Your Hidden Curriculum (part 2)
What do people learn from you about the Christian life? Sometimes it's what you never intended to teach.
| posted 6/15/2009
| Topics: | Communication, Curriculum, Education, Learning, Teaching, Training |
| Filters: | Director, Group Leader, Pastor, Teacher, Train |
| Purpose: | Ministry |
| References: |  |
| Date Added: | June 15, 2009 |
2 of 3
Just for the fun of it, he started making up stuff on his spiritual life report. He started by inventing a deep slide into depression. No response.
He wrote about having an affair that got discovered and led to an increase in attendance when it turned out there were a lot of swingers in his community. No one from the home office batted an eye. Each report grew more ludicrous until eventually he was leading a congregation of hallucinogenic mushroom-ingesting cultists.
Churches need to figure out how they will address the spiritual lives of their staffs and leadership teams. Some churches will make days of solitude or retreat times part of their staff schedules. I actually think that's a bad idea. I think we want to model the life we call our congregations to. And most people who work for the phone company or Yahoo don't get days off for prayer and fasting. I think it helps our integrity if we call the folks in our congregation to engage in practices in the same way that we ourselves pursue them.
But I do think it's good to ask certain questions of our leadership teams about their lives and relationships:
- Are we able to laugh easily together?
- Is there a general sense of strain and unease and preoccupation with numbers and techniques?
- How many friendships get formed across departments or ministry areas?
- How many people honestly have a good and close friend?
- How easily do we give up in the face of difficulties?
- How much energy do we have left over to bring joy to each other?
- What is the level of cynicism?
There is an added dimension to the hidden curriculum when it comes to my own life. One of the ironies of existence is that I am (theoretically anyway) able to view the head-to-toe-to-front-to-back body of any human being on the planet, except one. There is one human being whose body I can never directly see in its entirety.
Me.
And that's not just true of my body. It's true of the formation of my own spirit. I sometimes think the biggest spot in the world is the blind spot.
Jesus, as the greatest teacher of all time, was among other things the master of the hidden curriculum. In our churches, the line between "teaching times" and "non-teaching times" seems clear. Worship services and classes are clearly marked off; people expect prepared talks, but then in the breezeways and parking lots we're "just ourselves."
For Jesus and his little community, the line between teaching moments and "just living" got wonderfully blurred. He was so aware of his Father that for him the curriculum was never hidden—and never finished.
"What were you arguing about along the way?" he asked them, and they did not want to answer, because they were arguing about who was the greatest. He washed their feet. He blessed a child. He spoke to a shady Samaritan lady. He got the whip in the Temple. He pointed out an impoverished widow giving her last two cents. He noticed how people jockey for seats of honor at a party. He was always teaching. Not because he's overly pedantic. But for the same reason that you and I are always teaching. Our actions and words proclaim our beliefs, and invite other people to reflect and respond. Always. Jesus was just more aware than the rest of us.
Paul told Timothy, "Watch your life and doctrine closely" (1 Timothy 4:16). If "doctrine" makes up the formal curriculum, "life" is the hidden side. But I need people to help me see the hidden curriculum I'm teaching.
share this page
Proverbs: A House of Wisdom (activity-based course)
Use learning activities to help your group explore one of the Bible's more fascinating books.
Finding Joy in the Difficulty of Marriage (6 week course)
This six-session course can help you find joy in a difficult marriage.see more downloads
Average User Rating: