The Quest for the Masterpiece

I taught this morning at church. I really love the opportunity to teach, whenever I get it. Teaching is one of those things in my life where I feel “alive”—like I’m doing what I was created to be doing. I pretty much love everything about it – I love preparing for it, I love the research, and most of all, I love the presentation. There is nothing quite like giving a really good teaching.

Over the years, I have come to regard making and giving a teaching as an art form. There really is no other way to describe it. I feel the way about my teachings, that a sculptor or painter would feel about their masterpiece. I have a certain methodology that I go through each time I prepare, and each “masterpiece” has to have certain elements in it that fit together just so.

I will often agonize over the smallest details of the teaching because I long for them to be so perfect. In fact, this agony has become a familiar, and not so welcome, part of my teaching creation process. C.S. Lewis used to write of “longing” in many of his works—a pain-like emotion that reaches out from within us and stretches for the divine. This longing drove many of his characters to seek ‘better worlds’ and to not be satisfied with the status quo.

I have this longing when it comes to teaching.

I am driven by an intense and powerful force within me to make each teaching the best I have ever given. And so, I scrutinize. I dissect. I disassemble and reassemble. Every minute of a teaching counts. Every verse. Every story. Every point. The flow. The logical structure. The tone. The humor. The Spirit. And on and on.

I agonize over every fine detail – they all have to line up perfectly like the shaft of an arrow, all pointing in the same direction, so as to pierce the heart of those listening (mine included). I aim, as one of my teachers once said, to “Stimulate the mind, stir the heart, and motivate the will” every time.

I could write for hours about teaching, I’ll have to do more some time, because what I inteded to write about (the many pieces that I try to look for each time I teach) I have yet to do. Suffice to say, today I gave my teaching at our first service, and…you guessed it…decided it wasn’t quite perfect yet.

In between services I changed the title, swapped points #1 and #2, deleted my intro and added a new one complete with dramatic and funny story (that I thought of in the bathroom) and re-tooled the ending.

The second time around was so much better. It almost felt like a masterpiece to me, except….