Deanna peered through the tall windows forming the church classroom’s south wall, watching the solitary car or stroller occasionally pass by. Deanna had arrived early to her women’s scripture study, as was her habit. Indeed, she’d already made the coffee, pushed the tables and chairs around into the women’s preferred order, and laid out the Bibles on the tables for the few women who would not bring their own. Deanna always came early because she loved to linger around these times, stretching them out for as long as she could. Deanna loved nothing more than immersing herself in God’s word. She always had, nearly from the time she could first read.
Teaching
A rich teaching ministry can be a church’s heart and soul. If a church isn’t teaching, it’s not doing its job of discipling souls. Read the scriptures: they repeatedly emphasize teaching’s central role. How does one fulfill Christ’s Great Commission but to make disciples through scripture immersion, richly sharing, teaching, and receiving God’s word? The Christian army proceeds not with swords and guns but with baptisms and Bibles. And the Bibles are not to adorn the shelf and impress guests. They’re instead for reading and study, for pouring over and soaking up until God’s word lives in one’s mouth, spirit, body, and bones. For a Christian to live well and righteously, the scriptures need to guide every word, act, and step. Better still, every impulse and thought. The way that a church can most assuredly carry out its core mission of making disciples of Christ is to pursue a rich program of teaching that consistently reaches every congregant at every age, stage, and level. Help your church carry out its mission through a vital program of scripture instruction.
Worship
Worship isn’t the first place one looks when considering scriptural instruction. Yet the scriptural content of your church’s liturgy may be the single most-important aspect of your church’s program of instruction. Worship opens the heart and mind for a purpose, which is to receive the Spirit and Word of God. Music, in particular, stimulates the mind, body, and emotions. Congregants can carry an especially catchy tune around in their minds for days after a moving worship service. If your church’s worship music is unbiblical, congregants may carry that unbiblical message into and through the week, undermining the righteousness that worship should coax. Sound leaders look closely at the words of the popular new worship songs before they welcome the new songs into the church. But instruction should appear throughout the liturgy, from the welcome to the recitals, readings, and prayers, all the way through to the benediction. Ensure that your church’s worship leaders are giving careful thought to the instructional content of worship services. Every word and act carries its own message.
Preaching
Preaching is the first place one looks when considering scriptural instruction. Churches typically organize their services to make the message or sermon the focal point for instruction, recognizing of course that Christ is the proper focus of every worshipful moment. Jesus himself preached to crowds. He also sent his disciples out to preach. Preaching is a primary instrument for spreading the gospel. Not just worship services but also weddings, memorials, and other gatherings of the body rightly include at least a brief sermon, message, homily, or other appropriate moment of a pastor’s instruction. By appointing a pastor whose doctrine is sound, a church ensures that among all its other programs of instruction, it has the pastor’s voice as a clear voice communicating the scriptures and a consistent corrective for misguided instruction. Yet a preacher must root every sermon in the scriptures for the doctrine to remain sound. No preaching should diminish the scriptures’ central place and supreme authority. A preacher’s departure from sound biblical instruction should be a ground for discipline, especially when adversely affecting the membership’s spiritual development and maturation. Help your church select, support, and celebrate gifted preaching, while holding preachers accountable to God’s word.
School
Sunday School programs are a church tradition. Sunday School typically occurs around the Sunday worship service or services, either before, during, after, or in between. In some churches, Sunday School is primarily or solely for children. The membership may excuse children from the bulk of the worship service, especially the long and dry (for the children!) sermon, to retire to another location within the facility for Sunday School classes geared to the children, often separated by grade levels. In other churches, Sunday School is also for youth, sometimes separated by sex for interest and topic-appropriate instruction. In other churches, Sunday School is also for adults, sometimes together, sometimes separated by sex, marital status, family status, scripture topics, or other interests and affinities. In any case, Sunday School programs can require significant planning, preparation, and creative leadership. A church may appoint staff members to carry out the bulk of the coordination, but churches also find talented volunteer leaders willing to devote years of service to a Sunday School teaching ministry. Help your church identify and equip those devoted volunteers, and recognize and support the ones who continue to serve.
