Donovan L. Graham, EdD, is a former secondary school teacher and counselor. He also served as a dean, a professor, and the chaplain at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia. He is the author of Teaching Redemptively: Bringing Grace and Truth into Your Classroom, published by Purposeful Design Publications.
When considering the process of making disciples, we have only one place to turn—Jesus. So we will, without apology! Maybe this is a fresh look; maybe it is old stuff for many who read this. Either way, my hope is that this will both challenge and encourage us to take seriously our calling as teachers to be disciple makers and will enable us to see that it truly is a matter of the heart.
The Eternal Commitment of Jesus’ Heart
I believe it is important to realize that the commitment of Jesus to love, care for, save, lead, teach, and empower His disciples began in eternity and that it was first a commitment between the members of the Holy Trinity. It existed before there were any human beings to deserve or not deserve that commitment. It did not take long for Adam and Eve to become unworthy of that commitment, but God spelled it out plainly for them in Genesis 3. Life would be hard, things would not be as they were designed to be, Adam and Eve would physically die, but Jesus would honor the commitment and come to rescue them and their seed, in all their fear and against all their resistance. The commitment made by God could not be thwarted by the failure of His creatures to keep theirs.
What does God’s commitment say to us as teachers? Unfortunately, being the fallen and finite people we are, all too often our commitment to our students is heavily determined by whether they can show they deserve it, or at least that they are trying to do and be what we ask of them. We expect them to fail often enough, but if they are not at least trying…. If a failure to try had eliminated or even diminished Jesus’ commitment to us, where would we be?
The implications seem pretty obvious, don’t they? Our commitment to our students must begin long before we know who they are, and it must not be thwarted or diminished by how poorly they perform or behave or whether they fail to do the right thing. It cannot be enhanced by whether it appears they might be successful and obedient and whether they seem therefore somehow more worthy of our commitment. It has to come from our living in the commitment that the triune God has made to us.
So what would that commitment look like? In what ways would our students experience that commitment from us? While it certainly involves working hard at all the normal tasks entrusted to a teacher, it is far more than working hard. It involves a heart that is ready to give itself away, knowing that it will be bruised and battered by some and warmly embraced by others. It involves a heart that knows its own broken condition and that is willing to entrust itself to other broken hearts—even students’ hearts—all because it ultimately has entrusted itself to the broken and wounded heart of Jesus. It also involves a heart that is full of hope and that is given away to all, even when everything has gone wrong. It is a heart that is full of compassion and mercy and courage.
Giving our heart away by entrusting it to others who we know will bruise it or reject it is quite contrary to what many of us experience from and give to others. Most of us spend great energy guarding and protecting our hearts from being wounded by others. Given our fears and sinfulness, that is understandable; but it is not the Jesus way. It is not the way that evidences commitment to other broken hearts no matter what.
The Ongoing Investment of Jesus’ Heart
In the financial world, one takes what is sometimes hard earned and at least always valuable, and invests it in a company or a project (always managed by human beings), with the hope and expectation that the investment will help the company grow to produce its goods, which are for everyone’s good (well, at least in some companies that is true!). There is a choice involved, and although “smart” people choose companies that have a proven track record, we all know there are those also who take risks on the unknown. Sometimes investment in the unknown produces phenomenal results. Other times it produces abject failure and loss. Long-term investors who are not afraid and who hold a large supply of assets that will carry them through some losses are willing to risk and thus keep the market going and help shape progress in the economy and the society. They do not quit, even when there is a large loss. This type of investment takes a heart of courage.
Certainly all such analogies eventually break down, and I am not sure this is even a good one, but perhaps the point of this one helps us understand the ongoing investment that God makes in us. It is a courageous choice on His part, He has unlimited assets to carry Him through the failures and losses, He keeps investing, and He certainly takes risks on us. And as a result, He is building a kingdom of people who are able then to invest in others to reveal what He is like.
So what did the investment by Jesus in His disciples look like, and what might that mean for us as teachers? It may be important to notice that the first thing He did as He began to invest His heart and being in them was to call them away from the things they had invested their hearts in already. They were supposed to leave everything and follow Him wherever He went, listen to whatever He said, and do whatever He did. They had to put away all their preconceived notions of the way the world worked. What a creative opportunity that is for us as teachers! Is it possible that we as disciple makers are invited to or even expected to turn our students’ worlds upside down and inside out by having them follow us as we follow Jesus? I think so.
Learning that lasts involves the resolution of a creative tension—a reduction of the dissonance between the way things are and the way they are supposed to be. And way back there in the beginning in Genesis 3, we see the promise of commitment being voiced, and at the same time we hear that things in the world will not operate as they were supposed to because of the image bearers’ disobedience. So the fact that things are not the way they are supposed to be should not surprise us. The challenge for us is to turn that reality into learning!
But we cannot merely do so through lectures and papers and tests and other paper-and-pencil (or PowerPoint) activities. As teachers we must engage the world in redemptive ways, and we must invite and expect our students to go with us. We get to mentor them in the process. And we get to walk with them through the issues that matter to them, not just the ones that matter to us. Facing the challenge of things that matter to them that are not the way they are supposed to be is a step toward encouraging them to learn to give away their own hearts.
