GREAT THINGS ENTERPRISE
CLAUDE BLACK
Mark 3:35
New Methods
In my undergraduate program, I had two majors and two minors. One major was in secondary education, and in that major was a class entitled “Teaching Methods.” This was before the advent of the personal computer, before Radio Shack’s TRS-80, introduced in 1977. The instructor painstakingly demonstrated how to use a sticky transparency to lift the ink from a printed page and make an overhead transparency to be used on a new device called an overhead projector. Overhead projectors appeared in nearly every college classroom, slowly replacing the chalkboard.
After Jesus’ teaching in the house or courtyard, he began to teach in the open, which eventually became known as “field preaching.” “And again he began to teach beside the sea, and a very large crowd gathered around him, so he got into a boat on the sea and sat down, and all the crowd was on the land close to the sea.” (Mark 4:1) As opposed to a crowd in the synagogue, or the house, or the courtyard, the people gathered around Jesus on the seashore could come and go at will. The large crowd gathered around Jesus was accustomed to being taught in the synagogue, so listening to a teacher in the open was likely a new experience for many in the crowd on the seashore.
In Bristol, England, Evangelist George Whitefield was preaching to large crowds of miners in the open air. He called on John Wesley to come and help, but Wesley said, “I love a commodious room, a soft cushion, a handsome pulpit.” He was rather offended at the idea of open air preaching. Wesley said, “I could scarcely reconcile myself at first to this strange way—having been all my life (till very lately) so tenacious of every point relating to decency and order, that I should have thought the saving of souls almost a sin if it had not been done in a church.” Swallowing his pride, however, he did go to help Whitefield and later saw that field preaching won souls and said, “I cannot argue against a matter of fact.”
This doesn’t mean that change comes easily. Many instructors continued to use transparencies and overhead projectors after the advent of the personal computer, the projector, and PowerPoint programs. Wesley found preaching in the open air difficult to accept, but he changed his method and used it effectively. Change—not easy, but possible with the Father’s help.
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