One In Jesus

Myth #9. Asking questions is easy. Well, maybe for some people, but not for me. To have a decent discussion, the teacher must ask questions. And it’s certainly easy enough to ask questions, but asking good questions is hard. Very hard. In fact, I sometimes spend more time thinking of two or three really good questions than I spend on the rest of the lesson. In actuality, if you have just one really good question, you’ve got your lesson prepared. Continue reading →

I’ll be speaking at the ElderLink seminar in a couple of weeks. Details may be found at http://www.acu.edu/ministry/elderlink/conferences/atlanta.html. My two topics are “When does a Christian fall from grace?” and “What does the Bible really teach is a test of fellowship?”

Myth #8. Restoration history isn’t important enough to teach. One of the peculiarities of the Churches of Christ is our insistence on denying our indebtedness to the 19th Century Restoration Movement (also known as the Stone-Campbell Movement). I grew up in the Church and graduated from Lipscomb and never had a single class on the Restoration Movement. Continue reading →

Myth # 6. The Holy Spirit doesn’t matter. Quite a few years ago, our now-former minister preached a sermon that seemed to me to be clearly about the Holy Spirit, but he never once mentioned him. He just carefully alluded to the Spirit’s work … ever so carefully.

Afterwards, I asked him, “I think you were talking about the Spirit, weren’t you? Why don’t you come out and say what you believe?” I knew from previous conversations that we held similar views. Continue reading →

Myth #5. Grace is dangerous. Many years ago, when I first started to really understand the incredible breadth of God’s grace, I started teaching what I was studying. Several people cautioned me that while I may be right in what I was saying, it was a very dangerous subject to teach. After all, my students might be tempted to sin in reliance on God’s grace. Continue reading →

Myth #4. You’ve not really taught a lesson until you’ve made a life application. Teachers are repeatedly told: be sure you apply the lesson to lives! It doesn’t mean anything unless you come to a life-changing conclusion! As a result, some teachers make the mistake of thinking nothing matters except the application.

Many teachers take a passage, pull out a single lesson, and teach a lesson independent of the context. For example, Continue reading →

Myth #3. Class is for class.

Some of my favorite classes weren’t classes at all.

For example,

• Two year ago, we had the classes bring brunch to celebrate the end of a very successful 40 Days of Purpose sequence. All we did during class was eat and talk. Continue reading →