The Long-term Teacher

 The Sunday School Teacher 18

          I can see her now in my mind’s eye, the lens a bit clouded by the intervening years. She was my third-grade Sunday School teacher, Alice Reeves. To my boyish self, she was an elderly lady. She kept her glasses on a chain around her neck. She had wrinkles and gray hair. Though I no longer remember any specific lesson she taught, I do remember that she loved me. It was her tradition to invite her pastor’s family over for a specially prepared dinner once a year. As a “PK,” her care for us spoke to me then and speaks to me still. She continued teaching that class for decades.

         I meet such precious saints all over the country. Years ago, they answered the call to teach a class. Life rolls along, and they just keep at it, saints and consequently students sweetened by Christian graces refined through lengthy seasons of testing and serving.

         How do you do that? How do you become Alice Reeves to a little Tommy Brennan? How do you become a long-term teacher? Allow me to attempt an answer.

         To become a long-term teacher, you must first begin. No one can successfully run an endurance race without coming to the starting line. Like much other advice in this book, it may sound trite. Still, no one ever becomes a hero of the faith sitting on the sidelines thinking to themselves how much better they would be at being the man in the arena, to borrow from Teddy Roosevelt’s famous phrase. Finishing well is better than starting well, but the latter can only follow the former. So start.

         Second, the long-term teacher is motivated by a love for people and a love for the Lord. You may recall that our Savior said these two commandments support all the rest. At some point, a particular student or class of students will severely test the teacher. You will clash instead of mesh. Your heart and your mind will be spurned and mocked instead of received and followed. Alternatively, or even additionally, life's external stresses will mount. Job layoffs. Chronic disease diagnoses. Church splits. Car accidents. Some thing or some things will combine to wear away your initially fervent resolve, and you will think to yourself, “Things would be simpler if I just stepped away for a bit.” It is at precisely such a time that your love for the Lord and your love for your students carry the day. When the applause of the watching crowd has died to a whimper, when duty seems an unnecessarily harsh taskmaster, when the pace becomes more grueling with each step, it is only love that wins through.

         Third, the long-term teacher runs at a pace they can sustain. Failing here is one of the primary reasons young men do not make ministry a lifetime vocation. They start like a house a’fire, but no one can sustain that pace for decades. Any long-term service for the Lord is much more marathon than sprint.

How do you do this? Two things fit here, I think. First, it does not matter what anyone else thinks. Who has the biggest class in the Sunday School this year? It does not matter. Which teacher has the students all aflutter at the moment? It does not matter. Everyone seems to want you to be much more like Sister So-and-so. That, too, does not matter. With respect, ignore such trivialities and just keep moving forward. Hotshots come and go. Mushroom classes led by fungi teachers rise and shrivel. Roman candles dazzle all briefly. Meanwhile, the tortoise beats the hare.

Second, in application to run at a pace you can sustain, you may have to say “no” to some things you would otherwise want to say “yes” to along the way. Choose wisely which permanent burdens you will voluntarily accept. Guard your prep time, your prayer time, your visiting time, and your teaching time. Editing turns an average book into a good one, and life-editing shifts an average life onto the higher plane of being commendable. Like other things in a well-ordered life, this, too, may be misconstrued. Accept it, and keep moving forward.

Fourth on my list: stay young at heart. By sheer number, most Sunday School classes are for children. Adults tend to stay in one class for a long time. Children, on the other hand, move up to the next class relatively frequently. In practical terms, this means the typical church has four or five children’s classes for every adult class. Ergo, the typical Sunday School teacher has a class of people much younger than himself or herself, especially if they continue teaching that class for many years.

There is certainly nothing wrong with acting your age. Additionally, the younger generation gains much from being around the older generation. If you age in place as a teacher, own it. The trick is to do so while still enjoying and appreciating young people with all their energy, noise, drama, and passion. Let their enthusiasm be contagious. Guard your heart against cynicism, skepticism, and defeatism. Try to look at life through their eyes. Resist the urge to pour cold water on them. Keep your spirit warm and happy in the Lord. Cultivate a curious wonder with the world God created. Resist the urge to live on memories. Discover more than reminisce.

Fifth, and more practically, build a bank of lessons you can draw on for future classes. I do not think it is wise for any teacher to simply rotate through the same set for each class. Stale bread is unappetizing even if it is new to that particular student. But there is wisdom in recycling and reusing material you have already laboriously dug up. Keep track of each lesson you write, and each primary subject and Scripture passage you teach. Like ingredients, the skilled cook can combine the same ones in different ways so as to keep variety while minimizing the cost or preparation time. So can the skilled teacher.

Pastoring and teaching Sunday School are not precisely equivalent, but as I said in the last chapter, they are similar in approach and responsibility. Having said that, I found that as I aged in the pastorate my energy level declined but my wisdom level – for lack of a better term – made up for it. What I accomplished as a younger man with aggressiveness and enthusiasm, I could still accomplish decades later because I knew much better how much energy and attention to devote to any one facet of ministry to be effective. That was even more important in my specific case as Meniere’s Disease took its toll on me.

The long-term teacher does the same thing, though in a bit different context. The preparation and experience they have built piece by piece become a house they can inhabit and serve from for a very long time.

In one of my pastorates, I inherited an aging deacon. Saved as a young man in that same church, he had served the Lord there in almost every capacity it was possible to serve in. Through good times and bad, pastoral changes, economic setbacks, demographic shifts, and pandemics, he had just continued to serve. Although he was frankly no longer very effective as a deacon, I allowed him to continue serving. Perhaps you may have made a different decision, but I chose to do so because, in the process of serving the church, he had become a servant. I do not mean in a spiritual sense, although that was true. I mean in an identity sense. If I had taken away his place of service, I would have cut him to the quick.

I have seen the same precious thing happen to Sunday School teachers. It has become who they are, and they cannot not do it. Yes, perhaps such folks hang on too long when a younger person could be more effective in the immediate term. But there is much to be gained by younger generations patiently walking beside the shuffling gait of the senior saint. There is much of Christ on both sides of such a situation, and that is a Sunday School win by anybody’s measurement.

I am glad you want to teach Sunday School, heartily glad. But as you start, plan to finish. Not next quarter. Not next year. Not till life gets complicated. May the Lord grant you the strength, wisdom, and grace to serve Him and His people for decades.

There are lots of little Tommy Brennans out there who need their own Alice Reeves.