Object Lessons: Teaching With Common Objects And Activities

Object lessons use common objects and activities to drive home a point by connecting it to thoughts and memories already in the listener's mind.

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Teaching With Common Objects And Activities

(Published in Directory : Christian Ed. : Preaching)

Jesus was a master at seeing connections between the everyday material world and the deep life principles of the spiritual world. His teaching brought profound ideas into focus using mundane objects and activities.

In Matthew 13:31 Jesus compares the Kingdom of God to a mustard seed. The principle was simple: the Kingdom starts out small, but grows into something huge. But from that point onward, every listener who walked by a mustard plant would remember that spiritual lesson.

In Luke 9:62, Jesus tells His followers that once they put their hand to the plow, they must look back. Again, from that point forward, any farmer who set foot in his field, or any traveler who walked by a farm, would remember this important principle of spiritual life.

Jerry, one of our deacons at my church, was called upon to pray during the church service. Before praying, he commented that prayer was not like a cell phone. Unlike a cell phone, we never "lose signal" when talking to God, and we never run out of minutes. A very short lesson, but for cell phone users, very memorable!

This summer we took our youth group to Acadia National Park, and had our Sunday church service on top of Cadillac Mountain. Glen, one of the leaders, shared a message on our manner of speech to one another. Before the service, someone had handed him a spike and said, "Can you fit this into your sermon?"

Taking this as a challenge, he fit the spike into the message by pointing out that just like a spike could be used either to build something, or to harm someone, so our words either build or destroy.

Of course, this raises an interesting question: if he had been handed a rock, or a shoelace, or a softball, could he have come up with an appropriate object lesson?

I suspect he could. For every lesson we have to teach, there are probably hundreds of ways we could connect it to the material world, thereby making it far more memorable to our listeners.

About the Author

Name: Douglas Twitchell

Website: http://www.jeorgethedodo.com/dougblog/

Bio: I am the designer, maintainer, and editor of this site (Articles For Educators).

I am a former educator in both elementary and secondary math and science. In addition to this site, I also built and maintain the following educational sites: The Problem Site, Tile Puzzler, and Quote Puzzler.

I'm also a ventriloquist, and you can find more about my puppets here: Jeorge The Dodo

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Recent Member Comments

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Bernadin wrote on Jan 22, 2008

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Dear writer and the readers, I thank God that I accidently found this website, and couldn't stop being a member of it myself.

I agree that it's very important to use common objects as we teach/preach. I recently started implementing this in my daily activities and also while teaching the youth group at our church. It definitely helps us think on things which are good, noble and praiseworthy, instead of thinking about the material itself, which is passing away!

Thank you for this brilliant article and an excellent website!
Bernadin

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