Category: Life

Understand and explain

Jesus taught his disciples, but he also taught the crowds. Sometimes his teaching went way beyond words and ideas, often he’d share a parable like the Good Samaritan that reached directly into minds where words alone failed to penetrate.

Students and teacher (Wikimedia)

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9 – activating church

Students and teacher (Wikimedia) -Click images to enlarge

The final APEST gift we need to consider is the gift of teacher. Just like the other gifts, the teaching gift is there for the building of the church, does not act in a controlling way, but is a life-bringing and helping function in the life of the church and the individual parts of it.

Where a teaching gift is active there will be a clarifying service at work. Confusion and misunderstandings will be swept aside. Decades, even centuries and millenia of mistakes and misunderstandings will be exposed and brought out for fresh examination. Teachers cannot sit still or take a back seat where they detect error of any kind.

What is the most fundamental definition of a teacher? It must be something along the lines of:

A teacher is a person who helps younger or less experienced people to grasp and excel in an idea or a process that they have not previously met or mastered.

The photo at the head of this post, and my words in italic above may make you feel the teaching gift is about extending knowledge. But that’s not quite what the gift of teaching is all about. The distinction is critically important so read this carefully… The spiritual gift of teaching has little to do with imparting knowledge, it has everything to do with growing character.

I just don’t get it!

And it’s not just a matter of explaining things more clearly or studying the meaning of Hebrew or Greek terms. It’s much more helping people through those ‘I just don’t get it’ moments until they suddenly cry out, ‘Oh, now I see!’ The teaching gift sparks revelation. Hold on to that thought as you continue reading.

Jesus taught his disciples, but he also taught the crowds. Sometimes his teaching went way beyond words and ideas, often he’d share a parable like the Good Samaritan that reached directly into minds where words alone failed to penetrate. This kind of teaching gift cuts through misconceptions and breaks into parts of our being that seem to be based somewhere other than the grey matter in our brains. Often, we express this as heart even though that’s biologically incorrect. But our languages are full of heart-based expressions – heartfelt, avoir le cœur sur la main, heart-stopping moment, sich ein herz fassen, good hearted or a heartless act. There are facts and there is understanding; they’re two different things, we tend to think of facts being in our heads and understanding being in our hearts.

When the wealthy, or the Pharisees, or the Temple priests needed a bit more than a word to pitch them over the edge from not comprehending to fully understanding, Jesus would show them what the Father’s heart was like – ‘Don’t stand on street corners praying where everyone can see you, go quietly into your own room where only the Father sees you and pray there.’ And sometimes there’d be a spark of comprehension. It might only be one person amongst a group of proud scoffers, but it’s so worth it when even one person sees the light and understands a previously hidden truth for the first time.

As always, community really matters

It’s still like that in the church today. There are many who don’t see the truth but now and then a light comes on for someone – Ding! Anyone with a teaching gift loves it when that happens. Understanding is like a staircase, each step makes the next one possible when the right time comes. The teaching gift enables the teacher to recognise that right moment and drop in the necessary grain of truth so that it makes a deep and long-lasting difference.

Look again at the photo at the top of this article, these are not strangers interacting, they are people who know one another, a teacher and his pupils, they care about one another, they are engaged in conversation, they are happy and comfortable together, the entire class is a kind of community. In the church environment we should all be learning from one another every time we meet. Some people have a gift for making things clear. Make sure you encourage them as much as possible.

Building the body of Christ

Jesus told his followers, ‘I will build my church’. He doesn’t want you and me to build it, but he does pour out gifts upon us so that we, together, can contribute something essential and useful. There’s an abundance of brotherly/sisterly love amongst us when we all pool our different gifts. And that in itself is a secret that has been lost during church history. We need to fully grasp that secret – we all have gifts and we do far better when we share them, recognising them in one another and encouraging one another by saying what we see. This will never happen if we keep thinking only in terms of individual people and individual gifts. We, together, are the body of Christ.

