Monday, December 18, 2006

Opening Your Spiritual Gifts (Day 16)

Teaching is the spiritual gift of those with the ability to convey God’s truth and glorify God so that others learn about Jesus Christ.

In a congregational context, we usually associate the gift of teaching with those who preach or teach Catechism or Sunday School. In the Church at large, the gift is associated with instructors at colleges and seminaries and with our bishops, who also have teaching offices. Those are good and essential places for people to exercise the gift of teaching, to be sure. We need people who teach God’s Word with care and faithfulness.

But the gift of teaching can help the Church fulfill its mission in other ways, too.

The most important responsibilities of parents, for example, are (1) to prepare our children for adulthood and (2) most importantly, to introduce them to the God we know in Jesus Christ (Deuteronomy 11:18-21). Parents mostly discharge these two responsibilities by their examples. But if parents have the gift of teaching, they also have an important weapon in their parenting arsenal.

Another way people with this gift might exercise it is through mentoring. In my home church was a woman named Martha. Martha was in her sixties when I came to know her, a person of deep faith in Christ who took this rambunctious, out of control twenty-something under her wing and taught me about living for Jesus Christ. Mentors, too, often teach by example. But some with the gift of teaching have the capacity to make the faith come alive for both those within the Church and those outside of it.

We can also use the gift of teaching to extend the mission of the Church in non-churchy ways. In that same home congregation was a devoted follower of Jesus, president of our church, and vice chair of the Plant Pathology department at Ohio State. Phil was in his thirties and a husband and a father of four children. But, in the midst of a busy schedule, he taught a class on lawn care at our church building. We publicized his class to the community. It became a means by which we loved the people of our neighborhood in a practical way. Spiritually disconnected people who attended the class saw the Savior behind the teacher.

Teaching is the spiritual gift of those with the ability to convey God’s truth and glorify God so that others learn about Jesus Christ.

Bible Passage to Ponder: “Come, O children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the Lord.” (Psalm 34:11)

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