I teach a little Bible study online on Thursday evenings at an irc server. It's an interesting format in which to teach. When I first started doing it years ago it was quite a challenge. I would sit down in front of my computer and get nervous and sweat. Fortunately, God put someone into my life to work alongside me and mentor me in a way that allowed me to learn from my own mistakes and work my way through the challenges while doing something productive and glorify the name of Jesus.

When I first began the process I would write my studies out beforehand and copy and paste them as I went. I tended to try to stick to the "script" like glue. Inevitably, someone would interrupt my carefully laid out plans with a question. This would sometimes through me off kilter and sometimes not. Sometimes the question would get ahead of what I was teaching and take things out of the careful order I had tried to place them in and sometimes not. Questions added to my nervousness because I am just an orderly kind of guy. After a time though, and with enough questions, I learned to field them by placing them into the greater context of the subject matter and understanding that they needn't be a distraction, but rather something that served to reinforce the larger meaning of the study.

As time went by, my mentor guided me to teach the text I was in, but also to see the text in light of the larger, more full picture of the Scriptures as a whole. As I grew more comfortable doing the studies I started to go to more of an outline, mental or otherwise instead of using copy-and-paste. Using the tools I have naturally and the tools I was mentored with, I have learned to become very familiar with the text I'm teaching out of and allow it to teach itself. Of course, the most important factor in all of this is prayer. I pray beforehand.

Tonight I concluded the second chapter of 1st Timothy, and even covered what some would consider a controversial passage concerning the role of women in the church. It went quite well, praise God. Sometimes there are things that I wish Paul had not written. (Laughing here) Just kidding about that, but it can get touchy for some folks. Not everybody likes to hear everything that is recorded in the Scriptures. Still, it is a pleasure to teach through even the difficult or problematic passages, because in all of it---I think I learn more than anyone else does. Either that is a sign that I'm a poor teacher, or it's a major perk of the job.