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Distinction Between Preaching and Christian Teaching

The distinction between preaching and Christian teaching is crucial to spiritual development. Much of the sterility we have in our churches can be reduced—and thus we would have more fruitful churches—if we have a clear knowledge of the distinction between preaching and Christian teaching.

Why is this so? Why do we need to know the distinction?

Because these two activities have different goals and have different ways of attaining those goals. It is like feeding infants and adults. You do not feed them with the same food and in the same way. Infants are usually fed with milk which they suck from their mother’s breast or from a bottle. Adults are fed with solid food which they take by their own hands.

But in most of our churches those who are not yet even spiritual infants, because they have not yet actualized their faith given in baptism (as in most Catholic churches), or because they have not yet accepted Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior (as in Evangelical churches), are most of the time given solid food by Christian teaching. What these not-yet-spiritual infants need is preaching, not Christian teaching.

On the other hand we have many churches where the pastor keeps on preaching to a congregation of long time Christians already, spiritual Christians. And he still preaches to these Christians. What these Christians need is not preaching, but Christian teaching. They have already grown as Christians. What they need is spiritual nutrients, not the seed of God so that they can be born again. In some of these churches they have even called their main service as Preaching Service.

Distinctive Goals of Preaching and Teaching

The goal of preaching is transformation, while that of Christian teaching is conformation. The purpose of preaching is to transform the listener so that he or she becomes a child of God from being just a human being. He or she is transformed from a life of sin to a life of holiness from God’s point of view. He or she becomes a new creature. He or she leaves his or her old life and burns the bridge leading from it in such a way that even if he or she wants, he or she can no longer go back to that old life.

The goal of Christian teaching is conformation to the image of Jesus. The new creature now becomes more and more conformed or configured to the image of God as revealed in Jesus. The listener to Christian teaching is already a child of God. He or she now grows as a child of God and Christian teaching makes him or her more like his or her parent God. This is the purpose of Christian teaching.

The Distinctive Means of Preaching and Teaching

And the means to achieve these two different goals also differ although they both use words and images.

In preaching the means is by announcing the good news of Jesus Christ, what Jesus did for the listener, especially in his suffering, death, burial and resurrection. By listening to this announcement the person is convicted by the power of the Holy Spirit of his or her sin and turns to Christ as the only one who can solve his or her problem of sin.

In Christian teaching the means is by showing the person of Jesus to the listener so that he or she gazes upon him and becomes more and more conformed to the image of Jesus. Moralizing is not basic to Christian teaching and yet most of our Christian teaching is a discourse on morality, how the Christian is to behave in himself/herself and in the world.

Distinctive Effects of Preaching and Teaching

In preaching we experience the power of God, ushering us to eternal life. In Christian teaching we experience his wisdom, enabling us to think, speak and act like Jesus. And the Apostle Paul tells us that Christ is the power and wisdom of God. It is all the work of Christ. The preacher and the teacher are only ministers of Christ.

Let preaching be done for those who have not actualized their Christian life, those who have not yet really accepted Jesus as the Lord and Savior of their life. But let Christian teaching be done for those who are already actualized or professed Christians. In this way lives are transformed and transformed lives are more and more conformed to the life of God in Jesus, thus turning our world upside down as the Apostles did during their time.


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Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritworld for knowing more about spirituality or spiritual realities

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

Here are your links to download the e-books for FREE. To download a copy of A NEW CHRIST by Wallace D. Wattles click this website http://bit.ly/anewchrist. To download a free copy of A NEW EARTH by Eckhart Tolle click this website http://bit.ly/ebookanewearth. I hope that you enjoy reading these free e-books and profit much from them, as I have also profited greatly from them.

Solid, Christ-Filled Teaching

Prayer, the written Word of God, and preaching: These are the necessary steps in order to begin spiritual development. After spiritual development has started, the next that is needed is teaching, teaching the Word of God.

The teaching that we need for spiritual development is one that is solid, and Christ-filled.

Solid teaching is one that is based on the Word of God. Many teachers in the church say that they teach from the Word of God, but actually they teach from the words of human beings.

Teaching Which Is Not From God’s Word

They teach from the words of human beings if their purpose in teaching is to entertain. There are many teachers in the churches who have as one of their main purposes in teaching to entertain their students. They want to be thought of by their students as good teachers. So, they make all kinds of gimmicks to make the students interested in their teaching. This may be entertaining teaching, but it is not solid.

They teach from the words of human beings if what they really want is to share their own peculiar views with their students. For example, there are teachers who are so convinced of the doctrine of predestination such that they do not miss a chance to convince others of this doctrine. The doctrine of predestination is correct and beneficial if understood properly but it cannot be the theme of all our teaching, so that before we even open our mouths we have already decided to insert it in the course of our teaching. This is not solid teaching for spiritual development.

They teach from the words of human beings if they quote extensively from secular or religious sources and quote minimally from the Scriptures. There are teachers of the faith who in order to impress their students of their learning, quote from the classics of secular or religious writings in an extensive manner. They quote from Virgil, Cicero, Seneca, Thomas Aquinas, Erasmus, Emerson and others. Then they quote only a verse or two from the Scriptures. This is not solid teaching.

Solid teaching is one that is steeped in the texts and spirit of the Scriptures.

There is a teaching that is heavily inundated with texts from the Scriptures but the spirit of the Scriptures is not there. The impression a listener gets is that the passages from the Scriptures are used to prove or bolster the opinion of the teacher, even if that is not the sense of the Scriptures as a totality. An example of this kind of teaching may be getting all the passages about the prohibition on the eating of certain types of meat and then expounding on each of these texts. Paul the Apostle said that Christian living is not about eating and drinking, is not about prohibited meats.

Meaning of Christ-filled Teaching

Not only do we need solid teaching, teaching that is based on the Scriptures, we also need Christ-filled teaching. What is meant by this is that we teach Christ, the person of Christ. We illumine his personality so that we can know him more in a personal manner and thus love him more, serve him more and enjoy him more.

There are teachings which are insight driven. The teacher wants to share new insights with his or her students. He or she wants to surprise them with new ideas from the Word of God. This is not Christ-filled teaching. What we need for our spiritual development is not insights or new ideas but the Truth, a personal reality.

There are teachings which are morality driven. The teacher wants to drill moral principles into his or her students, like the principle that honesty is the best policy. Most teachings wound up as moral exhortations. This is not the teaching that will help us in spiritual development. It is not Christ-filled. It may make up morally upright Christians, but not necessarily spiritually developed.

John Paul II was insistent on the point that what we teach is supposed to be Christ, just as the teacher also needs to be Christ himself using only the human teacher. He mentioned this in his apostolic exhortation on catechesis, and he wrote this again in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

The teaching which develops our spirit is one that gives us an ever growing personal knowledge of Jesus and an ever increasing appreciation for all his worth to us. This is because spiritual development is really the development of the life of Jesus in us. It is not our life, no matter how good, that we develop in spiritual development. It is the life of Jesus operating in us, through us, with us, and for us.


Click Here!

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritworld for knowing more about spirituality or spiritual realities

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

Here are your links to download the e-books for FREE. To download a copy of A NEW CHRIST by Wallace D. Wattles click this website http://bit.ly/anewchrist. To download a free copy of A NEW EARTH by Eckhart Tolle click this website http://bit.ly/ebookanewearth. I hope that you enjoy reading these free e-books and profit much from them, as I have also profited greatly from them.