This series on the five-fold ministry is based off my handwritten notes, which I took as I attended a church conference on this topic in Mar 2024.
Goal of teacher in a church:
- To impart knowledge / skills, or give instruction to
- First level: Knowledge acquisition
- Second level: Application of knowledge acquired
- Third level: Creating followers / disciples, becoming and resembling Jesus
- Highest level: Create disciples, that creates disciples, this results in exponential growth
- We can trace our discipleship all the way back to the book of Acts
- Role of teacher defined: One who makes disciples, who makes disciples
- Times has changed due to technology, and people have short attention span, we need new methods of reaching out
- Seven styles of learning: visual, auditory, verbal, social, kinaesthetic, solitary, logical
- We tend to teach a style that we learn / familiar with
- But times have changed, and today we need to adapt to our student’s style
- Old way: Teachers shares info, and students are responsible for adapting to his style
- New way: Teachers need to adapt the learning styles of their students
- As Pentecostals, we use the anointing as an excuse to skip / preparation, or strive to be better teachers
- But let us look at more on how we can improve our teaching styles for students today
- We will look at seven more improvement pointers comparing old and new teaching styles
Improvement 1:
- Old way: Teacher never lets students see their weakness
- New way: Teacher confess weakness, and connect with students facing the same difficulty
Improvement 2:
- Old way: Teacher is the expert, they will try to impress students with big words / facts
- New way: Teacher is the tour guide, letting students discover information their own but guiding them in the right directions
Improvement 3:
- Old way: Disagreement is discouraged
- New way: Disagreement is encouraged
Improvement 4:
- Old way: Follow a carefully constructed lesson, in a linear fashion
- New way: Let students learn by trial and error, non-linear as they get to the same objective but through more curves and mistakes
Improvement 5:
- Old way: Lecture
- New way: Incorporate different teaching methods, suiting different learning styles of student. For example, Jesus thought using parables.
Improvement 6:
- Old way: Discipline and strict rules
- New way: Teacher engaged with the life of students
Improvement 7:
- Old way: Acquisition emphasised
- New way: Application emphasised
Improvement 8:
- Old way: Start with a Bible text
- New way: Start with a connection to engage the congregation
Improvement 9:
- Old way: Give materials and assignments
- New way: Model, develop, train and release
We should invest in children our next generation, and assign the best teacher to children. Adults already know how to feed themselves.
