Leading Sunday School

For whatever reason, I’ve been made the de facto deputy leader of my church’s Sunday School class for adults. So far, I’ve led three sessions, and it looks like I’ll be given charge of all of the next series, in which we’ll read through John Stott’s study guide on the beatitudes.

I really like these study guides by Stott. I understand the biblical texts much better after discussing them, under Stott’s guidance, with my classmates. Stott’s questions are open-ended, yet they always seem to direct us to the truth.

Tomorrow, though, we’ll finish a different series, Jim Cymbala’s Life-Changing Prayer: Approaching the Throne of Grace. The plan is to watch a 24-minute DVD episode; to answer the two discussion questions left over from our previous meeting (we watch every episode twice); and then to spend the rest of the session praying (it is the last session, and the unit is about prayer, after all). Like Stott’s curriculum, this one also pretty well teaches itself.

(I’m glad to have been put under the spotlight at the very end of the series, since the final episode, “The Church That Prays Together,” has been my favorite by far.)