Instruction
A weekly sermon, while important and helpful, is not generally sufficient to fully mature a church member in the faith. Churches recognize the need for abundant instruction beyond the weekly sermon. Churches rightly embrace programs of children’s, youth, and adult instruction, in all forms that the church’s leadership and membership supports. Those programs can vary somewhat from church to church. Not every church has a Sunday School program, nor separate women’s and men’s Bible studies. Leadership, though, should encourage membership to find its favorable forums and forms. Your church should encourage, promote, coordinate, and support instruction. Let teaching in one forum reinforce and build teaching in another forum. Encourage ministry leaders and volunteers to coordinate materials, themes, and topics with the sermon and with one another, while recognizing the different needs of different age and interest groups, men and women, and different members, in different forums. Budget and staff to support instructional programs. And help your church ensure that teaching meets the same biblical standard as preaching.
Studies
In pursuing programs of instruction, your church’s leadership may wisely choose to support instruction that resonates with the weekly sermon and seasonal sermon series. Preachers can put a great deal of thought into sermons, enough to give them greater value than their brief, one-time presentation may allow. Sermons pass quickly from week to week. Sermon series also quickly fly by. Hearing something once is seldom enough to give the content lasting value. Recalling a sermon a few hours and days later moves the message from short-term to long-term memory. A sermon study in a class or group, following the Sunday preaching by a day or few days, can commit a message to memory. It can also allow participants to discuss and explore the sermon’s scripture and scriptural theme. Preachers know when their congregations value their sermons. Help your church coordinate rooms, setup, and refreshments for review and amplification of the pastor’s sermons, whether by men’s or women’s groups, small groups, or youth.
Seminars
Also support church seminars, classes, and courses on scripture and the application of scripture to specific subjects, beyond the sermon and sermon series. A seminar on the Holy Spirit, Moses, Daniel, Ecclesiastes, the trinity, sanctification, and other scripture figures, books, and constructs can inspire and enlighten the membership. A class or course on fasting, prayer, baptism, marriage, hospitality, or another discipline, sacrament, or practice can guide, inform, hearten, and strengthen the membership. Churches can also teach on difficult subjects like grieving the loss of a loved one, dealing with the slow onset of dementia or other disability, confronting addiction and dependency, and navigating divorce. And churches can teach practical subjects like managing money or saving and investing for retirement, and practical skills like sewing, cooking, and woodworking. Help your church organize, promote, and conduct seminars, classes, and courses on relevant topics, to inform, disciple, and strengthen the membership.
Groups
Don’t overlook the value of small groups for programmed instruction. Small groups of four, six, or eight members, just few enough for a home to host, can be vital social organs within a church, fostering a stronger sense of familiarity, belonging, and community. Small groups, though, can also be great forums within which to pursue coordinated study. The church may, for instance, identify themes and distribute a curriculum and materials for scripture study to all groups at once, so that the whole church focuses at once on the same Bible book, figure, or topic. Or the church may simply facilitate the formation of small groups, introducing new members to groups needing additional members, forming new groups as more members come forward to join them, setting an expectation that the groups are for scripture study, but leaving the form and content of the study to the groups. Churches have made great use and great study of small group formation and leadership. Help your church develop or sustain a small group program that strengthens your church’s teaching.
Fellowships
Churches can also support larger fellowship groups, beyond the small-group format. Many churches have men’s groups and women’s groups that meet seasonally or year round, not necessarily with specific scripture topics, classes, or courses, but still with scripture study at hand. Churches also commonly support youth fellowships and may also have fellowships for singles, couples, elderly members, retirees, and other cohorts and demographics. The groups may meet in connection with a service activity such as writing cards to military members, preparing meals for shut-ins, maintaining the church grounds, or cleaning, repairing, and improving the church facility. They may alternatively meet for recreation, whether to canoe or kayak, play board games, assemble puzzles, or play tennis, pickleball, golf, or basketball. But when they meet, they often begin with a scripture study. They may even make scripture study their whole agenda, while at the same time encouraging fellowship. Help your church develop and sustain healthy fellowships with scripture instruction as their justification and at their core.
Initiatives
Churches can also significantly enhance their instruction in God’s word through various initiatives, outside of Sunday School, seminars, classes, courses, or groups. Bible reading plans are an example. The pastor may, for instance, introduce a year-long Bible reading plan at the beginning of the calendar year or school year. The church may alternatively have a Bible-reading challenge for the whole church or for youth, couples, seniors, or other cohorts within the church. The pastor may also periodically challenge the membership, just as ministry leaders may challenge their teams and groups, to memorize scripture generally or specific scriptures. A church may make teaching initiatives of this type a special event or may regularly incorporate them into sermons, courses, or other programs. Help your church extend its teaching through special or regular initiatives, outside of sermons, seminars, classes, and courses.
