Teaching Preaching
Once again this winer I took my turn in serving as teacher for the Burmese Bible School, Syracuse location. My assignment was a new one—to teach a course in expository preaching. I accepted since preaching is a favorite discipline of mine and I felt well prepared both by my years of formal training and by my own practice of study and preaching. I also felt that I might be able to build on the foundation I had made last year when teaching Introduction to Homiletics. There is a huge amount of preparation and the course delivery is concentrated—three weekends, Friday evening and all day Saturday. So it is draining but also exhilarating. For most of the sessions I prepared PowerPoint outlines and handed out printed notes. This helps the interpreter to follow me too. In addition, in this course Pastor Than and myself each preached exa
mple sermons for the class. I also shared many example sermon outlines.
Pastor Than Aung Assisted
It was my privilege once again to have Pastor Than Aung as my interpreter. Since he is a Princeton grad himself, he is a very capable assistant as well as interpreter. This is what is needed as much of the grading responsibility falls to him due to the need for him to read the students’ homework and test answers in Burmese. I very much enjoy teaching prospective pastors and teachers and am energized by it. I was also extremely gratified by the beautiful encouraging words I received from the students at the close of the last session.
The pictures are my class this year.
For the last three weekends, the class met from roughly from 5 PM to 9 PM on Friday evening and again on Saturday from 9 AM to 4 PM with an hour for lunch. It’s a lot of concentrated class time, even with breaks for Burmese tea (I tried three kinds, one of which I liked quite well). I also taught the class two years ago, but it was a four Saturday format at that time, so I needed to reorganize my material. I also supplemented it where needed and from books I have read in the interim. Everything is translated so that the school can serve the immigrant community whose English is not yet good enough to handle classes in English alone. Pastor Than from Lyncourt translated most of the time, with Dr. Khai, head of the school, translating one Saturday. I notice in the three years I have been involved that the English level of the students is constantly improving. It keeps me extremely busy. I will only attempt it in January when the church schedule is not quite as heavy as in some months. 