Category Archives: Teaching

STEPPING INTO CONTROVERSY INVITATION

Here’s the official announcement from Hill House.  And yes, the meals are free!
2104 Nueces Street (Austin, Texas)
Garage parking available across the street and parking can also be found on the street
Simply RSVP to me here.
Starting Wednesday, June 5
and running through Wednesday, July 17 
from 6-8 pm we will be hosting a weekly dinner and study at Hill House
taught by Dave Moore.    
Students and non students alike are welcome to attend. 

STEPPING INTO CONTROVERSY…WITH COURAGE AND CHRIST-LIKE CHARACTER

IS IT POSSIBLE IN OUR DIVISIVE AND TURBULENT TIME?

Taught by Dave Moore

Imagine that you are at your favorite coffee shop.  Everything about the place is great, except the tables are a bit too close to one another.   This, of course, makes it difficult to avoid eavesdropping.  Your reading tends to zone you out from the conversations of others, but not on this day.  To your utter amazement you listen in on a conversation between an ardent Trump supporter and one who gladly voted for Hillary Clinton.  It is not the various arguments that are being mustered for one candidate over the other that intrigues you.  Rather, it is the evident respect each person has for the other even while articulating their significant disagreements. 

It is hard to go back to your reading for the day.  You become preoccupied with why the kind of exchange you just heard is as rare as it is refreshing…even in your local church.

For seven weeks we will discuss several areas that can hurt or help us as we discuss controversial subjects.  A sampling of these include:

*Taking honest inventory of our own failure to be prepared and/or interact with grace

*The need to slow down and pay more careful attention to the definition of words

*Diagnosing how much of an echo chamber we live in

*The need to read and listen to those who make us angry…and to pay close attention to what our “opponents” can teach us

*Why the focus must be on our own challenges rather than being frustrated with those we disagree with

We will also be looking various points raised in How to Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds by Alan Jacobs.  Copies will be available. 

PREACHING PREPARATION…IN PICTURES

First, bombard a notepad (find a good one) with my favorite black pen (links provided).

https://www.amazon.com/Bienfang-11-Inch-Notesketch-Horizontal-Lines/dp/B001KZH1KQ

https://www.amazon.com/Pilot-Retractable-Premium-Roller-Extra/dp/B00006JNJ8

I am taking down anything I see, questions I have, possible connections, illustrations, etc.

Second, cross off those things that start to go in the first draft.

Third, tighten and edit first draft.

Fourth, make final draft.

Fifth, practice several times in bathroom with fan on so as not disturb my wife’s own studies.  I asked if she could hear me downstairs and she said the neighbors could!  That’s good!

 

 

NO EASY ANSWERS

 

Image result for controversy

I’ve asked fellow teachers, and certainly wrestled myself with the following question: How much as a teacher of God’s Word do you introduce others to the complexity, debates, and depth of Christianity?

Teachers should seek to edify and equip.  American Christians have a decidedly anti-intellectual bent coupled with an allergy to complexity.  How much does a teacher push back on those by introducing topics that cause people to be uncomfortable with how flimsy their beliefs may be?

 

HISTORY IS FOR ALL OF US

Wonderful interview with Dr. Margaret Bendroth, Executive Director of the Congregational Library & Archives.  HT: www.thewayofimprovement.com

JUNTO: When we spoke, you stressed the importance of storytelling as a means of getting a variety of people interested in history. How does storytelling factor into the work that you do? How does it connect to your research and writing?

BENDROTH: I invite a lot of academics to give talks at the Library—we have a monthly “History Matters” series that brings in a mix of people in our downtown area. I get twitchy when a presenter starts talking about “negotiating” and “complicating” and “constructing.”  It’s not that these words are bad—they’re great at academic conferences and I love most of them dearly. But (and I’m overstating a bit) the people in our audience profoundly do not care. It’s not that they can’t understand the concepts—I’m sure most of them could—but that’s not why there are there. I think that, like most human beings, they are looking for connection. They want to hear about other human beings, other lives, stories that make someone from the past both totally foreign and utterly familiar.

We should never forget that. I’m not saying that every historian has to be David McCullough or Doris Kearns Goodwin—would that we could sell that many books! But if we can’t explain our ideas in clear simple language that the average person, then we don’t really understand them ourselves.

The rest is here: https://earlyamericanists.com/category/special-features/where-historians-work/

 

 

TEACHING AND LEARNING!

The professor is in class to incite, cajole, inspire, and assign matters so that a young man or woman reads for the first time a book they may never have heard of. This is what he owes them. They want to know, moreover, not just what Plato had to say but what their teacher has to say. Yves Simon, in a famous passage, that I never fail to stress, tells us that there are three kinds of students: those only interested in grades, those who already know everything, and the eminently teachable, those who will allow him, in a short time in their youth, to take them through things which it took him into old age to figure out. The professor hopes that they all finally become “eminently teachable” and that he is worthy of teaching them.

From James Schall,”A Final Gladness,” The Last Lecture at Georgetown

 

 

 

SO SIMPLE, SO NEGLECTED

Watching the video I posted yesterday reminds me of a simple, yet widely neglected truth: Christians must wrestle with the beliefs of their faith.  We are now embarrassed to say doctrine and theology.  Sounds too impractical.  If people come to that tragic conclusion, it is either the teacher’s fault or it could be the student’s fault.  But it is never the subject of vibrant and life-giving theology.  And notice how I felt compelled to modify theology.  Maybe I am too defensive!

What happens when we mainly attract people to church with the social benefits, yet they don’t really understand much of what the Christian faith is about?  Well, if they get troubled and want to ask probing questions, they might be told good Christians don’t struggle with such things.  I’ve heard my share of such horror stories.

Christianity is true, but rightly understood it is beautiful, compelling, worth everything we are and have.