Who Should Go Into Full-time Bible Teaching

This transcript has been automatically generated

Do keep 173 open in front of us because that’s what we’re going to be spending the bulk of our time looking at over the rest of this afternoon. I’m aware that this is a bit of a graveyard slot and everybody is about to fall fast asleep because you’ve played football, gone swimming, gone for a walk, or whatever. So you’re only going to have to put up with me speaking to you for about half an hour, and then you’re going to be working in pairs quite a lot. So that just allows you to pace your adrenaline and your ability to keep awake. The aim of this session, as the title said quite clearly, is to explore what sort of person should go into full-time Bible teaching.

1 Timothy 3 is about who should be an overseer. Now the footnote in the NIV says bishop, but that’s really quite unhelpful. The bishop in those days simply was the person who ran the church. The overseer. So it is the church leader which we’re talking about, and that’s quite a useful passage for us because the church leader, as we will see in a bit, has as one of his main functions teaching the Bible.

Until very recently, there weren’t many people who were in church leadership apart from the one man who ran the show. So we now have an extension to that. In that most churches, or many churches, have staff teams with 2 or 3 people on them. But I think we can extend the principles for the one man who leads the show to also apply to the 2 or 3 who might be working with him on the team, or if you’re in St. Helen’s, slightly more than that. Before I go any further, can I just have an aside here to the women amongst us?

What I’m about to say applies in the first instance to men because our church— our passage is about church leadership. And the New Testament is explicit that that is a role for men only. You just have to look back about 3 verses to 1 Timothy chapter 2, verse 12, and you will see that Paul says— by the way, I ought to say that when I’ve got terrible eyesight, so if I need to read anything, I’m going to stick my nose in a text. Don’t be too put off by that, just don’t notice it. In 1 Timothy chapter 2, verse 12, Paul says, I do not permit a woman to teach or have authority over a man.

She must be So the church leadership role is a role for men, not for women. But the New Testament is also very clear that women have a key part to play in teaching other women. They also have a key role to play in some sorts of teaching ministry in a mixed setting. I say some sorts of teaching ministry because what sorts exactly they’re allowed to do in a mixed setting setting depends on how you interpret the word prophecy in 1 Corinthians 11. I don’t want to go into a big debate on that now because that’s not the object of this session.

But that’s simply to say that what I’m about to say applies in the first instance to men, but because women too have a teaching role, albeit over women in all its guises and in a mixed setting in some guises, I think everything I’m about to say applies by extension to the women here as well. It also, by exactly the same logic, applies to all the men here who might go into full-time Bible teaching but not actually be the leader of a church. So much by way of preamble before I start. In the passage we’re looking at in 1 Timothy chapter 3, Paul gives 3 facets to the answer to the question, who should be a church leader or a full-time Bible teacher? First, he says our desires have a part to play.

Secondly, he says that the leader of God’s church must be godly. And thirdly, he says that the leader of God’s church must be able to teach. We will look at all 3, but I want to spend most of my time on the third one, able to teach, mainly because that’s a phrase, even though in This passage is only one phrase. It’s a phrase which is often trotted out and seldom unpacked. So I just want to unpack that.

So just so you know again where we’re going in terms of timings. Let’s begin with our own desires. In 1 Timothy 3:1, Paul says, if anyone sets his heart on being an overseer, he desires a noble task. Now that’s slightly more complicated than it seems. Paul doesn’t say we should be a church leader if we want the job.

What he says is that if anyone sets their heart on a job, he desires a noble task.

And that implies 2 things. First, being a church leader, being a full-time Bible teacher, is a noble task. Secondly, and the fact that Paul goes on then to qualify what sort of person should do it, even regardless of who wants it, It’s good to want the job, but wanting the job is not enough. Let me unpack those 2. The 2 being: being a church leader is a noble task, and the task therefore we all ought to want, but wanting the job is not enough.

First, being a church leader, being a full-time paid Bible teacher, is a noble task. This picks up a lot of what William was saying in this morning’s sessions.

Our main purpose, you could argue, our one and only purpose as Christians in this world is to glorify God. Well, that’s very useful. We didn’t know we could do that, did we?

Our one purpose as Christians in this world is to glorify God by spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ. Our one purpose in this world is to glorify God by spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ. And as William pointed out this morning, the way the gospel of Jesus Christ is spread, the way God’s work is done, is by God’s Word being taught. So our goal as Christians must be to increase the amount of Word ministry. Now somebody pointed out to me a few days ago that Word ministry is one of those jargon phrases that we use quite a lot at St. Helen’s.

And so I just want to define what we mean by increase the amount of Word ministry. What I mean by increase the amount of Word ministry is increase the amount in which the Bible is taught. Now, as William was saying this morning, it can be taught in all sorts of settings, in all sorts of ways. It doesn’t matter. But we’re trying as Christians to increase the amount in which the Word is taught, whether it’s taught from a pulpit, whether it’s taught in a group study, whether it’s taught one-to-one, it doesn’t matter.

If God’s Word is taught, God’s work is done, and so God is glorified. And so what we’re trying to do as Christians is to increase the amount of Word ministry.

