TTTTeach?

Do these look like scary people to get up in front of? These fun people are some of our current ministry school students earlier this school year. They are holding journals that they had decorated, a fun way to encourage journaling, I thought!

No, I am not exactly scared to teach this week even though my normal role has been administrative & casual weekly mornings on a stool beside Hubs chatting with them on what is going on in their lives & spiritual experiences. I love those impromptu talks that lead to wonderful discussions that often lead me into sharing stories of my life & what I have learned & am still learning in this amazing adventure. But, this week I volunteered to actually teach on taking our thoughts captive! It is a subject that I am passionate about & have lived for the last few years, so I know it works & I love to help others get in on it!

I have resisted being scheduled to really teach a pre-planned lesson in our school for quite a while due to the nervousness that really messes with me before the moment of introduction. The students are my friends & wonderful, loving & open people who already love me, so what is the problem?

I think I just found the problem & the answer this afternoon as I was looking over some notes I was going to use in my teaching time. I am a writer. My notes tend to become paragraphs. The paragraphs become pages full of solid words. Pages full of words do not lend themselves easily to sharing verbally, unless you plan to just read your stuff to the listeners. ( Which I have done often, but it feels sort of like cheating.)

But today I remembered getting a sneak peak at one of my favorite Guest Teacher's notes once. It really shocked me the first time I saw his teaching notes. They looked like colorful dialogue clouds with short 2 sentence blurbs in each one. Can you picture it? The pages were full of fluffy clouds with one liners in them. Some clouds were red, some blue, some green. I asked him about them & he said that the colors were his keys to certain themes; forgiveness, joy, freedom, etc. Each of the blurbs inside the clouds were memorable phrases that were enough in themselves but he could also expand on them if he felt the need & had the time.

I think this could work for me this week. I will try to get all my desired messages across without worrying about typing out every single word that needs to be said. If it is all written down I will tend to read instead of teach. And if I freak out & simply forget it all, the students would love to be dismissed early or we could all go out for coffee!