Why?: How and why should you grow in your teaching skill?

What?: God is the only perfect teacher. Jesus, God the Son, taught perfectly in His earthly ministry. He sent God, the Holy Spirit to teach until He returns for us. Like Jesus, the Holy Spirit teaches perfectly. To be blunt, you’re neither of them. You ARE given as a gift by Jesus to the church. You ARE used by the Holy Spirit to teach, but only as His instrument. And, every instrument could be better…sharper…more effective.

So What?:So how do you improve?
One way to get better is to record your teaching and then go through the painful process of reviewing your own teaching.
Another way is to have your learners critique your teaching. Did they actually understand the truth you were trying to teach them? Were they motivated to be transformed by that truth?
You might even invite other teachers or church leaders into your classroom to give you feedback.
At TeachersOfTheBible.org, we have a list of questions that are useful in showing you ways you can improve.

So What Now?: The question is, “Will you actually try to improve?” Are you willing to receive feedback, even criticism, in the spirit of helping you to be more effective? Every teacher should want to improve. What will you do about it?

Why?: How and why might you teach a lesson using only discussion as your method?

What?: There are a number of reasons you might choose discussion as the format for a Bible lesson. The personality of the class, as a whole, may favor discussion. You may want to have a community of believers rely on the Holy Spirit, who indwells them, to teach them more directly. You may want to exploit the learning preferences of every learner in the class using the principles on which The Effective Four questions are based. Those Effective Four are Why? What? So What? So What Now?.

If you’re using discussion, you need to plan a series of questions that will help your learners engage with the Bible in order to provide direction for the lesson. For example, when teaching 1 John chapter 1, verses 1-4, I draw them in by having them answer a question: “What problems can keep us from having joy as a church body?” After a couple of answers, I point them to the text that provides the answer. Here I share my teaching point: Real joy comes from real fellowship with the real Jesus. My affective aim is that The learner will desire real joy as a member of Christ’s body
As I transition from the Why? to the What?, I explain how differences in essential doctrines divide today just like doctrine divided the early church that wrestled over the truth that Jesus is 100% God and 100% man.
Then, I walk them through the text asking questions that show them how I came to my teaching point. I spend as much time as necessary for them to see the truth I saw in my study. But, I typically have a time marked on my notes so that we don’t run out of time before getting to the final questions—So What? and So What Now?. In asking these transformative questions, I allow them to provide the answers so that they’re more likely to commit to being transformed by the truth of the passage. I sometimes have some sort of accountability built in, but sometimes I allow them to suggest ways they would be accountable. Throughout the entire lesson, I am steering them towards the truth of the passage and the application of that truth for their lives.

So What?: In the classroom, discussion sometimes looks like the teacher didn’t have to do much to prepare the lesson. That is as far from the truth as you can get IF the lesson is intended to transform the learners. As the teacher preparing, you never know what answers you will get to the questions you ask so you have to be prepared for the most likely and be willing to say “I’m not sure about that but I’ll get back to you” for responses you didn’t anticipate. You can never be sure how the discussion will unfold. And, you have to keep their transformation in mind as you sometimes force them to move on so that the Effective Four questions—Why? What? So What? So What Now? are answered. Being able to control the discussion takes a lot more preparation than a lecture.

So What Now?: Knowing that the Holy Spirit is the primary teacher, will you commit to allowing Him to use you to teach using a discussion format for some of your teaching? It seems risky not knowing the rabbit trails you may discuss, but trusting Him, will you commit to leading discussions with excellence?

Why?: As a teacher, do you ever feel like you are alone?

What?: In many teaching ministries, it is easy to feel isolated, to feel alone. We may not meet regularly with other teachers as we plug away week-by-week. If you feel alone, there is good news. It is recorded at the end of Matthew’s Gospel. Immediately after giving the Great Commission to His first disciples, in the last words recorded by Matthew, Jesus assures His first disciples, “Behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
The dilemma comes in reading at the end of Luke’s Gospel and at the beginning of Acts that Jesus was then taken into heaven. If He promised to be with us and then was taken away, maybe all believers, including teachers, have cause to feel alone.
Well, we’re not! Jesus promised to send His Holy Spirit to indwell us so that we have God present in us as believers. But, how is that Jesus being with us? Perhaps the answer is the church. Consider that the Spirit unites all believers as one church and that united church is called “the body of Christ” a visible body that we can see in local congregations of that one church.

So What?: We can legitimately say that Jesus is physically with us in the local congregation and spiritually with us in the Holy Spirit. We are not alone.

So What Now?: As a teacher, when you feel alone, remember that you’re not. You have Jesus’ promise that He is with all believers until the end of the age.

Why?: Why do you think your teaching is authoritative?