Now, if Word ministry is going to increase, every part of Christ’s body must play its part. Think about it for a second. Christians must be evangelists in the workplace to bring people in to hear the Word being taught. There’s no point in having somebody teach the Bible if there’s nobody there to hear them. So people need to bring other people in to hear the Word being taught.

People need to teach the Bible in small groups. People need to run Christianity Explored groups. People need to teach in the Sunday school. People need to welcome people who come in the church. People need to steward and make sure that everything runs smoothly so that the Word can be taught in the gathered congregation.

People need to fund the work. All sorts of things need to happen if Word ministry is to increase. But the most direct way to increase the amount of word ministry is to do more of it yourself. That is the simplest and most direct way of increasing the amount of word ministry. Do more of it yourself.

Secondly, the Bible teacher is actually the key to the rest of the work, the rest of the body working well to spread the gospel. All the other things Don’t come to much if somebody isn’t actually there teaching the Bible. You can steward wonderfully and all the chairs can be straight and there can be people welcoming at the door, people can be brought in by the thousands, and if nobody teaches the Word, it’s all a bit of a waste of time. So the person teaching the Word is key. He’s not the only person who is needed.

He’s not even more important. He’s just key.

Also, the Bible teacher is the one who equips everybody else to do the job. So Ephesians 4, the job of the pastor-teacher is to equip God’s people for the works of ministry. So how does everybody else in the church, every other part of the body, do the job which it needs to do if word ministry is to be increased? Answer, if the Bible teacher is teaching them so that they do the job so that word ministry increases.

What’s that? Fourthly, I think we’re on to now. There’s a huge shortage of good Bible teaching throughout the world.

It is a key bottleneck to the Bible being taught more.

We’re short of everything in the church. There isn’t enough money, there aren’t enough good people to evangelise and bring their friends in, there aren’t enough people who are welcoming and good at looking after people. There aren’t anything enough. The job God has given us is so great that really there’s need for more of everything. But the biggest bottleneck of them all at the present moment seems to be good Bible teachers.

So, teaching the Bible full-time and I was doing as much of it directly as you can yourself, is a key job. It is a noble task. It is one we all ought to want.

Okay, but there are 3 things I want to say, 3 notes we just need to put in at this point, just so that we get the balance right. First, it is absolutely vital to see that if I do not have the gifts to teach the Bible full-time, I am not a second-class Christian. If God has given me different gifts, gifts to serve in another way, I am no worse.

He’s just called me to serve in a different way. That’s all. I’m just different. God simply has another role for me to play in his plan to build his church, and every part of the body is needed. I mustn’t get resentful about the fact I don’t have the gift I want.

I must just accept the gift God has given me. Isn’t that the point Paul is making in 1 Corinthians chapter 12? The eye mustn’t say, because I’m not an ear, I’m not happy, or vice versa. We must just accept that the body needs all the parts of it to function properly.

God has given each one here and everyone in his church a different set of gifts. Be content with the gifts God’s given us and make the most of them.

Second thing to note: we ought to be wanting, though, to teach the Bible full-time if we can. If I don’t want to teach the Bible full-time when I can, I think we need to ask why not, because it’s such a key job in God’s economy? Why don’t I want to teach the Bible more? Is it because I want security, money, prestige, comfort more? Paul Apparate was telling us a bit about that yesterday, describing them as the bad reasons he was originally not going into it.

And they are bad reasons, aren’t they? Wanting just money and security, prestige. We need to examine ourselves and make sure those aren’t the reasons we aren’t wanting that job.

It may be that I don’t really believe enough what God has said in his word to want to spend my life teaching it. That’s a terrible reason again for not— is it not teaching it, isn’t it? If I don’t believe it enough to want to teach it, I better go back to the word to see whether I believe it enough.

If I’m believing it enough for my eternal salvation, surely I ought to be believing enough for everybody else’s eternal salvation as well. And teach it.

Now there are good reasons why I might not teach the Bible full-time even if I can. So if I’m an average Bible teacher and an outstanding evangelist, then the right thing to do may be to stay as an evangelist in the secular workplace. If I’m an average Bible teacher but I earn enough money to support 10 other Bible teachers, It might be better to stay in the workplace earning that money. But don’t deceive ourselves.

If I’m staying in the workplace because I’m an outstanding evangelist, then am I actually doing the job of being an evangelist out there? Am I actually bringing my friends in? There’s no point saying I’ve got the gifts but I’m not using them. If I’m staying in the workplace because I can earn enough money to fund Ken, Am I actually giving the money to fund 10?

What are the reasons we are not going into Bible teaching if we can?

We ought to want it, but that doesn’t mean that we have to do it. There may be good reasons for wanting something else even more because God has gifted me even more in some other area. So it’s one of those very tricky balances and one we’re going to revisit several times during this afternoon. How much should we want something? When, when, when, if I want something, should I do it and when should I not?

That’s quite tricky. We’re going to come back to it a couple of times. But before we do, one or two other points.

