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

• Jesus’ teaching involved the multitudes and the disciples in distinctive ways as he used both the language of imagery and direct discourse. The apostles followed his clear and compelling teaching of the Kingdom of God with their own commentary on the meaning of the Christ event for the Messianic community, the Church. By all accounts, the teaching ministry played a critical role in credentialing and empowering early Christian leaders and their congregations, defending the apostolic faith, and offering an apology for the Christian hope. • Certain difficulties are present in our time with the teaching ministry, including the tendency to teach and follow modern trends of truth rather than the historic Christian faith, becoming overly dependent upon highly analytical and technical approaches to biblical truth, placing undue focus on methods and gimmicks rather than the heart of the Christian message, and substituting academic performance rather than dependence on the anointing of the Holy Spirit. • We must 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. We conclude that Jesus shared some, but only some, of the views of first-century Jewish apocalypticists. He taught that his own coming already had planted the seeds of that kingdom, that his ministry evidenced the powerful advancing of that kingdom, indeed that the time of fulfillment had arrived (e.g., Luke 11.20). But he also taught that there would be a future Day of the Lord (e.g., Luke 21.34–36) that would bring the old order to an end and fully establish God’s final kingdom. This paradoxical “already” but “not yet” has implications for many of the key themes addressed by apocalyptic writers. Jesus taught that the Evil One was still in control of this present world, but that in some sense he was already defeated. Jesus taught that with his own coming, judgment on the world had come, but that nevertheless a future judgment was to be expected (John 12.31; 16.11). He taught that final vindication for his followers would be in eternity, but that even in this life they would also be well compensated for any sacrifices they were being Jesus Taught the Kingdom of God

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