To types of teachers

There are two types of teachers teaching on Sunday. Those with the highest motive, having been called from God to teach. Than you have others who have not been called; but are teaching for some other reason.  It is those who are called from God to who are the through teachers.

This does not to say that other teachers are teaching from bad motives. Truly, most peoples are honest with their teaching, but may be the only motive is to be useful to the church. Some teach because their friends have urged them to teach. Others saw the need and thought it was their duty to teach. Others keep teaching because of a strong conscience and the avoidance of failure.

These are not the proper motives for teaching, but can not be called bad motives.

Being called to any kind of ministry by the living God is the greatest thing in the world. It is the love of Christ.
A vital Christian experience

The prime essential of the teacher is an intense conviction!

* Do you know the love of Christ?
* Have you experienced the love from Christ in all your life?
* Does it invade you, thrill you, and empower you.
* Are you given up entirely yourself to do his will?
* Does the love from Christ lead you into a deep and tender love for lost souls?
* Do you live for one thing; being to attempt to bring those lost souls to Christ?

If you can answer these questions with an honest yes, then you have been called for a teaching ministry and you have accepted the great commission.

Only with the calling from God, you can teach the proper way. No other motive than the love of God and His desire in you will hold the true Sunday school teacher to his task, even in the face of failure, year after year.

The attack is coming

If God has called you, you will be attacked. The attack may not be because of lack of praise from people, or your friends are pushing you, or from a sense of duty. But the attack comes from a feeling of shortcomming. And in times you might wonder if you should quit and hand over the class to someone who can do the job better than yourself.

But, yet you feel your heart cannot resign the task of teaching because God has called you to do it.
The love for lost souls - the proof of the love of Christ in you

The love of lost souls is the material a true teacher is made of. You have the will to teach, and now you only need to learn how to teach. The real Sunday school problem is not the teachers who have been called to teach, jet they does not know how. But the problem are the good teachers who have not been called to teach, and dont even have a longing of seeking that call.
Pride - the primary hindrance

The Sunday school teacher has a huge chance to show off his skills. He is not like the secular school teacher who must stick to his task for 6 hours a day, 5 day in a row.  Rather the Sunday school teacher need only be wise and astute, tactful and fascinating for half an hour a week. If he does that he will receive praise from the church officials, the parents will respect him and the students will love him. No one questions the students for a gleam of the material and insight they have learned. No one knows if they were taught anything at all. They were not tested.  He has only to please them to be an apparent success.

The greatest hindering of spiritual growth in the Sunday schools is the glib, shallow, and popular teacher who has not been called to teach, who has not received the great commission and is not seeking it. It is a task for the church to bring such teachers under the sway of the great commission. This can be accomplished through teaching for all teachers at meetings and assemblies; sometimes it is nessesary by a one on one approach.  However, all teachers should understand that there is only one supreme motive for teaching. That is leading the students to Christ.

If the teacher has not received the calling from God, the greatest remedy for an un-commissioned teacher is the association with a commissioned teacher. If the commissioned teacher can be taught the thing which above all else he is yearning to know is how to teach effectively, then the class climate will change.

The commissioned Teacher is born - not made

But if the truth is to be known, it is an instinct for a few to teach well. We are not born teahers, even God has called us for this ministry. To teach well we must be taught how to teach effectively. Most peoples compare themself with others. They feel they dont reach up to the standard and result others can show for. Forget these things about yourself: ability, failures, success, and your relative skill ranking as compared with others.  Forget all this.

Dont miss the mark

Remember one thing and one thing only: your calling. Your commission.  The commission will never fail. It will get itself accomplished. It never fails when hearts and minds are set upon it and yielded to it. Remember above all method is the motive behind it. The teacher’s constant task is to keep true to his initial love of Christ, and the love of those that God has put under his care and the lost, and have a desire to bring these together.

2.

The true Sunday school class is an entity.  It is created, formed with deliberateness. It is not a work of chance. The teacher who really teaches must create the class before he can teach it. He cannot teach another teachers class.  They are not his. He must make the class his own.

This process could take a short time, or take long time (years). It may include some or all the original members, or it may not come to pass until the original members are all gone. But this process must be a success before the teacher can really teach.

