BrianHimes

I lead singing at church this last Sunday, which is something I do every month or so, as the rotation dictates.  It's something I usually enjoy but this time was a struggle for me from start to finish. 

 

To start it all off, I had a terrible time selecting the songs to lead.  I generally try to model my services after a theme topic or verse.  This time I had nothing to go on.  I thought it would be easy to just pick a few random songs that went together but that proved to be extremely difficult for me.  In the end I came up with my own vague theme that was probably only apparent to me but it took a week to come to that point. 

 

Because it took all week to come up with the songs, I missed the church bulletin deadline. That meant I had to go print out my own order of worship and make copies to hand out on Sunday morning.  When I went to go do that the printer at the church was out of ink, so I had to print out a copy on the fax machine. Annoying, but not the end of the world. 

 

I thought that I had experienced the last of my struggles after the song selection and printer issues but that wasn't the case.  When Sunday morning came I felt miserable.  I had a terrible head/neck ache that left me marginally nauseous.  Fortunately, unbeknownst to the majority of the congregants I was able to push through the service in pain. It went relatively smoothly.  I lead one song too high and another lower than desirable, but neither of those instances bothered me too much.  Those are somewhat common occurrences in my church.  It just was a miserable experience having to ignore the pain for an hour and a half, and it left me utterly exhausted. 

 

I knew it was a bad sign when I began my preparations for the service that week, but I had no idea it would be such a struggle.  Next time I might think twice about leading singing if it starts out the way it did this time. 

Call it what you will, but my preferred style of teaching is discussion based. The last thing I want to have to do is get up in front of a group and impart knowledge upon them in true lecture style. Maybe it’s a little selfish, but as a teacher I want to get something out of my classes too, so I tend to formulate questions that I think will lead to a discussion in which we can perhaps question our understanding and interpretation of a given subject. Sometimes it works wonderfully and sometimes it fails miserably. It is largely dependent on the group.

Back in college I took a course called the Great Books Colloquium. The course was based on a similar style of teaching called the Socratic Method. What I loved most about the course was not the books we were asked to read and discuss, but the method in which we discussed those books.

One of my favorite teachers of all time had this practice down pat. Each week he would take some sort of stance on a topic and force us into a discussion in which we would apply what we had just read to either justify or refute the validity of that stance. It was an exciting, engaging class that has really helped to shape who I am today. I don’t think I would be as interested in a discussion based teaching style if it weren’t for this class and that teacher in particular.

So, you’re probably wondering what this all has to do with the church. In short, nothing. In our churches, and I’m speaking in generalities here, we sit and listen to a sermon, we sit and listen to a teacher in a Bible class, and more often than not we sit and listen to yet another teacher in our small groups. There is a lot of being talked at in our church experiences. That’s great if you are able to learn that way, but for a portion of us, and I’m probably speaking mostly for myself, it doesn’t work. I can only handle so much listening. I need to be engaged in another way.

Here’s my solution. Let’s try another method of teaching and learning at least part of the time. Let’s be more purposeful in how we attempt to engage our students because we know that everyone learns a little differently. I’d like to see a Bible class in which we discussed topics and passages using the Socratic Method, or a similar style of teaching. What do you think? Would it work?

Part of the problem with a class like this is that we have been conditioned to give church answers. Answers like: Jesus, God, Forgiveness, Love, and Resurrection. We answer questions like mindless zombies, not stopping to think about what we’re really saying. For a class like I’m talking about to work, we would have to let down our defenses and admit that we do not know it all. We have to be willing to have a discussion.

So, perhaps the real question is not would the Socratic Method work for Bible class but are we willing to have honest, open, discussions? What do you think about that?