Don’t think in terms of a tyre here and a seat there. A gear lever and a rear view mirror. Understand that thinking about a car is very different from merely thinking about the different parts of a car. You can travel quickly over long distances if you have a car, but if you have only a tyre and a seat you’ll go nowhere. Building a car means recognising the pieces and putting them together in right relationship. Building community and church needs exactly the same skills and understanding.

A big mistake

There is one big mistake frequently made in mainstream churches today, OK, there are many mistakes made, but I want to highlight this one in particular because it’s very widespread and very harmful. It’s also an easy and natural mistake to make.

Many well-intentioned teachers don’t teach Jesus, instead they teach the Bible. Jesus is very much present throughout the Old and New Testaments. But teaching people to memorise or study verses may do little to help them grow in character or grace. Instead we need to bring Jesus himself into one another’s hearts and minds and be changed by his presence. We need to grow in love and in joyfulness, we need to be rooted in his peace, reflect his patience and great kindness and goodness, become faithful as he is faithful and develop the kind of self-control that never criticises and never directs anger or disappointment at the brothers and sisters.

We simply cannot be built on the foundation of Christ unless we come to know him well, so we’re not looking for technical knowledge of Greek and Hebrew, or deep Bible studies. Instead we need to know Jesus as our dependable, older brother, to recognise that he is always present and how to help one another find him again when we lose sight of him. We need to learn that the fruit of the Spirit is more fundamental than the gifts of the same Spirit, but that we need both to function as Jesus fully intends his church to do. ‘I will build my church’.

That’s it for this part of the series. Next time we’ll consider Jesus, the source of these gifts of service. Can we see all five APEST gifts at work in him? What can we learn from him in this regard?

See also:

I wanted to provide links or articles about the topic, just as I do in most of my posts, I looked at a load of stuff but nothing seemed to jump out for me, I didn’t hear Jesus whispering, ‘Yes, put that item in’. In the end I felt there were two videos I should include. Neither of them is specifically about the gift of teaching (though they both mention this gift in passing. Both of them are about the five APEST gifts as a whole. They are both interviews. Alan Hirsch and Neil Cole have both pretty much dedicated themselves to studying , teaching, and writing about APEST. My feeling is that I should link to these two interviews, so here they are.

I’ve met and spoken briefly with both Alan and Neil, and and I’ve heard them both speak in meetings several times. And I trust them to reveal something useful to you, so have a listen.

  • APEST, Interview with Alan Hirsch – YouTube (Follow Baptist Church)
  • APEST, Interview with Neil Cole – YouTube (Cynthia Anderson)

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You might also like:

Pear-shaped
The city on the hill
We are all priests

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Transparency

Some people are not at all transparent, with hidden motives, fears, doubts, and agendas. Treat such people with caution – what you think you see may not be what you actually get!

Ducks on clear water (Photo by Jess Grzeb*)

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Image of the day – 196

What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image whenever I can.

Ducks on clear water (Photo by Jess Grzeb*)

What does it mean to be transparent? In different ways, this word can used of material, of people, and of organisations. The photo is almost surreal, it looks as if the ducks are floating in mid-air above the water.

*Many thanks to Jess Grzeb for letting me use her remarkable photo.

Transparent material

The water in this photo (Lake Bled in Slovenia) is about as transparent as water in nature gets. Light is bent as it enters the water from the air, and again as it returns from water to air. Both water and air are transparent, of course, but they have different densities and the speed of light is a little slower through water than through air. The main effect of this bending is that the water looks a good deal shallower than it actually is. You can easily check this for yourself, fill a bucket with water and put a straight stick into it. The stick no longer looks straight.

Air is a gas, water is a liquid, glass is a solid, but all three can be either transparent or cloudy. Smoke turns transparent air cloudy, suspended mud will do the same for water, and glass can be manufactured to be cloudy as well. But of course, you can only see long distances through transparent materials. The universe itself is for the most part incredibly transparent. With telescopes we can see unimaginably far across the universe.

