Preaching & Teaching Ministries

by Steve Atkerson, Beresford Job

What place does preaching and teaching have in a New Testament house church meeting?

Part One

        What role did preaching and teaching play in the early church?  God’s people need in-depth teaching from God’s Word.  Acts 2:42 reveals that the early Christians devoted themselves to the apostle’s teachings.  Teaching is listed as one of the gifts of the Spirit in 1 Corinthians 12.  Paul urged that if any man has the gift of teaching, “let him teach” (Ro 12:7).  Those elders who work hard at teaching and preaching are to be supported financially by the church (1Ti 5:17).
        1 Corinthians 14 contains a detailed prescription for the typical church meeting.  One of the lessons to be learned from 1 Corinthians 14 is that church meetings are not to be dominated by any one person, no matter what his spiritual gift.  Each one of the brothers is to have the opportunity to contribute to the meeting.  Teaching was clearly included in the list of activities that can occur, but it was tossed into the mix in an amazingly cavalier way (14:26).  Clearly, early church home meetings were not focused primarily on Bible study.  In this context, if a gifted teacher exercised his gift weekly in a in-depth manner, it would necessarily squelch the expressions of the other gifts.  Equal weight is to be given to a variety of input:  singing, testimonies, prayer, prophecy, tongues, teachings, etc.  Thus any teachings would need to be shorter, rather than longer, to allow for all the gifts to be freely exercised.   If the 1 Corinthians 14 meeting is not the time for supernaturally gifted teachers to present comprehensive teachings, then when is that time?
        The answer is simple.  Intense, long teachings are to be done at special ministry meetings, not the regular Lord’s Day church meeting.  Weekly gatherings of a local church are to be focused on the Lord’s Supper, followed by an participatory time of orderly, verbal one anothering  (1Co 11:17-22. 14:23).  The goal for all that is done is edification (1Co 14:26).  Such church meetings are to be smaller (scores of people) rather than larger (hundreds or thousands of people), and not dominated by any one person.
        In contrast to church meetings, ministry meetings generally are focused on one (or a few) individual’s gifts, and can be as large a gathering as accommodations will allow.  If 5,000 believers want to assemble to hear someone expositor the Scriptures, great!  However, it is important to make sure that everyone involved realizes that such a gathering is not church.  It is merely a ministry meeting.  
        For instance, for two years Paul held daily discussions in the lecture hall of Tyrannus with the result that all who lived in the province of Asia heard the word of the Lord (Ac 19:9-10).  When in Rome, Paul rented his own house and from it boldly and without hindrance preached the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ (Ac 28:30-31).  These ministry meetings did not replace the regular meeting of the local church, but were in addition to them.  Another example of larger ministry meetings is the public healing ministry that the apostles carried on in Solomon’s Colonnade (Ac 5:12-16, 42). Large crowds gathered to hear the Gospel and bring their sick for healing.  Yet these large daily preaching and healing services did not supplant the smaller, regular, house church meetings (Ac 2:46, 8:3).
        There are many modern examples of ministry meetings.  Bill Gothard traveled and presented his Institute in Basic Youth Conflicts in major cities all over America.  Literally thousands would go hear him, often filling the local civic center to capacity.  Present in the audience were Christians from every denomination in the area.  Yet it was not a church; it was a teaching time designed to equip the church at large.  Another example is when Billy Graham would come to a city, rent the stadium, and hold an evangelistic crusade.  Believers from many different churches would participate in His crusade.  Yet the crusade was not a church meeting; it was evangelism.  Those who came to Christ through the crusade were channeled into local churches.  A third example is the music ministry of Bill and Gloria Gather.  God’s people flock to their concerts and worship the Lord with great enthusiasm.  God’s people then return to their local churches uplifted and full of praise.  Images of the worship described in Revelation 19:1-10 come to mind.  It is good to be blessed by such gatherings.
        All ministry meetings should be designed to strengthen the local church, not supplant it.  True churches have the right to exercise church discipline, have their own elders, and celebrate the Lord’s Supper.  None of this is true of properly functioning ministry meetings.  One of the great errors of modern Christendom is confusing large ministry meetings with true church meetings.  Indeed, that which is truly church has been replaced entirely by ministry meetings.  After visiting the Western church, Chinese Christian Watchman Nee observed that most Western Christians had never actually been to a church meeting — that all they had experienced was ministry meetings!
        The Western way of conducting a church service is very much like a New Testament ministry meeting.  It is dominated by one gifted person, with large numbers of people in attendance to benefit from his gift.  These ministry meetings might revolve around bible teaching, evangelism, praise, healing, encouragement, etc.  Such meetings are very helpful and have a rightful place.  Yet such meetings are ultimately secondary and optional.  Primary and indispensable are the meetings of the local church.  Local church meetings are to be smaller, participatory, not focused on any one person’s gift, and centered around the Lord’s Supper.

