"It doesn't say...anything!"

In my Studying & Teaching the Bible class this morning we were talking about Lesson Aims: which in a nutshell are focused, measurable goals you have for your lesson that are focused on the student and their life change. Basically, what do you want to accomplish in this teaching? An example of a lesson aim: "The students will discover why staying up really late at night is bad for their health by going over statistics and research of sleep patterns & health issues." That just came off the top of my head - probably a Freudian slip that I need to sleep more.

Part way through we began going over examples of "bad aims" and why they were bad. The first was "I want to be a blessing to my class." Everyone got the glaring things: not measurable, focused on the teacher, too vague, etc. During a moment of quiet while they were pondering more critiques, Ben responded, rather matter-of-fact, "It doesn't say anything! I mean, that sounds good but what are you saying? It could be anything!"

It was a pretty funny moment the way he said it, but I also thought that it was so good, simple & brilliant. "I want to be a blessing." Sounds so good, so right - but am I really saying anything at all? Is it possible to use a lot of "church-talk" that sounds really good and sounds like we have it all together in our head and heart - but we really don't? Can we be talking a lot without really saying anything?

Obviously we need to be a blessing to people - but...what does that mean?

So...what does it?