'Jesus-given' part 6: teachers

Jesus-given: living the life you were called to be part 6: teachers Andrew C. Dowsett

1

Introduction

This paper is the sixth in the ‘Jesus-given’ series exploring discipleship that helps people to

discover and grow into their particular and unique vocation, in the context of the particular

and unique vocations of other people. It is written from the perspective of well over a

decade exploring these ideas, grounded in practical discipleship, while at the same time

learning new things all the time. That is to say, my thoughts in this field are not theoretical,

but they are provisional!

The first paper, ‘Jesus-given: living the life you were called to be,’ introduces the idea that

everyone is at core an apostle, a prophet, an evangelist, a shepherd or a teacher, and that

our primary calling or vocation is nuanced by the other four callings; and why and how we

might help people to first receive themselves as gift from Jesus and then offer themselves

back as gift to Jesus and for the church and the world.

The second paper explores what it looks like to be an apostle, and how we might disciple

apostles. The third paper does the same in relation to prophets, the fourth in relation to

evangelists, and the fifth in relation to shepherds.

The specific purpose of the present paper – ‘Jesus-given’ part 6 – is to explore what it looks

like to be a teacher, and how we might disciple teachers.

Each of these subsequent papers will build on the first paper, and I will refer to those

chapters without significantly duplicating them. They will be important for those who want

to explore in some depth five-fold or APEST calling, particularly from the perspective of

disciple-making. However, the subsequent papers are far more practical, filled with

examples and illustrations, with the intention that they be more widely accessible to those

who want to grow as disciples.

Andrew Dowsett

Trinity 2013


2

Teaching Intelligence: learning to receive and give the gift of being a teacher

Since writing the earlier papers in this series, my own circumstances have changed. I am

about to move from Liverpool Diocese to Durham Diocese, and to a post in the north east

city of Sunderland. In the seventh century, in the Angle-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria,

Benedict Biscop established a monastery on the north bank of the mouth of the river Wear

(in the seventh century, a river-mouth location was comparable to being located near an

international airport today). Benedict brought in experienced masons from the continent to

construct one of the first churches in Britain to be built in stone. Rather than importing

window glass, he also brought glass-makers from France: not only was glass made in Britain

for the first time here, but Benedict ensured that the glass-makers taught their skills to local

people – the birth of British glass making. He brought over the Vatican choir master to teach

his monks Gregorian chant, again exposing his own community to the learning of the wider

Church. And he had the insides of his church building decorated with paintings inspired by

Scripture, specifically as a means of teaching the wider illiterate community. The technology

of his building and the ways in which it was used were utterly remarkable and had a

profound influence.

Benedict established a library, making many trips to Rome to build it up. Endorsed by the

Pope, and by the Northumbrian king, Benedict expanded on the south bank of the Wear

(the monastery land now sundered by the river, or sundered-land), land acquired to farm

cattle in order to produce vellum for book making. The library significantly expanded under

his successor, it became a world-famous place of learning, the Oxbridge or Ivy League school

of its day. People travelled from across Europe to study there. The Medieval illuminated

style was developed there. Monks created highly-prized Bibles, including the Codex

Amiatinus, the earliest surviving complete Latin Vulgate Bible; and wrote, and copied out,

commentaries and works on a wide range of disciplines. The polymath Bede lived and

worked there: his Ecclesiastical History of the English People is considered to set out for the

first time the concept of England as a nation.


3

Led by teachers, Sunderland became the cradle of English art and literature, of English

consciousness. But by the end of the eighth century, the monastery became subject to

attacks by Viking raiders. After seventy years of disruption, the great library was burnt to

the ground (imagine Oxford being razed to the ground by German bombers in WWII raids).

While this was a disaster, it is possible that it saved the community from stagnating, from

moving from innovation to a sterile perpetuation.

To be a teacher, in the sense Paul has in mind in Ephesians 4, is not the same thing as to be

a school teacher. He is speaking of a gifting and a preference, not a profession. Teachers are

found in every sphere (and for a school to be a healthy community, its staff must include

apostles, prophets, evangelists and shepherds). We need teachers, to pass on to the next

generation a platform on which to build, and the tools with which to innovate. In the

England in which I live – which is every bit as multi-cultural as it was in the seventh and

eighth centuries – we desperately need teachers who can help us engage with our

cosmopolitan and rapidly-changing world.

But perhaps different kinds of teachers come to the fore at different times: Benedict in

enough stability – and just enough instability – to innovate; Bede reaping the benefits of

innovation, in a time of consolidation…When turmoil comes, we only know their story

through the people and artefacts that had been sent out.

