Gathering Church

We visited month after month, enjoying the preaching and worship and wondering if we’d ever feel at home. It was one of the largest congregations we had ever participated in. With about 600 people packed into the sanctuary for the single service each Sunday, it felt big - overwhelmingly so at times. We sat in the same area of the sanctuary each Sunday but rarely saw the same people from week to week.

To connect, we joined a Sunday School class for people new to the church. The class used a workbook and DVD system based on passages from the gospel of Mark. We completed workbook homework each week, spent about 15 minutes discussing the workbook’s questions in class, and then watched a DVD that featured teaching by an English man name, you guessed it, Nigel.

Two church elders led the class, but neither of them taught. They left the Biblical teaching to a recorded stranger and simply facilitated the material. Stock images and video clips accompanied the teacher's narration as he taught. I was easily distracted, wondering who thought a clip of a red-tinted hospital room, straight out of a zombie movie, should play on a seven-minute loop while Nigel discussed the disease of sin and its deadliness. Then, the video would shift to Nigel in an empty warehouse, discussing the void that only the Holy Spirit can fill. Why is he on the beach now? Is he carrying groceries? Is that supposed to represent something? Or did they just film this as he was running errands? Who produces these videos?

One Sunday, on our way home from church, my husband and I discussed how we were looking forward to finishing the 11-week class and moving into one of the other two adult Sunday School classes, where we assumed a church member would be teaching instead of playing a video. My daughter piped up from the backseat and said she could see into one of the other adult Sunday School classes from the Youth room and knew they were also watching a video. My son joined in, sharing that he had passed the final adult Sunday School class on his way to the bathroom that morning and saw them watching a teaching video as well.

It seemed strange. Why weren't there any teachers in a church with a sizeable elder board and nearly 600 members? The pastoral staff were the only people in this congregation who taught, and they did so only during the main service. Either God forgot to hand out spiritual gifts at this church, or church leadership chose not to use the gifts of the Church.

First Church

A friend invited me to join a small women’s Sunday School class that met during the hour before the service. The following week, I met her in the unfamiliar back hallways of the church, and she ushered me into a small room with a few other women gathered around a table. The woman who led the class opened her Bible and invited us to join her in Matthew chapter 13. The class had been working through Matthew verse by verse, little by little, over the last several weeks. She read a short passage and asked us to observe what was happening. We observed that Jesus had explained to his disciples why he spoke in parables, leaving some people walking away without understanding.

Jesus said, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. For to the one who has, more will be given, and he will have an abundance, but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.”

This passage confused me at first glance. Why are some given in abundance, and others not given, and then even taken from?

Through our discussion, the surrounding verses, cross-references marked in our Bibles, and the gentle guidance of our teacher, we transitioned from observing the text to interpreting it. We concluded that people are responding to Jesus’ teaching in two ways. Some are open to hearing, desiring to understand his message. And some close their minds to what he has to say. Jesus tells the disciples that those who reject Him will forsake everything. They will be without understanding and even shrink from it, growing duller and more closed off. But, to those of us who turn our ears to his teaching, to hear his voice, we are given the secrets of the Kingdom of Heaven. The Holy Spirit’s work in our hearts is to grant us a deeper understanding as we grow to become more like Christ.

Not to be dramatic, but this moment changed my life. I sat in that little Sunday School room and was absolutely changed. No one at that table had been to seminary. No one there was a trained pastor or missionary. But we had opened God’s Word, read it, studied a passage that I found challenging, used other parts of Scripture to help us, and the Holy Spirit had given us insight. We learned about God’s character, Jesus’ teaching, and the Kingdom of Heaven. No one had ever led me through that kind of study. We didn’t have a book written by a theologian to look up what we should know. We just had God’s Word, each other, and a patient and faithful teacher. It still amazes me. This is how God designed his church to function. That moment has played over in my heart hundreds of times since that Sunday Morning. It changed the way I read scripture forever.

I started reading my Bible differently. I read it with the knowledge that it was mine. God’s Word was for me: a stay-at-home mom with two little babies and a third on the way, who didn’t attend seminary and probably never would, who wasn’t called into ministry, and who would struggle every few years to find a new church.

First Church's Sunday School teacher was a Christian woman with a job and a family who never earned a theology degree, published a book, or recorded a video of her teaching. The church was alive with the fruit of her ministry and others like her. It was evident that this church's leadership trusted God to provide the gifts necessary to build up the body and valued them enough to create space for them to flourish. A culture of discipleship, fostered through teaching, promoted genuine growth among the members. People weren’t just attending church; they were being the church—learning, serving, and investing in one another.

Spiritual Gifts in the Church

Gathering Church had effectively outsourced a key component of its calling, perhaps unintentionally doubting that God had equipped its people to teach one another. Teaching videos can be excellent tools for the church. They can offer a much-needed reprieve to teachers who may be stretched thin or as a temporary solution when a group is without a teacher. However, when spiritual gifts like teaching are constantly outsourced, the church’s members cease to act as the church, instead becoming consumers of a service.

The faithful teaching in my Sunday School class at First Church was the work of the Holy Spirit. How easy and understandable it would have been if the leaders at First Church had purchased a workbook and DVD program for that class. How much easier still if they decided not to make that class available because the official church leaders had other commitments during that hour? Instead, they knew and trusted the members, equipping them for the work of ministry and giving them the space to use the gifts the Spirit had given them for the building up of his church (Ephesians 4:12).

Praise God! His plan for the church is so simple. He has richly endowed His people with gifts to fulfill His mission, and every church must steward those gifts faithfully. A church that commits to identifying, equipping, and empowering its teachers is a church that will grow in depth, unity, and spiritual maturity, reflecting the beauty and wisdom of God’s design for His people. And when we, as members of His body, step faithfully into the roles He has prepared for us, we don’t just go to church; we are the church.

Related Articles

Healthy Church Leadership: Protect and Equip

The Purpose of Children's Ministry: Disciple the Parents

The Power of Intentional Prayer: Moving Beyond Superficial Prayer Requests