The reverse prayer

Do you ever wonder what the other person is praying?

It’s not uncommon for a Christian to pray about a difficult personal situation at work, school, university or church.

Maybe there has been a misunderstanding.

Or a confrontation.

Or an impending confrontation.

Often, we pray for clarity or boldness.

But, do we ever consider that the other person on the other end of our prayer request may themselves be praying.

Praying for themselves.

Praying about the situation.

Praying about us.

What do you think they will be praying for?

Clarity?

Boldness?

Understanding?

If we stop to consider how the other person may be praying through the exact same situation which has brought us to prayer, then maybe the change of perspective will soften our hearts and transform our petitions.

How I can teach other religions and why I want to teach them well

I’m fairly unusual.

I can wrestle aloud with the bible, the incarnation, the trinity, the way God reveals Himself and the questions surround creation, suffering and the afterlife.

I can tell you about the Four Rightly Guided Caliphs, the Quran, the Hadith, the six foundational beliefs of Islam, the Five Pillars and Islamic jurisprudence.

I can outline the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, the Tripitaka and the Five Precepts. 

As a part of my job I get to teach senior-high-school students about religion.

I get to take interested teens in a deep dive into Christianity, Islam and Buddhism (amongst others).

As a consequence, I know a fair bit about these three faiths.

I can tell you about the historical contexts, origins, expansion, founders, principal beliefs, sacred texts, ethical decision making principles and practical out-workings across three worldviews.

This makes me unusual.

Many others Christians couldn’t tell you about the any more than the very basic details of other religions.

Of course, the temptation is to be biased.

To let my personal worldview colour the way I present the alternate viewpoints.

But, I don’t.

I try to be fair.

As a foundation of my subject, I must be impartial.

My subject must be based upon understanding.

It must steer away from conversion.

And, I appreciate this.

For, I think there is nothing at all wrong about presenting faiths fairly - including Christianity.

Why?

Because I don’t want to be giving Christianity an unfair advantage which, frankly, it doesn’t need.

Christianity can stand up for itself.

Jesus can stand up for himself.

The bible can stand up for itself.

They don’t need me to defend them.

All they need is for me to be clear.

Just as I need to be for the Islamic and Buddhist faiths.

And, when presented with all the facts, I think it is a sign of faith to believe that Christianity shows itself to be trustworthy.

The fight - or classroom - doesn’t need to be rigged in its favour…

Seeing my previous decisions from a different life perspective

I started in youth ministry in my mid-twenties.

I started youth ministry while single.

I started youth ministry without kids.

A lot has changed over the last two decades.

Now, I view life and church - understandably - quite differently.

When I look back at some of the decisions I made, I cringe.

I now see that they were shortsighted.

I now see that they were impulsive.

I now see that they were - in the best of ways - ignorant.

For, I didn’t have the experience of being in ministry and church structures.

I didn’t have the experience of being married.

I didn’t have the experience of being a parent.

Now, I’d do plenty of things differently.

Slower.

More deliberate.

More considerate.

More gracious (hopefully!).

For, with the perspective of my current life-stage, I can now see that I made plenty of, frankly, preventable ministry missteps.

My mandatory casual teaching hacks

I was very fortunate in the breakdown of my first year in teaching.

On the back of COVID, I was employed in a school as a combined classroom teacher and a school-wide casual.

This was advantageous because it meant that I had a slightly lighter lesson load - and thus less prep in my first year - and allowed me to be exposed to casual teaching - and the important lessons it teaches fledgling teachers - in a familiar environment.

While I had the, frankly unfair, upper hand over other casual teachers since I was a staff member, there were a number of significant lessons which this unpredictable teaching schedule provided.

First, I picked up a lot of vital classroom management strategies.

The first was to use names.

Again, I had the advantage of having access to school systems, but when I began teaching I through that generic dissipations like “year 9” would suffice to get attention. 

It doesn’t.

Using names is the secret sauce.

And the best way to nail names as a casual teacher is to use the mandatory roll marking to identify students.

Ideally, if the roll has student photos attached the easier this will be, but as you mark the roll, you can insert the names of students into the blank template of the classroom.

At worst, this can be (at least in part) achieved over the course of the first activity during the lesson.

When you are armed with names, then the class runs a lot smoother.

Furthermore, the best advice I have gleaned about casual teaching is to start the lesson by writing all instructions on the board and number the things required during the lesson.

The reason for this is simple.

It is much easier to ask a student what number they are up to, or instruct them by simply using the number of the activities in the board to keep the class on track.

Better yet, if all the instructions are on the board, then you can allocate times when you either expect the, to have completed each task or when you will be going through the various activities.

Finally, all casual teachers should explicitly tell the class that they will be reporting on the lesson to the usual classroom teacher and informing the teacher precisely what work the students should have got through (which hopefully aligns with the amount of work which was left for the class).

Again, I had the advantage of being able to personally speak with the teacher if my usual summary email was not sufficient.