I believe…
- The Word of God created the universe (Genesis 1:1-3)
- The Word of God is inspired (2 Timothy 3:16-17)
- Jesus is the Word of God and in Him is life (John 1:1-4)
- God has given the church the gift of teaching and preaching to instruct, encourage, convict and to guide (Ephesians 4:10-13)
I am all about the Word of God. In our church we preach through books of the Bible on Sunday mornings. We teach the Word in our Care Groups and various ministries. Throughout my education I was trained in the original languages of Scripture. So I truly get and embrace the centrality of the Word of God in all we do. But recently I have been troubled over the over-emphasis teaching has received. It seems to me that a strategy of the evil one is to take something good (teaching), and pervert it (teaching is the primary criteria for a healthy church).
THIRTEEN SIGNS teaching has become way too important for you…
- On a weekly basis you travel from a great distance to hear a particular preacher. At the same time you find that you are disconnected from meaningful community but that is OK because you place such a premium on teaching.
- You believe the primary reason you are part of a local church is to be fed through teaching, preaching, and various studies. Therefore teaching is treated like food at an all you can eat buffet. We eat, and eat, and eat…
- You are highly opinionated about a particular style of preaching and teaching. Very rarely are you satisfied unless the teacher meets your personal standards.
- You compare every communicator to your favorite teacher.
- Your not totally convinced that Jesus got it right when he said that the two greatest commandments are to love God and to love others (Matthew 22:36-40). Maybe Jesus meant teaching…somehow.
- You evaluate a church more on how they teach (delivery, style, method) then you do on how they live it out in their life, family, community, and world.
- Information preferred over transformation.
- You believe that the greatest hope this generation has of embracing the love and grace of Jesus Christ is to get them to come to our weekly worship service.
- You think Jesus must have taught like (insert your favorite speaker here).
- In a very subtle, unspoken way you downplay the fact that Jesus said people will know the validity of the gospel by the way we love one another (John 13:34-35).
- You are not sure what the personal implications are for you when you read “the Word became flesh” in John 1.
- Teachers are treated like celebrities.
- As you are reading this you are beginning to get angry.
Photo taken from “Campaign to End Consumer Christianity”
I resonant a lot to point 3,4, and 6.
Thanks for the reminder that the two Commandment that Jesus taught us. To love. Teaching, in the form of love. Not teaching as its own criteria.
we have this bizarre tendency to turn churches into teaching centers, instead of a local expression of the family of God…thanks for the input Cliff…
This is a great post. I’ve been musing recently on the fact that our teaching programme dominates all our thinking about how we do church. We pour huge efforts into designing the teaching programme, making sure there’s a balanced diet of Old and New testaments, topical and exegetical, evangelistic and nurturing; our teaching team spends large proportions of their working week’s creating and delivering teaching material….
And yet.
I see lots of people like the ones you identify but not a lot of transformation going on. I fear we are suffering from information overload. Every week we give vast gobbits of information for our people to consume before they’ve really had any chance to digest last week’s gobbit.
The deeper problem is that a focus on teaching seems to create passive consumer Christians rather than active, getting-their-hands dirty believers. This is because the model I and my team offer is one of passivity: come and listen to my carefully prepared and crafted sermon; listen and evaluate, we suggest.
Of course, we urge action. But we don’t model it.
we are on the same page simon. the Word of God does need to be central to what we do, but we have to go much further (raise the bar of discipleship) to actually embodying the Word as a community.
and yes, the tendency to become consumers of our preferred brand of preaching or teaching is a big issue. i think you see this get played out when a preaching “legend” retires or quits…many people leave the church when this happens. to me, this reveals a consumeristic mentality towards preaching…
“Without dropping a myriad of stats on you, the street-level evaluation is clear. The last forty years of Sunday services, biblical sermons, safe childcare, affinity based small groups and programs to fit any need are not producing a strain of Christians that have significantly changed the culture. The majority of denominations are in decline, and most honest pastors lament the level of consumerism that exists among their parishioners. We are doing better church services than we have in the past as a result of presentation-enhancing tools; we have time sensitive programs that are truly helpful for people struggling through life; we have options of doing service times throughout the week so that anyone can attend; and yet wonder if all our resources may actually be hindering growth, if growth includes depth of transformation.”
-Hugh Halter, The Gathered and Scattered Church, P. 162
good conversation, thanks simon!
