Funday School

I filled in at the last minute for my absent Sunday School teacher yesterday. I had luckily -- or maybe providentially -- stashed some old lessons from my emerging church days in my briefcase that very morning. I pulled a lesson on the Beatitudes that worked really well at my last church, glanced it over in the ten minutes I had to spare before other people arrived, and waited for my small group magic to begin.

There are two different ways of thinking about the Beatitudes. One is to break each sentence down one by one. In other words, discuss blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted and then move on to the next verse. The other way is to look at the passage as a whole, looking for meaning while keeping in mind history and what else surrounds it in the text. The conclusions a class would draw from these two approaches can be very different. Using the first example, a person could say something like, "When I'm sad, Jesus will make me feel better." (Which demonstrates how ingrained is our consumer mentality.) Using the second example, it would become clear that Jesus is announcing His kingdom to his disciples who are mourning over the state of the world and their own sins. The comfort is found because the kingdom of heaven is here!

I chose the second way to approach this lesson. I no sooner got started before a classmate said, "These verses aren't connected because that's not they way I learned it in Vacation Bible School." I tried to get her to play along for fun, but she made it clear there was going to be no budging.

Since my entire lesson was based on using approach two, I was left hanging out there with nothing. I ad-libbed the best I could, but I can safely say this was:

The. Longest. Sunday. School. Class. Ever.