Was there a statement that stands out in your mind? Any deja vu when you read posts here?
I didn't answer that question at first because I wasn't sure it was appropriate. But as seen in
Message 273, it may be more significant than I thought initially.
There was a series of adult Sunday school classes I used to teach. They looked at the birth of the COE and a whole host of other issues and practices of the time relating theological events and decisions to the everyday life and technology of the time.
When I first suggested the series I sat down with the Priest and outlined where I would go and some of the things that I thought he might object to. He asked me to give him a short outline to look over and that he would get back to me, which I promptly did. My expectation since it was a pretty conservative church in a very conservative area was that I'd get a polite "Thanks but no thanks" response.
I got a call the first thing the next morning as I was going out the door to work. He was really excited about the course and how soon could I start and would it bother me if he sat in on it and could I come by after work and talk with him about it.
To make a long story somewhat shorter, he and I decided that it should be a four week course, and so I laid out the material based on that. The first sunday came and I began the talk to the usual suspects, the parents who had kids in the childrens sunday school and lived too far away to make it worthwhile to drive home and come back. I explained at the beginning that I might say things folk disagreed with, asked that they wait until the end to just dismiss what I said, but that please, anytime that questions came up, ask them and I would stop and go into more detail.
At the end of that first sunday it was obvious I had no chance of making it through the material in just four classes. We had covered less that a third of the material in the first class which really was just to set the stage for what was to follow.
The priest then asked the folk there what they wanted to do, did they want to followup on this and expand it until we got to the end, or keep it as a four week schedule? Everyone there said let's work through this, and we decided on a format where I would present the next part in the first half hour then the second half hour of each class would be discussion.
Two things stand out in relation to that class. First, every single week (and it eventually lasted about three months) there were more adults there. Second, at the end the priest asked if he could have copies of all of my notes and handouts for his files.
Aslan is not a
Tame Lion
™ Version 4.2