Transparent people

If a person is ‘transparent’ we do not mean, of course, that you can physically see through them. But metaphorically their nature and motives are clear for all to see. They tend to be open-minded, kind, thoughtful and make no attempt to hide their thoughts and opinions. If they think something they tend not to conceal it, and if you disagree it’s probably no big deal for them. They’re often live-and-let-live people.

Transparent people are useful in society. They say what they mean and they mean what they say. They’re reliable and you can trust them. I was once described by a colleague at work as a WYSIWYG person. It’s an old term from the early days of word processing; back in the 1970s computer screens were rather primitive and could only display text in one, very basic, typeface. On modern devices you can compose the text and images as they will appear in the printed document, that’s WYSIWYG and it makes life far, far simpler. Some people are not at all transparent, with hidden motives, fears, doubts, and agendas. Treat such people with caution – what you think you see may not be what you actually get!

Transparent organisations

So we come now to the third category of things that may or may not be transparent. Governments and companies are good examples of organisations that can vary greatly in their transparency. Few or even no governments or companies are fully transparent, both have aspects that require secrecy such as details of military capability or of new products in development. But not all governments are equally secretive, of course; and the same goes for companies.

Some examples will help here. Here’s a topical example: the Russian government is clearly much less transparent than the Ukrainian government. The presence of a dictatorial president in Vladimir Putin and the presence of a corrupt and wealthy oligarchy puts Russia amongst the most obscured of governments in the world. They are not alone in this, but they are one of the most extreme examples. Ukraine on the other hand has an open minded, democratically elected president in Volodymyr Zelenskyy. There is still some corruption in the Ukrainian system (but show me a government with no corruption at all).

The USA is an interesting case, the nation’s constitution is clear and requires openness and a transparent, law-abiding government. But the rules seem to be regularly flouted or ignored by President Trump who apparently has little interest in (or patience with) order, truth, legality or indeed transparency.

Perhaps among the most transparent governments are those like Switzerland, Canada and New Zealand – WYSIWYG nations.

When it comes to companies, we see the same thing; a wide range from open transparency on the one hand to deliberate obscurity on the other, particularly amongst high-tech businesses with commercial secrets to hide or those trying to make fast profits on illegal practices. Much lower transparency than Lake Bled here!

Governments and businesses alike range from law-abiding openness and clarity to some that are murky and perhaps even corrupt. There is a strong inverse relationship between transparency and corruption.

See also:

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You might also like:

The changing USA
Trump, Vance and fruit
Understand and explain
The Governor gives way

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Stars dancing in the sky

There is beauty in so many natural things – a waterfall, a flower opening from a bud, the swirling patterns in a shoal of fish or a murmuration of starlings at dusk.

Cirencester’s church tower

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Image of the day – 195

What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image whenever I can.

Cirencester’s church tower

On a clear evening during late May or early June, take a look at the western sky after sunset and you’ll see two very bright stars quite close together. They’re not stars at all, in fact. They are the planets Venus and Jupiter. The brightest of the two is Venus, setting slightly earlier than Jupiter until the beginning of June. The photo was taken on 25th May while the two planets were still far apart in the sky. Venus is brighter, the same side of the sun as Earth is. It’s just to the left of Cirencester’s Church tower in the photo. Jupiter is a little fainter, up in the top-left corner. Jupiter is a larger planet than Venus (about ten times the diameter, but it’s also much further away; far, far beyond the sun from our point of view. If you’re struggling to find the planets click the thumbnail image to expand it and you’ll see them both quite easily.

Passing close

The two planets will pass very close indeed in the first week of June. As I mentioned above, it’s merely a line of sight closeness, there’s no chance of a collision. Astronomers call a coming-together in the sky a planetary conjunction. At one time people thought the star of Bethlehem might have been a close conjunction like this, but these events can be predicted accurately far into the future and we now know there are no events from 2000 years ago that would fit the idea.

