Ten Thousand Teachers

It's easy to teach; it's hard to parent.

Sometimes I read biographical blurbs of this or that speaker "having taught in 48 of the 50 states and in 39 different countries."  Impressive indeed, but I often wonder, "How many kids does he have?".  There seems to be a growing number of people interested in teaching other people's kids and a waning interest in the work of bearing and training children. 

Exhibit A: A young seminarian approaches me feeling God might be calling him to teach theology to other people's disciples on the mission field (through an interpreter). But he has never led anyone to Christ who has been baptized and is an active servant in the church.

Exhibit B: A person who has never planted a church wants to teach church planting methods to others. He has learned these methods from somebody who wrote a book on planting churches--someone who also never planted churches himself, but visited some places where people were planting churches.

Exhibit C: A young blogger who has never done anything opines about ministry and missions (he is usually critical, sometimes right-on, but usually always invalidated by his reproductive barrenness).

Exhibit D: People love their favorite Internet pastors (which change every few years) but criticize their own local pastors' zits and foibles.

Exhibit E: Someone wants to host a conference and tries to tap big-name preachers and musicians, and flies them into an area as a drawing point. People ooooh and aaaah and then go off to their next conference, having never applied what they have learned in the first conference.

Exhibit F: A missionary candidate wants to come to the field and enlist the partnership of a young believer he met on his survey trip (someone else's spiritual kid). He thinks this will jump-start his ministry.

I appreciate some itinerant teaching ministry.  I love hearing powerful preaching.  I am sharpened by Biblical teaching on the Internet.  I have accepted teaching invitations myself.  But I love what Paul says: "Though ye have ten thousand instructers in Christ, yet have ye not many fathers: for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel" (1 Corinthians 4:15).

One application of this is to honor those who have begotten us--those who have labored to lead us to faith in Christ and disciple us personally. Doubtless, the 3,444th or 9,872th teacher will give us some stuff that we wish our dads had given us, indeed which might even seem like a better philosophy or doctrinal hue than our dads embrace. From a distance, the phantom pastors appear flawless (they are not) and seem to make our dads' flaws seem worse than they actually were.

Another application of 1 Corinthians 4:15 is this: Get busy with the dirty work of giving birth and training your own children rather than trying to sort out everyone else's.  It's OK to be taught by a plethora of God's servants. To read. To hear. To blog. Even to teach other people's kids.

But if we do not make child bearing and child training our priority, we will soon have no one left to teach.