Communicating (Wikimedia)
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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 and 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.
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.
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. There are facts and there is understanding; they’re two different things.
And 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 good friends, they know one another at a deeper level, they care about one another, they are engaged in conversation, they are happy and comfortable together. They might possibly live in community. I bet they eat together at least once or twice a week. And I bet Jesus and his followers interacted in just the same ways. We need community like this! We were designed for it. The five gifts of service (and many other gifts) appear when we are a fully alive community.
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 verses will 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 when he is 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 teaching gift, 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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Journeys of Heart and Mind 