The Church has struggled to engage with the rapid and discontinuous changes in society. It

has been accused, by those who are seeking to so engage, of training people for a world

that no longer exists. This is what happens, it is claimed, when apostles, prophets and

evangelists are marginalised and shepherds and teachers monopolise (or, exercise a

duopoly). While I broadly agree, I wonder whether apostles, prophets and evangelists are

made for the margins. Moreover, rather than seeing these five types as monolithic, we need

a greater appreciation of how each nuances the others – within a given person, as well as

our inter-personal dynamics. My own concern is to help reimagine the teaching role within

an Ephesians 4 framework.


4

Bearing this in mind, let us look again at our four primary kinds of teaching type.

Teacher-apostles are patrons. Their teaching impulse is expressed through the apostolic

concern with creating environments. Solomon is the prime biblical example. God granted

him wisdom, but not as some kind of divine download: reading between the lines of the

Wisdom Literature, he created a culture of learning, sent ambassadors to other courts, to

read through their libraries, part of an international exchange of knowledge, resulting in

innovation built on the already-established. Benedict Biscop is another example, creating an

environment for multi-disciplinary learning, gathering experts in various fields.

Of course, both Solomon and Benedict had enormous resources at their disposal. But if

Jesus distributes the amount of gifting, as well as the type of gift, as he chooses, what might

a teacher-apostle look like across the distribution curve? Does one have to be born into

privilege (or get there through some other means) in order to be a patron?

Just the other day, I came across Repair Café, set up by Martine Postma in Amsterdam in

2009. Her idea? To gather together those in a locality who know how to repair clothes,

furniture, bicycles, electrical appliances, toys – the things we so readily throw away and

replace – at a café on a given day, in order that people can bring items and repair them with

the aid of the specialists. In this way, not only are items fixed, but skills are passed on – skills

that we are rapidly losing. To me, there are parallels here with Benedict and his glaziers. The

impulse is to teach: to teach skills; to teach people to see possessions in a new light, valuing

them; to educate in relation to the environmental impact of the disposal consumer culture;

and to show that learning new skills can be fun! The particular genius is apostolic, reaching

beyond Postma’s own repair skills, networking others. All that was required was finding a

willing café owner, those with repair know-how, and some advertising – hardly the

resources of a king or a nobleman. Postma now oversees a small team who support others

to set up Repair Cafés in several countries – a small but rapidly growing movement.


5

The internet tricks us into believing that we know about things we really don’t know about

at all. And yet, it has perhaps never been easier to get together with others to cross-

pollinate expertise, or, experience. If we will only set aside the time to sit down together…

Teacher-prophets are scribes. If teacher-apostles create environments for learning, teacher-

prophets create break-through moments of learning, by the fresh application (treasures

new) of received wisdom (treasures old). Bede might be considered a teacher-prophet.

Certainly, he was the kind of scholar who is described as ‘ahead of his time’ in scope of

interest, and of holding out a choice between potential futures (a recurring theme in Bede’s

work is the benefit of unity rather than disunity: as a theologian, the move from pagan

kingdoms, and even Celtic and Catholic models of Christianity, towards a united people with

a united Catholic Church; as an historian, from cyclical or localised dating, towards

‘universal’ adoption of AD).

Indeed, I wonder whether Benedict’s ‘patronage’ drew an unusually high concentration of

teacher-prophets, men (mostly – though Hilda had established a community at Sunderland

before him, and before moving to Whitby) who developed a new script to facilitate faster

copying of manuscripts, who pushed the boundaries of chemistry and fused Celtic, Roman,

Saxon, Byzantine and Islamic design to create the brightly-coloured illuminated style?

Teacher-prophets are still drawn to such centres of excellence today: our greatest

universities are full of men and women with the ‘terrible gift’ of high-functioning autism, a

purposeful haven for those who combine the relational difficulties of the prophetic

personality with the teacher’s fascination with principles and knowledge. What role might

the Church play in helping establish purposeful havens for those who live with less high-

functioning learning disability? They, too, have gifts to bring, are gifts to cherish.

