since learning does not occur when knowledge is transferred, but when students reflect on the knowledge that is gained and contend with any new information that does not agree with their current understanding, the last segment is imperative for life transformation. This structure thus forces me to become more balanced in the way time is allocated, which would in turn allow for a better platform for lives to be transformed.

Reflections on Romans

Going through the book of Romans in Bible college reminded me of deep fundamental truths of our salvation and it was a great opportunity to assess if my heart has come to understand them a little better. Christianity is not difficult to understand, no doubt – God didn’t bring a form of salvation that can only be understood by the elites, but by every human being created in His image. But while we may think we have grasped what Christianity is about, we are very likely to not fully agree with some of its fundamental truths at the subconscious level, and this is revealed in our imperfect lives. For example, how do the daily decisions I make in life square with how who I am in Christ? It is hence important for us to constantly renew our minds through the study of the Word of God. And in a way, the importance of having accurate theology is proven by the existence of the epistle itself. If accuracy of theology isn’t important, Paul would not have bothered writing his longest letter ever recorded on the Gospel to people who were already Christians. And Romans isn’t just Paul’s message to the Christians in Rome – it contains God’s universal message for all Christians.

And this brings me to my next reflection on the book: Paul’s genuine pastoral heart for his fellow brothers and sisters. From the historical context, it is clear that Paul wanted to get help from the Roman church so that he could use Rome as a base for his missions to Spain. However, this reason is insufficient to explain why he needed to give a lengthy discourse on the Gospel. It is also likely that Rome having no apostolic foundation contributed to his impetus to write the letter, to ensure the Christians there had a strong foundation in the Gospel. However, this reason is also insufficient to explain why Paul had to write the letter at that particular point in time. Perhaps the most pertinent reason for the letter from my readings was the ongoing disunity between Jews and Gentiles in the church that was caused by an incomplete understanding of the Gospel. This is interesting. Perhaps all disunities in any church are caused by an incomplete understanding of the Gospel, and it is only by going into the heart of the Gospel that the church can be truly united in spite of the failings and hurts that are caused by individual members. While serving in church, it is easy for me to focus on the disagreements I have with others, and the frustrations I sometimes feel. Rather than sweeping these differences under the carpet, I believe that I should learn to see them in light of the Gospel and see how that will allow these relationships to thrive even stronger than they were before.

Each time I go through the book of Romans, I also question myself how much I believe that I deserve eternal death. For it is only with a proper view of sin that we can properly appreciate the grace of God. And my natural tendency has been to count the amount of hurt that I have caused to others and feeling that it comes short of the penalty of eternal death. “I am far from even causing the physical death of another, why should I deserve eternal death?” But I know that this reasoning is flawed as it doesn’t take into account the reason why I have sinned, and that is the denial of the existence of God, much like the prodigal son. However, it is slowly but surely that I have come to see my acts of sin as just the symptoms of our human tendency to live a life independent of God, and hell is simply a place where God allows you to do just that.

Finally, I was reminded that we need to work out our salvation in humility and in love towards others. This is a simple truth, but sometimes it is easy to forget why we are doing what we are doing. Love is always intentional and therefore cannot be something we get used to. Each act of love requires us to step out of our comfort zone to give to others. In my workplace, it is often easy to become caught up with the tasks at hand, and only think about the needs of others when it is convenient for me. But I pray that I will be able to make the presence of the church felt in my workplace each and every day through simple acts of hospitality and kindness.

Getting closer to the source

I took Biblical Greek this sem, and had really mixed feelings going into it. I never have been good in languages, even in English. It took me much effort in university for me to improve my writing to a decent standard. Needless to say, I am hopeless in Chinese. However, the thought of being able to read the New Testament in its original language intrigued me. To me it seems that being able to read the bible in its original language will allow me to better understand the author’s thoughts, and more importantly the mind of God that is speaking to us through the author. Thus far, that expectation has not been disappointed. Even while learning the fundamentals of Greek, it became clear that there are areas in the New Testament where the nuances can be more accurately seen and understood if the passage is read in Greek.

