Teaching Sunday School

My first experiences with teaching were through my church. I think I led a lesson at a camp once, then I was eventually asked to teach the high school Sunday school class. It was a small church, really small. I usually had two to four students at the most.

I liked the process of putting together lessons and talking about things I cared about. I don't remember it ever crossed my mind that I should be effective at it. It's crazy that eventually I took that to be my calling. I decided to make a career out of it.

A lot of other things had to come together before I actually did make a career out of it, but those small classes helped steer my thinking in that direction. 

I was coaching the ELA teachers in the middle school awhile back and for an icebreaker I asked them to tell how they got into teaching. Out of the five of us in the room, four of us started in Sunday school. I wonder if it ever happens the other way around?

I met my wife in Sunday school. This was years before we dated, but the first time I ever saw her she was a student coming to my class. She walked in, saw the other one or two kids there and said, "This is it?" Now we often wonder if, rather than falling for me at some point, she should have remembered how underwhelmed she was with my world at our first meeting.

"This is it?"

Well, I could go on, and I probably will in another post, but that's enough about my past for now. I think of this because my brother asked me to teach Sunday school with him this week. Now that I've been teaching for twenty years outside of the church, it will be interesting coming back. It's the same old building actually. Some of the people in the room will probably be ones who taught me years ago.

I'm not sure what to expect, but I know I didn't put together a conventional lesson. My job is to raise some questions, then my brother will take it from there to balance me out. I don't know if anyone else will learn anything, but I'll be taking notes.