A Week in the Life of the Educational Ministries of Techy Baptist Church

During the Week: Otto the Teacher Prepares

Otto Bleppendorf is the Teaching Pastor at Techy Baptist Church. He enjoys his job and has been repeatedly affirmed in his teaching gifts by the church. Otto's heart burns to see his students grow in their knowledge and love of the Lord. His teaching has been described as both pastoral and rigorous. Otto knows the challenges facing his students to really engage and learn from the material. As a result, he has sought to leverage technology in order to continue the teaching and learning experience outside the classroom.

On Wednesday morning Otto continued preparing for the weekly membership class he teaches. This week's topic is baptism. He starts, as he usually does, by logging into Google Reader to check see if there are any updates on his favorite blogs. He is so thankful for RSS; how else would he be able to keep up with the nearly 50 blogs he tracks?

He comes across a particularly insightful post by a local Baptist pastor on baptism--how appropriate! He saves the link on his del.icio.us site using the unique tag "TBCMemberClass." Now all of his students will be able to view his class-specific links.

Otto notices--again courtesy of RSS--that the class wiki has been updated since yesterday. Last Sunday he gave the students an assignment of evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of their denomination by creating lists on the wiki. Henry added a few insightful comments. Otto reads over them and edits the wiki making some minor corrections.

After closing Google Reader, Otto then logs into his Facebook account to see if any of his students' birthdays are imminent. Sure enough, Sarah's birthday is today! Otto writes Sarah a short note on her profile page wishing her a Happy Birthday! After he finishes, Otto laughs and says to himself, "I wonder if I would have felt a better connection with my teachers if we had Facebook back then. It's such an easy way to stay connected with the students!" Some of Otto's peers chide him for perhaps being the oldest man on Facebook; Otto brushes their jokes off knowing how much his presence on Facebook means to the students.

Susan must be on Facebook as she sends Otto a short note in reply saying "thanks" and asking for book recommendations on women's roles in the church. Otto sends her a link to his books tagged "WomenRolesChurch" in Library Thing. Just then Otto glances at the clock--it's time for his weekly online office hours. He logs into the class chat room and sees Quetessa and Harold already waiting.

After a rousing 30 minute discussion ranging from his picks for the upcoming Bulls game to the authority of Scripture, Otto signs off and remembers he needs to finish his podcast. Each week Otto records a 10 minute podcast reviewing last week's material and giving a short preview for the coming week's topic. Although there are only 15 students in his class, over 30 people listen to the podcast each week. Otto surmises the additional downloads are from members of their sister church in France who are following along online with the class and a few folks in the community who are curious about their church, but not yet comfortable actually coming in the building.

Class on Sunday

Otto's classroom is equipped with standard 21st-Century equipment: A wireless connection to the Internet, a digital projector, a whiteboard. He has set the chairs up in a semi-circle to increase personal connectedness in the classroom while still having a screen on one side of the circle.

Since the class' purpose is to give a survey of the doctrine and life of the church, Otto is excited about this particular lesson on baptism. Two members of the class have just come to faith, and they have many questions which keep the discussion lively. Recently, classes on church leadership, ordination, and governance led to a number of intense, ocassionally heated, but overall helpful times of online discourse.

Otto, being an Evangelical, has a high view of Scripture, and after spending a few minutes gathering conceptions and misconceptions, he always likes to start the meat of the topic with Scripture. This is his basic lesson outline:

I. Discuss class member's various ideas/experiences with baptism

II. Look at the Scriptural references to baptism

    A. The Gospels:

        i. John the Baptist, Jesus' teaching on John.

        ii. Jesus' disciples baptizing.

        iii. Jesus usage of "water" in his teachings.

        iv. Jesus' command to make disciples and baptize in the Trinity.

    B. The Acts of the Apostles

        i. Baptism of the Holy Spirit

        ii. Call to "repent and be baptized"

        iii. Various people who were baptized and their situations.

            a. Individuals

            b. Families

    C. The Apostles' teaching

        i. Paul: Rm 6, 1 Cor 1,12, Gal 3, Eph 4, Col 2

        ii. Peter: 1 Pet 3:21.