The 3rd note we need, thing we need to take note of, and that is there is no special call to full-time Bible teaching. The Bible does not recognise the call to anything other than the call to become a Christian. We are not called to be Bible teachers generally. Now God can work and does work in all sorts of ways, so individuals might be. Paul Appiah was telling us about himself yesterday.

But it would be wrong not to go just because I haven’t received a call.

Sometimes God calls. Usually he doesn’t. The Bible doesn’t tell us to expect a call or to look for a call or to wait for a call. Generally speaking, deciding to teach the Bible full-time is a purely pragmatic decision. Is this the place where I can best serve God?

And if the answer to that is yes, it is the place I can best serve God, then I should get on with it.

It is a key task, and the need to do it is so great that if I can, if that’s the best place to serve, I ought to. If I can do it reasonably well, it probably is the best place to serve, and I probably ought. Probably— there are caveats.

The next thing we said we’re going to look at is that wanting to teach the Bible full-time is not enough.

It’s right to want to teach it full-time, but if God has given me other gifts, gifts to do other things better, then I need to recognise that God wants me to serve in other places, and I need to then serve in the places God wants me to serve in.

There are probably people in this room who have the gifts to to be Bible teachers who ought to go into Bible teaching but who don’t want to.

Let me say that again. There are probably people here who should go into Bible teaching but who don’t want to.

There are probably others here who want to but shouldn’t.

We all need to learn to put God’s priorities first. We all need to learn to want what God wants. Rather than us saying, I want to be a Bible teacher, stamp, thump, throw my toys out of the pram, and I’m going to be miserable till God lets me. We ought to learn to want what God wants. Rather than to say, I want to stay in the secular world, we need to say, is that really right?

What are my reasons for wanting that? What does God want? And to want what God wants.

And the way we begin to know what God wants for us is by the gifts he’s given us, the sorts of people he’s made us.

So that moves us on to the qualities you need to teach the Bible full-time. Before we move on to that, let me just sum up what I’ve tried to say so far. There are 2 key lessons I think I want us to take away from this first part of the session. First, teaching the Bible full-time is an enormously important job in God’s plan. It is one we should all do if we can.

Secondly, we must be prepared to do what God wants us to do. If God has made us able to teach the Bible full-time, then we should begin to want to do that because that’s probably what he wants us to do. If God has made us better able to do something else, we should do that because that’s probably what he wants us to do.

So how do we recognise then who should teach the Bible full-time? How do we recognise what God wants me to do?

This passage gives us 2, I think, guidelines. The one which Paul spends most of the time on is that the Bible teacher must be godly. So in 1 Timothy chapter 3, verse 2, Paul says the overseer must be above reproach, godly.

But look on at the list of things he tells us being above reproach means. What does above reproach mean? It means the husband of but one wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable.

They’re very ordinary things, aren’t they?

It’s not a special set of qualities. He’s not saying some people have this sort of godliness and other people don’t have this sort of godliness, and if you have this sort of godliness, you can be a Bible teacher. And if you don’t have this sort of godliness, you shouldn’t be a Bible teacher. Now what Paul seems to be saying is these are the standards every Christian should live up to. You’ll find this list of things here which are here attached to who should be a Bible— a church leader, Bible teacher— elsewhere in the New Testament as things every Christian should live up to.

So Paul is saying this set of qualities— only have one wife, in other words, not be an adulterer, Don’t be a drunkard. Don’t be violent. Don’t be a lover for money. These are things all Christians should live up to. When you think who should be a Bible teacher, who should be a church leader, you are looking for Christians who are living up to that standard that all of us ought to be living up to.

Does that make sense? We all ought to be living up to that. We’re all going to be stumbling at times. When the time comes to choose a church leader, a Bible teacher, you’re choosing from the people who are actually living up to what we all ought to be living up to.

And the reason Paul tells us that we all need to be— that Bible teachers need to be living up to the standard, which is not particularly special, it’s just the standard that all Christians ought to be living up to, is that the church leader, the Bible teacher, must command the respect of both other Christians and the outsider. Look at how often this word respect comes up, or command respect comes up in the passage. It’s there in verse 2, the idea of he must be above reproach. Later on in verse 2, he must be respectable.

Verse 4, he must see his children obey him with proper respect. Verse 7, he must also have a good reputation with the outsiders.

Paul is simply saying the church leader, the Bible teacher, must have a level of godliness which earns him reasonable respect from his congregation and from the outsider. It is very hard to teach the Bible to people in the congregation if they’re looking at you and saying, you aren’t even beginning to try to live up to the standards you’re telling me to live up to. You need to command respect amongst the people you’re teaching. You do not have to be perfect. You do not even have to be significantly, or even at all, more godly than them.

But you have to be not less godly than them, if that makes sense. And similarly with the outsider, if you don’t have a good reputation with society, the person who heads up the church has a terrible reputation with outsiders. It brings the gospel into considerable disrepute. Just look at the fosters are being engendered in North America at the present moment by paedophilia in the Roman Catholic Church. That does the Gospel no good at all.