Hi Michael
It strikes me that your comments seem to assume that ‘teaching’ is limited to that given by only one or two individuals in a given church and in the form of a traditional monologue sermon. I think it is easily possible to see a different understanding of teaching from the NT which indicates it is much broader – given by many different people within a given congregation and in the form of interactive dialogue. Although I would not rule out a place for the traditional monologue sermon, I think the vast majority of teaching within a church should be of the multi participatory, interactive dialogue type within a much smaller group than a traditional large congregation. This encourages everyone to come to church prepared to share their insights, to take an active part in the discussion, values every member of the body and their contribution to a community understanding of the Bible, turns people from ‘passive’ to active involvement, etc . This is surely how teaching is best done and is much more effective in building community amongst God’s people than having them passively sit as ‘pew fillers’ listening to one professional celebrity speaker monologue at them each week?
Also think of the money that would be saved if you didn’t have to pay ‘the minister’ to prepare his sermon each week – money that could be spent directly on the poor and marginalised or on supporting gospel workers elsewhere!
In summary, I do not think it wrong to put a huge emphasis on teaching. The questions we should be asking are who is responsible for that teaching, how is it done and does it promote true gospel community among us.
some of the guys i respect are talking along the same lines as you paul. i was in soma in tacoma and i know their teachers ask questions to try to have the people interact with what is being taught. we do a little of that, but certainly not to the extent you have mentioned…i am certainly not opposed to it and i agree it can be a very postive way to learn God’s Word.
my argument is not so much whether or not one person should do the teaching or if different people teach every week in an interactive manner. what i have noticed is that people are highly opinionated about teaching and yet are not committed to deep, meaningful community. a subtle mentality has developed that if i can get good teaching on sunday then that is enough…i have been in large and small churches in the states and it is a problem everywhere i have gone.
again, teaching is critically important…but if we think we are the church just because we listen to good teaching or participate in good teaching we are sadly mistaken…
Option A: The American Way (of trying to do church)
-Attend a worship service on Sunday morning
Option B: The New Testament Way
-Be in meaningful relationships where you…
John 15:12 – Love one another
Romans 5:13 – Don’t pass judgment on one another
Romans 12:5 – Be members of one another
Romans 12:10 – Honor one another
Romans 12:16 – Live in harmony with one another
Romans 14:19 – Build up one another
Romans 15:5 – Be like-minded toward one another
Romans 15:7 – Accept one another
1 Corinthians 12:25 – Care for one another
Galatians 5:13 – Serve one another in love
Galatians 5:26 – Don’t provoke or envy one another
Galatians 6:2 – Bear one another’s burdens
Ephesians 4:32 – Be kind to one another
Colossians 3:13 – Bear with each other and forgive one another
1 Thessalonians 3:12 – Abound in love toward one another
1 Thessalonians 4:18 – Comfort one another
Titus 3:3 – Don’t hate one another
Hebrews 3:13 – Encourage one another
Hebrews 10:24 – Stir up one another to love and good deeds
James 4:11 – Don’t slander one another
James 5:9 – Don’t bear grudges against one another
James 5:16 – Confess your sins to one another
1 Peter 4:9 – Offer hospitality to one another
1 Peter 5:14 – Greet one another
1 John 1:7 – Fellowship with one another
1 John 3:11 – Love one another
Ephesians 5:21- Submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.
Hi Michael
I agree with you completely. I guess what I was trying to emphasise is that the teaching in church gatherings should be more of a community activity, rather than something done as a professional minister / passive audience thing, so that it is more difficult to ‘sample’ good teaching but contribute nothing to true gospel community.
I know plenty of people who advocate that everyone can be involved in ‘teaching’ outside the gathering events when we do normal life together. I agree with that, but I don’t think it means we shouldn’t strive to minimise our emphasis on professional, one man, sermon style, passive congregation ministry. Neither, in my experience, does much teaching go on outside the gathering in practice. When people get together, they generally share from what is going on in their lives. Sadly, that rarely seems to include any meaningful interaction with Scripture and so little encouraging, pastoring, counselling and general ‘one anothering’ actually occurs. I don’t think this will change significantly until we make teaching in our church gatherings more of an interactive community activity and there is more of an expectation that all will contribute.
Enjoy Grace!
thanks paul for the clarification and thanks for taking the time to contribute to the disucssion, appreciate it.
Hi Michael,
Thanks for your thoughts. I share your concerns regarding a consumer based culture of which church is a logical part. I share your concerns in general and specifically myself as I am attracted to slick performances of expert musicians and linguistic gymnastics and enjoy the lack of effort required of me along with the rush of experiencing excellence. I recently moved to a church where the music is not as good, the sermons are not as fancy but the teaching is powerful. I’ve been surprised to experience growth in my thinking, spiritual practices and find that I walk into church excited to learn and see how God’s going to speak to me. I would judge my new church to be very teaching (though not performance) focussed and for me it is a real blessing.
kent, that is excellent! sounds like you are at a place where you are challeneged and can grow spiritually.
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you are welcome cathy!