Teaching pastors tend to be good learners. In fact, you can’t be a good teacher without being a good learner first.
- Are you curious?
- Are you teachable?
- Do you seek to know where you’ve been wrong so you can correct it?
If those characteristics apply to you, so does this article.
Here’s one of the most important lessons I’ve learned as a teaching pastor: Teaching people is not the same as equipping the saints.
The biggest mistake we tend to make is to think we’re equipping when all we’re doing is teaching.
(This is the first of two articles about becoming an equipping pastor. Check out my follow-up article, How To Go From Teaching A Crowd To Equipping The Saints.)
Equipping > Teaching
Certainly teaching is a vital part of equipping. But it’s just one aspect. It’s not the whole thing.
If all we do is teach people more about God and the Bible, we won’t have better equipped church members, just better informed ones.
Information is not enough. It never has been.
We need to do what Jesus told us to do. Not just teach students, but make disciples.
Disciples are doers of the Word, not just hearers of it. In fact, the New Testament contains some harsh criticism for people who hear the Word, but don’t translate that hearing into doing. James 1:22-25 says such people are living in self-deceit.
The Pastoral Prime Mandate
The primary calling of the pastor or any church leader is not just to teach people. According to Ephesians 4:11-13, it’s to “equip the saints for the work of ministry” (ESV). This principle is so important I call it the Pastoral Prime Mandate.
If you are a teaching pastor, I want to thank you for what you do. But we must always see our teaching through the lens of doing. We must always gauge the effectiveness of our teaching, not by what people learn, but by how people’s lives are changed by it.
Like me, your primary ministry gift may be teaching. But that gift must always serve the greater command to be equippers.
A smarter church doesn’t make an impact for the kingdom of God. Only an equipped, discipled, and empowered church does that.
(Photo by George Kelly | Flickr)