I also appreciated the fact the module had a very specific focus: to understand the New Testament in its original language. As such, the usual components of an introductory language class, such as conversational Greek and writing Greek sentences, were absent from this class. It was a constant reminder that we should be focused in all we do, and not just gain knowledge for the sake of it, but to always keep the bigger picture in view.

To become good at any skill in life, consistency is key; and Greek is no exception. From memorizing vocab, to familiarizing oneself with the grammatical syntax of the language takes consistent diligence, which is something I definitely lack and need to work on.. As a first step, I plan to revise what I have learnt from this module before Greek 2 begins after the break. It will be difficult but I am really looking forward!

Learning in a Christian Community

It’s a new year and I am at the tail end of another course at ACTS Bible College. This time, it is a new compulsory module titled “Learning in Christian Communities”. Going through this course has reaffirmed some of my reflections about my learning journey during my first year at ACTS in 2016.

Coming to Bible College, I sincerely wanted to learn more about Jesus and how we can make him relevant to our world. However, pragmatism kicked in with all the assignments and deadlines. It became my natural instinct to finish the assignments with satisfactory quality, failing to do so I would feel that I have failed the course. However, at the back of my mind I knew that was not true. Being able to do all my assignments well does not indicate that I have actually learnt anything significant; not if I were to measure significance according to God’s standard. If what I learn does not have an impact on the way I think after the module is over, and consequently the way I live and represent the Gospel, then my learning would have gone to waste. On the other hand, it is possible to have life transforming revelations through the module while not doing well for our assignments. Essentially what determines whether we take anything significant away from the module is how much we reflect about the issues surfaced through the module and what they mean for our lives. (Something like what I am doing right now.) Assignments then should thus not be seen as more than means that facilitate this learning process. This creates a second step of learning that occurs outside of the classroom, and is where the real learning begins.

Then comes in the community aspect of learning. Without a community, our learning will always be limited to our own perspective, which can be very limited sometimes. As a learning community we are able to debate and refine our ideas and reflections collectively. A point to note is that people would have different preferences of how they wished to be engaged during this process. In particular, while extroverts in general do not mind engaging in dialogue while their thoughts are being formed, and allow their learning to concretize during conversation itself, introverts very much rather complete their own personal reflection before engaging in any form of dialogue. And I guess this is why hospitality is as important a practice in a learning community as it is in any other type of community. We need to be sensitive to the different ways people prefer to engage in dialogue, make each individual a safe environment to share his or her views without fear of being belittled but instead allow each voice to be treasured and heard. Furthermore, if each view of another is to be considered seriously and not merely listened to, the community needs to be interested to find out where the person is coming from, and each person explaining his viewpoint has to be willing to open up in order to be understood. And while having differences in opinion is never pleasant, resolving them in a hospitable fashion will always lead to a closer community and a wiser community that learns from each other. 

Personally, striving to transform the communities I am in, namely my small group as well as in my secular workplace, into learning communities is something that I am striving towards. And I realize that everyone has different levels of tolerance of engagement in debate. Most people do not wish to expand energy debating things that do not matter to them, while I can sometimes find joy in debating on trivial matters. As such, I think it is important for me to know what the battles worth fighting for in my communities are. What are matters that is important for everyone to agree upon, and what are matters that is more profitable for the community to agree to disagree, to live with our differences.

Out of the four practices of a Christian community mentioned in Christine Pohl’s book, Living into Community, namely gratitude, promise making and keeping, truthful living and hospitality, I found the fourth practice of gratitude most lacking in myself, especially when I think I have given too much and received too little, or when I feel that I have been unjustly treated. Too often I find myself grumbling about trivial things and forget about the good things I have already received, which really include many things I do not deserve. And in addition to having received a lot, I also have a Father who is sovereign over my life. As a person living in grace, I think I ought to be more resilient when unpleasant circumstances occur or when I do not get what I want because what I have at this present moment is better than what I would want for myself. To grow in this area, I will have to slow down now and listen to his still, soft voice that assures me that I am exactly where He needs me to be.