Today marked a first for me and Eric. We are now officially adult Sunday School teachers. Both of us are licensed teachers, but when we were teachers we taught kids.
We were approached earlier this winter about teaching a class starting today. There was a desire to have some new class leaders to diversify some of the Sunday School offerings. So we decided to teach our class on a book I had been reading, "Fearless" by Max Lucado. It is a good book that we thought would appeal to a wide range of people in our congregation. It also has a nice discussion guide at the end to help us plan our class.
Yesterday we finally sat down and planned out our first class. We divided out how we are going to share the leader role and what we wanted to cover. And I realized, I was a little nervous. Yes, I was a little bit afraid of leading a discussion group on a book about fear. Oh, the irony!
It was funny to think about. I speak fairly regularly at church making announcements and have been a speaker for a few small women's events. It was not the public speaking that made me nervous. And the planning was easy. I found myself comparing my feelings to when I used to teach Sunday School for the middle school girls at our old church. Then, I never felt nervous. But preparing for today, I realized that I was nervous because I worried that I wouldn't measure up as a Sunday School teacher. I wanted the people who decided to come to feel like they had made a good choice, one that was "worth it". I worried people would think we were lame teachers.
None of that stuff matters though. Our job as Sunday School teachers isn't to be impressive or entertaining. It is to share the information, encourage discussion and ultimately help everyone (including ourselves) learn more about God and our relationship with Him.
Today we taught our first class. And I wasn't nervous. We had a good sized group, enough to break into smaller groups for short discussions but not too many to limit people's chance to speak if they wanted.
We covered Fearless Chapter 1 today, got through the material on time, had some good discussions and people had a chance to share and get to know each other a little bit better.
Hopefully next week everyone will be back for Chapter 2. Eric and I have kinks to work out in the "co-leading" department, but we are looking forward to working through the book with friends.
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