Planting Seeds of Faith: A Conversation with Mr. Eastman about Spiritual Formation In Middle School
In our pursuit of excellence in the 5 areas of our Thriving Index, spiritual formation enjoys a uniquely essential emphasis as we think about defining ‘success’ as a gospel-centered school.
Mr. Eastman joined our Faculty in July of this year as our Middle School History & Bible Teacher after having taught at another school in our association. Prior to his teaching career, Mr. Eastman spent almost a decade on the mission field where he and his wife spent years sharing the gospel in Israel & in Germany.
When we hired Mr. Eastman, we knew his contribution to the middle school played an important role to instill Scriptural knowledge and values during some of the most critical years in the lives of our students. We recently sat down with him to discuss what middle schoolers are reading and discovering in Scripture Memory class and what his goals are for growing their faith and knowledge in 2023.
Q: What areas have your middle school Bible classes covered & focused on during the fall semester at TRS?
“With the seventh and eighth grade students, we’ve been focusing on Ephesians, and we memorize a verse or two every week. We are trying to get them to read a passage and then decipher for themselves what it means by asking questions about the text and not waiting on somebody to tell them. The language is complex, but it is possible to read and understand it if you spend time with it. That’s one thing we’ve been doing - lingering in a particular text for a longer period and then going over it multiple times to think about what it could mean.”
Q: To help with comprehension, are you selecting a few verses per week to memorize?
“Yes, I’ve been choosing verses from the passages we’re studying more in-depth so that they get it in two different ways. By reading a long passage but then focusing on one or two verses and memorizing it. The future hope is that they’ll still recognize it because they’ve spent time with it.”
Q: Are there any particular themes you are honing in on in Ephesians?
“With the seventh and eighth graders, the theme that we’ve been discovering in Ephesians is what Paul calls the mystery of the Gospel that finally got revealed in Jesus’s lifetime and after Jesus’s death and resurrection. That you don’t have to ethnically be a Jew to be one of the people of God, that now the Gospel is for Jews and Gentiles, and the two have become one new people. The separation is over. We’ve been talking about what that looks like and how there used to be a separate place for Gentiles to worship in the temple, and the Jews wouldn’t even eat with or talk to them. They would worship in their separate place, but God brought and is bringing us all together into one family.
With the sixth graders, we’ve been going through the statements of Jesus in the Gospel of John when He says ‘I am’, like “I am the good shepherd (John 10:11-18 NIV)”. It shows them that every time Jesus says that, he’s indirectly claiming to be God, and the people were able to understand that. We’ve been exploring how it would be to imagine ourselves in that setting and in their midst.”
Q: Are there any particular goals for the new year with Bible study?
“I’m trying to help our students practice being familiar with a physical copy of the Bible and practicing that skill of either knowing where to find a chapter or knowing what the contents are and searching from there. Imparting familiarity with God’s Word is a goal that will have lifetime implications.”
Last question - Why is Bible memorization especially important for spiritual formation in middle schoolers?
“In middle school, students are starting to push back a little bit, ask deeper questions, and think for themselves, which I want to encourage them to do. Because until you make the Bible personal to you, it’s just what people told you, which is a weak foundation to build on. When you look at the difficult or controversial parts of the Christian faith, you have to be willing to live in that tension of some things remaining a mystery. But in this setting, it’s safe to discuss those things and to look at the Bible to see where there are some answers in Scripture for our concerns and worries.
In Matthew 28, the Bible says that some of the disciples who interacted with a resurrected Jesus still doubted. We believe God can help us mature in our faith as we wrestle through difficulties in the text and in our own lives.
That’s what I hope we’re able to do with these students, in giving them a space to become active and engaged followers of Christ.”