Nonetheless it’s a beautiful thing to see and you don’t even need a telescope. It’s something you can watch evening by evening with the naked eye or a pair of binoculars (providing the weather cooperates). Serious warning, don’t look until the sun has set. You can damage your eyes by looking at the sun, and seeing it in binoculars is particularly dangerous. Hint: go on watching after the planets move further apart, you’ll get a continuing sense of how active our Solar System can be.

What makes something beautiful?

It’s hard to pin down, isn’t it? There is beauty in so many natural things – a waterfall, a flower opening from a bud, the swirling patterns in a shoal of fish or a murmuration of starlings at dusk. There is beauty in athletics, the perfect pole vault, a new world record, a plunging, almost splashless entry into the water from a high board after a long series of breathtaking manoeuvres on the way down. A special sunset or sunrise. A list of beautiful things could go on for ever!

There’s also beauty in human relationships, children playing together, smiling and laughing; the elderly chatting together about times past. There’s beauty in the flavours of food and drink as well, some combinations are just so special, cheese and fruit, even really simple things like a ripe apple and a chunk of mature Cheddar, or some Brie with ripe grapes and crispy crackers.

Beauty seems, at its heart, to depend on everything good and right. Kindness and gentleness are beautiful things, anger and violence are ugly.

What about me? How can I become more beautiful? Think about it from your own point of view if you are reading this; what can you do or say or think or display that will make other people catch their breath and think, ‘Ah, there’s something beautiful here, something commendable, something I can appreciate and value.

Living and behaving in beautiful ways costs nothing, and greatly benefits those around us. So what is not to like? If everyone on the planet was determined to live better and more kindly today than they did yesterday, what a wonderful world this would become!

See also:

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You might also like:

Life together
The Lake District

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Seemingly a leafy town

When I say ‘landscape’ I’m thinking here of the way the rising hills and the meandering river valley reveal a town snuggled into a cosy counterpane of woodland as in the photo.

Cirencester’s church tower

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Image of the day – 194

What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image whenever I can.

Cirencester’s church tower

Seen at a distance from the east, Cirencester’s buildings are almost entirely hidden by trees. Only the tallest structures remain visible, mostly just the tower of the Parish Church. This telephoto shot shows it clearly; I’ve compensated for some summer haze by increasing the contrast a little.

Inside the town

It’s a very different matter when you’re in the town itself. Most of the larger buildings are in and around the Market Place. The church tower is at the western end of the Market Place and really all you can see are buildings. From the Abbey Grounds there are views over the rising land to the east across Tar Barrow Field towards the point where I took this photo (here’s the opposite view from near the tower towards the higher ground where I took today’s image). Northwards, the Cotswold Hills rise ever higher as you approach Gloucester and Cheltenham where the land falls suddenly and steeply about 300 m to the floor of the Severn Valley. In the West the hills increase towards Stroud and Tetbury as they also do to the south on the roads heading for Swindon and Marlborough.

Central Cirencester therefore lies in a hollow, part of the Churn Valley, and because the Churn meanders along its course there appear to be hills in every direction. Without the wandering of this valley, Cirencester would have hills mostly on the east and west. If it wasn’t for the church tower, Cirencester would be invisible from every direction, hidden by woodland and fields with scattered hedgerow trees, until you reach the built environment.

The old centre dates mostly to the 18th and 19th centuries with many wool merchant’s houses built of cut Cotswold stone blocks, often built in Georgian ashlar style and now converted to shops and offices. There are a few, scattered, timber-built properties remaining in some of the older streets in the town, almost entirely within 1½ km of the town centre. There are other wooden buildings now hidden, re-fronted in Georgian times with stone. Further out are Victorian and Edwardian streets, then houses from the 1920s and 30s, followed by post war housing estates from the 40s, 50s and right up to the present day. The town is still expanding.

