A New Teaching

We are talking about teaching and when we talk about teaching we cannot do it without talking about learning as well. Teaching in and of itself cannot exist without someone or a group of someone to teach. So when we read today from Mark's Gospel, it is as much about what Jesus is teaching as it is about the crowd he is teaching and their willingness to learn. My teachers out there know what I am talking about right! As one high school teacher said to me as we were talking about a certain situation, “Hey some days are bad days, some month’s are bad month’s and some years are bad years.” Sometimes what and how you teach depends so much on what others are willing and maybe even dare I say capable of learning.

I have experienced that myself. As a pastor I have several opportunities to teach and some of that includes confirmation classes for our youth. In a previous church we had launched a new program, I had a key layperson who was on board and committed to co-teach with me. We put our plan together, and we had a great year. These youth had so many questions we couldn’t even get all through our material each week, because they had a desire to go in depth on certain topics and we just went with it. At the end of the year when we laid our hands on them and confirmed this in the church we were so proud. This new program obviously worked, it was great can’t wait till next year. Then next year came with a new crop of students, a new crop of youth who were just... well at a different stage of learning and in their faith. It was rough to hold their attention, and halfway through we had to ask, “what are we doing wrong? This all worked so well before.” We had to realize that they were in that different place in their journey of faith, and their maturity, and we changed how we approached the class. Some of those youth now are great and faithful young adults, but it was hard to see it at the time. But what we could not compromise on was the core of our teaching in that we all are trying to be faithful followers of Jesus Christ.