Church leaders need to be above reproach. Now we won’t go into that in more length now, not because it’s not important, but because over the last couple of years quite a few of the 9:38 sessions have dealt with this. And if you want to go into it more, there are tapes on the subject. What I want to do now though is to unpack, as I promised earlier, that phrase, able to teach. Paul says the only gift he mentions the church leader needs to have is able to teach.

What does that mean? Why does Paul say it? Well, Paul says it because the church leader is the Bible teacher, as William has been saying at length this morning. Church leader’s job is to teach the Word. So he, of course, must be able to teach.

It’s an obvious gift. But what does it mean? It’s only just mentioned here. So how do we know what it means to be able to teach? Well, Paul tells us not a lot here, but in his letters in the New Testament as a whole, he does tell us quite a lot about what teaching involves and how you recognise good teachers from false teachers.

And so by looking at what Paul says about teaching in the rest of his letters in the New Testament, I think we can come up with a reasonably good idea of what Paul means when he says able to teach. Now some of the things we’re going to look at refer to Paul talking about himself teaching, which ought to raise alarm bells amongst us because Paul is an apostle and what is true of him may not be applicable to us. But Paul very often tells his readers they should emulate him, and in particular, he very often seems to describe his teaching because he wants it either to be a model for his readers to follow, or because he wants them to use those criteria to recognise true teaching and false teaching when they see it. So they seem to be much more generally applicable and not being This is an apostle teaching and I’m not like him. I think all the verses that we’re going to look at now are verses which fall into that category.

I won’t— we won’t go into the detail of each one just because we don’t have time. You can look at them, and if you have any questions, do come back and ask. But I think all the verses we’re looking at, as I say, are either Paul talking about people generally teaching, or himself in a situation where it does carry over to us. Let’s look at what Paul says about teaching under 3 headings. And if you’re not with it, we’ve just turned over the sheet.

The first thing we’re going to look at is Paul has some verses all about the content of what we’re to teach, what we are to teach, the content. Now what I want you to do is spend about 7 or 8 minutes in pairs, in twos really, looking at what Paul says in this first box on your handout about what we’re to teach. You’ll notice I’ve put some verses in italics and some in normal text. The italic verses are the ones to look up first. The ones which are in normal text, as far as I can tell, just repeat what is already said in some of the italic text.

They’re just there to reinforce the point should you need reinforcement. You also see that I’ve grouped them to make slightly different— I think they’re making slightly different points. So do spend about 7 or 8 minutes in pairs looking up those verses, making sure you look at at least one from each of the 3 groups, but preferably all the italic ones.

These verses very much sum up— are the main verses on the subject of what the content of our teaching should be. So being able to teach means, I think, 2 main things from this passage. The first, and the smaller, is that we must be able to handle the Bible correctly. And what handling the Bible correctly means, it seems, are that we will be good Bible students, we’ll be able to grasp what it’s saying, we’ll be able to exercise good judgement over which issues matter and are worth contending for. And which issues are minor and we shouldn’t be disputing over them.

We will, if we are able to teach, be good Bible students. Is that the same skill as literary criticism?

No, literary criticism might be a tool you would use en route to understanding the Bible and not necessarily a good tool, a tool, but it is not the same as literary criticism. It means understanding, being able to read the text and work out what God is saying there, being able to distinguish what is important in the passage and what is unimportant, what the argument is, what the point of it is, where it’s driving to. Now there are all sorts of things which will be needed if you’re to do that well, but that’s the goal.

The other area which Paul brings up, interestingly, it’s even— it’s much bigger. There are far more verses on it. I’m not sure how much we’re to read into that, is that we have to be able to teach correct doctrine from the Bible. We need to have a good grasp of the Bible’s theology. We must be able in particular to teach the full truth that God has revealed, not just parts of it, not just the bits we like, but the full truth that God has revealed.

But put that together with what we saw earlier, and the full truth doesn’t mean absolutely everything, all the details, all absolutely on a level. Correct doctrine means working out what is big and what is small. The full truth of what God has revealed means understanding what the key to it is, what the heart of it is, what the big issues are that are driving it, and what are relatively minor subsidiary details, and focusing on the big. And the sorts of things that will come out when we focus on the key doctrines are the ones— some of the things we mentioned: Jesus our Lord, Jesus has reconciled us on the cross, Jesus is the means by which we have the hope of glory. It’s not about us.

Those are typical, though not quite exhaustive, of the main things that you’ll discover when you have a correct understanding of the Bible’s doctrine. So that if you’re able to teach, you will have 2 things: you’ll be able to handle the Bible well, and you’ll have a good grasp on the Bible’s theology. And the two go hand in hand. You cannot be a good Bible student if you don’t have good theology. Good theology is actually one of the best tools you bring to an understanding of the passage.

But conversely, you won’t get good theology if you can’t handle the text correctly. If you’re not a good handler of the text, the best you can do is steal somebody else’s theology, and you will take with all his good points all his errors as well. You’ll never be able to challenge it and correct it and refine it from what God himself has said if you can’t handle the Bible yourself. The 2 things are needed if you’re able to teach: handling the Word and good theology.