Landscape affects the feel of a place

It’s important to notice this because the principle applies far more widely than you might, at first, think. When I say ‘landscape’ I’m thinking here of the way the rising hills and the meandering river valley reveal a town snuggled into a cosy counterpane of woodland as in the photo above. The entire feel of the town depends to a great extent on the underlying landscape features and the ten thousand years of water erosion since the end of the last ice-age. Had these events not taken place, Cirencester and its Roman predecessor, Corinium, would have been very different from the places they actually are and were.

Just consider how this applies to other aspects of life. Here’s a short list to consider. It really is a fundamental process.

  • Education – Shapes a person’s entire life.
  • Character – This affects how other people will understand you and treat you in life.
  • Genetics – Will affect everything from skin colour to health issues.
  • Wealth – Can open doors, create or close opportunities.
  • Faith – May provide strength to persevere, can bring peace and calm in difficulties.
  • Vision – Nobody can do what they cannot imagine!

Have a think about your own life. What things have been fundamental in shaping who you are and what you have achieved (or may achieve)? What has been really special so far in life? What is the ‘landscape’ underlying your life and how has it affected you and the way others perceive you?

See also:

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You might also like:

Cirencester Hospital
A grand old house in Cirencester
Cirencester Abbey

Useful? Interesting?

If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. (If you don’t see those links, click the article’s title above the main photo and they will appear.) Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!

What’s the rush?

We live in a culture deeply uncomfortable with grief. We rush people through heartbreak. We hand out silver linings while wounds are still open. Even in faith spaces, we sometimes move too quickly toward redemption language because suffering itself makes us uneasy. We want resurrection without sitting at the tomb. We want healing without fully acknowledging what was lost.

The Slow Return of Hope

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On the web – 4

Slow Return of Hope

It’s quite easy in life to bounce from one thing to another without paying much attention to anything. It’s the usual mode of the world we live in. But when we do that, we miss a very great deal. We don’t really get into the deeper aspects, we don’t think things through properly. On the one hand we don’t see the wood for the trees, but on the other hand we don’t have time to even get to know one, single tree in the depth it deserves – the crevices in the bark, the shades of green in the details of the leaves, the patterns of the veins in those same leaves, the gentle sound of the breeze filtering through the canopy. The aroma of moist earth and leaf-mould.

Sandy doesn’t make that mistake, it’s even in the title of her blog – Run with Patience (KJV Heb 12:1). Here’s an extract from a recent article to give you a flavour of her approach, at the end of the extract I’ll place a link so you can read the rest direct on Sandy’s site.

Extract from Sandy’s article – The slow Return of Hope

There are seasons when the soul does not sing easily. Seasons where faith feels less like soaring and more like sitting quietly in the dark, trying to remember what light once felt like.

I think that’s why I keep returning to Book of Lamentations, not because it resolves suffering neatly nor because it offers quick comfort, but because it refuses to lie about pain.

The older I get, the more I realize how rare that is.

We live in a culture deeply uncomfortable with grief. We rush people through heartbreak. We hand out silver linings while wounds are still open. Even in faith spaces, we sometimes move too quickly toward redemption language because suffering itself makes us uneasy. We want resurrection without sitting at the tomb. We want healing without fully acknowledging what was lost.

But Book of Lamentations lingers in the ruins. It lets the smoke rise, the silence ache, and grief breathe.

And strangely, that honesty feels sacred to me.

Because there are losses in life that cannot be reduced to inspirational lessons. Some grief changes the architecture of a person. Some suffering rearranges the nervous system, the body, the assumptions you once held about safety, love, God, or the world itself.

Sometimes you survive something, but you do not emerge untouched.

I think Scripture knows this better than we often allow ourselves to admit.

Read the full article on Run with Patience

Here’s the entire article on Sandy’s site. I suggest you read it to discover the precious truth it contains. Explore the other articles on Sandy’s thoughtful site as well. Perhaps bookmark the blog, or sign up for email notifications whenever new articles appear.

See also:

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You might also like:

John 16:12-15 – The Spirit
Another great post
Run with patience

Useful? Interesting?

If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. (If you don’t see those links, click the article’s title above the main photo and they will appear.) Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!