Evangelists are ‘people’ people; and transmitters of, and recruiters to, good news. If

evangelist-teachers are enthusiasts, who popularise their field of interest, teacher-

evangelists are speculators. They invest in others not simply a subject-matter – knowledge

of chemistry, or history, or – but a passion for teaching. They scatter the seed for the next

generation of teachers, not knowing what return they might get. Even where they might not


6

scatter indiscriminately, they have no way of knowing what will grow. When I was at school,

three teachers in particular encouraged me to consider becoming a high school teacher:

that was not to be my vocation, nor even a step on the way; and yet I have a love of learning

and, indeed, a fondness for those teachers who invested something more in me than just

information. For some of us, personality-wise, we invest deeply in a few; while others invest

widely and in passing. This spectrum is true also of speculators, though being too cautious

or indeed too indiscriminate will reduce a return. Speculators must learn where – in whom –

to invest.

Returning to that great idea of the Repair Café, some of those with specialist expertise will

undoubtedly be speculators. And while some of the guests will want no more than a

particular item to be given a new lease of life, others will ‘catch the bug,’ returning again

and again to learn and new skill-set and experience the joy of passing it on in turn.

Of course, to some degree we will all find ourselves in situations where we have to turn our

hand to many different preferences, whether they are our own preference or not. We can

do this – we each carry all five gift types, in potential – just to greater or lesser capacity for

competency. As a parent, I find myself in the speculator role on many occasions, regardless

of the fact that it is well outside of my comfort-zone. As well as working with others –

drawing them in to walk alongside us – we need to learn from one another. While I will

never be a natural speculator, I can learn to be a more competent one.

The last and largest group, teacher-shepherds are trainers. Because of the particular balance

of chaos and order needed for life, apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds and teachers

are not evenly distributed: there are significantly more shepherds and teachers, and of all of

the twenty main personality types I am exploring, shepherd-teachers (nurturers) and

teacher-shepherds (trainers) are the most common. No wonder they have dominated, not

only within the Church but also, much of the time, within wider society.

Trainers hand on, in a very hands-on way, knowledge and skills. They are master-workmen

and -women, with apprentices. Without them, whole professions are lost – as witnessed in


7

the cataclysmic decline of industry, and devaluing of apprenticeship, in England. Benedict

brought in glass-makers, to train locals in how to make glass. The best trainers might not

have been the most pioneering – indeed, almost certainly not.

In times of rapid change (whether invasion by Vikings, or the sheer pace of the current

technological revolution) certain skills become obsolete – that is, either a new use is found

for something or it is discarded – and new skills are developed. But certain skills are lost,

which are still required, including basic life skills. While skills are passed on almost without

second thought in times of greater stability, in times of greater instability they need to be

preserved. One of the great challenges facing the Church at the present time is how to

engage with a rapidly changing cultural context while preserving a body of learning that we

will need to draw on again – albeit not in order to return to the past – when we emerge into

a more stable time and need to help people rebuild their lives, rebuild society. This has been

the challenge of the Church in country after country and century after century as empires

rise and fall and peoples migrate (pioneer, whether in peace or hostility) and settle. Dare I

say it, the Church of England, for all its many faults, has a particular expertise in this very

area.

Without doubt, we will need to position ourselves to take a lead in this very rebuilding

again, by releasing trainers to rehearse such a role at the local level. Here, again, we see

that the generative types – apostles, prophets, evangelists – and the consolidating types –

shepherds and teachers – need each other, need to work together. Any temptation to see

each other as competing visions – whether exiling the APEs or returning to overthrow the

shepherds and teachers – must be resisted. With Bede, we must seek unity, must be willing

to compromise and submit to one another.

I believe that there is a teaching presence in every local church and in every local

community, almost certainly waiting to be discipled in their vocation. Perhaps the examples

listed above already help us to identify possible teachers in our own context. Looking at

teacher-shaped spirituality (how we relate to God), teacher-shaped community (how we

relate to one another) and teacher-shaped mission (how we relate to the wider world) will


8

give us further clues, both as to whether someone is a teacher or not, and to how we might

help them grow into themselves.

Teacher-shaped Spirituality

Teaching spirituality is concerned with wisdom, wherever wisdom may be found. Of course,

for most teachers, they will not necessarily be looking to the Church as collators of spiritual

wisdom; while teachers who have encountered Jesus may likely recognise that insight can

be found in many places, dispersed among different traditions, with much to learn from one

another. And so teachers may encounter Jesus in places that might surprise others; while

the Church is mistaken if ever it falls into the conceit that it holds a monopoly on wisdom.

