I taught my first installment of Greek nouns last week. Tomorrow we move from second declension nouns to nouns of the first declension.
Yes, I love teaching nouns. I mean, it's no problem for me to get carried away when I get to the vocabulary and begin doing word studies. Let's see ... shall we talk about the Greek word for truth, or kingdom, or church, or salvation, or joy, or tongue, or love, or righteousness, or peace, or parable, or soul, or prophet, or tax collector? Nah. I'm going with "disciple," mainly because I don't care much for the term "disciple." I mean, we should really use a term like learner or apprentice or (best of all) trainee. To "make disciples" doesn't mean sitting people down in a classroom and having them learn facts and then take tests. Imagine you're starting out as an employee at WalMart. You are now officially a "trainee," and what will you be taught? A trainee coach at Walmart, among other duties, "provides supervision and development opportunities, training, and mentoring of associates by assigning duties, setting clear expectations, and providing associate recognition." I love what that says about quality versus quantity. Walmart has this down pat and it would make a wonderful pattern for the way we teach disciples about what it means to be saved. You can say, "Discipleship is just following Jesus." But those of us who've followed him for any amount of time know it's so much more than that.
So it's onto the next chapter in our textbook. Class time can't come around quickly enough.