A Jesus Seminar

“Jesus did not want anyone to know where they were, because he was teaching his disciples.”
Mark 9.30

Imagine if Jesus utilized our methodology for teaching. (We often think he likes our methods!) If he was walking around Earth today and wanted to teach his disciples something, and wanted to do it the way we do it, this verse would say something like:

“Jesus outsourced the design of a really cool logo for the upcoming teaching event. He found enough money in the budget for t-shirts and koozies imprinted with the logo for all the participants. He purchased a web-site for the specific event (ignoring the graphics on godaddy.com) and signed a deal with constantcontact.com to alert everyone in his address book about the upcoming event. Jesus rented a very posh hotel banquet room, complete with complimentary coffee in the mornings and soft drinks in the afternoon. He did have to pay extra for the oversized white board and video projector. He designed a “killer” PowerPoint Presentation to help him communicate with his students. Since it was near the end of the budget year, and he would lose any unspent money, every participant received a leather portfolio with the conference logo embossed on the cover. He also placed ads on 3 different billboards and bought time on 2 different radio stations to help publicize the event. All of this led to a fantastic “teaching moment.” At the end of the day, each disciple was asked to fill out a survey on the event. The next day, the lectures ended up on YouTube. One month later, the outline was released in a book.”

For Jesus, teaching someone something simply meant teaching them something. And what he teaches us from this interesting little footnote in scripture is that content always trumps hype, preparation, and marketing.