Teaching by the Book

His class sizes varied from one-on-one, to thousands upon thousands.

Classrooms? It didn’t matter: indoors or outdoors; even on a boat or on the beach, if the situation required it.

He communicated instruction, wisdom and guidance to all age groups.

Just the one textbook, but plenty of material around to use as object lessons, or stories, to make the teaching points clear.

No written tasks or reading lists, of course – they would have been useless anyway, for most of his “students”.

The teaching experience of Jesus was physically different from the context of our schools, of course; but He remains a good model, in so many ways, of what our teaching can and should be like.

What about the Old Testament, though? Can we learn anything about our teaching in the Anglican schools of 2026 from its pages – in particular, its three main divisions: the Torah (or Law); the Prophets; and the Writings?

Walter Brueggemann, in his book The Creative Word, argues that we can – and the models of teaching that he identifies as occuring in the Old Testament have helped challenge and stimulate my thinking in the teaching Chaplain role that most of us will have.

First, there’s the teaching that’s done through the Torah or Law – in the fashion described in Deuteronomy chapter 6:

‘Here, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one.  Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.  These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts.  Impress them on your children.…In the future, when your child asks you, ‘What the is meaning of the stipulations, decrees and laws the LORD our God has commanded you?, tell them: ‘We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt, but the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand.’…

God’s commandments were taught to explain to God’s Old Testament people their identity: who they were, and where and why they were.

As they learn what they should do to please God, they are being told who they are, and to know that they have a Father who cares for them.

Then there’s the teaching done by the Prophets, who chiefly challenge people who, hainvg the Torah and the Law, think that they have it right.

People who may have considered that they really didn’t have anything else to learn from God – and the prophets were there to shake up that attitude.

To question how and why God’s people were imbibing the culture in which they lived.

To question the worldview and beliefs of the people around them.

To question how they themselves were living out the things they had affirmed that they believed.

And then there’s the teaching found in the Writings – books like Proverbs and Psalms, Job and Ecclesiastes.

Where the ‘teachers’ found in these books are focused on wisdom – how we are to live well.

How to promote justice and fairness in their communities.

It’s practical teaching (but with its roots in the previous types of teaching mentioned) about how to live wisely in God’s world and with one another: in one’s homes; with one’s neighbours; and (for our context) with our students and colleagues at school.

Not surprisingly, we also see Jesus exemplifying these three different methods in His own teaching.

And they are also types of teaching that we seek to employ in our roles as School Chaplains, aren’t they?

As ‘Torah teachers’, teaching our students to know who they are – created and loved and known by their God, and made for living in the security of relationship with their Creator.

We’re called to be, as it were, “prophetic teachers” – in the sense of challenging our students to investigate, to ask questions, to be prepared to look at things in a new way.

Like the Old Testament prophets, we’re not just passing on truth to our students about who they are, but also challenging and encouraging them to be open to learn, to critique the prevailing beliefs and actions of themselves, and of our society and culture.

We’re also to be wisdom teachers – reminding our students that having all the theories and knowledge and high grades that they can get, doesn’t mean that they will know how to apply that knowledge wisely and justly, or to make good decisions in life!

Living well and wisely in the world revolves around relationships, and how we relate to other people is significant.

It seems to me that we need to use all these “methods” in the teaching we do as Chaplains, in our respective school contexts.  If we only teach our students the knowledge of identity and truth, we can make them secure but self-satisfied in that knowledge (not unlike the Israelites with whom the prophets dealt!).  If we only teach them to question, they may have questions, but never seek answers.  If we only teach them practical wisdom, they live in the limits of their present knowledge and don’t get to see and understand the bigger picture of God and His purposes for this world – and their place in these purposes.