Sunday • Christian Education Sunday • Christian

One door in the church school class room opens to God. That door, the most important, is the teacher. Whatever else they teach, church school teachers should teach the central message of the Christian faith.

What is that message? Albert Schweitzer, after making a life study of the message of Jesus, has concluded that:

The essential element in Christianity as it was preached by Jesus, and as it is comprehended by thought, is this, that it is only through love that we can attain to communion with God.17

When Jesus was asked which commandment was first, he answered that the first is to love God and that the second is to love your neighbor. If teachers share that which is essential to Christianity, they will teach their pupils to love.

Teaching is changing. Unless change occurs in the pupils, no learning has taken place. Pupils may recite the great commandments, but, unless their ability to love has grown, they have not learned the great commandments.

To love is to respect and to seek the welfare of others. To love is to serve instead of seeking to be served. To love is to draw closer to the one loved. To love is to be loyal to the one loved. To love is to forgive. To love is to seek the best for all, whether they be good or evil, friendly or hostile, black, yellow or white, man or woman, rich or poor. To love is to resolve conflicts.

How can love be taught? To teach love, as to teach anything, teachers must know at least four things.

First, they must know their purpose. As they plan each class session, teachers should have one purpose and plan the lesson to carry out that purpose.

Second, teachers must know their pupils. In order to teach, teachers must know something of their students’ home lives, preferably from a visit to their homes. They must also know the problems which people of that age group experience.

Third, teachers must know sound methods. Too often, teachers are handed a quarterly, given a class and expected to be a qualified church school teacher. The church school teacher will do a better job through improving his or her methods by attendance at laboratory schools, observation schools, leadership education classes and workers’ conferences as well as through reading.

Teachers must also know their material. One of the problems of many people today is the problem of time. Yet if teachers consider the task of helping pupils to be what God wants them to be an important one, they will take time weekly for the preparation of the church school lesson.

In two church school classes the teachers discovered a snobbish attitude toward poor people. One teacher attempted to correct it by giving a lecture on the text, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” At the end of the lecture her class had the same attitude as when the lecture began. Thus no learning took place.

A second teacher met the problem by setting out with the definite purpose of getting her pupils to develop a more loving attitude toward people with low incomes. Next she studied her pupils to find out what their faulty attitudes were. Then she led them through a study of the causes of poverty and of some of the contributions which have been made by poor artists, musicians and writers as well as some of the services rendered to that community by the less economically fortunate. Finally, she took her pupils one Saturday to a needy widow’s home where they painted the inside of her front porch. As the young people became acquainted with this woman, who despite her poverty was a noble person, the teacher began to see changed attitudes in her class toward poor people. The prejudices began to evaporate, to be replaced with love. Pupils learn to love by loving.

The most important door in a church school classroom is the teacher, who may be a door to God. When teachers’ vision grows dim, God challenges them; when their ambition flags, God spurs them on; and when they stumble, God picks them up, strengthening them, starting them again.

God is with the pupils, making them open to growth, stimulating them to live what they have been taught.

It is a tremendous venture to be a Christian teacher. It is a high calling to be a door to God.

Prayer

To see ourselves as we are seen by You, keep us growing, O God.

To feel the needs of widows with knuckles red from scrubbing for their children, of youth with bones twisted from disease, of infants with stomachs drawn from lack of milk, of civil servants who resist the temptation of selfish aims, of all who suffer persecution from hates of race and creed, keep us growing, O God.

To appreciate those with whom we are united in one common task, for the ability to see the fruits of our common efforts, which in unexpected ways appear to encourage and delight us, keep us growing, O God.

To give ourselves in fresh acts of faith which through the years mature into committed lives, keep us growing, O God.

And then at last, to forget ourselves and the self-regard with which we are driven to despair, to lift our lives in one act of adoration of You, keep us growing, O God. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen