Church Alive January 2, 2012 Issue

The following was written in support of Church Alive, a focus of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, that explores the meaning and possibilities of awakening to the spiritual basis and impact of Church.  

Prepared to teach

By Hannah Mensing

After recently moving to a new town, I attended the local Christian Science church for a Wednesday evening testimony meeting. Afterward, a gentleman from that church greeted me and we began talking. When he learned that I would be in the area for almost a year, he told me he was the superintendent of their Sunday school and immediately asked if I would be interested in teaching Sunday School.

Though I wasn’t a member, the church had a bylaw allowing any regular attending Christian Scientist to teach Sunday School. I was relatively young, had a busy schedule, and had never taught Sunday school before, yet his enthusiasm and joy was hard to resist and I found myself saying, “Yes.”

As I was preparing for the following Sunday, I was apprehensive and unsure what to teach or how to teach it. I had studied the Christian Science Bible Lesson and had written down ideas about Bible stories to discuss, looked up fun projects and activities we could do, and thought about ideas that I could share that might be memorable and helpful to the students I’d have. Despite this physical and metaphysical preparation, I still wasn’t feeling ready to teach or able to share Christian Science with students.