On Teaching and Church

So I never finished that big post I was working on. It took on a life of it's own and got away from me.

In the meantime, here is this thought to ponder...

In my education courses we learn that GREAT teachers give their student strategies to help them engage in higher-level thinking, make connections and examine things critically. They help them to learn to be independent and intrinsically motivated. In other words they don't stand at the board lecturing their students for an hour, but rather create an environment where students can learn, explore, question and create.

This progressive model of teaching needs to make its way into the church. I find that even in most progressive learning churches the emphasis is still on the song service and a sermon.

I've already written about my issues with most modern church music, so let me just focus on the sermon.

According to the best teaching pedagogy today, teachers should give a 10-15 minute INTERACTIVE mini-lesson and leave the rest of the time for the class to engage in activities to help them construct their own knowledge.

This should apply to sermons as well. It would mean less people would tune out, more would engage with the material, and greater opporunities for community building could happen in the activities after the "mini-sermon"

Rather than having adult Sunday/Sabbath school groups come before the sermon could serve as a launching point for the small groups and each group could have different activities/discussions based on the needs of the congregation. (In education we call this Differentiated Instruction)

Thats all for now.

(Yes, I am in the middle of writing my final paper for Grad School on an ideal literacy curriculum.)

Comments

Cassandra said…
What do you think is the purpose of church? I think answering that question helps clarify what works and what doesn't.

Lately I've been thinking that the purpose of the actual church service is to worship God. If that is the case, how does a sermon help with worship? If we're to worship, why do we have so many calls for money (regular offering, children's story collection, etc).

I've been wondering what the point of the church service is and why almost every single Adventist church I've attended follows the exact same model.
May 16, 2010 at 8:13 PM
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