What Every Teacher Needs: People Skills

We have been thinking together about several key areas in which every teacher needs to keep growing. These areas are vital to success in your ministry as a Sunday School Teacher. The first area is biblical accuracy or doctrinal integrity. A second need for every teacher is to develop strong people skills. One major hurdle in learning better people skills is realizing that we may need to grow in this area. People with poor people skills usually do not realize they have a problem! It is clear that this comes more easily for some than it does others. But it is also clear that we all can and should seek to grow in this important area.

Before we can grow in people skills, I think we must accept the fact that this is a spiritual issue. Just as surely as our love for God is a spiritual issue, our ability to love others is a spiritual issue as well. The passage that admonishes us to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, also tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves. People skills are really practical ways that we demonstrate our love for others. When you think about it, the fruit of the Spirit referred to in Galatians 5:22-23, helps us focus on nine traits that help us to love others by the power of the Spirit in us. It is the Spirit of God that enables us to demonstrate those characteristics. It really is a spiritual issue and those people skills are developed best on a spiritual level.

Acquiring people skills requires that we learn empathy. Empathy is the ability to see the perspective of the other person. It is putting ourselves in the other person’s shoes. The Bible says, “Therefore, whatever you want others to do for you, do also the same for them…” (Matthew 7:12 HCSB). This “do unto others” idea is empathy. You can ask, “If I were new to this class and insecure about my reading, would I want to read a difficult Bible passage in front of a room full of people I hardly know?” Or you can ask yourself, “If I were a first time visitor attending my class today, where would I sit, how would I want to be treated, or what would make me feel most comfortable?” Or you might ask yourself, “If I were 13 years old and already a very self-conscious adolescent, would I want the teacher to call attention to my lateness or my wet hair or the fact that I forgot to bring a Bible?” The devil is already at work trying to disturb the minds of lost and inactive people. Our ability to show empathy gives him one less thing to cause them to stumble.

Demonstrating sensitivity and kindness to others is a Christian norm that enhances people skills. On occasion I have run into a church leader who thought it was spiritual to make harsh, rude, insensitive remarks to others. These leaders often imagine themselves to be following the pattern of prophets of old who confronted idolaters and pagans who sacrificed their own children to a false god. They use the same zeal to rebuke people in their Sunday School class over things that are much less offensive. I have seen pastors who “grew” their churches from 200 members to 60 in a very short period of time using such tactics. I have seen Sunday School teachers who emptied out their Sunday School classes using the class time as an opportunity to comment on dress, or on a Bible translation, or a political issue or some gray area of behavior. When people left or stopped attending they blamed it on the Last Days or on the “fact” that the people were too immature to handle the “meat of the Word” they were teaching. In reality, their insensitivity and lack of people skills revealed the fact that they should not have been trusted with church leadership. Developing greater sensitivity toward others does not come naturally to our human nature, but it is vital to success in our ministry as Sunday School teachers.