I’m a Powerpoint presenter. In fact, it’s gotten so I can hardly conceive of doing a presentation without a remote slide clicker in my hand. Like any communication tool and media, Powerpoint is merely one way to do it. Use it well and your communication is effective. Use it poorly and it’s no better than a flip chart or chalk and blackboard. I spend as much time planning the design and pedagogy of a presentation as I do on the content. The fact is, the medium needs to complement the content.

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I often challenge Christian educators that we need to stop giving mere lip service to the importance of Christian education in our churches. It’s not enough to preach its critical importance in helping people grow in faith. It’s not enough to urge leaders to get serious about providing effective Christian education in our congregations. When it comes down to it, Christian education will never improve until resident Christian educators, pastor and staff, start functioning like real educators.

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I’m not a big fan of sports analogies or metaphors, especially from the pulpit and in reference to matters spiritual. I find them at least irksome and at times insufferable. When in seminary a local church pastor (whose church we visited often only because of proximity to the seminary) used sports analogies as a staple in his sermons. After a while it was evident that he probably spent more time consulting ESPN than the ISBE.* However, it seems that sports analogies have a long history.

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I used to find it difficult to correct student papers on the computer screen, preferring to print out dozens of pages to correct then with red pen in hand. Over the years my predilection has switched: I’ve come to prefer editing on the computer screen. I rarely print out student work submitted via computer (e-mail or via our seminary online learning system). I correct papers and projects on the computer screen, make annotations, add links to appropriate internet help sites, and then e-mail it back to the student. I’m saving a lot of red ink and paper these days.

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Yesterday we wrote about what “real” Christian educators do. Today we consider what real educators know. Yes, real Christian educators know how to run an effective Sunday School, and they need to know how to do that well. But effective Christian educators need to know certain other foundational things to inform their work.

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I recently heard a seminary alumnus say that one thing he regretted about his seminary experience is not taking Christian education courses. He suggested the reason for that was he “Didn’t really understand what Christian education was about.” I suspect that for this former student, Christian education was, in his mind, equivalent to and not much more than “Sunday School.”

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Christian psychologist and therapist Wayne E. Oates wrote, “Two tuning forks that are alike will pick up each other’s vibrations. Persons are prone to imitate people they like. Therefore, change can be created in another person by stimulating the desire to be like you.” (The Psychology of Religion. Word Books, 1973, p. 157). In 1973 Oates uttered this “true” statement from the standpoint of the emotional and the evident frameworks (direct observation) of psychology. Today the neurosciences can make this same statement. But more and more, their frame of reference is the biological and the scientific.

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A friend asked me how I prepare my speaker notes for Powerpoint presentations. He saw that my speaker notes had the slide images on one side of the page with the corresponding notes on the other (with about four slide images to the page). He was not satisfied with the default Powerpoint printouts that came out with one huge slide image on the top half of the page and the notes on the bottom half of the page. Beside using up a lot of printer ink, it required him to flip a page for each slide.

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