Hitting the Ground Running

I’m settling into my new position, but I’m also still learning something new everday.  Right I’ve taken over several of the major teaching duties that I’ll do each week.  For instance every Tuesday morning I am teaching through Romans.  It’s interesting because I took on this mid-stream, so I am starting with the men’s group in chapter 14, and the women’s group in chapter 10.  I’m spending quite a bit of time each week immersed in Romans getting prepared to teach these classes.

Another large chunk of my time is spent preparing to teach Sunday School classes.  However, I have yet to step foot in a classroom.  How, you might ask?   Each week I prepare a teaching vdeo and then meet with a group who gathers to study and discuss the scripture that corresponds with the Sunday morning sermon (right now we’re in Luke).  They then help me go deeper into the passage and prepare a series of questions to go along with the lesson.

One thing I’ve learned in all of this is how difficult it is to do high quality video teaching.  It looks so easy to see Rob Bell doing Nooma or when I’ve watched other folks doing video teaching, but in reality it’s ridiculously hard to look natural and deliver high quality content at the same time.  It also takes quite a bit of time to do this.  I’m definitely blessed to have tons of help from people who know far more about video and editing than I ever will, so that makes a difference.  However, I really think that this is a great means of being in several places at once to teach on a Sunday morning.  In fact, last week I printed off over 200 lessons for people using this curriculum.

There’s a lot going on with missions at our church too, but I’ll save that post for another time!