Teaching Ministry
The New Testament knows three different words each of
which can legitimately be translated teach / teacher / teaching.
The first is didasko. This is the word that is used in Ephesians 4
when Paul says there are “some teachers” given to the Body of Christ to take
her on to maturity. The teacher here is
the Master. In a trade, it is the
Tradesman; in a university, it is the Master or Doctor. Consult a modern dictionary, and it will tell
you that a ‘journeyman’ is someone who has completed an apprenticeship and is
working at their trade for or on behalf of someone else, an employer for
example. In this sense, apostle Paul as
a ‘teacher’ (didaskalos) was a
journeyman. As far as God was concerned,
Paul was qualified and ‘approved to be entrusted with the good news’ and he was
engaged in that ‘trade’ for and on behalf of Jesus. Remember Paul’s words, “I plead with you, on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to
God.” The relationship here would be, in
simple terms, one of experienced adult to inexperienced adult.
The second is paideuo. This is the word used when you want to talk
about instructing a child: “Train up a
child in the way that he should go…” The
idea being conveyed here has to do with the responsibility of a parent to train
and instruct their child in all the matters of life as it is lived in their
place and time. The basic relationship
here is one of parent and offspring.
This word has the same root as the main Greek word for child. Hence a paediatrician is a doctor who specialises
in children.
The third is kateecheo. This is the word used when you want to talk
about giving a child a formal education.
It is the Greek word we get our word Catechism from. Its inference is that formal instruction,
even using rote learning models, is in play.
It is generally age-specific in that as the child grows in years, the
teaching grows with them. It is also
often in the form of question and answer, as are the Catechisms of various
lines of church life. An example of this
is a snippet from the Anglican Shorter Chatechism: “What is the chief and
highest end of man?” Reply: “The chief
and highest end of man is to worship God and fully to enjoy Him forever.”
Ecclesia’s Teachers
The teachers of Ephesians 4 are of the first
kind. They are didaskalous. They have
served their time, done their apprenticeship (discipleship) and are qualified
and approved to pass their learning and skill on to others. They are in the service of God, working on
behalf of Jesus, to add their part to the recipe for maturity for the Body of
Christ that matches that of Jesus Himself.
The ones they are passing their learning on to are called
‘acolytes’. So you have Master and
Apprentice; didaskalon and acolyte.
This is the word Jesus used when he instructed his twelve
apprentices before he left them: “disciple all the nations…teaching them to diligently observe the entirety of what I have
commanded you.” (Matthew 28:20).
What kind of teaching is it? It is adult to adult; it is about teaching
things not known by the learner; it is not
parent to child; it is not school
teacher to pupil; it is not about
teaching a child life-skills; it is not
about learning a religious catechism.
It is about the kingdom of
God; about ecclesia; about the fellowship of the saints; about the good news of
the kingdom of God; about faith, hope and love; about pulling back the curtain
on the revelation of the mystery of Jesus and his Bride; about seeing the
unseen; about hearing the faintest whisper of the Father; about discerning
which way the wind of the Spirit is blowing – in short, about what Paul calls
“living according to the Spirit”.
The new Testament uses only this word didaskalon when it speaks of teachers in
the Body of Christ. Acts 13:1 says there
were prophets and teachers in the ecclesia at Antioch: Barnabas, Simeon,
Lucius, Manaen and Saul (who later became Paul). It doesn’t say if these men were both
prophets and teachers or if some were one and some the other. Looking at other parts of the New Testament,
I think it is likely Saul’s primary gifting was teacher and Barnabas’ was
prophet.
What it does indicate is that these men were
ministering to the Lord and fasting. As
they did, the Holy Spirit said to them, “Set apart for Me Barnabas and Saul for
the work to which I have called them.
Then when they had fasted and prayed and laid their hands on them, they
sent them away.” They were prophets and
teachers; and then they became ‘apostles’ by this act of sending them out –
that is the meaning of the word. An
apostle is one sent out with a commission.
This fits with the whole idea of the kind of teaching
I am talking about. They had done their
time, served their apprenticeship and were qualified and approved by God for
the work they were now being sent out to do.