The pitfall of teacher-shaped spirituality is the belief that the teacher has greater insight

than others: in fact, insight is dispersed, with shepherds having particular insight, and

apostles, prophets and evangelists each having different particular insight. A truly wise

teacher is not a guru, but celebrates insight in its diversity. But the gift of teacher-shaped

spirituality is a deepening of those diverse insights – a depth for which apostles might lack

patience, or evangelists, inclination. In discipling teachers, we might help them to make

connections between their particular areas of interest and Jesus; and also to make

connections between the gifts of others, and the deeper development of those gifts. At its

most fundamental, to be a disciple is to be a learner, to be a life-long disciple is to be a life-

long learner – and to be a disciple who makes disciples is to be a learner who is also a

teacher. While being a teacher is not the first call on many, healthy teacher-shaped

spirituality helps us to be disciples rather than spiritual consumers.

Teacher-shaped Community

Like shepherd-shaped community, though for different emphasis, teaching community

values stability. Shepherds value stability because stability is necessary for people to thrive

(though a degree of risk is also necessary); teachers, because stability is necessary for

learning to be collated and disseminated. Whenever a culture is shaken – Empires rise and

fall – structures which have provided stability break down; but, in due course, life must be


9

rebuilt. If the Church needs apostles and prophets and evangelists to help us navigate in the

wake of cultural earthquakes, to help us rescue those caught in the collapse; and needs

shepherds to help us care for those survivors; the Church needs teachers to organise the

rebuilding of life, of society. The problem comes when teachers believe that what worked in

times of peace will work in times of war (and vice versa) if we only try harder: when, in fact,

we must beat ploughshares into swords, or, indeed, spears into pruning-hooks.

The key to healthy teaching community is cross-fertilisation, the interaction and exchange

between learning communities – as seen in the court of Solomon, or Benedict Biscop’s

abbey. Yet again this highlights the importance of those with a greater apostolic weighting –

with their concern for environments and their networking gifts – to oversee communities.

Teacher-shaped Mission

In relating to the wider world, teachers have a focus on connecting the generations: they

are a bridge between past and future generations, between what has been discovered and

what is yet to be discovered. In this sense, they have an integral part to play in the healing

of the nations, reconciliation between those whose day is passing and those whose day is

dawning (but will, in turn, pass). Teachers will always live in the tension between leaning too

heavily on the past and leaning too heavily on the future, and need to be discipled in

maintaining that balance – perhaps in seasons or rhythms that move back and forward

between the two. They will also live with the often unhelpful criticism of others who believe

their emphasis to be out-of-balance, and need to be disciple in dealing with negative

criticism in a positive way.

Shepherds and teachers are the most common preference types. We need to move beyond

understanding ‘teacher’ only in terms of those employed in education – and we need to

move away from thinking of the teaching role within the Church as being the pinnacle-point

of the gifted preacher. We need to recognise teachers – and our need to learn from

teachers, where their strengths are not our own – everywhere, playing a key role in helping

people grow into their own calling, from the platform of basic life-skills to the specific


10

applied knowledge of a musician or fashion-designer or architect or ecologist or builder or

parent or soldier or any of the other facets of God’s expertise reflected in the diversity of

human talent.

Birthing life from chaos

Like each of the five gift types, teachers have their own besetting sins, habitual patterns that

run contrary to godliness: familiar behaviours we hide from our true selves within, but

which nonetheless contain a revelation of God’s grace (for that is what redemption is).

Franciscan Richard Rohr suggests that we do not abandon our sin until we have learnt from

it, or else we shall experience something akin to the story Jesus tells of a demon driven out

who simply returns with several others more wicked than the first.

Teachers can be legalistic, moving from the laws that make things possible (the principles of

mathematics, for example) to a constraining rigidity (think music, without the improvisation

of jazz). They can be judgemental of those who just don’t grasp what is plain to them, and

bossy in instruction – taking over, rather than taking people from unconscious

incompetence (ignorance is bliss), through conscious incompetence (despair!) and

(empowering) conscious competence to unconscious competence (perhaps beyond the

competence of the teacher). They can be too theoretical and abstract (though I am not

primarily a teacher, it is strong in my own mix!). They can miss the wider picture, or be too

slow to act; and fall into the tap of the scribes and the Pharisees, of being big on doctrine

and light on praxis, and of becoming proud.

These things are all hiding places, a pattern of behaviour that goes back to Adam and Eve

when their eyes were opened to how little they knew, and how much they would have to

learn for themselves…and yet these things point us not only to our need for one another

(for apostles, to draw the teacher from passivity; for prophets, to draw them into the future;

for evangelists, to draw them away from Gnostic elitism; for shepherds, to draw them away

from the abstract) but are the very place where we might encounter God’s grace. Law

redeemed for freedom, the school rather than the prison-cell; the love and the discipline


11

and the freedom we need to grow to maturity; apprenticeship; practical provision;

commissioning to hard but satisfying work with companionship.

