The Student Learns By Teaching
As I reflect on the continued training opportunities I have in the Solomons, I’m amazed at how much I learn by teaching. And it makes me wonder how I ever learnt anything by merely watching others train me.
So today in class I found myself backed into a corner as my students presented me difficult questions about preaching: How do I make “dry bones live”? Can God use me to make a difference? What have you discovered through standing in the pulpit with a sea of faces waiting for what you might have to give?
But this is what keeps me living on the edge. I’m not up for this task of equipping others for ministry in a most difficult setting that forces me to remain utterly dependent on divine intervention, to make it through each successive day in the Pacific’s most impoverished nation…unless God gets a hold of me and succeeds in using me supernaturally for his glory!
As Jesus said, “The student is not above the teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like their teacher (Luke 6:40).” So I keep going because as Jesus teaches me, through my students, I find I have more to pass onto them.
Rev David Collins