We must realize, though, that just as it did for Jesus, this process takes a heart of great courage. We and our students would always rather hide from the things that are not the way they are supposed to be, just as Adam and Eve did after they disrupted everything. Jesus was not afraid to expose the fearful, self-protective, foolish hearts of His disciples. He was not afraid to ask them to walk into situations that were beyond their control. He was not afraid to trust them with work that was beyond their human capacities. In fact, He sent them into those situations. But note also that when He sent the 12 or the 70 out to do impossible work He empowered them to do it with His own Spirit. Is that not a creative challenge for us to figure out—how do we empower our students to leave the safe environs of our classrooms to go do the impossible task of changing things to resemble more of what they are supposed to be? And do we have the courage to face the results that our students might create? What an invitation from God to be a partner with Jesus!
The Safe Haven of Jesus’ Heart
If we take what I have just said seriously, we know we are in for many disappointments, painful failures, and, in general, a messy learning situation. How are third graders going to attempt to change the world from what it is to what it should be? How are self-conscious and self-serving seventh graders going to give away what they are so desperately trying to protect—their hearts? How are high school seniors who have finally made it to the top of the heap going to step out to do the impossible and get their faces smashed and their confidence shredded? What in the world would make it safe for these students to have the courage to try to make a difference in the world? to actually try to live like Jesus?
Well, what in the world makes it safe for us to try that? What made it possible for Jesus’ disciples to do so, even in the face of persecution and ultimately execution? I think that it is the infinite compassion of Jesus. His heart was always open to them, and it was safe for them to try and to fail. Even when rebuked, they knew they were safe with Him. He always received them, spoke into their lives as they needed Him to, saved them from disaster when necessary, picked them up after failure, and even forgave them for rejecting Him in fear when things got too tough and scary. “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28, NASB). That is, Jesus is offering to His listeners a safe haven, especially when their weariness and burdens come as a result of their own “mess-ups.”
Again, what are the implications for us as teachers? How do we provide a safe haven for our students? How do we have compassion on them? Our first mistake would be to think that such compassion means we do not discipline them, correct them, or have expectations of them. Jesus did all those things, sometimes even in what must have been a tough voice. But He was so committed to them and He had invested Himself so much in them that they knew even His rebukes, His pointing out their lack of faith, and His over-the-top expectations were evidences of His love for them. And they knew that He always longed for them to come home to Him to find solace, to find mercy, to experience grace, and to receive His long-suffering compassion.
Academically, a heart of compassion could evidence itself in structuring assignments and examinations in a way that students are always invited and sometimes even expected to try and try again if first efforts produce unacceptable performance. A heart of compassion could mean using formative evaluations to enable a student to build his or her final product into a success. It means that the relationship between teacher and student is clearly independent of achievement.
Behaviorally, a heart of compassion could mean that systems of rewards and punishments do not define classroom discipline. It could mean that when a student is at his or her worst the teacher responds with grace instead of law, the teacher reaches out with an open hand and heart to hear and console instead of with a closed fist and an angry heart ready to demand conformity.
In all areas of school life—athletics, academics, any co-curricular activities—it could mean that the atmosphere is one of cooperation and standing in the gap for those who are lacking rather than an atmosphere of competing, judging, winning, and losing. What really reveals redemption in a broken world more: a new school record in the 100-yard dash or a race in which the Special Olympics kids running the race see that one has fallen and they all return to pick up that runner and laughingly all join hands and cross the finish line together? (I realize that story could be apocryphal, but it makes the point.)
The Confidence of Jesus’ Heart
How can I say that Jesus had a heart that was confident toward His disciples? Were they not dull in understanding, a dichotomous mixture of arrogant and fearful in challenging situations, lacking in faith, argumentative about who would be the greatest in the kingdom, inept in almost every way? Yes, they were. They did not have it together.
Yet Jesus left the earth and gave them the most important work in the universe to do. What a group to hand over your mission to! But then why should Jesus have been confident in anything regarding His earthly ministry at all? From a human point of view, even His work on the earth appeared to be an utter failure.
Clearly, Jesus’ confidence was not in anything earthly. It was in His Father and in the Spirit. Jesus knew what His Father was up to, and He knew that the Spirit would carry it out, would finish what Jesus had started. Jesus knew that His work was finished but that the Spirit’s was not. He also knew that His Father was in charge and that nothing could thwart the Father, including the sin and failure of the image bearers. Jesus knew that what appeared to be was not what was really going on.
I think these truths give us as teachers great confidence! Sometimes I think our theology of the Holy Spirit is much more advanced than our practice and experience of Him! We act as if what we do in the classroom and in a student’s life determines what will become of that student. We act as if what is going on in the home or with peers is so powerful that it will determine what becomes of that student. We act as if our great lecture, creative lesson, clever insight, or whatever else we do right is supposed to make that student come out right. We act as if our mistakes will keep that student from making it in life.
Where is our confidence in the Holy Spirit as an active agent in the classroom? and out of the classroom? Do we not know that whatever we do right in a student’s life will have a desired, positive effect only as the Holy Spirit makes it so? Do we not think that the Spirit is active in overcoming our mistakes? Is it not the Spirit who enables us to even come close to dispensing grace to our students such that they have a living taste of what Jesus longs to give them?
Conclusion
I have tried to say that teachers are in the business of making disciples and that disciple making is a matter of the heart—a heart of commitment that never gives up, a heart of courage that invests, a heart of compassion that provides a safe haven, and a heart of confidence that believes in students because it believes in a God who is active in the lives of students and in the whole world. But of course, there is no way to make disciples without first being one. Jesus has this same heart toward you and me. Can we receive it and live close to it so that we can give it away to our students who need it?
Making Disciples 12.3