Christian Education — Unit 6: Teaching Aims and the Lesson Plan

Paul wrote 1 Corinthians 14:8 about a trumpet that did not know what it was sounding. Was that a charge? A retreat? A signal to camp? An alarm? If the trumpet itself was not sure, no soldier could be sure either, and the army would scatter rather than march. Paul drew a hard conclusion: communication that is not clear in itself cannot make anyone clear. The unclear trumpet does not produce hesitant soldiers; it produces no soldiers at all.

The Christian Education classroom is full of trumpets. Every Sunday, every lesson, every paragraph the teacher delivers is a sound the learners are trying to follow. If the teacher does not know what he is sounding for — if he himself cannot say what this hour is supposed to accomplish in the life of a learner — the learners will hear forty minutes of vague noise and go home unprepared for any battle.

This unit takes two large topics. The first three sections are about the aim — what an aim is, how to write one, and the difference between an aim and a wish. The last three sections are about the lesson plan — the three parts every plan should have, with biblical examples of how the Master Teacher and his earliest preachers used each part. The teacher who has a clear aim and a written plan still has work to do, but the work has direction. The teacher who has neither is doomed to wander, no matter how hard he runs.

Paul described his entire life with a sentence that ought to be carved over every classroom door. "This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 3:13–14). Notice the five words at the front of that sentence: this one thing I do. Paul did not have ten priorities or seven goals or a vague desire. He had one. He could name it in five words.

That is what a teaching aim is. It is the single thing the lesson is supposed to do for the learner this hour. Not three things. Not five things. One. The teacher who tries to do five things in forty minutes does none of them well; the teacher who picks the right one and presses toward it accomplishes more in one Sunday than the scattered teacher does in a season.

An aim has three elements. It names a learner (who?), a change (what should be different?), and a direction (toward what end?). For example: "By the end of this lesson, the children of the third-grade class will be able to recite the names of the twelve apostles and explain why Jesus chose ordinary fishermen instead of religious experts." That sentence names the learner, names the change, and names the direction. Compare that to a wish: "I want the children to learn about the apostles." A wish has good intentions. An aim has a target.

Paul's one thing was eternal: the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. The teacher's one thing for any given Sunday is smaller, but it is built from the same material. Each lesson is a single arrow drawn from the same quiver, aimed at a target the teacher can see and the learners can recognize.

An aim that cannot be measured cannot be hit. The book of Nehemiah opens with the most specific planning project in the Old Testament. Nehemiah was the cupbearer to King Artaxerxes when word came that the wall of Jerusalem was broken down and the gates were burned. He wept. He fasted. He prayed. And then he did something that distinguishes Nehemiah from every well-meaning daydreamer who has ever grieved over a problem: he made a plan.

When the king finally asked, "For what dost thou make request?", Nehemiah was ready. He did not say, "I want to help Jerusalem somehow." He said, "If it please the king... that thou wouldest send me unto Judah, unto the city of my fathers' sepulchres, that I may build it" (Nehemiah 2:5). Then the king pressed for specifics: "For how long shall thy journey be? and when wilt thou return?" (Nehemiah 2:6). Nehemiah named a time. He requested letters of safe passage. He requested a letter to Asaph the keeper of the king's forest, asking for timber for the gates of the palace and the wall of the city. He named the materials before he ever lifted a hammer.

When he arrived at Jerusalem, he kept the same discipline. "I arose in the night, I and some few men with me; neither told I any man what my God had put in my heart to do at Jerusalem" (Nehemiah 2:12). He inspected every gate. He measured every breach. Only then did he stand before the people and say, "Come, and let us build up the wall of Jerusalem, that we be no more a reproach" (Nehemiah 2:17). The wall was finished in fifty-two days. A two-month project, a clear plan, a measured outcome. The text records exactly when each gate was built and by which family.

The Christian Education aim is written the same way. It does not say, "I want the youth to grow." It says, "By the end of this lesson, the youth in this class will be able to define the gospel in their own words and identify three places in their own week where they could share it." A learner could meet that aim or fail to meet it, and both the teacher and the learner could tell which had happened. That is what makes an aim hittable. Nehemiah could measure his wall in stones. The teacher measures his lesson in a learner who can do, say, or be something at the end of the hour that he could not do, say, or be at the start.