Notice the Holy Spirit instructed them to set apart Barnabas and Saul
“for Me”. They will be working for and
on behalf of Jesus under the direction the Holy Spirit. Note verse 4 says, “Being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went down to
Seleucia and from there they sailed to Cyprus.”
Then verse 5 notes that when they reached Salamis [on
the eastern end of Cyprus] they began “good-newsing” (sowing) the logos, the story of Jesus, in the Jewish
synagogue there. Given that Jews from
Cyprus were likely to have been in Jerusalem at Pentecost a few years earlier
(the Acts 2 account), it is also fairly likely that the ministry now built on
the foundation of Peter’s proclamation on that day. And we note it is not just Barnabas and Saul:
they had John Mark (see Acts 12:25) with them.
The record shows they carried on teaching the logos throughout the whole island and
eventually came to Paphos on the western end of the island where the Roman
Proconsul Sergius Paulus wanted to hear their message. They were opposed by Elymas who is described
as both a magician and a Jewish false prophet going by the name Bar-Jesus
(which means son of Jesus) trying to turn the Proconsul away from the
faith. Saul (now mostly called Paul)
receives intuitive knowledge from the Holy Spirit and spoke out boldly to the
magician and made him blind there and then.
Acts 13:12 makes this important statement: “Then the
Proconsul believed when he saw what had happened, being amazed at the teaching (didasko) of the Lord.”
As Westerners, we love to fit this story into our
church structures and suddenly make Paul an evangelist as we think of
evangelists. He wasn’t; he was a
teacher; he taught; he ‘evangelised’ with the logos (the story of Jesus) and
his hearer was amazed at this teaching
of the Lord. Consider Paul’s own words
to his son-in-faith Timothy: “And for this I was
appointed a herald and an apostle – a teacher of nations in faith and
truth.” (1 Timothy 2:7) What we note of Paul here is that he is a
teacher who, by virtue of being set apart for God and sent out with a
commission, has become an apostle, who functions in a prophetic teaching
ministry. Is it any wonder Paul later
indicates that the foundational ministries in ecclesia are first apostle,
second, prophet, third teacher?
Paul, throughout his life, is the living embodiment of
teacher and teaching ministry – and his story indicates one of the ways
teaching ministry functions. The other
main illustration of teaching ministry comes in the form of Timothy and Titus, two of Paul’s disciples whom
he apprenticed and eventually sent as overseers of ecclesia, one to Ephesus,
one to Crete.
One teaching ministry is to spread abroad the logos of
God, the story of Jesus, to bring men and women to faith in the Lord; the other
is to build up the believers within the ecclesia of God, making them solid and
well-grounded in the knowledge of God and in the hope of the good news. This then enables them to always be ready to
give a good account of and reason for the hope that is in them. This latter work seems to be the emphasis in
Timothy’s ministry at Ephesus and Titus’ on Crete.
Both Timothy and Titus were appointed and sent by Paul
as ‘overseers’ (Greek: episkopos, literally meaning overseer) and according to
Paul, one important trait of an overseer is that he be qualified and ever-ready
to teach (1 Timothy 3:2). What he wrote
to Titus gives the more detail (Titus 1:9-16): “The overseer must … hold fast
the faithful word which is in accordance with the teaching, that he may be able
both to exhort with sound teaching and to refute those who contradict.”
Take careful note of these verses. I believe Paul’s instruction to Titus opens a
window on how the ministry of teaching was established in the ecclesias Paul
brought his influence to.
“Cling
steadfastly to the word of faith which is in accordance with the teaching [you
received from me and my co-workers], so
that you are able to exhort with sound teaching and to refute those who
contradict it, for there are many rebellious men – empty talkers and deceivers;
especially those of the circumcision sect – who must be silenced because they
are subverting and corrupting whole households, teaching things they ought not,
for the sake of sordid gain. One of them
– a ‘prophet’ of their very own – said: “Cretans are always liars, evil
beasts, lazy gluttons”. This is true testimony!
“For
this reason, reprove them severely that they may be sound in the faith, not
paying attention to Jewish myths and commandments of men who have perverted the
truth. To the pure, all things are pure;
but to those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure for both their
mind and their conscience are defiled.
