Sound teaching is the lifeblood of the church. As the teaching goes, so go the people. Without skilled teachers, the church will languish: obedience will falter, love will grow cold, and spiritual growth will stall.
An important question then becomes: How do we know if someone has the gift of teaching? Given the high importance of the teaching office, churches cannot afford to get this question wrong.
Yet, it is easy to address this question with wrong or merely insufficient criteria. In this article, we will consider the various natural talents and abilities that we may mistake for the Spirit-endowed gift of teaching. In the next article, we will consider the correct criteria we should use when assessing our own teaching gifts and the teaching gifts of others in the church.
Before we consider these criteria, we must first define the gift of teaching.
The biblical gift of teaching is a supernaturally endowed spiritual ability that may resemble and overlap with, but is not the same as, a natural ability to teach. A spiritually gifted teacher is a born-again Christian who is able to teach the Word of God in a way that accurately conveys the meaning of Scripture and consistently edifies, encourages, and motivates God’s people to obedience. A spiritually gifted teacher will also be able to apply the truth to himself as he teaches it to others.
We now turn to consider a few ways we might wrongly assess the teaching gift.
You Are Naturally Winsome
Some Christians have a naturally outgoing, gregarious personality. This may even translate into an ability to speak well in front of people. This sense of comfort when speaking to larger or smaller groups of people may lead someone to conclude that God has outfitted them for teaching.
Similarly, some people have a great “stage presence.” Public speaking is a strong suit for them. When giving presentations or speeches, they engage well with their listeners, and the audience finds them entertaining and easy to listen to.
While an outgoing personality and stage presence are good qualities, they do not indicate that someone has the spiritual gift of teaching. Actually, someone may be relatively reserved, quiet in larger groups, and feel uneasy at the prospect of standing in front of others, and yet be endowed by God’s Spirit to teach his Word. Even the apostle Paul asked for prayer that he might speak “as [he] ought to speak” (Eph 6:20; Col 4:4).
If we take our naturally outgoing personality or the ease with which we can address a crowd as criteria for whether we have the gift of teaching, John Piper’s early years in high school showed little promise that he possessed the gift of teaching. He simply could not speak in front of people.
While at Wheaton, however, he was asked to lead the prayer at summer chapel. Unexpectedly, he agreed to do it. Having realized what he had committed to, he cried out to the Lord and made this promise: “God, if you get me through this prayer, I will never again turn down an opportunity to speak for you out of fear.” The rest is history.
That’s an encouraging story of the Lord equipping an unlikely individual with the gift of teaching. Negatively, many people throughout church history have had magnetic personalities and natural speaking gifts but proved unskilled at teaching God’s Word. The prosperity gospel, for example, is usually proffered by men whose personalities are uniquely suited to capture people’s attention.
There is no indication in Scripture that natural winsomeness or feeling comfortable in front of people are signs that God has endowed someone with the gift of teaching. This observation serves as both a warning and an encouragement. It is a warning to those who lean on their natural gifts as evidence that God has called them to teach his Word. But it is an encouragement to those who are more naturally reserved: their lack of natural gifting in this area does not necessarily disqualify them from teaching.
You Have Taught on Non-Biblical Topics Outside the Church Setting
Perhaps you are already a teacher in a middle school, high school, or university, and you regularly instruct students in math, biology, chemistry, and political science. That’s excellent. But your skill in teaching these topics does not indicate that God has gifted you to teach Scripture to his people. This natural ability to teach may overlap with the spiritual gift of teaching, but the mere fact that you can and do teach outside the church is no necessary indication that God has gifted you to teach his Word.
But there is good news. Another implication is that experience teaching outside the church is not required for you to be a gifted teacher inside the church. The apostles, for example, were untrained fishermen, yet after Pentecost and the coming of the Spirit, were able to effectively preach and teach God’s Word (Acts 2:5ff ). Prior experience in teaching was not necessary.
You Consider Yourself a Well-Spoken or “Intellectual” Person
Perhaps you are able to articulate your thoughts well. You possess a large vocabulary and can speak eloquently with some ease. You like to think and ideate on important topics. Again, these are good qualities, and they may enhance one’s teaching ministry. But these natural gifts, in and of themselves, do not prove that you have the gift of teaching. Paul addressed this very issue in his first letter to the church in Corinth. Rhetorical skill and dependence upon one’s intellect may even hinder the pure and simple gospel message from going out with power (1 Cor 1:18-2:1).
You Like to Study the Bible and Theology
The spiritual desire for the Word of God is a fruit of regeneration (Ezek 36:26-27; Matt 4:4; John 3:1ff; Titus 3:3-7). Christians love to hear the Word of God preached, and we aim to discipline ourselves to immerse ourselves in it during the week through reading and meditation (Ps 1:1-2). But some Christians are especially passionate about studying Scripture and reading books about its truths.
While this passion for study is good and may indicate that God has gifted one to teach his Word to his people (as we will see in the next article), desire for in-depth study is not enough to determine whether one has the gift of teaching. A person may read and study much and profit spiritually from their study, but they may not be able to communicate that knowledge effectively to God’s people in formal settings. I’ve known many men over my Christian life with vast knowledge of Scripture and theology, but who lacked the skill to teach that truth to others in a way that edifies and deepens understanding.
Family Members Have Said You Will Make a Great Bible Teacher
While it is a blessing to have family members highlight our strengths and encourage us to cultivate our talents, we should not conclude, based merely on a relative’s comments, that we have the gift of teaching. Comments about our gifts from family members, particularly parents and grandparents, may not always be the most objective, but they are often powerful factors when assessing our strengths and weaknesses. Yet, Scripture calls us to sober-mindedness precisely when we are assessing our spiritual gifts (Rom 12:3ff). While God may use family members to help us see our gifts with greater clarity, we must look beyond immediate and extended family to confirm whether we have a teaching gift. God’s normal course is to confirm our gifts in the context of the local church, among godly church members, leaders, and pastors, because the local church is for whom God gave us spiritual gifts in the first place (1 Cor 12:7).
You Want to be Up Front
This last criterion deals with our motives. We must be able to discern between a desire to be “up front” and a desire to teach. If we want to teach because we want to be up front of people and not behind the scenes, we are not yet compelled by the right motives for teaching.
Right motives for teaching include a desire to build up Christ’s church in the gospel, see sinners saved from their sin and sanctified by the Holy Spirit, and enable God’s people to understand and obey his Word. These aims will require us to be up front in larger and smaller group settings, but the mere desire to be in front of people is not sufficient to indicate that we are gifted by the Holy Spirit to teach. Actually, this longing to be up front is a sign of selfish ambition, which Scripture clearly warns against (Phil 2:3) and which will lead us away from fruitful ministry (James 3:13-17).
In the next article, we will explore the biblical criteria by which we can determine if we have the gift of teaching.
