Education that is Christian
Lois E. LeBar
How do our young people leave their Sunday school classrooms on Sunday morning? With eyes sparkling with new vision and insight? With serious determination to practice the will of God? With chin up ready to face an unbelieving world in the power of the Spirit? With deep questions about God Himself? Too often they are glad for release from a dull, boring session. (15)
It is not mere words that nourish the soul, but God Himself, and unless and until the hearers find God in personal experience they are not the better for having heard the truth. The Bible is not an end in itself, but a means to bring men to an intimate and satisfying knowledge of God, that they may enter into Him, that they may delight in His Presence, may taste and know the inner sweetness of the very God Himself in the core and center of their hearts. (17)
Nothing will take the place of sound doctrine and the facts of the Word of God. But it is possible to starve people with Biblical facts, to make doctrine a substitute for spiritual reality, to fail our people by denying them the intimate personal experience with the Lord Himself who alone will satisfy the deepest longings of the human heart. (18)
We train our church people to be professional listeners rather than leaders. The Scriptures declare that teaching is more than talking, though it sometimes is talking. (22)
If the potentialities of all Christians were being developed from the earliest years, the adults in our churches would be producing—producing Christian life, witness, literature, art, music, and skill in all the vocations that are worthy of a follower of the Son of God. (22)
From the inception of the Sunday School in the latter part of the eighteenth century, the aim of Christian education has usually been stated as knowledge of the Bible and conversion. Conversion has been conceived as a natural by product of knowledge of the Bible, the Holy Spirit would do the inner work of regenerating the pupil. They didn’t consider it necessary for them to study human nature or to know the developmental stages through which the pupil passed. (29)
. . . throughout the ages teachers have most often considered their task to be that of exposing pupils to factual content and of getting them to give back in words this outer knowledge. They have relied almost wholly upon verbal communication of facts. (29)
Knowing is neither the beginning nor the end of the transformation of character. Knowledge is not virtue, but rather the wise use of knowledge is virtue. (33)
Scripture often compares spiritual growth with natural growth (psalms 1:3 psalms 92:12,14, Matthew 15:13, Mark 4:4-4-8,28, John 15:2) and [Comenius] saw many valid comparisons. Chief among these is the fact that one grows by his own activity. Teachers and books may help or hinder growth, but the learner must do his own growing. Genuine inward changes are essential for any type of progress for the pupils. “Outward ceremonies without inward truth are an abomination to God,” said Comenius. (42)
Learning is by practice as well as by precept. We learn to write by writing, to talk by talking, to sing by singing, to reason by reasoning. In other words, we learn to do by doing. (43)
Because we learn more than one thing at a time, the various senses and faculties should continually be exercised together. (44)
Only a realistic application of that faith to present day life can make it effective (A.W. Tozer—47)
We have often been afraid to accept what is solid common sense merely because it has come from godless sources. We have often been afraid to enter into our educational heritage because worldlings have “beat us to it.” (49)
How often we human teachers speak the precious truths of God’s Word into the air because we teach a lesson that is wholly unrelated to what the pupils are doing and thinking! Generalities, even generalities from the Word of God, mean little to most people. If we do not select the part of the Word that meets the personal need, our pupils develop the habit of not listening, or devise their own activities. (56)
The result of the lesson was immediate action. Christ taught the woman [at the well] not in order that she might know something for future use or do something in the future, but in order that she might be changed that day, in order that she might make a definite response in the present. Trying to teach for an unknown tomorrow is usually vague and general and ineffective. If a person finds his deepest needs met today by the Living and written Word, he will be ready to go to the same source tomorrow. (57)
People understand best not bare statements, not abstract generalizations, but concrete ideas put into experience and illustration. (67)
Jesus didn’t ask people to repeat His answers back to Him. He was looking for spiritual insight and action on the basis of His teaching. (82)
Christ did not expect that knowing mentally would automatically result in doing. If this had been His philosophy of education the Pharisees would have been His best pupils. (82)
What kind of results are we working for in our teaching? What kind of results are we getting? If we ask pupils merely to repeat words back to us, we aren’t likely to get more than words. We’ll stress memorization of Scripture, surely, but for the purpose of changing life. If we’re looking for transformation of life, we’ll teach for transformation, we’ll pray for transformation, and we’ll not cease our efforts until we see transformation. (83)
The Creator, who made man—body, soul and spirit—seeks to meet his needs at the level of the LIFE that He created. Therefore our aims will be in terms of feeling and doing as well as knowing. (85)
Too many Christian young people feel like this. They attend church, hear the Word of God, and go out to do nothing about it. The teacher doesn’t really expect anything to happen, and the pupils don’t expect anything to happen. On the contrary, we should be arranging spiritual experiences for each age group on its own level, and taking advantage of arising needs that are followed by new spiritual decisions and practices. (87)
If we want Jesus to teach in His own way through us, what will our general pattern look like? We’ll start where our pupils are, with their current needs, help them find God’s answer in Scripture, and begin to practice that truth this week. (87)
Having assured to Moses in infancy the best in secular education, God insured that Moses’ most pliable years when permanent habits and attitudes are formed should be spent at his mother’s side in a home that, though impoverished, had the riches of spiritual heritage to pass on to its children. (92)
In order to raise all of life to the spiritual plane, God’s method is ever the spontaneous vitality of actual life. There is no need of artificial stimulation of interest when inner urges are being utilized, when the sources of material are direct and primary. It is true that experience is the best teacher provided it is the right kind of experience, provided it is skillfully guided. (93)
The Bible always connects doctrine to practice (124)
Our main problems in the use of Scripture are to get through the written Word to the Living Word, and to translate doctrine into life. (124)
It takes more than God’s Word in the mouth to insure God’s power in the life. (131)
When the Word of God is brought to bear upon current needs, it produces action as it is meant to do, not always positive, but it changes things. People ought not to be able to listen to the Word of God without being changed. They are forming disastrous habits if they’re ever allowed to do so. (132)
The Bible knows no such thing as truth that is merely theoretical; in the Bible the truth is linked to the deed. (133) Frank E. Gaebelein The Pattern of God’s Truth.
