How to Fail as a Christian Teacher: Top 20

I really like this blog entry from Jonathan Moorhead. I am personally challenged by it.


How to Fail as a Christian Teacher: Top 20

1. Approach teaching as a job, and not a ministry.

2. Consider each student as a number, and not as a ministry opportunity.

3. Try to manipulate the students so that they will give you a good mark on your "course evaluation."

4. Don't spend any personal discipleship time with the students - you only need to teach them in class.

5. Try to confuse the students with difficult material so they will think you are really smart.

6. Have no compassion for less gifted students.

7. Do not show how your lectures glorify God or are applicable to ministry. You only need to disseminate information.

8. Don't work toward replacing yourself.

9. Try to get students out of your office as soon as possible.

10. Do not pray for your students.

11. Don't teach students the strongest arguments of their theological counterparts.

12. Teach them that your theological critics are naive and have devious motives.

13. Don't ever admit that you are wrong, and if you are asked a question that you do not know the answer to, then answer that question by responding to a question for which you do know the answer.

14. Always seek to have preference as a professor. If challenged, always be sure to say, "Do you know who I am?"

15. Make your students memorize irrelevant material. It doesn't matter if they will never use the material in ministry, or that they will easily forget it, but what matters is that you can say you tested them on that material.

16. Never make comments on your students' papers to help them become better writers, just put a grade.

17. Write for the academy, never for the Church.

18. Don't waste your time making your lectures interesting by using PowerPoint, because your students aren't worthy to be your students if they can't simply listen to you reading your lecture.

19. Don't let your students think that their families are more important than school.

20. Don't care enough about minorities or women to correct them. Political correctness and the appearance of tolerance/openness is more important than love.