Apt to Teach - Tuesdays with Timothy #24

Apt to teach.

The local church is the place where men learn to preach and I believe that the local church has a responsibility to train up men in the ministry and give them a place to preach from time to time. Preaching is something that you cannot learn from books and the only way you can get better at preaching is to preach. If a man has a desire to be a pastor, the church he is a member of has a responsibility to the man (and future generations of hearers) to help him to grow in the gifts he has and also to make sure that he has the gifts. This can only be done by allowing the man to preach. A church that is active in training up men are going to hear badly delivered sermons for the glory of God. Every church has to understand that the longer a man preaches, the better he is going to get at it (in most cases, anyway). 

A church can be so eager and excited when man says he wants to preach that we throw him to the task without helping him and making sure he is ready to go. One of the big areas that a church can help a man is in the ability to teach. So if a man has all the other markers, but he isn't skillful in teaching, I think this is the churches responsibility to help him before sending him out. We don't stamp DISQUALIFIED on the man's head if he struggles for a while, but the church can and should help him. This is where men who desire to be in the ministry can look at themselves and honestly evaluate their lives and sure up areas where they are lacking. Teaching is an art and it can be taught. Some men are, by nature, equipped with a natural ability to teach others but that natural ability is something that is defined by particular rules to the art of teaching. R.L. Dabney, in his textbook on preaching Sacred Rhetoric said of the art of rhetoric: 

The assumption that the preacher's sacred attitude is above rhetoric reveals ignorance of the nature of true art. Let us then, at the outset, seek a correct conception of it. And we may be led to this idea by considering the distinction between art and artifice. Art is but the rational adjustment of means to an end. (Art, from Ars (root, art-is) which is from Greek apa, to adjust, whence aprwu, aprof, joined. Art is, therefore, adjustment.) Art is adaptation ; it employs proper means for a worthy end ; it is but wisdom in application. Artifice is false ; it adopts deceitful means for a treacherous end... 

I assert that all true art is natural. If man is by nature a creature of reason and conscience; if duty, forecast, judgment, will, desire of legitimate success, are natural to him, then surely he does not obey, but violates his nature when he discards the use of adapted means for his ends. If there are gifted souls who, without that detailed study of art which is necessary for us common mortals, are able to effectuate their ends more nobly than we with all our labour, then the explanation is that their more powerful genius has only made a quicker and easier intuition of their art. To reach that pinnacle of efficiency, they have ascended the common stairway, for there is no other. The difference is, that while we climb it step by step, their superior vigor enables them to bound up it with almost unconscious effort. Moreover, it is not true that these advocates of pure nature discard art. They are not naturally so natural as they claim to be.

There is an art to teaching and even if you have the natural ability of a teacher, you should work to improve that ability. Even those who are natural and gifted teachers play by the same rules as those who need to study and work hard to learn to teach. A musician may be gifted to play the piano by ear and have natural ability, but that doesn't mean he can mash any group of keys he wants and it makes a beautiful melody. The best preacher I ever knew spent his whole life getting better. He was always perfecting the craft or the art of preaching. Anything we do for the Lord, we ought to do with all our might and to the best of our ability, and preaching is not excluded. Preachers should never stop trying to get better as a preacher.

 I knew a man who went to a church that believed it unspiritual to think about what you were going to preach before you got to church. They had a bench behind the pulpit and 5 preachers sat there every service. The congregation would sing while these men bowed their heads and prayed until the Lord "spoke" to one of the men. Whoever the Lord spoke to first got to preach that night. My friend told me that it was all very spiritual and that only an infidel would think about what he was going to preach prior to standing behind the pulpit; lack of faith and such. He did tell me that he thought it strange that the preachers usually preached on the same verses and would say the same things every time. Usually about women wearing pants and people drinking beer on Sunday. Somehow I doubt that the God who ordained the end from the beginning, and elected us before the foundation of the world, would frown upon our forethought prior to preaching His Word as somehow being "unspiritual". 

How does this work itself out practically? Personally, I try to always be reading a book on preaching or a book on writing. When I finish one, I try and start on another and just keep plodding along. One reason I stick with the blog is practice writing because writing helps you become a better preacher. Anyone can stand up and chat for 30 minutes and wander hither and yon, but if you are going to write, you have to put your thoughts in some kind of order and in a way that people will understand what you are trying to say. This helps a man to teach because it helps to train a man to get the thoughts out of his head and into words in a way that makes sense. The better you are a doing this, the better a teacher you will be. 

A teacher also has to have patience. When a church looks to call a man into the pastorate, he is going to know more than a good number of the church members. There are going to be a lot of people who just don’t know much about the Bible, whether they be children, young converts, or lazy believers. The man of God will have to teach the same thing, over and over and over and not get tired of telling the same things in different ways. He will have to be patient that when he teaches on thanksgiving, that he hears people complaining about the weather after the service and the like. Patience, know that no one grows in a day, and it has taken all of our lives to get where we are now, and it will take the rest of our lives for us to get where we will finally be. 

A teacher has to have humility. By humility, I don’t mean the false humility of post-modernity that says that it is arrogant to claim to know something with certainty. Years ago I had a lady yell at me in a restaurant because she said I was arrogant because I was saying definitely that Christ rose from the dead. Her idea of humility was saying that I could be wrong.

The humility I speak of is understanding that the Bible is a spiritual book and that God the Holy Spirit enlightens men to the truths of His Word. Without the Spirit’s help, the best teacher in the world cannot impart truth to the hearers. A humility that when we try to do our best, our best will never be good enough to give life to the dead or sight to the blind. Humility that we are mere jars of clay, imperfect vessels carrying perfect message and that our broken, frail, feeble efforts will only be effectual if empowered by God’s Holy Spirit.

I don't think anyone has every reached the mark of perfection as a teacher and even the best can get better. Vine's defined the word as "skillful in teaching" so that tells us there is a level of ability involved and skill to be learned. I have heard a lot of men who disqualified others who themselves couldn't teach a hound dog to howl at a possum on the porch.  Each church and each man is going to have to read this passage and decide whether or not they meet the standard in a way that they are confident of God's calling.