The Heart of Teaching our Students

Hey Central Families!

This is Matt Woodson, Assistant Director of Student Ministries, and I wanted to spend a few moments sharing how we hope to transform our students’ lives through the grace of Christ.

If you’ve spent more than 30 minutes talking with me, you know how much I love trivia. I love learning random facts about how the world works. These are things that I have absolutely no expertise in. Things like why there are random earthquakes in Missouri, to learning that Sean Connery turned down the role of Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings. The things that I learn rarely have any affect how I live my life, and as much as I find these things interesting, most people around me could care less. Just knowing this trivia has no effect on my life (unless I’m in a trivia tournament I guess…)

When we are teaching our students, we want them to learn new things about God, and we want them to be captivated and curious about what they are learning. But at the heart of our teaching, we are showing them that every area of their lives is transformed when they encounter God’s grace. They now have a different identity, and they can use that identity to build God’s kingdom.

I love working with teenagers because at this stage in their lives something has clicked in their heads that they have a unique identity/purpose, and they can take what they have learned to change the world. It’s a privilege to see students grow in learning their gifts, but it can also be a double-edged sword. Students become frustrated when they are forced to learn things that seem to have no connection to their purpose. I’ve heard so many students complain that they are forced to learn things at school that seem so arbitrary; students that love history hate learning about mitochondria, or students that love science despise learning about the French revolution. It’s good that students must learn multiple lessons, but their frustration highlights how transformation happens when we learn our identity and are able to express that identity. Some students haven’t even begun to learn what their purpose is, and they feel like their purpose is just to digest more and more data.

But the biblical story helps answer those questions and frustrations. A vast majority of the people that Jesus interacted with were Jewish and had some understanding of the Old Testament. Each group of people had a different view of who they were and what the purpose of scripture was. Some people like the Pharisees saw scripture as a list of rules, and their purpose was to make sure everyone else was following those rules. Tax collectors like Matthew saw themselves as profiteers, and scripture was irrelevant. Regardless of the type of people Jesus interacted with, he showed them how scripture was a gift. And here’s the cool part, Jesus did this in a bunch of different ways. He preached sermons, he gave people parables to think about, he quoted scripture while healing people. He interacted with a lot of people, identified their gifts, invited them to a new identity, and showed them how they could use those gifts and passions with their new identities.

In Student Ministries, we seek to know what our students are passionate about and help them express their identity in Christ in those passions. If they love music, we want their help in our praise band. If they love writing and social media, we want their help in promoting our social media. If they love building things or love being outdoors, we want their help in serving our refugee community. There are so many things teenagers are passionate about, and we love spending our time helping our students grow in those passions and showing them that they can use those gifts to love God and love others.

Here's where you can help partner together with us in that mission. We want to know what your kids are passionate about. We want to go to the places that they are growing their giftings. That could be places like their games, robotics competitions, concerts, debates, or the thousand other things that they are doing. We want to not only support them in those passions, but it also helps us better shepherd your student individually. When we see them, we can encourage them that their gifts are building God’s kingdom. We can point them to scriptures that guide them in their passions. We’ll show them God’s mercy when they have setbacks in their endeavors

All this is to show them that God is relevant in their lives. We want them to see how big God and his mission is. The Bible isn’t just a set of stories, or a set of verses to memorize. Those stories and verses change the way we live our lives today, and as we grow together that story will impact every part of our lives.

It is truly a privilege to be a part of your family’s life. Feel free to reach out to me anytime!

May God’s peace be with you,
Matt Woodson
Assistant Director of Student Ministries
Central Presbyterian Church