The following is a transcribed Video Q&A, so the text may not read like an edited article would. Scroll to the bottom to view this video in its entirety.
"A good bible study leader knows that she is always learning at the same time as her students are. I think there's a misconception that the leader knows it all when she shows up, and I know that so often as I'm teaching, and I was talking to another bible study teacher last night, it's unfolding for me as it's unfolding for them. It's not that I haven't done the prep work and put the time in, but it's that this is all something that the lord is showing to me as well. I think that's a really important place to stay, because it keeps you humble.
We have a sense, again, that the teacher's the smartest girl in the room, and I just never feel that way. In fact, I kept thinking, 'One day I will stop feeling inadequate for the task,' but every time I sit down to write a study and really almost every time I stand up to teach, I just feel this sense of, 'There's so much more I could have done with this. There are so many pieces I couldn't pull in. I had to leave this part out. I chose this part over this part.' Then it keeps on going, even after you finish with the teaching.
You sit down, and then you get the replay in your head of all of the things you could have said or should have said. You can go to a really yucky place with that, but I think ideally you let that place keep you just pushing forward yourself and always aware. If I feel this need and I feel this lack, then what must the women that I'm teaching feel? That's really what I think keeps a teacher teaching."
Originally published Thursday, 11 September 2014.
