Christian Education — Unit 2: You — The Teacher

The teacher is the most important element in the teaching-learning process.

That sentence is the thesis of this whole course. It is more important than the curriculum. It is more important than the room. It is more important than the textbook. It is more important than the lesson plan. The student will remember the teacher long after the lesson is forgotten. The student will be shaped by the teacher's character long after the words of the lesson have faded from memory.

Paul wrote to Timothy, "And the things that you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also" (2 Timothy 2:2). Notice how Paul describes the teacher. The teacher is a faithful man. The teacher is one who has heard the things of God among witnesses. The teacher is able to teach others. The teacher receives what he has heard and passes it on. There is no curriculum mentioned. There is no classroom. There is no textbook. There is just a faithful person who can hand the truth on to another faithful person who will hand it on again.

This unit answers the question, "What kind of person should that teacher be?" Six things stand out from the New Testament's description of those Paul, Peter, and James trained for the teaching ministry.

The next six sections take each one in turn.

The teacher must be a person of God before the teacher is anything else. A person who does not walk with God cannot lead a student to God. A person who does not know God cannot teach the student about God. A person who has not been changed by the gospel cannot expect the student to be changed by the gospel.

This is not optional. The teacher who tries to teach what he has not himself received will run dry within a few weeks. The teacher who teaches out of an empty cup gives the students an empty drink. We cannot give what we do not have.

The teacher's first work, therefore, is not preparation for the lesson. The teacher's first work is preparation of the soul. Before the lesson plan is written, the teacher must be in the Word for himself. Before the questions are framed, the teacher must have answered them in his own heart. The classroom does not begin on Sunday morning. It begins on Tuesday afternoon when the teacher opens the Bible alone and asks the Holy Spirit to teach him first.

The Word must be the teacher's constant companion. Not a reference book pulled from the shelf on Saturday night. Not a tool used only when there is a question to answer. The Word is the teacher's daily food.

The teacher must know the Bible — what it says, what it means, how it fits together, where one passage answers another, where the Old Testament prepares for the New, where the four Gospels speak as one voice. The teacher who does not know the Bible cannot teach the Bible. The teacher will be reduced to teaching opinions about the Bible, which is something else entirely.

The teacher must also know how to use the Bible — how to find a passage, how to read it in context, how to compare Scripture with Scripture, how to apply an ancient text to a present-day question. Knowledge of the contents and skill in handling the contents are different things. The teacher needs both. A person who has read the Bible cover to cover but cannot answer a child's question on Tuesday afternoon has knowledge without skill. A person who can find any passage in seconds but does not understand what it means has skill without knowledge. The Christian Education teacher pursues both, all his life.

The teacher must be willing to be a servant. The teacher gives of himself in service to his students. He puts the student first. He carries the heavier weight so the student can learn.

In our culture, the teacher is often regarded as a person of authority who stands above the student. In the New Testament the teacher is a person of authority who serves the student. Jesus gave the model: "Whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant" (Matthew 20:26–27). The teacher in the Christian Education classroom does not lord over students. The teacher kneels with them. The teacher walks them through difficult passages with patience. The teacher gives the time the lesson requires, even when the time is inconvenient. The teacher answers the small questions as carefully as the large ones, because to the small student a small question is a large question.

A teacher who serves can teach a student anything. A teacher who lords over students can teach them only resistance.

The teacher must be a student of the students. He must know his students — their names, their families, their needs, their interests, their backgrounds, the questions they bring with them and the questions they cannot quite ask.

Paul shows us how this is done. When Paul wrote to Timothy, he could say, "the genuine faith that is in you, which dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, and I am persuaded is in you also" (2 Timothy 1:5). Paul knew Timothy's grandmother. He knew Timothy's mother. He knew the household Timothy came from and the faith he had been raised in. He had taken the time to learn it. The single phrase "your grandmother Lois" tells us more about Paul's teaching ministry than a hundred sermons could. Paul taught one young man so well because Paul had first studied that one young man.

The teacher must be willing to listen — to listen more than the teacher speaks, in some weeks. The teacher must be willing to learn from the student. The student often teaches the teacher something the teacher could not have learned any other way: what it is like to come to this passage of Scripture as a young person, or as a new convert, or as someone who has just lost a parent, or as someone who has just given his life to Christ. The teacher who refuses to learn from the student stops being a teacher very quickly. The teacher who learns from the student keeps growing as long as the class keeps meeting.

CTS Editorial Note (2026): To know students well is also to handle their stories responsibly. Do not repeat a learner’s private circumstances, confession, or family difficulties as a classroom illustration without permission. Avoid promising absolute secrecy where someone may be in danger; follow appropriate child-protection rules and pastoral reporting duties. When a problem calls for specialized care, seek qualified help rather than acting beyond your training. A learner must be able to ask honest questions without fear of humiliation or exposure.

The teacher must also be a student of the teaching process itself. How is a lesson planned? How is the time prepared? How is the material presented? How is the lesson evaluated afterward? These are skills that must be learned and practiced.

A person who knows the Bible and loves the students and walks with God can still fail in the classroom if he does not know how to teach. The next six units of this course are devoted to the craft of teaching — to the learning environment (U5), to lesson planning and aims (U6), to methods and strategies (U7), to questioning and case study and experiential study (U8), to Bible learning activities (U9), and to the children's sermon (U10). All of those exist because the teacher must take the teaching itself seriously as a discipline.

A pastor would not stand behind the pulpit on Sunday morning without preparation. A teacher should not stand in front of a class on Sunday morning without preparation either. The teaching ministry deserves the same care that the preaching ministry deserves. The Christian Education classroom is not a lesser room.

Finally, the teacher must be a person of prayer. The teacher must pray for himself — that the Spirit who breathed the Scripture would also breathe through the teaching of it. The teacher must pray for the students — by name, week by week, as a shepherd prays for sheep. The teacher must pray over the teaching-learning process itself — over the lesson, over the classroom, over the response.

The teacher who does not pray relies on himself. Reliance on oneself is the surest way to ruin a Bible class. The teacher who prays relies on the Spirit, and the Spirit is the One whose presence makes the Bible class different from a book club.

A teacher's prayer for his students may sound something like this:

"Lord, this Sunday I will stand before children whom you love. I cannot reach their hearts; I can only reach their ears. Reach their hearts. Use the words I will say. Forgive the words I will say wrongly. Give me sensitivity to know which student needs encouragement today and which student needs gentle correction. Give me patience with the one who is restless. Give me wisdom with the one who is asking honest questions. And after the class is over, follow each student home and continue what you began here."

Such a prayer does not need to be elegant. It needs to be earnest, and it needs to be regular.

Six characteristics of the Christian Education teacher: a person of God, a student of the Word, a servant, a student of the students, a student of the teaching process, a person of prayer. None of them can be safely omitted.

The teacher who omits the first becomes a religious lecturer. The teacher who omits the second becomes an opinion-giver. The teacher who omits the third becomes a tyrant. The teacher who omits the fourth becomes irrelevant. The teacher who omits the fifth becomes ineffective. The teacher who omits the sixth becomes a self-reliant fool.

The teacher who keeps all six becomes what God uses to do His work in the heart of a learner. That is the calling of every reader of this book.

In Unit 3 we will look at the teacher whose example informs all six: Jesus, the Master Teacher.