Part Two

        In the New Testament we find churches meeting on Sundays, in people’s houses, with a twofold purpose.  First, they had completely open, participatory and spontaneous sharing together and worship which wasn’t led from the front in any way.  Second, they ate the Lord’s Supper together as their main meal of the day.  Given such a set up, and it is indeed how the apostles universally set churches up, then certain other things would subsequently find no place.
        For instance, in such a set up there is not the slightest need for sacred buildings.  Hence it will come as no surprise that we find the churches in the New Testament meeting exclusively in people’s homes.  Something else you won’t find in the New Testament is a Sunday service, led from the front, with those attending sitting audience style in rows and participating only in singing and, maybe, a bit of open prayer.  Neither will you find in the New Testament anything that even faintly resembles a sermon.  Such a practice would go completely against what the very essence of a church gathering on Sundays was originally seen to be.  The apostles set churches up in such a way that when they came together on the Lord’s Day the rule was strictly, “each one has . . . for you may all prophesy one by one” (1Co 14:26, 31).  They set churches up in such a way that would positively encourage all those gathered to participate, and therefore brought about a situation where the Lord would be free to move by His Spirit through each part of His body.  Any idea of the Lord’s Day gathering of the church revolving around the ministry of any one individual flies completely in the face of Scripture and contradicts it outright.
        This is not to say, however, that there isn’t a place for the type of teaching amongst God’s people whereby one person predominates in giving it.  The Lord does indeed provide people in churches who are gifted in this very thing, and the New Testament makes it clear that teaching is a calling and gift of the Holy Spirit.  Indeed, in the church of which I am a part we meet for Bible Study on Tuesday evenings, and we work very hard at furthering our understanding of God‘s Word.  But in the New Testament the coming together of a church on Sundays was not the time when such gifts were exercised in that particular way, and the push was always for mutual participation; for lots of people to share something, including a short teaching, rather than for one person to predominate or lead in any way.
        And this helps us to at last take the emphasis away from leadership, and from our inclination to just revolve around those who are gifted in teaching and public speaking ability and to consequently make big men of them. It helps to keep us safe from the evil of the whole clergy/laity divide thing, and from the completely unbiblical two-tier system of leaders and led which creates hierarchy. Hierarchy is something no church should ever have.  The only hierarchy found in the pages of the New Testament, pertaining to church life, is simply Jesus and everyone else.  Even elders — for that is what a biblically based church will either have or be moving towards, a plurality of co-equal, male elders who have been raised up from among those they serve — are strictly in the everyone else category.
        Moreover, this biblical way of doing things creates a set up in which people feel free to question whatever is being taught in order to test and understand it more fully.  It also makes those who teach realize that the onus is on them to do so in such a way as to persuade people that what they are saying is actually biblical.  It helps minimize the danger of those who are taught being expected to just passively accept things because it’s what the leaders teach.  It brings about a situation wherein people are much more likely to actively and questioningly understand rather than merely passively accept things as being the case and just agree.  It creates, in short, what many leaders in many churches fear most, people with open Bibles and free-thinking minds who don’t accept things merely on the authority of a leader’s say-so, but who question and challenge until they are persuaded that something is or isn’t biblical.  It further releases the corporate insight and wisdom of all in the church, and engenders an atmosphere of humility and the willingness for everyone to learn from anyone.  It recognizes the vitally important fact that the Lord is in all His people, and can therefore speak through any of those in the church and not just some chosen and verbally gifted elite.
        But I must deal now with what might, in some people’s minds, be perceived as biblically-based objection:  Paul’s preaching.  Take a look at a particular Sunday that Paul the Apostle spent with the church in Troas:  “On the first day of the week we came together to break bread. Paul spoke to the people and, because he intended to leave the next day, kept on talking until midnight” (Ac 20:7).