CTS Editorial Note (2026): A measurable aim needs a fair way to recognize success. After a lesson on the Good Samaritan, ask learners to explain the point of the parable and suggest one act of neighbor-love in their own setting. A short oral answer, written response, or appropriate demonstration can show what was understood. A correct explanation in the student’s own words may be stronger evidence than a memorized phrase. Use the responses to decide whether the next lesson should review, clarify, or move forward.

Once the aim is written, the lesson plan is the road by which the teacher and the learners get there. This is a teaching tool, not a text Scripture itself prescribes, but it is a useful one: most effective lessons, regardless of the age of the learners or the topic, tend to have three parts.

The opening grabs the learner. It connects the lesson to something the learner already knows or already wants to know. It answers the silent question every learner asks at the start of every class: Why should I listen to this? The opening should be short — usually no more than the first five or ten minutes — but it is not optional. A lesson without an opening begins in the middle and never gathers its learners.

The body develops the truth. This is the long middle of the lesson, where the Word is opened, the doctrine is taught, the story is told, the question is explored. The body is where the teacher does most of the actual teaching. It should be organized in two, three, or four clear movements that connect to one another, not a wandering river of every interesting fact the teacher knows. A learner who can repeat the three points of the body at the end of the hour will remember them for the rest of his life. A learner who cannot list a single point will remember nothing.

The closing applies the truth. It moves the lesson from the head to the hands and feet. It answers the second silent question every learner asks at the end of every lesson: So what? A closing should always include some kind of decision or response. The teacher who skips the closing has fed his learners and then sent them home with the food still on the plate.

The next three sections will look at each part in turn, using three biblical sermons as illustrations of how the pattern plays out, not as proof the apostles were consciously following this outline: the opening as Peter sounded it on the day of Pentecost, the body as Paul built it on Mars Hill, and the closing as Peter brought his Pentecost crowd to a single decision that day.

Acts 2 records the most famous opening in any sermon ever preached. The Holy Spirit had just fallen, the disciples were speaking in the languages of the gathered Jews, and the crowd was confused. Some asked, "What meaneth this?" Others mocked: "These men are full of new wine" (Acts 2:12–13). The crowd was already engaged. They had a question. They were waiting for an answer.

Peter stood up with the eleven and opened with one of the most perfectly crafted sentences in apostolic preaching: "Ye men of Judaea, and all ye that dwell at Jerusalem, be this known unto you, and hearken to my words: For these are not drunken, as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day" (Acts 2:14–15). Notice every move he made. He addressed the audience by who they were. He commanded their attention. He named the question they were already asking. And he answered it with a piece of common sense the crowd could not deny — it was only nine in the morning.

That is an opening. It met the crowd where they were standing. It used the question they were already asking. It hooked their attention with a single fact they could verify by looking at the sun. And it set up everything Peter was about to say. He had not yet given them any doctrine. He had not yet quoted any prophecy. But the crowd was now listening, because Peter had earned the right to speak.

The Christian Education teacher needs the same instinct. The opening of every lesson should connect to a question, an experience, or a curiosity the learner already has. Sometimes the question is right on the surface. Sometimes it has to be raised by the teacher: a story told, a problem posed, a verse held up to the light, a strange sentence dropped onto the table. By the end of the opening, the learner should be leaning forward and saying, in his heart, Tell me more.

The body of a lesson is the long middle, and the model is Paul on Mars Hill in Acts 17. He stood in the most cultured city in the ancient world, surrounded by Stoics and Epicureans, in the very court where Socrates had once defended himself. Paul had been waiting in Athens for Silas and Timothy, and his spirit had been stirred by the idolatry he saw in every street. The philosophers brought him to the Areopagus and asked, "May we know what this new doctrine, whereof thou speakest, is?" (Acts 17:19). They had asked the question. Paul gave them the body of a lesson.

