CLING WELL TO INSTRUCTION
AND NEVER LET IT GO:
OBSERVE IT WELL
FOR IT IS YOUR LIFE
— Prov 4:13 NIV

THE TEACHING MINISTRY OF THE CHURCH

Dr. T. Franklin Miller, executive secretary of the Board of Christian Education, from 1945–1965, often preached and taught that “a bird needs two wings to fly” and so does the church: “evangelism and nurture, both outreach and Christian education, are needed if the church is to be healthy and growing.”

In 1998, Dr. Merle Strege, historian of the Church of God, wrote the following appreciation for the teaching ministry of the church:

Near the conclusion of Matthew’s Gospel Jesus issues the Great Commission, the oftquoted speech that commands the church to make disciples. That we have taken the commission as a mandate for evangelism is, by now, an accepted commonplace. That we have frequently neglected its other elements—baptism and instruction—is also true. To read the Great Commission in its entirety strongly suggests that disciples are made through personal commitment that entails participating in the church’s liturgical and educational life. Making disciples is therefore clearly an educational activity, especially if we remember that biblical models of education embrace both the formation of our passions and the shaping of our perspectives.

The church, in other words, is to come to be a particular kind of people, formed to love the Lord our God with heart and mind—affectively and cognitively, as the educational theorists say. The goal of this education is the formation of a people who can life faithfully to the God who is revealed in the Bible. That, of course, is no small or easy task. Indeed it is, or ought to be, embraced throughout the whole life of the church. It becomes clear, then, that educational ministry lies at the heart of the purpose and work of the church.

DISCIPLESHIP

Arthur Kelly, former coordinator of Christian education for Church of God Ministries, recently wrote the following set of “assumptions” about the centrality and importance of Christian education in the life of the church—

• discipleship is the primary base from which the work of the church goes forward;
• discipleship is defined as the means by which persons become fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ;
• one needs to know who Jesus Christ is in order to follow him;
• the two best sources for understanding Jesus are the Bible and the people of the Bible, that is, the church—and that the Bible is also the best way to understand the church;
• a thoughtful, age-level appropriate, culture and life connected, whole Bible approach to understanding Jesus is the “back bone” of the discipleship life of the church;
• a systematic (scope & sequence) curriculum is not the only means by which a person is formed into a disciple of Jesus Christ, but it is an essential means.

Dr. Strege further writes: “Christian education is not merely what we do once we’ve got our theology straight. Sunday schools are not indoctrination centers. Understood as the formation of the people of God that they might live faithfully as disciples of Jesus, educational ministry becomes instead the umbrella under which nearly all church activity stands. Those of us who benefited from this ministry from our earliest years have little trouble calling to mind men and women who, yes, helped us to memorize the names of all sixty-six books of the Bible and handed out perfect attendance pins. In the process, however, they helped to make us disciples.

“Handing out those attendance pins, they taught us not to neglect the assembly of the Lord’s people. Checking on our memory verses, they taught us to hide the word of God in our hearts. Making sure that we had a ride to vacation Bible school…, they incarnated such faithfulness and love as knows when the sparrow falls. In all of this and more, they taught us to ‘cling well to instruction and never let it go; observe it well, for it is your life’ ”(Prov 4:13 niv).

 

 

For more information, contact:

Christian Education 765-648-2116 800-848-2464, ext. 2116