Church Voices

Taylor Mali does this sort of slam poetry/stand up comedy schtick that mostly revolves around the deification of teachers.  You can see the text of it here (although, to be fair, without seeing him perform you can’t really get a feel for the power of his communication).  In this particular poem he is asked what he makes.  Here’s part of his response:

You want to know what I make?

I make kids work harder than they ever thought they could.
I can make a C+ feel like a Congressional medal of honor
and an A- feel like a slap in the face.
How dare you waste my time with anything less than your very best.

Its really power, heady stuff.  But when I hear it I just laugh cynically.  Mostly because after 12 years of dealing with lots of teachers I know its a bunch of crap.  I know that 70% of teachers are at best average, and stand up there and follow the syllabus, 25% are terrible and/or lazy, and 5% are excellent. 

I had one teacher that kept a running total of how many days he had left until retirement.  Once a week he’d hand out a worksheet, take the class down to the weight room and lift weights while we either joined in or sat on the floor and waited for "class" to be over.  Even when we had class, he spent most of it either talking sports with the jocks in class, or

I had a world geography teacher that, unbelievably, was even worse.  On Monday he’d hand out a list of countries, their capitals, and a map then go sit at his desk at the back of the class room and read a variety of newspapers, magazines, and books.  The rest of the week he’d tell us to study the list and go back and read.  Then on Friday he’d pass out the test and go and read. 

Don’t get me wrong I’m not knocking what Taylor Mali does.  He’s probably in the top 1% of communicators in the entire world.  The problem is what he says, and what I’ve experienced are completely at odds, and so when he deifies teachers it has no persuasive effect on me because no matter how good, entertaining or fantastic a communicator he is he cannot overcome what I’ve actually experienced. 

So here’s the lesson.  If you want people to believe that the church should be a place where God’s people love each other, forgive each other, and actually live the gospel then you better make sure that when people experience Christians they experience people who love, forgive, and live the gospel.  Because otherwise there’s no one who can discuss, teach or preach persuasively enough to convince them otherwise.