Okay, you have been working on the whole "sovereignty of God" material and tonight is the night you teach. What do you do today?
Because you are using a PowerPoint presentation, you start by going over the presentation. You need to see, again, how you are using this material and make sure the order in which you have the material will really work. This is a very important presentation. All of the students there will have heard arguments about "how sovereign" God is. Some of them have heard people say that God is not sovereign, or that He has, in some way, "abandoned" some portion of His sovereignty. Some have heard of Open Theology, which denies that God either knows or controls what is going to happen next. How will they think about all this?
It is important that you take into account how modern college/career age young people think. They are not Puritan children from the 1600's, after all, but are raised in an age that is highly technological (therefore less personal in a traditional sense) but also highly reactive. They are used to thinking in small bites, not large bites, and to reaching conclusions quickly on very little data. They bore easily.
So, as you go through the presentation, think about how quickly you will move from topic to topic, from slide to slide. You can use more slides, with less information on each slide, more effectually than using fewer slides with more information.
And hit them hard with the truth. They like hard truths. They like to be confronted into knowing the truth more than they like being smoothed into knowing the truth. You do not teach college/career the same way you teach older people. They want the whole truth, in smaller bites.
So, how does it all look? For me, I will present the truth as it is, explaining sovereignty (what it means) and establishing that God has such sovereignty. Then, we are off to the races, with verse after verse of His sovereignty in different areas of life.
I will let you know how it goes.
Because you are using a PowerPoint presentation, you start by going over the presentation. You need to see, again, how you are using this material and make sure the order in which you have the material will really work. This is a very important presentation. All of the students there will have heard arguments about "how sovereign" God is. Some of them have heard people say that God is not sovereign, or that He has, in some way, "abandoned" some portion of His sovereignty. Some have heard of Open Theology, which denies that God either knows or controls what is going to happen next. How will they think about all this?
It is important that you take into account how modern college/career age young people think. They are not Puritan children from the 1600's, after all, but are raised in an age that is highly technological (therefore less personal in a traditional sense) but also highly reactive. They are used to thinking in small bites, not large bites, and to reaching conclusions quickly on very little data. They bore easily.
So, as you go through the presentation, think about how quickly you will move from topic to topic, from slide to slide. You can use more slides, with less information on each slide, more effectually than using fewer slides with more information.
And hit them hard with the truth. They like hard truths. They like to be confronted into knowing the truth more than they like being smoothed into knowing the truth. You do not teach college/career the same way you teach older people. They want the whole truth, in smaller bites.
So, how does it all look? For me, I will present the truth as it is, explaining sovereignty (what it means) and establishing that God has such sovereignty. Then, we are off to the races, with verse after verse of His sovereignty in different areas of life.
I will let you know how it goes.