Watch how he built it. He opened by acknowledging their religiosity and naming an altar he had passed in the city: "To the Unknown God" (Acts 17:23). That was his hook. From that hook he moved to his first point: God is the Creator, not made with hands, who gives to all life and breath (Acts 17:24–25). Then his second point: God is the Sustainer, who has determined times and boundaries that men should seek him (Acts 17:26–27). Then his third point: God is the Father of all men, in whom we live and move and have our being — a truth their own poets had glimpsed (Acts 17:28). And the fourth point landed the truth where they lived: if we are the offspring of God, then God is not silver or stone shaped by an artist's hand (Acts 17:29). Four movements, each one building on the previous, leading toward the central claim that was about to come.

Notice what is happening in that body. Paul is not dumping every doctrine he ever learned into the open air. He is selecting four pieces, sequencing them, and arranging them so that the next one cannot be heard without the previous one. Each point makes a single claim. Each claim is supported by a single argument or quotation. Each one moves the audience one step closer to the destination. By the end of his fourth point, the philosophers had been taken from their familiar ground all the way to the threshold of a doctrine they had never heard — the resurrection.

The Christian Education teacher writes the body of his lesson the same way. He picks two, three, or four claims that together carry the aim. He arranges them so they build, not so they merely accumulate. He resists every temptation to add a fifth or a sixth or a tenth, because the longer the list grows, the less the learner remembers. The body of a lesson is not a buffet. It is a path.

Return to Acts 2. Peter has opened with the question of the crowd. He has built his body in three movements: the prophecy of Joel about the last days, the witness of David about the resurrection, the testimony that Jesus is both Lord and Christ. The crowd has followed him from What meaneth this? all the way to This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses (Acts 2:32). And then comes the closing.

Luke records what happened in one stunning sentence: "Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart, and said unto Peter and to the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do?" (Acts 2:37). The crowd asked Peter the closing question themselves. They were pierced. They had been moved from their head to their conscience. They knew the truth, and now they wanted to know the response.

Peter's closing gave them the response in one sentence: "Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost" (Acts 2:38). Repent. Be baptized. Receive. Three actions, in the right order, that the learners could take that very day. Three thousand of them did. The closing of that one sermon turned the largest crowd in Jerusalem into the largest church in Jerusalem in a single afternoon.

Now consider what Peter did NOT do in his closing. He did not summarize his outline. He did not say, "In conclusion, here are my main points again." He did not let the moment dissolve into vague suggestions for future thought. He answered the question the lesson had raised in the learner. He named the action. And he expected an immediate response.

The Christian Education closing does the same. The teacher's last five minutes are the most important five minutes of the hour. What does this mean for me on Monday morning? the learner is asking. What is the next step? The teacher who has answered those two questions has finished his lesson. The teacher who has not answered them has only delivered information. Information without application leaves the learner where it found him. Application with information moves him forward.

The teacher who walks out of the classroom on Sunday morning ought to be able to answer two questions: What was my aim? and Did I hit it? If he can answer both, he is a teacher; whether or not the lesson went perfectly, he was aiming. If he cannot answer either one, he is not yet a teacher; he is a man with a Bible and a microphone, and the trumpet is sounding uncertainly.

One aim, written in a single sentence. Three parts to the lesson plan: opening, body, closing. Each part with its own work, none of them optional. The Master Teacher used this form, his apostles used this form, and the church that came out of their preaching changed the world. The Christian Education teacher who learns to do the same thing in forty minutes a Sunday is in the very best of company.

An aim is one arrow. A lesson plan is the bowstring drawn back. The hour itself is the release. The teacher cannot make the arrow fly true after he has loosed it; that is the LORD's part. But the teacher can draw well. He can aim well. He can choose his target with care, hold his form with discipline, and trust the Spirit with the wind.

In Unit 7 we will turn from the plan to the methods that fill it. The same lesson plan can be carried by lecture, by discussion, by storytelling, by question and answer, by demonstration, by drama, by song. We will look at how to choose the right method for the right point in the right lesson, so that the arrow not only flies but lands where the teacher hoped it would.