Teaching Outside the Box - Chapter 3. The Interpretive Approach

I still remember the feeling. I had been trying a budgeting system, and it started off really well and it was making sense to me. Then we got paid and trying to add this to the system left me feeling like the people who knew how it worked must be on another planet. It made no sense to me!

Now imagine being 15 and hearing that you can get to heaven because a carpenter who was also a teacher was crucified around 2,000 years ago on the other side of the world. Would it make sense to you just because someone told you? Probably not.

In Andrew Zirschky's book "Teaching Outside the Box" he writes about five different approaches to teaching. This is the third of the five, and one that gets the imagination involved.

The Interpretative Approach involves more than just talking and listening. This approach involves the student in seeking to interpret and understand what they are reading and/or hearing.

Teaching teenagers the facts and content of the Bible is very important. The Instructional Approach imparts knowledge and understanding that students apply to their lives. However, the Interpretive Approach is more concerned with seeing youth interpret their lives through the lens of God's story, and thereby come to live out of a different view of self. (p84)

This might seem a bit strange to those of us who believe in the value of preaching, but properly understood there is no conflict. Rather, adopting the interpretive approach will strengthen what you do with the instructional approach. What makes the difference? (Here's where it might get dangerous)

Imagination is the key.

This means that we as teachers want to encourage the youth in our groups to make the most of their imagination as they hear the stories in the Bible. Jesus is clearly the master story-teller, and even while some of his stories have no reference point for suburban teenagers, yet we can still imagine what it looks like when a shepherd goes looking for that one sheep that got lost, or when a woman is looking for a lost coin in a dark room, or a father looking out for his son and waiting for his return. Why not ask the teenagers about those images in their minds, and what they see as they place themselves in these stories of scripture.

Keep in mind that the Holy Spirit is the great teacher, and that what we are doing is to prepare the way for God to open the minds of these young people. Zirschky offers three essential steps to the interpretive approach - Accept; Imagine; Release.

Accept

Accept the students' individual experiences and ways of seeing the meaning of their lives and the world, and invite them to share their thoughts. I think many of us might be a little cautious of this step fearing that they will be on the wrong path. Maybe they will be. But they will also be the ones interpreting their own experiences, and it would be good for you to listen to that.

Imagine

Now we get to help them to imagine a world that can be different, a world that is informed by a Christian narrative, a world where they begin to see God's values being honoured and lived out. This can be confronting because the world around them in reality is probably very different, but maybe there are some places where those kingdom values shine. Highlight these ones.

Release

The world of the imagination is often a very comfortable place, but we can't stay there. So we release the teenagers back into their own world, but now they will be looking at that world with a different perspective.


I think the Interpretive Approach is brilliant, but I also recognise that if this is the only approach you use, your teenagers will potentially end up with an understanding of God which is based more on their own thoughts rather than God's own revelation. Used in conjunction with the Instructional and the Community of Faith approaches, it will greatly strengthen their understanding of the text and their experience of God.