From the start, the teacher must focus on forming his class. And he must get students to come to his class. One way to get people to do things is simply to ask them. Ask the potential student to join your class. Simple. He is not inviting them to himself, but to Christ. He is not inviting them to a conceited display, but to a feast.  Do not have false modesty for fear of seeming to have a big ego.

Invite the students to class. Invitations should be issued by the members of the class. The present student can tell those being invited of the help they get. Praise from your students will be convincing. Your students are your best recreating agents.

One method is to take a community census, get all the names of potential members, and let all departments and classes go into the field and make a strong effort to bring in new members.  

Place an empty seat beside each student and make it remain there until that student fills it with a member they brought in. Send the student out two by two to accomplish this task. See who will be first and who will be last. Give recognition in some way to the successful efforts of the students. Honest effort resulting in the coming of a new student with all the implications for time and eternity can be recognized. The thoughtful teacher will find some way to reward these efforts.

Your class must have some sort of organization about it. Pick a name for the class.  Establish a constitution. Make it simple at the start and change it as you go along and see a need you overlooked.  Let every member have a copy of it. In the constitution, provide of officers. President, vice president(s), sectary, and treasurer. The teacher should not hold any office. The teacher will do work in the background, guiding and directing the officers from the sidelines.   The officers should be elected. The aim of this is to make the students feel responsible for the success of the endeavor. One vice president shall be charged with creating class activities the vice presidents will develop a social life for the class. Another vice president will look after the class membership. He will be charged with increasing class membership. This officer will develop membership drives, and develop tools designed to increase membership. This officer will pay special attention to new families who move in to the community. An excellent time to embark on membership drives is when the class embarks on a new series of lessons. This could be the basis of new appeal to individuals  who refused invites in the past. You will find a plan that is relevant to your situation.

For example, the class members could go about and say something like this:  “Hey Joe, the class is building a scale model of the temple.” “Come and be a part of it.” Of course if they come, they will be proposed for membership by the membership officer and voted on at the nest meeting. The individual who responded to the invitation should be notified of the vote and acceptance in a well phrased note. The prescient should pay the new member a call. The president will escort  him to sign the constitution. Now he “belongs” to the class. This Sense of belonging is worth all the trouble the class has gone to. Any plan will not run itself. The teacher must observe and watch for signs of slackness.  The teacher should call on a membership report every Sunday and call for suggestions on improvements in the procedures.
The membership officer should also look at the absentees.

Do not neglect these. Try to find out who and why. Let the students do this work. Let the students hold one another up to the mark in the matter of attendance.

The best way to deal with attendance is this way. Divide the class into two groups.  Have group leaders. When a member is absent, ask another member why he is absent. This member will take it on himself to find out and encourage the absent member. A report back to the team leader could be made the following Sunday.   The class is now an entity. The class can and will learn to work together in a systematic manner. This will develop the character of the class, and it will develop its’ own methods of working. The class will develop “esprit de corps”.  

It is necessary for the teacher in his work for the class to be inspired by the love for Christ, for those who are lost, and a desire to bring them together. It is essential that the teacher arouse these motives in the students in his class.

3.

Many teachers fail in their task because they do not engage in perpetrations for teaching.

The lesson must flow from the the teacher. Teaching is an overflow of a crowded mind, not the draining of a desperate mind on the last ebb of information.

6 essential tools for Sunday school teaching:

1. A reference Bible
2. A good commentary
3. A Bible dictionary
4. A Bible index
5. A Bible atlas
6. As many periodicals   as he can get

Proceed thus:

1. Read the Bible first
2. Read the last lesson and two lesson beyond today’s lesson
3. Underline useful words and thoughts
4. In the atlas, find the location of the lesson
5. In the atlas, convert distances to a scale of miles/ kilometer.  Make it relevant.
6. Use the Bible dictionary to gain information on all points of the lesson.
7. Use the commentary to find answers for the questions that have surfaced so far in your study
8. Use the periodicals to get suggestions on the best way to teach this lesson

Start the next Sunday’s lesson Monday morning. A Sunday school lesson is not made while you are waiting. This will take time. Pour your heart into it. Each time you go over sections of the Bible that are relevant to the lesson, the work will get easier. But do not expect success without pouring yourself into the lesson.

