In a recent sermon, the speaker told an anecdote about a Christian who had been given the responsibility to teach a class. The experience was somehow less than positive, because the teacher complained that the class members were not willing or interested in learning. The minister concluded the anecdote editorially by indicating the teacher might not have had the “gift of teaching,†in other words, that the teacher might have been lacking rather than the students. Of course, missing from the anecdote was that some church leader had appointed the teacher, so someone else believed the teacher had some gift to use in that setting. That omission led me to discount the editorialization and consider the state of Bible education.
How does the church educate its members?
For the moment, omit new believers, young children (pre-teens) and new members received from other denominations or traditions and consider only the evangelical church and its members. Each represents different needs, at least at the outset.
Regardless of what a church calls it, or when in the week or month it is scheduled, does the church actually educate its members in the Word? In addition to the Word, denominational or church-specific “what we believe†orientations, sometimes captured in creeds or slogans, need to be taught (e.g., “No cause but Christ,†“When the Bible speaks we speak, when the Bible is silent, we are silent,†to name but two). Also, is the education ever “complete?â€
Most churches with which I am familiar have absolutely no plan to educate members. Christians either educate themselves through personal study of the Word, or pick up whatever they know from a patchwork of accidental encounters with particular classes, teachers or ideas from the Word. By middle age, most church lifers can pretty well recite the fundamentals, or they will never do so. Most shy away from any discussion or encounter that might call for an organized response. Most members have never been taught the simple techniques for sharing the Gospel, sharing their faith, or explaining their faith (every Bible should have installed by the user a typed or handwritten outline of a few verses to use in a few situations; memorization has its uses but is not effective over the long haul).
Because churches have no educational plan, students can never tell whether they have “graduated.†There is no method to measure whether minimum skills or basic knowledge have been imparted. Most Christians are highly critical of the public schools but have not within their own walls implemented the least method of helping believers objectively determine when they have mastered the basics. Ecumenical churches rely on catechism for the young but do not appear to be any better at creating the mature adult believer.
An adult Christian with some years of maturation in the Spirit should be able to handle a simple outline of the plan of salvation, a simple outline of the Gospel, and possibly one or two other simple subjects likely to come up in most encounters. An adult Christian should know enough about each book in the New Testament so that the believer can identify them, and state in a sentence or two their general content or purpose. That might be harder with some of the shorter NT books, but perfect knowledge and basic knowledge are not the same thing. The believer should have a working knowledge of repentance and prayer. The adult Christian should have at least a conversational knowledge of Bible translation, the history of its assembly and a general knowledge of how the Bible works. The believer need not be a master of inerrancy or the principles of Bible interpretation, but a working knowledge of some fundamentals would save most believers from a lot of confusion.
There are probably several other basics that could be listed, and each church or group of churches would have a different take on it. For example, in my opinion, a believer who does not know about concordances, Bible software, topical Bibles, dictionaries and encyclopedias of the Scriptures, commentaries, and other finding aids is not ready to be an adult believer. Every church should have a basic booklist and reading list of entry-level materials. It need not be a long list, and would defeat the purpose if it was. For example, a class organized to run a semester could buy a few books in bulk and then focus on one for a week or a few weeks, with each believer obtaining his own copy and learning to use it together with his classmates.
I am always shocked when a church will organize a class around the latest megachurch marvel book or something worse, but the church has never equipped the members of that class to critically review such a book. There are almost as many pop culture books in Christendom as anywhere else, but too many believers are unable to make a distinction or even identify false teachings. Just because it sounds wise does not mean it is Biblical.
I am not shocked when Christians gravitate toward churches with the best variety show Sunday morning services. What else have they been trained to do? I am not shocked when Christians make a Sunday morning service their only connection to a church. What else have they been equipped or trained to do? Those Christians are all behaving just as they have been discipled. They have not taken a Life of Christ class, so why should anyone be shocked when they are misled into thinking it is possible Christ had a wife, children, or heirs undisclosed by the N.T.?
When the basics have been “learned,†“graduation†should result. I am not talking about an empty ceremony. I am talking about shouldering responsibility, serving, and, for some but maybe not all, going on to more advanced training and education within the church, most likely in small classes mostly involving self-directed study. Whether offered by the local church or purchased by the local church, the Internet should make all of these things available by correspondence. The church that relies on someone else to do it will have spotty, fragmented and incomplete results, just as they did when they had no plan.
The church that has individuals in leadership that have not “graduated†from Sunday School will be prone to being cultic in its reliance on the minister(s), overly dependent upon its music ministry to provide a “worship experience,†and open to enemy incursions and possibly a hostile take over. Pandering to the emotions in order to gain a following or protect the offering plate will backfire on the salaried clergy.
It may have already happened, as ministers who cannot draw a large crowd or spark a personality-driven following find themselves hunting for jobs every few years, because churches have become marketing driven and fickle, measuring their success based on “numbers and noses,†rather than any objective measure of how well their members are being trained.