That then is the content of what we’re to teach. What about how we’re to go about teaching? If we’re able to teach, what does that have to say about how we go about it? And again, Paul has a whole set of verses on this subject, and this comes in the second box. So again, spend about 7 minutes in pairs looking at what Paul says in the second box.

Same rules: focus on the italics, try to do one from each of the 3 lines in that second box. Shall we again call a halt there? So what sort of things that people come up with? How are we to go about our teaching if we’re able to teach? Honestly.

Yep. Without deception. Thank you. That’s the way it puts it, isn’t it? It puts negative— without deception.

Yep. Genuine motives. Thank you. Yes.

Humble. Yep.

Good. Looking to please God rather than man. Yes. Gentleness. Gentleness.

Thank you. Clearly. Clearly. That’s a very important one, isn’t it? Clear, plain speaking.

Yeah. What else? Carefully. Yep. With love for those who are teaching.

Yes. We look more at that in a second. That’s very important.

With courage to rebuke people. Thank you. Again, we’ll look at that one a little bit more later. That’s the trouble with trying to split it up, isn’t it? That sometimes verses do more than one thing at once.

So, but yes? Concentrating on the truth rather than eloquence and wisdom. Concentrating on the truth rather than eloquence and wisdom. Yes, exactly. How else are we to go about doing it?

With patience. Sorry? With patience. With great patience, yes. Any others?

At all times and to everyone. Yes, real urgency.

With energy. With all the energy God gives me. Yes. Somebody else?

With the spirit of faith. Yes, that’s an interesting one, isn’t it? Yeah. With belief. With real— with genuine belief.

With fear. Fear of God, yes. Any others?

With a purpose. Good. We’ll move on to the purpose in a bit, in the next one. Let’s just try to pull together some of what we have to say, what we are saying under this heading. If we’re able to teach, then these verses are some of the main verses on how we should go about our teaching.

What being able to teach means in this way. 3 main points. The first is it will mean that we teach— if we’re able to teach, we will be people who teach clearly, who put the Bible’s truths plainly. We will not use deception or even eloquence. And there are quite a few verses on that, and that’s really quite important.

Just think about it for a second. If I teach By just presenting God’s truth plainly and clearly and not relying on eloquence or deception, what that’s saying is that I trust God to do the work.

I’m not trying to do it by human means. Every time I use deception, I’m trying to do it by human means. Even if I use eloquence, I’m trying to do it by human means.

God’s Word is powerful. All I have to do is to make sure that you see what it says and then rely on God to do the rest. So teaching God’s Word clearly and plainly without deception or eloquence is a key means by which we teach the Bible because it shows a real dependence on God, a willingness to let Him work in His way. It also reflects a concern to please God and not man, because man, people, are going to be very impressed with eloquence. Conversely, because the gospel is often offensive, a clear presentation of the gospel will cause offence.

People won’t like a message of a crucified Lord. People won’t like a message of a Lord who rules in eternity, that there is a judgement. All sorts of things about the gospel are offensive, and if you present them clearly so people understand it clearly, they will be offended.

So teaching clearly and not deceptively or eloquently is a key means by which we’re to teach. Secondly, Being able to teach means having a real passion for teaching. So we’re devoted to it. We do it with real urgency. We do it with all our energy.

We do it despite what it might cost us.

Being able to teach means having a real passion for teaching.

And thirdly, and I think slightly the most complicated, but also in many ways very important, Our teaching must reflect a genuine belief and fear of God. Being able to teach means that we— our teaching comes from having personally understood God’s revelation and be living in the light of it. It means having a real relationship with God. Now this seems absolutely obvious. How can somebody teach the Bible if they don’t have a real relationship with God?

And yet it’s so easily forgotten. We so easily focus on the mechanics of teaching and we forget that good teaching flows out of a genuine relationship with God. It underpins the rest of what we’re saying. Okay, so 3, if you like, facets of what— of how we’re to teach if we’re able teachers. The 3rd area I want to look at under this whole heading of what does it mean to be able to teach is if we’re able to teach, what does that mean we’re achieving in the lives of the people we teach?

What does it mean we’re achieving in the lives of the people we teach? There’s slightly fewer verses here, so let’s spend 5 minutes looking at the verses in this third box. Let’s stop there. Again, what sort of things did people discover? What is Paul trying to achieve in his teaching?

Presenting people perfect in Christ. Yeah, that’s first, most obvious, but really, really important, isn’t it? Yes, what else?

Preparing people in the church for works of ministry. Yes, thank you. What else? Encourage them. Thank you.

Yeah, to rebuke them. Thank you. Any others?

Live lives worthy of God. Yes. Any others? To save them. To save them.

Yeah. To lead them away from false doctrine. Thank you. I think that’s pretty nearly it, isn’t it, for the things? Let’s try to group all of that together and summarise it.

Notice that Paul isn’t just shouting his truth into the ether. He’s actually trying to accomplish something with his teaching. He’s got people in view and he’s trying to change those people. He’s trying to accomplish something in people. He’s trying to take a person and turn them around and do something.