They profess to know God, but by their deeds they deny Him, being
detestable and disobedient, and incapable of any good deeds. But as for you, speak the things that befit
sound teaching” (Titus 1:9 to 2:1)
These are stern words
indeed. I am of the opinion that, as the
‘Pharisee sect’ of Acts 15 and the ‘Jewish circumcision sect’ of Titus 1 are
alive and well today, so also should be the powerful teaching ministry
described here. Unfortunately, by and
large, it is not – and hasn’t been for many many years. It is difficult in the extreme today to find
– alive and well – the good news of Jesus devoid of what I call antique
legalism: the legalism of today’s Pharisee and circumcision sects. Whole households, indeed whole congregations
of people, have been subverted and corrupted by an array of pseudo-gospels that
come with all kinds of strings attached.
And like then, so now: many
times it is done for the sake of sordid gain, either financial or
personal. And like then, many of these
make claims of being apostles and prophets who go around saying things that are
contrary to the good news of the kingdom of God, contrary to the logos of Jesus
and contrary to the scriptures. Many of
the things they teach are straight out of the Law of Moses: “Jewish myths and
commandments of men who have perverted the truth” (see above). It is as if the law of Moses is part of the
good news we are to preach and part of the administration of the ecclesia (keeping
the ten commandments for instance).
Apostle Paul’s words, as delivered to us by Luke in the book of Acts and
by Paul himself in his epistles, loudly proclaim to all who have ears, “IT IS
NOT SO!” Concerning these teachers Paul
wrote strongly: “I WISH THOSE WHO ARE DOING THIS WOULD CASTRATE THEMSELVES; I
WISH THESE TROUBLE-MAKERS WOULD EMASCULATE THEMSELVES.” (See Galatians 5:12)
But the problem now is that
everything has been turned on its head.
The faithful teachers of the faithful word as Paul was and as Paul referred
to are now considered the trouble-makers.
The Pharisee sect rules! They get
to say what is taught – and who teaches it – and most often it has nothing to
do with obvious Spiritual gift or Divine calling. Even perhaps more than in Paul’s day, today
it is absolutely imperative that teachers teach; that teachers “exhort with
sound teaching and refute those who contradict it”; that the “rebellious men,
empty talkers and deceivers … must be silenced because they are subverting and
corrupting whole households, teaching things they ought not.”
I recently read a teaching
book on teaching ministry in the church today. It contains so many things
from the Pharisee sect that I refuse to mention it by name or by author or
publisher. And yet it comes from the
very heart of one of the large international movements of “Third Wave” church
life of the late 20th century.
Teachers today, on the one
hand, need to teach – oh, we desperately need them to teach; and to heed the
teacher. And the teachers need so
desperately to learn and to teach the fundamentals as taught by Jesus and Paul
and to soundly defeat the lies and the plunderings of the Pharisee sect and be
heard to rebuke them sternly as Paul wrote to Titus.
On the other hand, the
teachers often feel so heavily constrained by apostle James’ teaching: “Let not
many become teachers, my brothers, knowing that as such we shall incur a
stricter judgement. For we all stumble
in many things. If anyone does not
stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to bridle the whole body as
well.” (James 3:1-2) James goes on for
several verses about how dangerous is the tongue and the importance of taming
it – as one tames a wild beast.
Here’s what I suggest – to myself
and to anyone else who is gifted as a teacher in the Body and who carries the
burden of teaching as did Paul, Titus and Timothy. Take what Paul wrote to Titus seriously;
remember, as James said, that our tongue can run away with the rest our being
and don’t let it; remember the stricter judgement that James wrote about; but
also remember Paul’s teaching that a) it is those who are led by the Spirit of
God who are sons of God and b) the sons of God have the mind of Christ. Then teach your heart out in the power of the
Holy Spirit and under His direction. God
needs teachers who will today do what Paul was teaching Titus to do, not teachers
who hold back for fear of their tongue running away with them.
Yes, the tongue is a small
member and it indeed can start a forest fire; but personally, I believe that is
precisely what God wants to do in this hour – under the direction of the Holy
Spirit and by His power. “‘Not by might,
nor by power, but by my Spirit’, says the Lord.” The safeguards necessary are given clearly in
Paul’s instructions, especially the qualities he taught Timothy and Titus to
insist upon for overseers. These
qualities clearly apply to Timothy and Titus themselves, not just to the ones
they would eventually appoint as elders.
