When scheduling our brothers and sisters for various duties in service to God, a common consideration is ‘do they have enough time to care for their own spiritual health and knowledge?’ Indeed, the Bible asks us to “take heed how [we] hear” (Luke 8:18), “not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together… but exhorting one another” (Heb 10:25). However, I’ve always found it interesting that being involved in teaching children’s class is seen as not just a sacrifice of time and energy (which is expected) but a sacrifice of your own learning as well. Perhaps, what holds some of us back from serving the Lord is this manner - the legitimate worry about missing out on the topics taught during Bible class. Yet personally, I’ve always found that I learn so much more from actively teaching rather than passively sitting in class. Hence in this article today, I’ll be sharing the 3 things we learn in children’s classes.
Learning ABOUT Children
The first, and perhaps most obvious thing we can learn from teaching children’s class is the teaching itself. “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it” (Pro 22:6). Teaching our children is also a form of evangelism and ministry and so learning to do so is also part of growing as a Christian in service of God. However, unlike preaching sermons on Sunday or teaching adult’s Bible classes, your audience is not entirely responsible for their own learning. The key difference in teaching children is the concept of motivation. When teaching students from a variety of backgrounds, abilities and interests, one often has to consider both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation – how could I make this subject and topic interesting? How do I convince the students that this work is worth their effort? Why is it important for them to learn this? Hence teaching children’s class also gives you the experience needed to be more aware of the mood of your class, to present the content of your lesson in a way that is not only understandable but also interesting. When applied to our duty to “make disciples of all the nations” (Matt 28:19), it is an invaluable tool to enhance how we reach out to various people in various contexts.
Learning FROM Children
Next, besides learning from your experience of teaching children, you can also learn from your students themselves. “Therefore whoever humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 18:4). In my experience, when teaching children, there is a refreshing sense of honesty, they are unafraid to admit their faults or to acknowledge their mistakes. As we grow up, we get embarrassed, weighed down by the idea that we ought to know better, behave better. Once, when I was teaching a lesson about Cain and Abel, I asked if they found their siblings annoying, to which the answer was a resounding “yes!”. Then, I asked, “but would you kill them?”, expecting a “no” but getting “no… well maybe” instead. This may be a semi-serious answer to my semi-serious question, but it brings more meaning to the lesson – why would Cain kill Abel? What would make us want to hurt someone we should have loved? The honesty of such considerations allows us to see a further layer of these Bible stories that we are so familiar with and perhaps gives us the courage to confront the reality of our own weaknesses. In many similar cases, the direct honesty of children serves as a potent reminder of the need for humility – to admit to our own flaws and mistakes so that we can learn from them. Therefore the second lesson we can learn from children’s classes is this reminder of honest and humble self-reflection for “whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will by no means enter it” (Luke 18:17).
Learning WITH Children
Lastly, we can also learn from the lesson itself. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen 1:1) is the most basic of lessons – the story of creation is taught over and over to children – a simple lesson that we are all familiar with. Yet, in having to teach it again and again, the different activities used to keep the children’s interests gives us further insight. In getting children to “make” the earth then reflect on the order that is in it – we (and hopefully the children) are faced with the realisation of how hard it is to make a “world” that is designed and ordered as the one that we actually live in. Even besides this, in our sermons, we often focus on the ‘more important” Bible lessons – learning from more common and major stories in the Bible. Indeed, we are required to grow in our knowledge and understanding of the word “for though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not solid food” (Heb 5:12), so it is understandable that we should move away from the just simple Bible stories. However, the verse elaborates “For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness” (Heb 5:13) – it is not that there is nothing of worth in the Bible stories of our childhood, but that we should reply on them alone. Yet all of these stories were recorded for our learning, one story that stood out to me was Elijah and the still small voice which teaches us how to deal with being tired and discouraged. In teaching these less well-known stories, we still continue to broaden our knowledge of God’s word, even if it is “meant” for children.
Conclusion
In conclusion, through teaching children’s classes, we have an opportunity to learn lessons we might not have learnt otherwise and learn them in ways we would have not learnt before.