And there are 3 things he’s trying to do, I think. First, he’s trying to teach individuals To build them up in Christ, to help them live as Christians, to help them keep going as Christians to the end, to help them be perfect on the last day. That is one of his key goals, is to help Christians keep going so they’re perfect, they’re still believing in Jesus on the last day.

Secondly, His goal, and therefore our goal, if we are able Bible teachers, is not only to build individuals but to build God’s church.

In particular, the Bible teacher’s job, the pastor-teacher’s job in Ephesians 4, is to teach Christians so they can serve better. The job of building the church is far too big for the full-time Bible teacher to do it alone. If the full-time Bible teacher tries to build the Church of God alone, it will be limited by how much work he can do. Or if there are 2 or 3 of them, how much the 2 or 3 of them can do. But no church has a staff team big enough to do all the work just by the paid members of the staff team.

If God’s body is to be built, if God’s name is to be glorified, everybody in the church needs to be playing their part. And the pastor-teacher’s job is to teach and to train the church so they all do play their part. If he does it all himself, it’s limited to what he can do. If he trains others, he multiplies his effectiveness manyfold. A key role of being able to teach is of being able to train people to do the work of ministry for themselves.

And thirdly, the Bible teacher’s job is to correct error, to encourage and to correct error, and to gently oppose those who spread error. It is deeply unpopular in our postmodernist age to say people are wrong. But if we are to be able Bible teachers, we have to do that.

Gently. Paul is very clear to Timothy, you are to gently correct your opponents. But correct them we must.

So that then, I think, is what being able to teach means. Being able to teach means having the right content to our teaching. It means going about it in the right way with a real relationship with God. And it means being able to build and correct real people. That’s what it means to be able to teach.

The problem, of course, is that many of these things are things again that all Christians should be aspiring to and seeking to do. We should all, shouldn’t we, be aiming to know our Bibles and to know how to handle it well. We should all be seeking how to teach it clearly and passionately, not with deception. We should all be seeking to build people up. We should all be having a real relationship with God.

This is particularly true if you have responsibility responsibility in your church, like teaching a small group or running a Sunday school. So how do we know whether our teaching gifts, which may be enough for us to be leading a small group, are enough for us to go into full-time Bible teaching, running a church? How do we know when our gifts, when our ability to teach is such that we should be doing more than running a Read, Mark, Learn group and actually be going forward to do that the whole of the time we’re awake, effectively. And the answer, I think, is Paul— or there are, Paul gives 3 tests for how we know if one should go full-time. I don’t think Paul gives it because Paul didn’t really understand that.

He just did it. But there are 3 pragmatic tests I think we can deduce from what we’ve been looking at this afternoon so far. First, if our gift is equipping others for the work of ministry, that’s a strong argument to say, which I think, that we should go into full-time Christian ministry. If our gift is that we can teach Christians so they become better labourers in God’s harvest field, Because the pastor-teacher’s job, as we saw, in the first instance is not to do the work themselves. Of course they will do it because they are models and church will learn best if they are doing it themselves and they learn from him or her.

Of course he will want to do it because his passion will be to see people converted, to see people built up individually. But the job from Ephesians 4 seems to be to equip Christians so they can do the work of ministry better. So if your gift is actually on the front line of ministry, if your gift and your passion and your zeal and your love is speaking to the non-Christian directly and making them Christian, if your greatest gift is working with very, very baby Christians and helping them with the first few steps of the Christian’s life, maybe it’s better for you to be staying in the workplace where you’re going to come into contact much more with the non-Christians to speak to them about it. But if your gift is training Christians for the work of ministry, it may well be that doing it full-time is the most effective way for you to serve the gospel.

Second test: if we have significant Bible teaching gifts— it’s, you see, the things we’re looking at are not absolutes. It is not that somebody has the gift of teaching and somebody hasn’t. As we’ve been seeing, it’s very much a sliding scale on all these things.

The person who leads a Bible study group has some teaching gifts. The person who’s asked to lead a group of leaders has slightly more teaching gifts. Somebody who goes into full-time Bible teaching hopefully has slightly more still. But where do you draw the line? It’s very relative.

It’s very much a matter of judgement. You need to ask people who see you in action, older, wiser Christians who’ve seen you in action, whether they think you have enough gifts that the church ought to pay you to do that full-time, as opposed to you doing it in your part-time or working part-time and funding yourself to do it the rest.

A test related to that one which comes from John Chapman, the Australian evangelist, the Chapel Test I’ll call it, is that if we’re asked to teach the Bible so much that we have no time to do our secular jobs, That’s the point at which to give up your secular job. It’s not a bad test.

If nobody is asking you to teach the Bible when— in your evenings and weekends, they’re certainly not going to pay you to do it the whole— the rest of your working life as well. But if they’re asking you to teach the Bible so much in evenings and weekends that you don’t have time for your secular job, maybe they’ll pay you to do it. Instead of your secular job. Go do it. And thirdly, if we wanted to.