        Here we have the believers in Troas coming together for their main weekly gathering, and we can note certain things. (By the way, no Bible scholar would disagree with any of the following observations I am going to make. They are a simple matter of textual fact.).  
 •The church is gathering on the first day of the week, on Sunday.
 •They were gathering together in someone’s house.
 •The Greek text here conveys that the main purpose given for their coming together was for the breaking of bread.
 •The phrase breaking of bread refers to eating a full meal, here the Lord’s Supper.
        The thing I want to focus on here is that Paul spoke to the people and kept on talking until midnight.  That certainly makes it sound as if Paul is doing the talking and that everyone else is just listening.  So if that is the case then there isn’t much open, un-led participatory stuff going on here as we might expect to see, assuming of course that what I‘ve written so far isn‘t complete nonsense.  But there’s worse to come, because in some translations of the Bible this verse actually reads, “Paul preached unto them . . . and continued his speech until midnight.”
        That doesn’t just sound like a Sunday sermon, that sounds like the very mother and father of all Sunday sermons either before or since!  Paul, if this verse is to believed, not only preached to the church, but continued to do so until midnight.  What on earth can I say to that in the light of the burden of this article?  Well, it’s actually very simple.  The original Greek doesn’t say here quite what the English translation conveys.  Luke doesn’t use any of the various Greek words for preach at all.  He rather describes what Paul was doing here until midnight with the word dialogemai.  And dialogemai, as any Greek scholar will tell you, means to converse, to discuss, to reason or dispute with.  It denotes a two-way verbal trafficking between different parties and is actually the Greek word from which we get the English word dialog.
        Preaching is a monologue, and in certain settings of church life that may well be fine.  Midweek Bible studies, for example, may very well be conducted at times by one person doing a monologue followed by questions.  But in the New Testament, when the Lord’s people come together on Sundays as a church, it’s strictly dialog that goes on, and this is precisely what Paul is doing here.  He is most certainly teaching the church, and it goes on most of the night because they wanted to learn all they could from him, but it was a discussion-type format and not a monologue of some kind.  It was participatory and interactive, and therefore completely in keeping with the way the apostles set up Sunday gatherings of churches to be like.  In short, Paul was simply conversing with them.  It was a dialog, and he and the assembled church were reasoning together.  It was two-way mutual communication. It was question and answer, point and counterpoint, objection and explanation! Paul isn’t here standing on some raised platform with everyone sitting silently just listening to him speaking to them.  No, he is rather sitting on the sofa in the lounge talking with them.
       There is of course a time, as I have already said, for something of a more formal lecture type format, but even then let it be clear that whoever is teaching must be completely and fully open to questions concerning their subject matter.  I don’t by that necessarily mean in the middle of the teaching, but when the speaker has finished then let the questions and comeback flow.  Let it be clear as well that whoever does do teaching, and the more brothers amongst whom this task is shared out the better, is just one of the brothers, and is not special or spiritually elevated just because that person is gifted in a particular way.  (At our Tuesday night Bible Studies at the church of which I am a part we also do lots of discussion and interactive type teaching sessions as well, and use the lecture type format as just one of various approaches.)
        Let me end by making clear that I am not in the slightest down playing Bible teaching in the life of Christian churches.  Far from it!  Indeed, none of us would be going on about any of these things in the first place were it not for the fact we are into good solid Bible teaching ourselves, and keen to both receive it and pass it on to others.  No, we are simply saying that we have got to start doing things biblically.  We must in this, as with everything else, get back in line with what the Word of God teaches rather than just sticking with age-old, yet completely unbiblical, traditions.
        Churches need ongoing teaching, of that there can be no doubt.  But they need other things too!  To do some biblical things at the expense of other equally biblical things is, believe me, a big mistake.  The apostles expected that, when believers met in their respective churches on the Lord’s Day, it would be a case of, “When you come together each one has” (1Co 14:26).  That, then, is the way it should be!  Nothing more and nothing less!
        Got it?  Good! It’s pretty simple really, isn’t it?  After all, whose ideas and way of doing things have got to be the best? Jesus and His apostles?  Or someone else’s?

