Mandy Sayers, Teaching Assistant

So, I thought it'd be a GREAT idea to spend my day off with my former pastor and current mentor/friend, Andy Lunt, being a TA for his Introduction to Preaching class. I thought it wouldn't be tiring because, shoot, we're talking 9 to 12. Manageable. The kids are in school, it's my day off, what's the big deal? Preaching is one of my soul-feeding activities, says I. And I so loved being a student--who wouldn't want to take a turn on the other side of the lectern, and Intro to Preaching is perfect. Pretty sure I could NOT be a TA in Hebrew or anything of that nature..so I'm giving it a shot. 

Of course, I grossly underestimated the amount of work and energy it takes to do this, but in the main, it was a really fabulous idea. It's a huge honor, first of all, to be a Teaching Assistant or indeed a Teaching Anything. These students have paid for a block of time for us to teach them, and time is the one truly irreplaceable commodity. Andy is wise and trustworthy and gifted (and knows me well enough to know "what he's getting" in me). I pretty much stand up there and wave my hands about and say outrageous and true things, designed to enlighten at best and at the very least be something they'll remember.

At first, I was really scared, because I felt unqualified--after all the ink is barely dry on my diploma. I discovered to my horror that I am so adrenaline-filled it is like being out of my body to do this. Dry mouth, slightly dizzy, and Southern Storyteller meets Denise Hopkins meets Ellen Degeneres probably best describes my "teaching style"--minus the dancing. When I worried that I was a little too "much" and that I was probably going to stroke out or get arrested or something by the Teaching Police, my dad said, "My girl, they have Andy if they want wise and sage and sane and steady. If they want hair on fire, what's she gonna say NEXT, well that's what they're paying YOU for." I had to admit, he kind of had a point.

So, it appears I will survive my first semester as a TA. I hope someday I get to have another semester as this IS the sort of thing one gets better at with practice. I marshal everything I have in my arsenal for these new preachers (just as I do when I preach, myself) because a. this is their last chance to do this for practice, to make blunders and try things without actually doing it for "real" and b. as Buechner aptly describes, for maybe 30 seconds, every Sunday, a congregation waits expectantly for a preacher who clears her throat and leans over the sacred desk. For that half minute, they are wondering if we have a truth to tell them, if the Word has devastated us before it has gotten to them (Willimon, I think I have to thank for that), and whether we will indeed bring any good news to bear into their real lives.  One important sign of our Lord's Resurrection is that some cloudy Sunday morning in Dublin, Georgia or Detroit, Michigan or Deale, MD, a preacher is willing to stand up and say "I have seen the Lord" or "We have been lying to ourselves" or "We are called to see this world through the glasses of the widow's mite/prodigal son/Lazarus." There's no more important work. And that's just what I do on my day off. If you think THAT'S wild, you should see what I do the other days of the week.