I love teaching, but then a lot of people do.  One of the things that jazz’s me up about teaching is the unique opportunity to pass on things that have been learned to a variety of people in the crowd.  I teach junior high students in a program environment, and in smaller chunks as well. And in those places I have recently re-discovered an old truth: we teach too much!  Kinda of hurts going down, but swallowing this pill might just be the key to a larger picture of clarity that is needed to build momentum in our ministries.  Let me explain.

So what am I talking about it. Am I saying we are on stage too much or are too many folks dominating the stage? Nope, I am not saying that.  In fact the fewer the better in my opinion, just not total dominance.  Am I saying we should throw teaching in the main stage back into the shadows of programming in favor of more creative experiences? Nope, though in some places I have been that would have been better than the 45 minutes of convincing (or so they thought) that happened.  What I am saying is that we might be teaching to much…content.  Sure everyone knows simpler is better, yet we continue, and I say we with myself in mind, to preach/teach a mind blowing amount of content each month to our folks. While I do believe each age group has different tolerances, can we really expect people do change 52 things  about themselves and their faith each year. 52, or maybe you could say 50 if you discount Easter and Christmas. Still 50 different weeks of teaching, may not be the answer we have been looking for to bring the light bulbs on in our church communities. At the very least in student ministries this potentially is overload.

Some would argue that we don’t really teach 50 different things a year, because we have all these snazzy teaching series that make more like 12 things a year.In some cases that works, because in some situations I see church’s doing an incredible job of selling the series week after week. In most cases I would venture to say that because of all the sub points in those series things can get of course pretty fast. While you can make a case for year long creative studies, or building block weekly points, I think at least in my world for now we need to change things up a bit. Here is what we are moving towards as we plan out 2009.

• Picking 6 foundational scripture based truth’s that fit the current needs of our community. These 6 would be assigned a month and repeated twice.
• Making sure each of those series has a clear statement that is said over and over. Some call it the take away.
• Making sure our teachers teach out of the statement and are guided with it.
• Be flexible enough to change a week here and there for special events, circumstances or celebrations

Here are some things people are challenged with when it comes to this concept:

• Repeating themselves – for some reason even though we know that we learn through repetition, we run from doing it. For some it is the calling to be original which we both know does not exist.  For some it is the fear that our crowd will not respond to it, except that we keep going back to sequels in the media and making more money off them. Review and take your best series from last year and do it again! Give yourself a break and your mind.
• See above point again.