What is Great Teaching?

Dis­ci­ple Mak­ing Teach­ers by Josh Hunt

“Simply put, great teach­ing is teach­ing that cre­ates great peo­ple. Where dis­ci­ples of Jesus are being devel­oped, great teach­ing is tak­ing place. When the peo­ple in our small groups and class­es turn their worlds upside down, we have done a rea­son­ably good job of teaching.
Jesus told us to make dis­ci­ples, not mere­ly to make con­verts. The objec­tive of Chris­t­ian teach­ing is to pro­duce mature dis­ci­ples of Jesus Christ.”

“Teaching that makes dis­ci­ples is good teach­ing. Any­thing else is sim­ply not enough. The point is to change lives, to help peo­ple live dif­fer­ent­ly on Mon­day morn­ing. Teach­ing that pro­duces dis­ci­ples is good teaching.”

“Teaching is about peo­ple learn­ing. Teach­ing is not about peo­ple mov­ing in class; it is about peo­ple mov­ing when they get out of class. The point is not how high peo­ple jump; but how straight they walk when they get down. What hap­pens in class mat­ters, but not as much as what hap­pens in people’s homes, work­places, lives, and rela­tion­ships. The point is not that stu­dents feel enter­tained or inter­est­ed or stim­u­lat­ed or what­ev­er. The point is will they live dif­fer­ent­ly on Mon­day morning?”

“To pro­duce change in people’s lives, the teacher has to do the right things in class. And in order for the teacher to do the right things in class, he or she must pre­pare the right way.”

“In order for dis­ci­ple-mak­ing teach­ers to be effec­tive, sev­en things need to take place:

1. The learn­er must become inter­est­ed in the lesson.
2. Truth must become truth that mat­ters to the learner.
3. The learn­er must dis­cov­er how this truth relates to Mon­day morning.
4. The learn­er must rec­og­nize the gap between his or her life and the life God calls us to live.
5. The learn­er must see the ben­e­fits of obe­di­ence and the draw­backs of disobedience.
6. The learn­er must com­mit to exchange one belief, val­ue, atti­tude or behav­ior for another.
7. The learn­er must be held account­able for his or her deci­sions or commitments.”

Account­abil­i­ty questions:

• How did last weeks les­son affect the way you lived this past week?
• How did you apply last weeks les­son on the need to be hon­est in all your dealings?
• Did any­one have a mean­ing­ful time alone with God that you can tell us about?