On Teachers and Teaching

My kind of weekend: intensive January term class on prophecy with visiting prof, Dr. Richard Pratt of Third Millennium Ministries (check out the website - way cool vision); teaching tomorrow morning at Memorial on leadership (specifically how being a good follower is key to being a good leader); and digging into Proverbs to prep for class with my high schoolers.

Combine all this with a nice, dreary drizzle forecasted for most of the weekend, and it might as well be heaven (minus, of course, the still-obvious presence of sin, not to mention the periodic on/off flickering lights due to ice on the power lines). But I digress...

Dr. Pratt is a pretty amazing teacher who makes good use of audio/visual media without overdoing it. It's obvious he also know his stuff on the prophets, and I was encouraged by both his scholarship and his biblical commitments trumping his solid Reformed perspectives.

Don't get me wrong: for my two cents, Reformed theology is and always has been far and away the superior systematic in so many ways, but every man-made system has its limits, and Dr. Pratt is not only unafraid to say so, but seems bent on teaching it as part of his pedagogy.

Perhaps the other encouragement for me last night was how helpful and affirming his review of Old Testament history was, especially having just taught so much of it last semester at Wildwood. There are few things worse than realizing after the fact that something you taught someone else was actually wrong (or perhaps even worse - not quite right); thus, going into the class, I was somewhat prepared to have to revise some of my notes afterward, not so much for having wrong data, but for botching the interpretation of it in some way.

Thankfully (at least so far), my study and teaching seem to be lining up with Dr. Pratt's take on things. Granted, there were a couple of important aspects that I did not emphasize as much as I perhaps should have, but there also was no real heresy I was guilty of either. For that, I was and am very thankful.

Of course, I was only in class three hours last night. We'll see how my notes stand up after seven hours today.

"Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness." James 3:1

Freaks me out every time I read it...