Rites
Churches also use various rites of passage as opportunities for scripture instruction. Churches of different traditions use confirmation or professions of faith as a process through which youth move into maturity and adulthood in the faith. Confirmation may end with the young adult’s profession of faith before the whole body, but it often begins with weeks or months of mentoring and instruction. Churches may also treat adult baptism in the same manner, preceding the public sacrament with a class or course of private instruction. Pastors may also treat the engagement and marriage of members in the same way, not simply as a sacrament and special public event but also as an opportunity for instruction through one or more sessions of scriptural counseling. Help your church’s leadership recognize rites of passage as an opportunity for deep and meaningful scripture instruction.
Trips
Church-organized trips are another special opportunity for scripture instruction. Churches organize and promote trips to Israel, Egypt, Asia Minor, and Greece for locations identified in the scriptures, where the pastor, ministry leader, or tour guide may instruct from the scriptures. Teaching trips can give members profound new insights into scripture that they may have studied for years or even decades. Supplying the sound, smell, and sight of the locations can transform one’s understanding and even one’s faith. Churches can support trips by promoting opportunities, helping with fundraising, preparing the travelers with orienting studies, praying for the group, featuring daily social media posts during the trip, and sharing stories with the congregation on the travelers’ return. Israel trips can require substantial time, thought, energy, and money but deeply impact the traveling youth and adults including both those new to and veteran in the faith. Help your church consider Israel trips as a special opportunity to instruct and inspire members in the faith.
Libraries
Churches also develop and maintain libraries of scripture studies and materials to support their instructional programs. The church may make the library generally available to the membership in a room or other public space, or maintain the resources in an office out of which to offer materials for individual and group studies. The church may also solicit and accept donated books and materials on the scriptures, provided that the church designates a discerning member to ensure the quality and appropriateness of the donated materials. The church may also offer budgets and stipends to its pastors and ministry leaders to acquire books and materials for their own study and use in their ministries, after which they may contribute those materials to the church’s library. A church may also subscribe to the enormous online libraries of digital audio, video, and text materials, making those resources available to ministry leaders or even the whole membership. Maintaining recordings of the pastor’s sermons online can further enrich your church’s library. Help your church pursue its opportunity to offer a rich library of scripture studies and resources.
Artwork
Churches can also make facility artwork and displays, and website displays, a special opportunity for scripture instruction and celebration. Artists and graphic designers have done remarkable work celebrating the scriptures with calligraphic designs of the scriptures and graphic representations of scripture accounts and events. Churches can enrich their public spaces with framed prints, banners, quilts, and video marquees displaying beautiful illustrations of the scriptures. Help your church celebrate the scriptures through art and design, as another teaching means.
Reflection
On a scale of one to ten, how strong is your church’s program of scripture instruction? Does your church’s worship center on scripture? Does your church have a program of instruction to confirm and extend the scripture message from the weekly sermon? Does your church offer a Sunday School program? If so, does it have sound leadership, organization, and content? Does your church offer seminars, classes, and courses on scripture and its application to relevant topics? Does your church promote scripture study in its small groups and larger fellowships? Could your church use Bible reading plans and memory challenges to augment its teaching? Does your church have a process of confirmation or profession of faith for its youth, through which it teaches? Could your church make greater use of Israel trips through which to inspire and instruct in the faith? On a scale of one to ten, how well does your church’s library support and stimulate scripture study? Does your church offer its members a helpful subscription service? Does your church celebrate the scriptures in its artwork and displays?
Key Points
Teaching God’s word is a central function of a healthy church.
Worship services are a vital forum in which to teach God’s word.
Preaching messages or sermons is the traditional form of teaching.
Sunday School is another traditional form for scripture instruction.
Churches can pursue scripture studies several other ways.
Studies of the weekly sermon topic confirm and extend its teaching.
Seminars, classes, and courses throughout the week aid instruction.
Small groups are a great forum in which to promote instruction.
Fellowships for men, women, youths, and other cohorts can teach.
Initiatives like reading plans and memory challenges aid instruction.
Teach in confirmation, profession of faith, baptism, and marriages.
Church trips to Israel and other Bible sites can instruct and inspire.
A church library can offer rich resources for instruction.
Church artwork and displays can celebrate and depict scripture.