[the whole of scripture truth] must be related to life to be known for what it really is. (134)
Spiritual knowledge is not deep thought, but living contact, entering into and being united to the truth as it is in Jesus, a spiritual reality, a substantial substance. (134) Andrew Murray The Spirit of Christ
. . . in the Garden of Eden two ways were set before Adam and Eve for attaining the likeness of God, two ways typified by the two trees, the tree of life, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God’s way was that through life would come the knowledge and likeness of God. But Satan assured Adam that it was through knowledge that man may be like the Most High. Ever since then it has been difficult for men to put knowledge in its rightful place. (135)
A pupil’s growth is determined not by what he hears, but by what he does about what he hears. (143)
Our big job as teachers is to set up a situation that is propitious for learning, in which Jerry and Alice and Nancy and Alden will want to find God’s higher ways. We can make everything in the classroom situation favorable to learning rather than militating against it, as is often the case. In the first place we’ll project ourselves into the place of our pupils, and try to feel as they feel, think as they think, walk in their shoes. We’ll put aside the fact that we know the lesson of the day, but remember only that they don’t. We won’t stay in our own world and try to call across a great gulf into theirs. We’ll try to tap their world. We’ll transfer the learning process from the teacher to the pupil. Then teaching becomes a great adventure with the Master Teacher Himself. (145)
No matter what person’s training or mental understanding may be, we won’t assume that he is a Christian until we observe unmistakable evidence of his being born from above. However, just as there is a period of prenatal development before physical birth, there is a period of prenatal development before spiritual birth, sometimes longer, sometimes shorter. Before regeneration, the young child’s parents try to help him to say no to his own selfish ways and yes to the Lord’s higher ways; yet strictly speaking, only after spiritual birth can the new creation in Christ be said to grow. Our concern is to see the individual making steady spiritual progress from physical birth to death. (146)
We train our pupils to repeat verses that are only words to them or to say pretty little poems in special-day programs. These words may perhaps entertain adults, but what is happening inside the pupils as a result? Is the Word of God merely “hung on” the pupil for decoration, or is it being assimilated into his inner being? (147)
Whichever need is most basic and most pressing will claim our attention, our interest, our effort. Our whole being is consciously and unconsciously searching for the means of meeting these needs. If we see no relation between an event and our own needs, we pay no attention to it. (152)
Every problem in life ought to drive us to Him for its solution. Most of the lessons Christ taught in gospels started with personal needs. We as teachers help our pupils to see and appropriate the Lord as the answer to the personal needs that He has ordained. (152)
When a man feels the pul of the spiritual world, he will submit to any amount of external routine rather than take himself apart within. It is much easier to fall into the habit of quoting words and assuming that they are meeting God’s requirements. If we teachers demand nothing more than words, the pupils will try to quiet their consciences with them. (154)
If pupils’ inner needs and ideas and suggestions are woven into the lesson, it will penetrate to the mainspring of action. (155)
Through sermon after sermon, Bible lecture after Bible lecture, are the churches training “professional listeners” who become expert at tuning out what isn’t vital to them personally? It is estimated that only about one-fourth of a congregation is really listening to the preacher at any one time. When people are also “talked at” in the so-called teaching sessions, it is no wonder that spiritual results are not more in evidence. Pupils are actually being trained not to listen. (156)
The peculiar genius of teaching is the small intimate group in which overt interaction is possible. (156)
When teachers do most of the learning, pupils get only the ‘dehydrated product, which is tasteless and dull” (157) Ruth Bailey
We should seek a maximum of self-propulsion, a minimum of absorption of the teacher’s words. (157)
Experience is the best teacher in the sense that her lessons are always learned. Whether or not they are the right lessons is something else again. Experience is a hard teacher, for she gives the test first, the lesson afterward. (158)
Too long have teachers been the active participants in the game of learning, with the pupils merely spectators. (158)
It is questionable how long our society can support institutions where “students” sit and watch teachers learn. (159)
In presession they may examine objects related to the Bible lesson, in worship they actively sing and pray and use familiar Scripture, in expressional work after the story they do something that helps to bridge the gap between knowing and doing God’s will. (161)
Unless we teachers involve the whole persons in our classes, they may give assent to our teaching but remain unchanged in conduct. (177)