I said we’d come back to this one, and here we are. We said earlier on at the beginning of this afternoon that teaching the Bible full-time is a noble task that we should all want, and it’s right to want it because there’s no special calling to full-time Bible teaching. It’s a great job. We should want to do it. But we also saw that wanting to teach the Bible full-time is not enough.

God might have other plans. God might want us to do other things. God might have gifted us in different ways to play other roles in his body. However, wanting to teach the Bible, though not a foolproof test, is a test of whether we should be going into full-time Bible teaching. If we don’t want to teach the Bible full-time, there may be something wrong with us, but I would not encourage somebody to go into Bible teaching if they did not want it.

Conversely, if it is something you want very, very much indeed, yes, you may need to make sure that your motives are right and and you’re not just wanting to do it because in the Christian circles we move in, it’s the job with the prestige and the kudos and seems very special.

But if you want it despite that, when you’ve checked your motives and you make sure your motives are godly and you really want it because you’re convinced the gospel says it’s important, maybe you ought to be doing it. Because many of the qualities we have looked at this afternoon are learned qualities. Did you notice that? Very few of the things we looked at this afternoon are impossible for anybody to do. If you want it enough, you can learn to do it.

And what we’ll be looking at tomorrow is how we grow Bible teachers.

If you want it enough to learn it, if you want it enough to be taught it, If you want it enough to work hard at becoming good at teaching the Bible, maybe you ought to do it.

A Bible teacher is to some extent born, but at least to an equal extent, Bible teachers are grown. And as I said, we’ll look at that more tomorrow. Any questions? Yeah. Could you just describe what you mean on the sheet where you said, my gift is equipping others for the work of ministry?

Could you just define what you mean by ministry in that sentence?

I think the answer is ministry covers quite a broad range of things that are needed within the church. I pointed you to Ephesians 4 People differ on their interpretation of Ephesians 4. My understanding of Ephesians 4 is that in Ephesians 4, the works of ministry are speaking the truth in love. So in Ephesians 4, the gift that the pastor-teacher is being told to equip people for is specifically being able to speak truth in love to one another, be it in a small group, be it one-to-one, be it with your flatmate, your friend, over a pint in a bar, whatever. That is what the pastor-teacher’s job is doing.

But there are other lists in other places that I didn’t mention, like 1 Corinthians 12, Romans 12, where the body has many parts and all the parts are needed for the body to function. So I think ministry, New Testamentally, though not in Ephesians 4, is broader than just speaking the truth in love. I think it does encompass all the other gifts needed in all the other works of service needed to make a church function— bringing other people into the church under the sound of the gospel, welcoming them, serving coffee to them, putting the chairs out, being the church accountant, being the church administrator, doing the legal work for the church. All of that is works of service needed in order to keep a church functioning properly. And the pastor-teacher’s job is to make all of that happening.

But I would say with a special focus because of Ephesians 4, on speaking the truth in love.

Compassion, do you know what I mean? Being kind and that sort of thing, would you say? Yeah, that turns up, I think, in the lists of gifts, doesn’t it? Works of compassion is one of the things that we, the church, is meant to show. So I think the pastor-teacher’s job is to equip other people in the church to do that sort of work.

When the New Testament is absolutely clear that Christians have a responsibility to other Christians who are suffering. If somebody in the church is going through a really bad time, it is imperative that we as Christians look after him or her. But it is not imperative that pastor-teacher does that work.

How will the rest of the church do it? I’d say if the pastor-teacher is teaching the rest of the church, then they need to be doing it. And we don’t— do we not have an obligation to people who are not saved to show compassion? It’s something we’re going to touch on very briefly tomorrow. I think— but I’ll mention it now because it’s going to be so brief tomorrow.

In the New Testament, there’s quite a lot on love and the need to do works of service generally. The vast majority where we can work out to whom we’re to do it are to other people in the church. Now it is not exclusively to those in the church. Galatians 6, I think, puts it very well. Insofar as you have opportunities, says Paul, do good to all men, but especially those of the household of faith.

So there is a priority and an emphasis, I think, on other people within the church. And I think you can actually make quite a good case for saying the compassion we show for those outside the church— what’s the most compassionate thing you can do for a non-Christian? Preach them the gospel because they go to hell if you don’t. Now that’s not to say we stop there, but that’s our priority with them. But to fellow Christians, who are continuing believing?

Well, the most compassionate thing we might do might again be preach the gospel, which is why teaching the truth in love, I think, comes very high up, because we have to keep each other going as Christians. But to some extent, there are other things which are now beginning to become even more significant— or not more significant, but becoming more significant. And therefore, the New Testament seems to say, well, if your Christian brother is hungry, feed him. If he’s cold, Lend him your shirt or coat or whatever.

Yeah? Michael, you said near the start that if God has made us better able to do something else, then we should probably do that because that might be a sign that’s what he wants us to do. What would you say to someone who’s brilliant at their current job, maybe they’re a teacher or lawyer or doctor or whatever it might be, and that competence teaching the Bible. Do you think there’s a case for saying that because it is such an important gift and the role is so important that it might be worth doing that job even though you might do it less well than you were doing your old job? I think— thank you for bringing me— picking me up on that one.

