Testing Faith

Trainee teacher Sean Harris is so passionate when he talks about his job that it's impossible not to be infected by his enthusiasm.

He's clearly a man who loves what he does.

So it's surprising to hear he found the decision to train as a teacher an extremely difficult one to take.

Heaton Baptist Church

Up until last year, Sean, 25, was youth and schools worker at Heaton Baptist Church, where he worked for about four years.

But, after doing regular "God slots" in local schools, he started to feel like he was in the wrong place.

"I remember there was quite a significant moment once where I was walking out of this school [Longbenton Community College] and I just thought 'Oh it's a real shame that I get to walk away,'" he says.

"I guess I almost felt that the kids were missing out on something - that somehow I was being slightly cheap in the way that I would come, I'd do my session, I'd maybe do an assembly and then I'd walk off.

"It made me think 'What impact am I really having? Would I have more impact as a teacher?'".

Helping young people

Around the same time Sean was working towards becoming ordained as a youth minister and this process also forced him to question his long-term commitment to working within the church.

One day he stopped outside the school where he now works and prayed to God for direction.

"I said 'Just make it clear if I am to teach or if that is an appropriate route for me to take, God, then just make it clear to me'. But it wasn't like a voice came out of the clouds and opened up the school gates and there the job was offered or anything!

"Some people hear an audible voice, others hear God's voice in a dream or a vision or maybe a word of prophecy in church but for me it was a step by step process," Sean continues.

"I'm hesitant to say I've been called to teach but I guess ultimately I've felt I've been called to have a positive impact on the lives of young people."

Conversation not conversion

It can't have helped that not everyone Sean knew thought he was making the right decision.

"Sometimes there is this view that there's a sacred part of God's work, your 'churchy' work, and the rest of it, which is the secular stuff, which you and I do, God approves of it but it's not quite 'God's work'. And I guess I have an issue with that.

Spiderman: a lesson in self-control?

"I think, from what I could sense, there was a reaction from some people of 'Why would you do that?' Not anger or anything like that but rather a little bit of disappointment [that he was leaving the church]."

Sean didn't agree with such a secular-sacred divide and says he was uncomfortable with some of the language of the church, like conversion and evangelism.

"I'm not in education to evangelise… I'm more about conversation than conversion," he explains. "I enjoy dialoguing with kids, I enjoy getting them to think for themselves and make their own minds up."

Now that he's made the jump into teaching Sean knows he's made the right decision but he doesn't regret his time as a youth worker, which gave him the chance to experiment with teaching methods.

And the children at Longbenton Community College are getting the benefit…

My old RE teacher would never have dreamt of using clips from Spiderman 3 to illustrate self-control in a lesson on Buddhism but if he had have done I'm certain we would all have paid more attention!