III. Bring ideas together. Why Baptism?

    A. Repentence - connection of baptism and forsaking sin

    B. Covenant - Abraham, circumcision? (compare views)

    C. Our Denomination's Theology

IV. Cultural Issues with Baptism

    A. Throughout history

    B. Today: Islamic countries, the persecuted church, etc.

V. Questions/Discussion/Final reflections

Otto is aware of the temptation of merely teaching in a lecture format but would like to make the class more interactive, meet the students where they are, understand them and their needs, and be able to see this aspect of the life of the church understood and appreciated. He would like to use current technologies to communicate in a deeper way, as has been discussed in this project already.

After spending some time in prayer for the class and reviewing his notes, he drives to church. Once set up in the classroom, he gets a cup of coffee in the lobby of the church and begins to see students trickle in. He strikes up a conversation with one student, Henry, who made some significant contributions to the online discussions regarding leadership this past week. As they walk towards the classroom, Henry thanks Otto for the helpful discussion and shares how he e-mailed a link to the online discussion to a non-Christian coworker who had been hurt by Christian leaders in the past, which led to some fruitful conversations about the church and the Gospel.

Time passes and the class is ready to begin. Otto remains seated during the class to help give the room a greater sense of community and mutuality in the learning process. He gives a few announcements and prays briefly. Otto then introduces the topic of the day and the class outline. He leads a discussion asking students to share experiences with baptism they've had or heard about that they find significant. Margret shares that she was baptized as an infant. Frank shares how he was baptized when he was 14 in a river next to his parents' church. Leopold shared a story he read that morning on a Persecuted Church RSS feed that he subscribes to.

After about 10 minutes, Otto begins his presentation on what the Scriptures say about baptism. He only has the citations on the PowerPoint, because he wants to encourage the students to use their Bibles. Here are a few sample pages.

His presentation also includes pictures from the Internet of mikva'ot a few archaeologists found from the 1st Century. He also has a link on one slide that directs to position statements on issues in baptism on the denomination's website. At a number of key points, he also displays quotes from a few blogs he reads regularly. In discussing cultural issues surrounding baptism, he describes the life of their sister church in Paris, France. Recently a Turkish Muslim was baptized which caused a huge stir in his family and local community. Otto used Google Maps to help students see the geography of the area and briefly describes the challenge of Evangelicals in Paris. Here is an example of what it could look like from a different presentation:

His approach to PowerPoint is significant. He uses the slides to help with memory and visualization rather than have it contain everything that he is saying. He wants to encourage the students the think, interact, and not merely stare at the screen in a daze. To keep himself on track, he has typed out all his lecture material using the "notes" feature in PowerPoint. Throughout his presentation, he shows the outline of where they have come and where they are going. He posts the file to the class web site after class using SlideShare.net.

During the discussion time, various students ask hard questions about baptism and a heated discussion ensues. After calming a few individuals down, Otto encourages the students to go home, pray through the scriptures given, and do more reading on the class web site. As questions have arisen during the class, he types them directly into the class wiki from his laptop. He encourages the students to come up with their own answers and add them to the wiki. He hopes that by the end of the class, this wiki can become a helpful FAQ which would serve future classes. He also posts the MP3 of the lecture online in the class podcast.

At the end of the presentation, he shows a list of links which he has placed on the class' web site, both to blog articles and podcasts. He had been bookmarking these links over the past few months of preparation for this class and he used a unique tag in del.icio.us which is mentioned above. He shows links associated with this tag on the class blog.

Otto notes the time and brings the discussions to a close. The class ends with a time of prayer for the sister church in France and the new believer there, the two members of the class who are about to be baptized, and for godly, redemptive fellowship online during the week.

During the Week: Collaborative Learning 

Although class is over at 11:30 am on Sundays, the learning continues throughout the week.  On Tuesday night, Krissy finds an excellent site that she would like to share with her classmates.  Thus she saves the link on her del.icio.us site using the unique tag "TBCMemberClass." Now all of the students will be able to view these class-specific links. 

Across town, Herman is engaging with the class blog.  This week Otto has invited one of their church's overseas missionaries, Jim Smiling, to be the guest blogger.  His post tonight discusses the challenges of communion (the topic of class next week) in his country.  After Herman spends considerable time reading and processing Jim's thoughts, he posts an insightful comment for Jim and others to read.  Herman then shoots off a quick email to Otto to see if it would be possible to have Jim join their class via Skype next Sunday. 

Just before bed, Otto runs across a helpful video which, he thinks, describes well the evolution of the Internet.  He'll need to continue to evaluate and rethink the role of technology in the educational ministries of the church.