The Equipping Ministry, Student Workbook, SW15

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T H E E Q U I P P I N G M I N I S T R Y

The teaching ministry has its own distinctives, including its focus on spiritual maturity, teaching disciples to obey all that Jesus commanded us, the call to the saints for the work of the ministry, and to protect growing disciples from the threat of heresy, schism, dead orthodoxy, and spiritual immaturity. The teaching ministry was prominent in the life of Jesus and the apostles, and reveals its centrality in credentialing and empowering leaders, defending the apostolic faith, and offering an apology for the Christian hope. Modern difficulties challenge the teaching ministry today, including the tendency to follow current trends rather than the historic Christian faith, and being overly dependent on technical approaches, modern day gimmicks, and academic performance rather than on the anointing of the Holy Spirit. We need to recover the ministry of teaching (i.e., the ministry of equipping the saints for the work of the ministry) in our urban churches in order to build the Kingdom in our most vulnerable and neglected urban communities. Our objective for this segment, The Foundations of the Teaching Ministry , is to enable you to see that: • The NT defines the teaching ministry through a number of terms, all of which highlight the role of the teacher as an instructor and builder of others. • Various models of the teaching ministry may be inferred from the NT, including the model of the teacher as a scribe of the Kingdom (one who teaches or instructs in the revelation of Jesus Christ and his Kingdom), the teacher as a master builder (one who builds on the teaching of Jesus, the apostles and prophets to make their meaning clear for others to teach others), the teacher as a master craftsman (one who equips apprentices who will be able to train others also), and the teacher as seer (in modern terms, a color commentator on the game of the Lord, one explaining the working of God in the world, and our response to it). • The teaching ministry possesses its own major distinctives in the Church, especially its focus on building up disciples in Jesus Christ to maturity, the fulfillment of the teaching clause of the Great Commission (i.e., teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you,” Matt. 28.19). Two other distinctives include the need to envision the teaching ministry as equipping the saints for the work of the ministry, and the protection of disciples from the threat of heresy, schism, dead orthodoxy, and spiritual immaturity.

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