They apply equally to teachers in the Body today. But you will never find Paul advocating
holding back out of fear of starting a fire.
I think perhaps Paul understood Jesus’s words, “I have come to cast fire
upon the earth and how I wish it were already kindled!”
Old vs New
Now there is one other
important issue here: what is the ‘source’ of the ministry of teaching we have
within and among the people of God today?
Throughout his writings, and those of Luke who wrote Acts, Paul is at
pains to make it perfectly clear that his ‘gospel’ – his evangel – is not a
post-Jesus extension of Jewish law and traditions; it is not a revised Law of
Moses. Indeed, the writer to the Jews
(the Hebrews) strongly puts the case that not only is Jesus superior in every
way to Moses, the covenant he inaugurated is superior in every way to the
Mosaic covenant. And Jesus was
abundantly clear on this issue. The new
evangel is not a matter of adding Jesus to the old evangel; it is an entirely
new, separate, distinct and vastly superior message.
And one of the facets of its
superiority is its source. The old
message traces its source back to the Jewish covenants of Abraham and Moses and
it is essentially a message of law and order, blessing and cursing, obedience
and disobedience, all based on the written code. The covenant of Abraham and the Law of Moses
are the primary source of the old message.
And these covenants were administered through a human priesthood and a
series of rites performed according to a calendar. And God dwelt among His people as represented by the box known as the ‘ark of the
covenant’, not in them either
individually or corporately.
This bears no comparison
with the new message. The new message is
entirely ‘other’. God no longer relates
to man (Jew and non-Jew alike) according to the terms and conditions of the old
covenant. He instituted, and inaugurated
in Jesus, a new covenant whose basis is grace, not law. God no longer dwells in temples made with
hands, but within the lives of His family members and in their gatherings of at
least two or three. The written code of
commandments and rules and blessing and cursing has given way to God’s trustworthy
word being written on the hearts of people: His logos (which is firstly His Son and secondly the story of His son), His rhema (which is whatever He speaks in
the moment to His children), and scripture
(now interpreted through the covenant of Jesus). It is a message of faith, hope and love; of
deep, satisfying intercourse with God and, as a result of that, with our
fellow-man and with our selves.
And what type of knowledge
does the teacher primarily deal with? It
is the knowledge that comes from a sound mind studying and working hard like an
athlete to exercise and challenge the intellect – both his and his hearers; it
is the knowledge that comes from the discipline of sitting at the feet of Jesus
and of other Spirit-anointed teachers who have been given to the ecclesia for
her maturity; it is the knowledge of “correctly handling the word of God”
(logos, rhema and scripture), not peddling it like second-hand merchandise.
All of these are the source
of the teaching ministry within the ecclesia of God in the new covenant. And all
that has its source in the old covenant – in the “Jewish myths and commandments
of men who turn away from the truth” and in the Pharisee sect and the
circumcision sect – is to be refuted and silenced, according to Paul. Paul’s summary instruction for teachers is
Titus 2:1 – “But as for you, speak the things that befit sound teaching.” Amen!
And by doing that, you teach without trying: you teach how to be a
teacher and how to teach.
And can I encourage teachers to note this: Jesus’
ministry was about disciples and discipleship and making disciples (Greek – matheetees). When he commissioned the twelve, the central
instruction to them was to ‘disciple
the nations, teaching them…’ And Paul’s instruction to Timothy – and quite
probably Titus as well – was, “The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many
witnesses, entrust these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.” This is discipleship in action. And it is intended by Jesus and Paul to be
the basic and central thrust of how the new life in Christ is to be lived in
the world. When we do this according to
Jesus and Paul, drawing on the sources I have indicated here, things are far
less likely to go astray and off track.
I encourage you to revisit what I presented earlier in the section on
apostolic ministry from Floyd McClung and his work: You See Bones, I See an Army.
Things tend to go off track when they get polluted or diluted by
religion, legalism, institution and the grubby hands of man; when they depart
from the rich simplicity of Jesus.
Next: Evangelist
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