An author was discussing C.S. Lewis on C-SPAN’s “Book TV.” When a member of the audience asked how Lewis would express his Christian faith in today’s world, the author believed Lewis would spend more time depicting his faith, as opposed to defending his faith. Then he said he wanted to see more Christians show others their vision — or picture — of the beauty of their faith.
Painting a vision of faith for our students should be at the core of our teaching. One of the first questions we should ask ourselves is, How will this teaching paint a vision of goodness, beauty, and truth for our students?
Our teaching should put on display the values of the Kingdom and inspire those who hear it to live in the reality of the Kingdom. As we prepare to teach, perhaps we should spend more energy thinking of how to paint a vision of biblical truth than how to defend it.
As our teaching paints pictures of what it may look like to follow Jesus, we need to be specific. It’s not enough for us to challenge our students to “walk in love, be merciful, stand up for the oppressed…” We need to paint a clear vision of what this looks like. Recently, one of our sixth-grade boys shared how he stood up for a kid being bullied.
This simple story gave clear lines to the picture we were painting.
Our students are theologians; the question is whether or not they are good theologians. We must paint pictures with our teaching that are theologically sound. When we paint a vision of the life of faith for our students, we should paint using colors of creeds, confessions, and theological concepts that we know our students need to encounter.
Several months ago, our middle school ministry spent an entire four weeks looking into the theological concept of being created imago Dei — in the image of God. Students engage most deeply with our teaching when we don’t skirt around some of the more complex theological issues facing us.
Teaching starts the moment our students walk into the gathering. From the way the room is set up to the pre-gathering music to the worship songs, everything should be painting the same picture for our gatherings.
The danger with putting all of our focus in the spoken message is that we implicitly communicate that truth is experienced only through the message. Can’t truth also be encountered in silence, in song, in conversations, even in a crowd breaker?
Recently, we were studying what it meant to be a child of God. We had childish games set out before the gathering started, played games centered on childhood memories, and showed pictures of the students as children. We do this because we truly believe that everything is teaching. All aspects of our gatherings should paint visions for our students.
Two months ago, we did a series on sexual purity. In our large group gatherings, we painted a vision of what sexual purity might look like. In our small groups, students explored those concepts at a deeper level. At our monthly parents meeting, we talked with parents about forming a sexual ethic in their kids. Students, leaders, and parents are all on the same page when everything in the ministry revolves around one specific topic.
Perhaps our greatest call as teachers is to paint a vision of what faith might look like expressed in life. May God help us to be imaginative artists.
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Jason Mitchell is the middle school pastor at Lancaster County Bible Church in Manheim, Pennsylvania.
