Teaching Team

we're looking for some new models for how we do teaching at hOME. Last night we had the inaugural meeting of the newly formed hOME Teaching Team.
The idea is to explore some more collaborative teachings styles. At the beginning of each month those with an interest or a sense of calling to wrestle with and teach the scriptures in the context of our community will gather to look at the Sunday lectionary texts for the following month (so last night we were looking at the texts for January). Out of the creative discussion that follows ideas and themes will emerge which people can then take away and shape up into talks (and the plan is that some people will work in pairs etc. and think of creative ways of helping the gathered community to engage with the texts).
We had a really great first meeting. To me, as someone who has spent many hours over recent years sitting alone in a room trying to come up with some interesting and spiritually nourishing things to say from a text, to work on texts in a group setting was a very rich way to approach the task of doing a talk. Especially if, like me, you are an extrovert processor. We were finding that there was a real synergy to this approach as one person tossed out an idea which someone else then developed and added to.
And I like the idea of broadening the teaching base and democratizing it a bit more - taking it out of the exclusive domain of the 'professionals' and releasing more people with a gift/desire/passion for this work, to learn together and from each other.