What?: Some teachers think their teaching is authoritative because of their position in the church. Others, because they know and communicate the Bible well. Some even think that if they speak in authoritative ways— whatever that is — that their teaching has authority.
The truth is that we speak authoritatively when we speak with Jesus’ authority. In Matthew chapter 28, verse 18, just before giving the Great Commission to make disciples, the resurrected Jesus said He had been given ALL authority in heaven and on earth. And in that authority, He was sending the church out to make disciples. In other words, Jesus has given us His authority to continue His work of making disciples.

So What?: It is Jesus’ ministry to make disciples who grow to look more and more like their Savior. He has redeemed them. Through His Spirit, He transforms them. The fact that we are operating on His authority rather than our own should keep us humble as we are used to carry out His work. Our teaching fails when we do it on our own authority. Our teaching succeeds when we rely on the authority of the One who commissioned us in the first place.

So What Now?: When you start getting a little full of yourself thinking you are really special as a teacher, will you repent and humbly submit to the One who has real authority and who has sent you to His church with that authority? Only then will your teaching be authoritative.

Why?: Does teaching in the Great Commission apply to every Christian in the same way?

What?: At the end of Matthew’s gospel, he records Jesus’ Great Commission to the church to make disciples by having a heart to reach the lost, baptizing new believers, and teaching all disciples to obey everything Jesus has commanded. That commission for the church applies to every individual believer in the church; we are all to teach. And teachers are to teach. Isn’t that the same thing?
No! In Ephesians chapter 4, verses 11 to 16, Paul tells us that Jesus gave certain gifts, including teachers, to the church to equip every member for ministry. So, all believers are to teach by modeling the Christian life and passing on God’s truth. But, those who are gifted to the church as teachers have a larger responsibility to teach the church so that every believer CAN teach. Although there is certainly some overlap, a simple way to describe the difference is that every believer is to teach in private settings — for example, in the home; but teachers are to teach in public settings — for example, in Sunday school classes.

So What?: As teachers we are publicly to teach how all believers can teach privately.

So What Now?: Don’t be satisfied if your teaching ministry teaches others truth unless you have taught them how to pass on that truth. Teaching them to teach, you will be the gift Jesus intended for you to be when He gave you to His church.

Why?: What does a teaching ministry have to do with baptizing?

What?: In the Great Commission recorded in Matthew chapter 28, Jesus commissions His disciples to make disciples. Having a heart to go to the lost, the church is to baptize those who become disciples of Jesus as their first act of obedience as new disciples, confessing to the world the profession of faith in Jesus. As teachers we have an obligation to teach — and to help those we disciple to teach — the full Gospel message. We must tell of the holiness of God and the separation from God that comes because humanity, through our first father, Adam, chose to sin. We must share the Good News that Jesus is the only solution to our separation

So What?: If we want to be right with God, we need to be disciples of Jesus. Disciples who make disciples by sharing the Good News presented especially in the Gospels that open the New Testament.

So What Now?: As a teacher, being used in a special way by God to make disciples, will you commit to teaching the holiness of God, the brokenness of humanity, and the only solution that makes us right with God, that is Christ Jesus?

Why?: If “Go” is not the Commission, what does “Go, therefore…” have to do with the Great Commission?

What?: The Great Commission recorded in Matthew chapter 28, verses 19 and 20 begins with “Go, therefore…” Many focus on the going as if the only way to carry out the Great Commission is to “go on mission” to some other place, near or far. While the Commission does include what we, today, call missions, the “Go” at the beginning is the first explanation of what it means to make disciples. “Go” prompts our hearts to share the Good News of Jesus Christ to the dying world, starting in the home, extending to the local community, and then reaching all the way to the most distant lands. “Go” begins when we become followers of Jesus and ends when we have no breath left in our bodies.

So What?: Admittedly, it is easy, as a teacher in the church, to leave evangelism and missions to others. After all, we say, we’re doing our part by teaching. But, if we really believe what we teach, we need to model what it means to have a heart to reach the lost and teach the redeemed.

So What Now?: Pray that God would give you a heart set on obedience that sees the brokenness of every person so that He might use you to go, therefore and make disciples.

Why?: The Great Commission is recorded at the end of Matthew’s Gospel, but what is the commission?

What?: In Matthew’s Gospel, chapter 28, verses 19 and 20, Matthew records Jesus’ Great Commission for the church. Jesus said to His first disciples: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you.” There is only one main verb in the Commission and it is not “go.” Instead, it is to make disciples, that is, make disciples of Jesus. So the Great Commission is disciples who make disciples who make disciples…

So What?: Is your teaching ministry about making fact-filled fans of your teaching OR about making disciples of Jesus whose hearts desire to be obedient to Jesus by making even more disciples?

So What Now?: Commit, today, to make every lesson you teach an exercise in obedience to the Great Commission to make multiplying disciples of our Lord.