The Real World: Bible Class
One husband and one wife: put together in a minivan with a teenager and three children watching Care Bear and Star Wars movies for over six hours. Can they plan an effective class discussion in that time?
No, that isn’t the premise for the latest reality television series, it is an all-too accurate description of the conditions my wife and I faced as we planned week two of our class study on spiritual formation.
For those who are unaware, Sheila and I are currently in the midst of a grand experiment designed to answer the question: can a husband and wife jointly teach an eight week series in a bible class without driving themselves (and the rest of the class) nuts?
And when I say, teach it “jointly,” I don’t mean a “you take this week and I’ll take that week” approach. I mean, we wanted to try working together so that we could each be involved in each week of class. Only two slightly insane individuals, overly arrogant with the knowledge (or lack thereof, depending on your perspective) that comes from their masters degrees in speech communication, would think to attempt such a thing.
Particularly when they are married.
Surprisingly, however, the results so far are not too bad. During Week 1, I pretty much handled the material and discussion, since I had been in trial during the preceding week, and we just hadn’t found the opportunity to get together to talk about it. For week two (the class we taught yesterday), we did manage to find the time to talk, albeit under the less than ideal conditions described above.
We learned a lot during our trip to Dallas last Thursday and Friday.
We both have different perspectives. Its not that we disagree with each other. We just have different ideas about what it is best to emphasize. For yesterday’s class, which involved “waking up” to the spiritual realities around us, I thought it was important to see the spiritual transformation process as a struggle, a spiritual war. Sheila (correctly) pointed out that the Bible also has a thing or two to say about the revelation of the glory of God and of the Kingdom, and that “seeing God” as he truly is plays a critical role in spiritual formation. We don’t disagree with each other on these points, those are just the things that resonate more strongly for each of us. Is that bad or good? Probably a little of both. It takes a long time to get on the same page, but in the end, Sheila added a feminine perspective to the subject that made it more balanced, and more true to scripture.
Unfortunately, when we both have ideas, its hard to get them out in the 40 minutes we normally have for covering the material and for having class discussion. From a communication/post-mortem viewpoint, I think we may have overwhelmed our friends in class yesterday with the sheer volume of scriptures, stories, and ideas we generated on our trip. Also, as a result of all of these ideas we wanted to get out, class discussion (which we both REALLY wanted to hear yesterday) was a casualty.
Oh, well. Live and learn. We’re already on our way to making a few adjustments for next week. Plus, how can we go wrong when our source material is drawn from John Eldredge and Jedi Master Dallas Willard?
Stay tuned for more The Real World: Bible Class.
No, that isn’t the premise for the latest reality television series, it is an all-too accurate description of the conditions my wife and I faced as we planned week two of our class study on spiritual formation.
For those who are unaware, Sheila and I are currently in the midst of a grand experiment designed to answer the question: can a husband and wife jointly teach an eight week series in a bible class without driving themselves (and the rest of the class) nuts?
And when I say, teach it “jointly,” I don’t mean a “you take this week and I’ll take that week” approach. I mean, we wanted to try working together so that we could each be involved in each week of class. Only two slightly insane individuals, overly arrogant with the knowledge (or lack thereof, depending on your perspective) that comes from their masters degrees in speech communication, would think to attempt such a thing.
Particularly when they are married.
Surprisingly, however, the results so far are not too bad. During Week 1, I pretty much handled the material and discussion, since I had been in trial during the preceding week, and we just hadn’t found the opportunity to get together to talk about it. For week two (the class we taught yesterday), we did manage to find the time to talk, albeit under the less than ideal conditions described above.
We learned a lot during our trip to Dallas last Thursday and Friday.
We both have different perspectives. Its not that we disagree with each other. We just have different ideas about what it is best to emphasize. For yesterday’s class, which involved “waking up” to the spiritual realities around us, I thought it was important to see the spiritual transformation process as a struggle, a spiritual war. Sheila (correctly) pointed out that the Bible also has a thing or two to say about the revelation of the glory of God and of the Kingdom, and that “seeing God” as he truly is plays a critical role in spiritual formation. We don’t disagree with each other on these points, those are just the things that resonate more strongly for each of us. Is that bad or good? Probably a little of both. It takes a long time to get on the same page, but in the end, Sheila added a feminine perspective to the subject that made it more balanced, and more true to scripture.
Unfortunately, when we both have ideas, its hard to get them out in the 40 minutes we normally have for covering the material and for having class discussion. From a communication/post-mortem viewpoint, I think we may have overwhelmed our friends in class yesterday with the sheer volume of scriptures, stories, and ideas we generated on our trip. Also, as a result of all of these ideas we wanted to get out, class discussion (which we both REALLY wanted to hear yesterday) was a casualty.
Oh, well. Live and learn. We’re already on our way to making a few adjustments for next week. Plus, how can we go wrong when our source material is drawn from John Eldredge and Jedi Master Dallas Willard?
Stay tuned for more The Real World: Bible Class.
posted by Matt at Monday, October 11, 2004
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home