Getting the lessons information is only half the job. Some teacher fails to teach because they do not take the time to prepare to teach. It is good to study the lesson as a scholar, now the teacher must study the lesson as a teacher.

There are 5 things a teacher must do with each class:

1. Get their attention
2. Must get them to reveal what they know
3. Must get them to reach out and lay hold of what they do not know
4. Must attach their minds to what has been taught
5. Must inspire them to study the nest lesson

If a teacher fails to plan for winning attention, eliciting expression, arousing interest, reviewing and inspiring the students to study at home, then he has failed to prepare. He has studied the lesson but he has failed to prepare to teach it.

There are 3 divisions of a lesson that require special attention.

* The opening,
* the closeting and
* the middle.


If you fail on the first one, you will be lacking on the other two.

The opening demands getting the attention of the students. Remember the best hook for the mind will be varity in your approach.

If you are teaching about Joseph’s journey to Egypt, you might relate the conditions of such a trip and who has made similar trips in the past and modern times.  If you are teaching about the Birth of Jesus, you may ask the student “What is the most important event in all of the world’s history?

When you are teaching the lesson of Jacobs’s ladder, you might make it personal by discovering the dreams of the students. You might, in another case, ask the students if they have ever heard of a man who sold his soul for a pound of flesh. Of course that was fiction, but we are about to study about a man who sold his soul for a few pounds of flesh. We are going to study the story and life of John the Baptist.

Sometimes you can gain attention for the lesson by holding up a relevant picture that illustrates one aspect of the lesson. Sometimes you can take a tablet and a pen and draw free hand, illustrations and diagrams about the lesson.  Create while they watch. This will get their attention. Keep a close attention to how you are opening a lesson, there is lots of room for variety and use of your intellect, and the effort will be greatly repaid. ( may be 2 or 3 examples...)

After opening the lesson and gaining their attention, the next step is to draw out what they know about the study.
You can question them!

Get them to question you. Have them question each other in some way. Assign little essays for home work and read them. Then discuss them. The next step is to get the students to reach out and make the knowledge you have, to become their own.

The best teacher is known by the quality of the question from the students, not by his own questions.

Arouse their sprit of inquiry. Use an overstatement to bring this out. Offer to solve or attempt to solve any difficulty that comes to their minds. Or you may point out a difficulty of your own and lead them to a solution to it.

Divide the class into two groups and get them to debate on the lesson. For example, was Paul justified in his criticism of fellow missionaries?

Try to get each student to question you on the subject. This will take some skill but it becomes not so difficult after some time. You will in return praise the questions that are pointed and probing.

Finally the next step in teaching is to set the students for review and to look forward. A look forward will set the class studying at home with a purpose.  Each lesson should have two ends in mind.  First, to better the student’s life and second, to increase knowledge of the Bible.
Every lesson should have a distinct mental goal in mind.

The goal should be easily attainable, but clearly one step in advance. Each lesson should give your students one new Bible act and leave them with the idea that they know that they know it.  These facts will accumulate over time.

If you are going to study the life of Christ, for example,  for a year, get the class to get excited about week one, the prominent  facts in the life of Jesus.  In this manner, week by week, for 52 weeks, they will have a complete outline with many details that few Christians possess.  Write down in advance each step you will take in the lessons, reviewing your choices constantly.

At the beginning of each quarter, determine in advance, plan what distinct spiritual impression you want to impart to each of your students.  Make a list of these purposes.  Plan around them, making an application to their  individual lives.  The essential thing is that you plan and review your results as you go along.
Things to remember:

In your planning do not be content with amassing information about the lesson.  Rather, in your planning and prepare time develop  five distinct things to do with your students.  Through these five  things you have in planning , you have two goals to reach.. In the points for preparation for the lesson, remember there the teacher’s preparation as being different from the your preparation for the student.

No lesson is considered prepared fully until in the seven items metioned previously and you have  formed a clear plan of attacks and have thought things so carefully that the lesson has become a part of you.