Doing What I Do

One of our main tasks in moving to Malawi was for me (Bruce) to teach.  In my role as pastor I think I did a lot more teaching than I realized - but now it's unmistakable.  There's something very inspiring about a group of people gathered in one place for the purpose of learning new things, thinking new thoughts, and expanding their worldviews.  Being in Malawi reminds me of the incredible privilege of education.  The vast majority of ABC students don't have nearly enough money to afford their education - and costs keep rising all the time.  This goes for the masters students as well.  Out of 35 accepted students 31 showed up for registration.  And out of 31 registered students, less than 20 had the full deposit amount for the semester. 

Bruce teaching Hermeneutics at ABC

Once in the classroom the other challenge begins.  Since the Master of Arts in Christian Leadership program is designed for working people, the classes are all run in the evenings between 4:00 pm and 7:30 pm.  We played around with different schedules but landed on the idea of having one class per night.  This avoided a lot of time lost to moving around and it also spared students having to prepare themselves for multiple nights of assignments.  It all sounded great and looked great on paper.  Then came the class time!  One of the classes I'm teaching right now is Hermeneutics.  It's a brilliant subject for serious students of the Bible and includes studies in exegesis, historical-cultural analysis, and syntactical-contextual analysis.  Fancy words that I had to look up not that long ago - but it's basically giving students the tools to dig more deeply into Scripture for themselves and understand what's written from the perspective of the writer.  The problem is..........how do you discuss these things for THREE  HOURS - and not have people falling asleep in warm, often muggy classrooms? 

It's a challenge I'm enjoying.  I start with a 10 - 15 minute devotion that highlights part of what the lecture will be about and then lecture for 1 hour and 15 minutes.  After that I dismiss for a 15 minute break.  When they come back I have them watch a video for 20 minutes related to the topic (just to let them hear a different voice for a change) and then they gather in groups for some application exercises to work through together.    I use a lot of power point (when electricity is flowing) and try to incorporate as many relevant photos as possible.  The students are incredibly gracious and seem to track along with much of the course content. 
First assignments will be due in a couple weeks so that will be my first indicator of how much of the content is actually making sense.  It makes me nervous but I'm enjoying the challenge of it.