These are offered not as great insights, but as broad suggestions for discipling teachers,

helping them to receive themselves as gift from Jesus, and to offer themselves back as gift

to him and for the world. We must sit with our darker side and allow it to teach us, for God

wraps himself in darkness as well as hides in unapproachable light...and his Trinitarian life is

one of unfolding learning, of delight in creation.

Likewise, this paper is in no way an attempt at a definitive work. My hope is that I have

fleshed out the skeleton of the first ‘Jesus-given’ paper, in regard to teachers, or built some

rooms around the structural core of the building. But in each given context, disciple-makers

will need to work with disciples to tell the stories that will clothe the body, furnish the room.


12

Appendix

This appendix duplicates material from the first ‘Jesus-given’ paper, with the intention of

refreshing the memory without having to refer to another document.

Firstly, we need to describe the Jesus-given people-gifts of being apostles, prophets,

evangelists, shepherds and teachers in terms of preferences, not in terms of ministry

experience (we might not have had any) or gifts of the Holy Spirit (the gift of prophecy is not

restricted to prophets) or any particular church tradition (in our diversity, we define too

narrowly). Secondly, we need to understand the Jesus-given people-gifts as preferences,

not restrictive boxes to limit what we can or cannot do. The twenty primary combinations

help us to explore and discover what kind of apostle/prophet/evangelist/shepherd/teacher I

am – these gift types are not monolithic, but multi-faceted – but they should not be

understood too rigidly, not least because all the gifts are carried within us and nuance us.

Teaching Intelligence: patrons, scribes, speculators, trainers

Teaching intelligence is concerned with the handing on of knowledge, so that learning is

perpetuated and skills are not lost.

Patrons: Teacher-apostles

TAs represent the pioneering end of the spectrum of teaching intelligence. Among teachers,

TAs are most likely to have greatest interest in extending the frontier of knowledge in their

given field. But more than that, TAs are patrons, who gather others together for the cross-

pollination of knowledge, its weighing and testing and applying, and, having brought

together, the ‘packaging’ and distribution of that knowledge. A friend of mine displays this

primary preference pairing, which is creatively expressed in bringing together people from

different places and interests to network and learn together. By patron, I do not mean one

who bestows their wisdom from a place of hierarchical strength, but one who creates

environments for the Research & Development of their field to take place.


13

Scribes: Teacher-prophets

Jesus spoke of ‘scribes of the kingdom’ who brought out of their treasure chest (the

resources available to them) treasures old (received) and new (not seen before). While

scribes of the kingdom may be restricted to those who know and love king Jesus, and are

not restricted to any one personality, I choose to identify TPs as scribes because of their

preference for the fresh application of learning, their ability to pass on what they have

received often making their own contribution. If TAs create environments for learning, TPs

create moments of learning.

Speculators: Teacher-evangelists

Evangelists are ‘people’ people; and transmitters of, and recruiters to, good news. If ETs are

enthusiasts, who popularise their field of interest, TEs are speculators, who make particular

if passing investments to pass on not only subject-matter but a passion for teaching. An

example: in high school I had two Geography teachers and a History teacher who all saw in

me a love of learning and encouraged me (not so much to pursue further study in their

discipline) but to consider teaching high school as a career. Though that wasn’t to be my

vocation, teaching is a big part of what I do and love doing. As speculators, perhaps they

backed someone who didn’t respond in quite the way they hoped – but for speculators the

outcome is not so much the point as the action-preference on their part.

Trainers: Teacher-shepherds

TSs represent the consolidating or settler end of teaching intelligence. Remember, we are

talking about preference here, not boxes. It is not that a TS is unable to function as a

patron, scribe or speculator, but their preference and fundamental motive is to be a trainer:

one who, hands-on, hands on knowledge or skills to others. Without trainers in every

discipline or vocation, skill sets are lost, perhaps forever. Of course, a TS will often enjoy

learning a new skill as well as passing one on – appreciating the gifting of another TS. While

competence is acquired through investment and practice, and some are more gifted than


14

others, TSs as a preference group – like STs – represent a large percentage of the

population.

'Jesus-given' part 6: teachers

Documents

Transcript of 'Jesus-given' part 6: teachers