Learning How To Teach From Jesus, part 5

“My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work,” Jesus told them.
-John 4:34

Chapter 5 of Harrell Howard Horne’s book, Jesus The Master Teacher, is entitled:

HIS AIMS

Harrell: A real teacher must have both strategy and tactics, that is, he must have both objectives and means for attaining them. Without strategy, tactics have no goal; without tactics, strategy has no means of attainment. What were the objectives of the Great Teacher? First, make a list of these for yourself, and then compare it with the one given below.


What were Jesus’ objectives as a teacher?  What were his aims?  Did some ideas come to mind, when we read Harrell’s words, above?

• Teaching strategy
• Teaching tactics
• Teaching objectives

Here is Harrell’s list the 9 aims of Jesus:

1. To do his Father’s will and work.
2. To be accepted as Messiah.
3. To win learners and to train them as witnesses of his.
4. To substitute vital for formal religion.
5. To fulfill the law in the new universal kingdom of social righteousness.
6. To show by example and to teach by precept the way of life.
7. To quicken the faith and hope of men.
8. To break the bonds of race prejudice.
9. To destroy the works of darkness.

These are Jesus’ aims in terms of his accomplishments.  

• Which ones of these are practical for us?  
• Is Jesus more concerned with our thinking or our actions, what we believe or what we do?
• How do our secular goals for education today coincide or differ with Jesus’ educational style?

According to Harrell, the aims of modern education, circa 1920, that Jesus actually exemplified, are:

1. To develop a sound body: He healed people and made them whole.
2. To form a good character: He lived and taught the highest standards of moral character.
3. To refine feeling: He pointed out the beauties of nature.
4. To inform and equip the intellect: He taught ethical and spiritual truths and trained the intelligence of his disciples.
5. To make a good citizen: He was a good citizen and taught obedience to civil authority.
6. To cultivate productive skill: He was a carpenter and taught economic virtues.
7. To relate life to its Source and Goal: He was the Son and spiritualized life.

Harrell wrote (1920), that:

Jesus practiced what modern educators preach, that complete education is sevenfold namely, physical, moral, esthetic, intellectual, social, vocational, and spiritual. In both practice and theory the Master Teacher long ago set up the standards which are also those of our modern pedagogy.

Questions to think about:

• Would you say that one of the aims of Jesus was to establish religion as an ecclesiastical institution on the earth? 
• Did Jesus intend to reform Judaism or to found Christianity? 
•  Review his aims and ask in which he succeeded best. 
•  To what extent should his aims be ours? 

The next chapter is on “His Use of Problems”.

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Learning to teach Like Jesus series:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Part 4