Part Three

        Amid all of our emphasis on home-sized fellowships, it is important to emphasize that the Scriptures also describe a much bigger attitude and congregation:  membership in the church universal.  It is unhealthy for believers to exist exclusively in one isolated house church.  Each house church, properly speaking, is a part of the much bigger city church in whatever town it is located.  Though they may never all meet together in one place, and though there is to be no outward ecclesiological authority controlling them, all the congregations in a given area constitute the one body of Christ.  We are to cultivate an attitude of oneness, acceptance, love, concern, and cooperation with all the other believers in our city.
        What has all this “big church” talk got to do with preaching and teaching?  Simply this:  in Bible teaching and interpretation we must not ignore the rest of the church as a whole.  The Bible is our final authority, but it is not our only authority.  The Holy Spirit has actively guided and worked in God’s people for the past 2,000 years.  When the church of history has studied a matter and reached consensus on it, that becomes authoritative for us as well.  Do we really have the right to dispute the theology of the church of the ages?  As one church historian put it, “It is said that the Acts of the Apostles are more correctly described as the ‘Acts of the Holy Spirit’.  But it is all church history which should be written under that title and be appreciated as such.  Any Christian movement which neglects this story loses the dimension of the solidarity with Christ’s church in all ages.  The slogan ‘Back to the New Testament!’ represents only part of the truth.  ‘Onwards with the Spirit!’ is the other half of this truth; together they make up the authority of the Reformers — which was always that of ‘Word and Spirit’.  It is the same Spirit who inspired the Bible who is alive in the church, creating the tradition and bringing afresh to every age the authority of the once-given Word.”1
        Who has the authority to decide upon the correct interpretation of the Bible, a single church (i.e. Rome), the individual believer, or the universal church as a whole?  At one extreme, Roman Catholics will declare that as an individual you are not supposed to interpret your Bible, but rather that you should accept what Rome declares it to mean.  At the opposite extreme, though, many Evangelicals have replaced Rome with a new Pope in the form of each individual believer.  “Just me and my Bible.”  Is this much different?
        The authors of this book advocate historic Christian orthodoxy poured into the wineskin of New Testament patterns for church life.  We believe that the original teachings of the apostles are preserved in the essential doctrines of the historic Christian faith.  Jesus said that it was actually to our advantage that He went away, for in His place He sent the Holy Spirit to live in  and guide us.  Confidence in the Spirit’s ability to teach and direct God’s people makes us conclude that in the essentials of theology, the church of history has been taught of the Spirit   When certain basic doctrines are agreed upon today by Christians from every conceivable background, and also by virtually all those who went before us in the faith, that should get our attention.  That is authoritative.  Some of these basics include a belief that the sixty-six books of the Bible do finally and completely comprise God’s written revelation to us, the doctrine of the Trinity, the deity of Christ, the propitiatory nature of Jesus’ work on the cross, justification by grace through faith unto good works, the future bodily return of Jesus, the future tomb-emptying resurrection of the dead, and the future judgment.
        The original Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura included the belief that whereas the Bible is our final authority, it is not our only authority.  The church as a whole is also an authority (albeit a secondary one).  As Paul wrote to Timothy, the church is “the pillar and foundation of the truth” (1Ti 3:15).  When the entire church arrives at the same conclusions regarding theology, that is authoritative.  Teachings contrary to doctrine universally agreed upon by the church at large are not to be entertained.
        The church of history has passed on to us various creeds and confessions.  The word “creed” is from a Latin root that simply means, “I believe.”  Did you know that there is even a post-New Testament, church-made creed printed in your Bible?  It is called the “Table of Contents.”  The books of the Bible were not finally compiled and settled upon until quite some time after the apostolic era.  How can we trust the church of history to give us the right collection of books that are supposed to be in our Bibles and yet not also trust her to give us right theology about what that same Bible teaches?  The main people who resist an acceptance of the basic creeds of the church are those who hold to aberrant theology, denying one or more of the essentials listed above.
        Since they are not inspired, it should be acknowledged that the creeds and confessions of various churches are liable to error.  That this is so is obvious from the fact that they differ from one another in places.  However, what should get our attention all the more is when the creeds and confessions do line up in uncoerced agreement at various points.  It is somewhat naive, arrogant even, to think that a new truth has been discovered that 99% of all others who have ever studied the Bible failed to see.  We must cultivate an historical humility, a spirit of mutual submission with the church at large and with the church of ages past.  Pastors, teachers, laymen, historians, catechists, and theologians all coming to the same conclusion regarding a basic theology is significant.  Although church practice is beyond the scope of the creeds, it is important to consider that scholars from every denomination are in general agreement regarding such practices of the early church as house churches, participatory meetings, Lord’s Supper fellowship meals, non-hierarchical church leadership, and the support of qualified elders, itinerant evangelists and church planters.
        Throw out the interpretations of the church as a whole, and you are left with individual subjectivism.  Keith Mathison, throughout The Shape of Sola Scriptura, has aptly pointed out that modern American Evangelicalism has redefined sola scriptura in terms of secular Enlightenment rationalism and rugged democratic individualism.  This modern reinterpretation grants autonomy to each individual believer’s reason and judgment.  The result is the relativism, subjectivism, and theological chaos that we see in modern Evangelicalism today.  Mathison points out that each of us comes to the Scripture with different presuppositions, blind spots, ignorance of important facts, and, most importantly, sinfulness.  Since we are far from neutral, each of us reads things into Scripture that are really not there and also misses things that are there.  Reason and conscience become the final interpreter.  The universal and objective truth of Scripture is made virtually of no effect, because instead of the Church proclaiming with one voice what the Bible teaches, every individual interprets Scripture as seems right in his own eyes.  The unbelieving world is left hearing a cacophony of conflicting voices rather than the Word of the living God.  In the final analysis, each individual is responsible for establishing his own creed.2
        Faddish theological ideas will continue to sprout like weeds in a garden.  Devilish doctrinal winds will always blow and toss the ungrounded to and fro.  These challenges must be put into perspective.  Which would you rather throw out the window, a recent novel theological position of very few people or the theological convictions of the universal Christian church of all ages?  The choice is between the tried and proven faith of the collective body of God’s people and the private judgment of a few individual objectors.  False teaching could be broadly defined as anything which falls outside of the historic orthodox faith as upheld by the general consensus of the Christian Church for the last two millennia.
        The church as a whole has clearly spoken concerning the correct interpretation of the foundational doctrines of the Christian faith.  To deny these is to deny the teachings of the Bible.  Those who do not hold to sound orthodoxy are not to be allowed to teach their false doctrine (1Ti 1:3), and are not to be recognized as apostles, elders, teachers, or deacons (1Ti 3:9, Titus 1:9).  Individual churches are not like little row boats out on Lake Placid.  Instead, we will go through storms on the high seas.  Challenges will come.  Aberrant teaching will wash up on deck.  It is not a matter of if, but when.  In opposing heretical theology, elders and teachers must declare, like captains of war ships, “Repel all boarders!”  We are to gently instruct those who oppose, “in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who had taken them captive to do his will” (2Ti 2:25-26).

