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• Adults are oriented to their tasks, roles, and identity. This means that the learner's identity—as parent, spouse, worker, professional, or recreational hobbyist—profoundly affects what the learner is willing to learn about. Good adult education is intimately linked to people's image of themselves and what they see as their role and function in the world.

For example, in our culture women are vitally concerned about their role and function. The woman who has made the decision to be a traditional wife and mother spends a lot of time and energy concerned about those roles, especially if many of her female friends have careers. Then when she completes the bulk of her child-rearing by her middle forties, she's got to figure out what she is supposed to do for the next thirty-five years. What are the resources of faith for her?

An effective adult education program will integrate such concerns about roles with biblical curriculum.

• Adults want knowledge that can be immediately applied. Probably no more than 10 percent of adults are genuinely interested in learning for learning's sake, to know the Bible simply in order to know the Bible, to know theology or church history or Christian philosophy simply because they enjoy learning. Unlike many children and youth, adults are unwilling to store up theoretical knowledge that may or may not someday be of use to them.

For most adults, the someday of their childhood has arrived, and they want to see the practical benefits of learning today. They want information they can use now. They want connections to everyday life. So it's harder to "market" a course on the doctrinal themes in Hebrews than a course on parenting teenagers. This doesn't mean you avoid Hebrews, but you must connect it to questions they're asking.

Often then, I look for teachable moments in adult lives, windows of opportunity when a course subject matches the felt need of the learner.

For example, I frequently conduct a class called "Teaching Values to Children," and I've found that the time parents are most open to this course is within the first few months after a baby is born. Two years later, they feel they already know how to parent. They've settled into patterns. But later still, when their children move into new and more challenging phases, new teachable moments will occur.

So one of our jobs is to catch people at those transition points in their lives, when they are trying on new roles, exploring new situations, facing new challenges.

That's not to say that adult needs should rule the classroom. Although I recognize the need to touch adults at their points of needs, most of my teaching is essentially Bible-centered. But I always try to find those crucial links between the Bible and real-world living.

Teaching that Connects with Adults

While keeping in mind the characteristics of adult learners, I structure my teaching so that it connects with adults. For me, there are at least six keys.

1. Treat adults as adults. This obvious point is, unfortunately, sometimes overlooked.

In one church where I was working with the adult education program, a teacher whose class was practically evaporating before her eyes came to me in a panic.

"I need you to come observe my class," she said. "I only have a few people left. Please tell me what I'm doing wrong before my class disappears completely!"

So I visited her class, and in the first minute or so I knew exactly what was wrong.