When you teach your Bible students, what do they learn about you? How you answer that question depends a lot on your personality, the age of your students and what concepts you are trying to teach them. There is something from your personal life you should share, though, regardless of the age of your Bible students. If you are willing to do it, you can help them grow spiritually.
What is it? Your hobbies. I know. We constantly talk about using Bible class time wisely, so how can sharing your secular hobbies with students be useful during Bible class time? The actual benefit to each student will vary a bit, but here are some of the benefits sharing your hobbies with your Bible students can provide.
- Make you a real person. As silly as it sounds, there is a part of every student that believes you have no life outside of the church building. This is especially true if your students never see you outside of the building. Sharing your hobby shows you have interests and a life outside of the church building and might just understand life a little more than they have given you credit for in the past.
- Give you an opportunity to share the joy in a Christian life. People tend to do the things they enjoy the most as hobbies. Young people who are struggling with their faith may already have begun developing the beliefs that Christians are boring or never have any fun. Sharing with them the ways you have fun and yet still obey God can open their minds to the possible positive realities of the Christian life.
- Give you an opportunity to help them discover, develop and use their gifts. Use your hobbies as a platform to help your students explore different gifts to find out how God has gifted them. You can also explain how you developed your gifts and how you use them to serve God – even if you haven’t served God with your specific hobby yet.
- Give them an opportunity to develop the creativity God has given each one of them. Since we are created in the image of God, it makes sense we are designed to be creative. Unfortunately, most schools destroy creativity in favor of conformity. Yet the Church needs people who are creative. Not to change scripture or it’s original meaning, but to be creative in serving the world around them and sharing their faith. Consider bringing in your hobby and have students brainstorm different ways you could use that hobby to serve others and share your faith. Then have them bring in their hobbies and repeat the exercise. You may all find some new ways to serve God and find your creative “muscle” is a bit stronger from the exercise.
- Help build relationships. There is a famous study that found if two people discussed the answers to a certain number of questions, they fell in love. Why? Because they got to know the other person intimately. You can better teach, mentor and coach your Bible students spiritually if you have a close relationship. Sharing something personal, like a hobby, is sharing an intimate detail of your life that can create the beginning of a closer bond with students. If they share theirs in return, the bond strengthens with you and their classmates. If you extend learning and spend time with some or all of your students helping them experiment with your hobby….all the while asking and answering questions about your lives….the relationships will grow even more. Sharing our hearts builds relationships faster than sharing random information or having small talk.
You don’t want to bring in a hobby every week, but taking some time in class to talk about hobbies, while bringing God into the picture can help your students grow spiritually. It’s another great tool to use in your Bible class.