Notes

1 Tom Dowley, ed. Eerdman’s Handbook to the History of The Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI:  Wm. B. Eerdman’s Publishing Co., 1977), 16.
2 Keith Mathison, The Shape of Sola Scriptura (Moscow, ID:  Canon Press, 2001).

Discussion Questions

1.  What role did preaching and teaching, respectively, each play in the early church?
2.  If the 1 Corinthians 14 meeting is not the time for supernaturally gifted teachers to present comprehensive teachings, then when is that time?  Explain.
3.  What is the difference between a church meeting and a ministry meeting?
4.  Why is it important to be able to question something that is being taught?  When is it not appropriate to question a teaching?
5.  Biblically, what is the difference between preaching and teaching?
6.  What role should consensus play in the correct interpretation of the Bible?
7.  One historian wrote that ‘Back to the New Testament!’ represents only part of the truth.  ‘Onward with the Spirit!’ is the other half of this truth.  What did he mean by this?
8.  Who has the authority to decide upon the correct interpretation of the Bible, a single church (i.e. Rome), the individual believer (whether you or the Pope), or the universal church as a whole?  Explain.
9.  What role should the early creeds play in our belief system?
10.  Which would you rather throw out the window, a recent novel theological position of very few people or the theological convictions of the universal Christian church of all ages?  Why?
11.  What can we do to be sure our church remains in alignment with historic Christian orthodox?
12.  If you find yourself in a house church that has no gifted teachers, what can you do to expose your family to solid teaching? 

The Nicene Creed

This authoritative statement of Christian orthodoxy was the consensus of church councils that met in Nicea (A.D. 325) and Constantinople (A.D. 381). The wording of the Nicene Creed comes entirely from the New Testament. It is the most widely accepted and used brief statement of the Christian Faith.

We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father. Through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified. He has spoken through the Prophets. We believe in one holy catholic* and apostolic Church. We acknowledge one baptism** for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

* In this context, “catholic” means “universal.”

** “For” here means “because of” as in “She cried for joy.” Just as circumcision was the outward seal of the righteousness that Abraham had already received by faith (Ro 4), so too water baptism is the outward sign of the salvation every believer already has because of his faith in the risen Lord Jesus and the work that He did for His people on the cross.

Revised 10/14/08