I think when I said if he’s gifted you for something else, I mean gifted you for specifically gifted you for something else which advances the cause of the gospel. So I’m not sure that being an absolutely outstanding accountant furthers the work of the gospel unless it means that somebody’s going to pay you so much that you can then give away huge amounts to fund other teachers. So I think that’s what— that’s a very helpful caveat. When I say if God has gifted you in other ways, I mean in other ways which are directly advancing the work of the gospel. Then you might sort of think, if God has made me a fantastic evangelist and there are some around who are just superb bringers— you just have to look at the St. Helen’s congregation, that at every guest event, there they are with 12 people— and you sort of think the right place for you is where you’re going to be meeting 12 different people every year to bring them in.

Is it, um, is there a case of saying that those people ought to be training others to do the same? If I could bring Richard Coker up, he said that if he replicates, you know, if he’s— if one lawyer was converted through his ministry, who he could train up to, to do what he was doing in his old job, then he replicated himself, and anything after that was a bonus. Yeah. Is there a case for saying that even if you’re someone who has gifts of earning money or gifts of personal evangelism, that it’s still worth being freed up for ministry? It may well be.

You just have to look at someone like a V.J. Menon or a John Chapman. They are fabulous evangelists. They cannot get into a lift or a bus without preaching the gospel to the person beside them. But it is still right that they’re freed up to do it full-time.

I’m just saying that At that point, the case starts getting slightly more complicated, but it may still be right that they get taken out in order to, to train other people. Your point about learning helps with that problem. Go on. If somebody may be a competent Bible teacher, but if they have the ability and potential to learn and improve on that, then that may be factored into that question.

Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. How spiritually old should somebody be to start thinking? Because you were mentioning training other Christians to pray.

I think the answer is you don’t need to be spiritually at all old to start thinking about the possibility. But I think you need to have a reasonable spiritual maturity before you actually go into the job of full-time Bible teaching. Titus chapter 1 says that a church leader ought not to be a young convert, and I think that is right. The reason given in Titus chapter 1 is otherwise you become proud, which is certainly right. It’s scriptural, it has to be, but you can also see the logic of that.

But I think also if you aren’t— if you haven’t been a Christian for a bit, you’re not in a position to train other Christians. So what is the bit? How long is a piece of string?

I am very reluctant to take— take the associate scheme. If somebody becomes an associate, they then do a year or two training people, but in sort of a fairly junior role within the church, and then they might go off to theological college college for 3 years. And then they might become an assistant minister for 3 years. So between the time somebody starts as an associate and they actually become the person running the church, a vicar somewhere, would be a period of about 8 years realistically, at least. So I would say that you can start as being an associate without being hugely, hugely mature.

But I still would not take anybody as an associate who’d been a Christian for less than about 2 years.

Yeah. I suppose a lot of people might have gone through a session like this and kind of understood that they have these gifts and they have this inclination, but for various reasons, perhaps the timing’s not right, and there’s a tendency to say, well, I’ll sign up for the scheme next year. Yes. Yes. What is the danger The danger of that is next year all this goes away.

Next year never arrives.

I think you want to ask yourself the question, why wait?

God hasn’t given us an infinite life. He’s given us a maximum of 70 years, 80 years. The years are ticking away. If this matters and He’s called— and this is the right sort of thing for you to do, He’s given you the gifts, You’ve reached a sufficient maturity. Why waste time?

Get on with it.

Yeah. There may be issues within a family or financial issues that would mean that I would wait, but I need to ask that question. Yeah, that’s right. I mean, none of these are hard and fast rules. The Bible does not say that at the age of 4 years and 3 months you’re then an old enough Christian to go or anything.

They’re just giving guidelines, and guidelines need to be worked out in the lives of people, which means it’s complicated because people are complicated. So you need to look at your— all sorts of situations to do with family and finances. And if you are 6 months away from getting a qualification like being an accountant or something like that, I’d say get your qualification because you’ll never know in a very uncertain age when you might need to make tense with your qualification. But if you’re just starting, I’d say, well, is it really worth doing that? You can flip hamburgers.

So it’s such a difficult balancing act.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, I wish I knew the answer to that, Nigel. I think you need to tell us that. I’m not sure has to be the answer, but I think we need to ask ourselves as we prepare our sermons, as we prepare our talk, what am I trying to do here? Am I trying to make sure my audience understands the point, or am I trying to fast-talk them?

I think that’s probably the test between clarity and plain speaking. I need to present it in such an interesting way that that they stay awake enough to listen to it. Because remember what we’re trying to— what we said. The point of plain-speaking gospel rather than eloquence or deception is so that the Word of God hits you. And the less of me it sees, the better.

Which means if I’m deadly dull, it’s actually seeing quite a lot of me. It’s seeing just how dull I am, so it’s not hearing the Word either. So I think the pastor wants to be a fairly transparent medium so the Word hits the audience with the power of the word, which means not being duller than the word is, but also not being more flamboyant and exotic than the word is.