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.

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

What?: There are a number of reasons you might teach using only lecture for a particular lesson. Your time may be very limited and you want control the flow so that you get through the entire lesson. Lecture allows you to do that. Your group of learners may be very large and in a confined space. Lecture allows you teach them where they are. The point is that there ARE legitimate reasons for using lecture as your method. Arguments against a lecture format in a class are typically arguments against the teacher rather than the method. Some people just aren’t good lecturers.

So how might you lecture?

Considering the first four verses of John’s first epistle, here’s one way I’ve used lecture to help learners answer The Effective Four questions—Why? What? So What? So What Now?

My teaching idea from 1 John, chapter 1, verses 1-4 is that 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.
I draw them in by asking a rhetorical question: “Why can’t Christians just get along?” This is my Why? Then as I transition into the text, I explain how doctrine divides today just like doctrine divided the early church that wrestled over the truth that Jesus is 100% God and 100% man.
Then I help them answer the What? question; what is the truth in the verses? Here I walk through the verses and show them the teaching idea: Real joy in v. 4 comes from real fellowship in v. 3 with the real Jesus, who is described in the first verses.

Then the biggest question: So What? So What difference does that truth make to our life as the church? What might we do to be in fellowship with the real Jesus so that we can experience the joy of His body, the church? I present possibilities that may even raise other options as they think about answering the question.

Then I end with the So What Now? I ask them to commit to doing something that had been suggested or something they thought of themselves. Even getting mental agreement by asking “Will you commit?” primes them for transformation.

So What?: Teachers are divided arguing for or against lecture in a Bible class. Considering the fact that the central teaching event in the church—the sermon—is typically a lecture format, there seems to be good grounds for having lecture in your skill set. The problem is that not every teacher is a good lecturer.

So What Now?: If you’re going to use lecture, even occasionally, will you commit to lecturing with excellence? Grab their attention in the first few moments and hold it until you get them to commit to transformation.

Why?: People say we’ll have all the answers to our questions when we get to heaven. Will we really?

What?: In Ephesians, chapter 2, Paul describes how we’re saved by grace through faith. In verse 7, he tells us why. Paul writes, “… so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” How long will it take for Him to show us what Paul describes as “immeasurable riches of his grace”? The answer is, in a word, “forever.”
Every day we’ll learn more of the “immeasurable riches of his grace.”
I’m reminded of the last stanza of the familiar hymn, Amazing Grace: “When we’ve been there ten thousand years bright shining as the sun, we’ve no less days to sing God’s praise than when we’ve first begun.”
The same will be true a million years later. We’ll still be learning about God’s grace poured out on us. We’ll still be learning more about our Creator, our Savior, our great God as He reveals Himself day-by-day.

So What?: We’ll never know everything, otherwise we would be God. But, since God has made us in His image, we can know everything He reveals to us. A billion years into our eternal lives, we’ll be excited to say, “Lord, we thought we knew you yesterday, but today you have revealed yourself in a new way. You are an awesome God.”

So What Now?: As Bible teachers, we have the privilege of giving our learners a taste of the learning they will experience every day, forever. We get to show them how great God is in every one of our lessons. Are you… will you be that excited every time you have the privilege of teaching those God has placed under your teaching ministry?