Good kids, that’s what we want. So we post rules and plan consequences and reward behaviors to stop the bad. But this isn’t enough.
“Go,” Jesus said, “and make disciples.”
He was ushering in a new kingdom, one based not on codes, but on the outpouring of the heart. So as we approach the summer season, where adults invite kids to camps and vacation Bible schools, how can we aim for the highest goal—to help kids be like Jesus and follow him? Here are some ideas to consider:
- Search for the image of God. I’m glad I taught at a prison toward the beginning of my career. Because there, I had to come to grips. My students had murdered and raped and robbed. They had committed larceny and fraud and arson. I knew all this. And I knew one other thing—that I couldn’t teach without love. But how could I love these classes?
“Look for my image”—this is what I heard God say to me one day as I prayed.
So, I did. And I found a trace of mercy here, incredible creativity there. The more I looked, the more I found—love for a son growing up without a father, grief for a daughter gone wayward, and kindness toward a newly-sentenced inmate.
There’s no question. These images of God were marred, deeply marred. But, in me, the image of God is also marred, deeply marred.
Learning to turn toward the image of God in people helped me later when I taught middle school bullies and when I worked with parents who neglected their children. Over and over, I found that calling out the image of God gives people hope.
- Use misbehavior to find gifts. I’ve come to believe that misbehaviors are often the misuse of gifts—that bossiness is the backside of leadership, that students full of high drama are especially expressive, that students who lead cliques and gangs are socially astute. My impulse is to put a hammer to these students. But while issuing detentions stops the bad, it doesn’t develop gifts.
If you want to turn the talents of bad kids in your Sunday school class toward the kingdom, if you want to make disciples, follow the example of Barnabas. When he visited the church in Antioch (Acts 11), he could have focused on the ways this church, with its new believers and challenges, was messing up. But Luke writes about what Barnabas did instead—Barnabas came and saw the grace of God and he was glad (v.23).
Try pulling aside a bossy kid. Tell that kid—I’m excited about the leadership I see in you. I’d love to help you develop it. Could we meet now and again to talk about how to be a good leader?
I’ve never had a student say no.
- Listen more than you talk. On Labor Day last year, I checked off a life goal. I walked across the Mackinac Bridge. By dawn, thousands of us had gathered at the foot of the bridge.
“How does this work?” someone beside me asked.
But I didn’t know either, this being my first time. And then, far ahead of us a man climbed a ladder with a bullhorn.
“Now we’ll find out,” said my fellow walker.
And for the next ten minutes, the bullhorn man explained. At least, that’s what I think he was doing. But I’m not sure because the sound of the bullhorn was too weak to reach back into the crowd. Still, I was amazed at how people kept leaning forward, trying to hear.
“What’s he saying?” my new friend asked. But I shrugged. And when he climbed down, most of us were still uninitiated. He had, however, covered the material.
Like the bullhorn man, we’ve got curricula to cover—in Sunday school and Bible school and at church camp. And there’s something satisfying about covering it. We’ve led students through the necessary texts and lessons. But while we’ve stayed true to the course, we often don’t know what they’re thinking.
The measure of learning is not what comes out of a teacher’s mouth; it’s what students say and do and believe. What counts is the meaning they uncover, not the material you cover.
“Be quick to listen; slow to speak,” James says.
And teachers aren’t excluded.
What fun to teach a class of good kids. But how satisfying to help students take a step on the journey . . . and then another.
