One of the joys of being a husband and dad is to see my wife and kids be creative. Their week is filled with cooking, knitting, yarn spinning, lotion-making, photography, art, and music. Each family in the gathering has a bounty of giftings and interests that are peculiar and special.
Often, the brothers and sisters will share things with each other. We demonstrate our love to one another by offering the works of our hands and minds. We give forth from whatever "makes us tick". We are also mindful of others needs and interests.
Much of it is very practical, and we are not overly mindful of it. It is just the way we are. I like to play guitar. I'm more than happy to do it while we're singing together. Kimberly and Abby like to knit, and they are happy when someone can wear their stuff. If young Malachai Talbott grows something in his garden, he is excited that folks will eat it. When Emily V.H. or Emily Talbott captures the family photographically in a special moment, they are glad that we would display it proudly.
We all have pursuits. We gain expertise in something we love. We find satisfaction in detail, in good work. We discover something which resonates with us. Teaching is among the crafts.
In the "housechurch" or "organic" (or whatever) community, there is a tendency to keep at arms length (at least rhetorically) anything that smacks of clergy. Trust me, I'm no friend of the concept of office and hierarchy. But until recent events, I had not given "educated" guys enough credit.
First of all, let me say that teaching had been a big fetish of the institutional subculture I came out of. Every young man who became a believer asked himself, "Does God want me to be a teacher? That would be so cool." It didn't matter that he didn't know anything at all. But the one thing he did know, instinctively through the subculture, was that teaching was the highest calling. And if you proved yourself more "serious" than your peers, maybe the organization might send you to school to be the real deal, the only thing in church that really mattered. If not, well, you could get a wall full of books and position yourself to teach some Sunday School or weekly Bible studies. And then there were the folks who sat under the teaching. It was called "being fed". Is brother so-and-so feeding you right? Would you get fed better on the other street corner? Oh, the horror, if you're not getting fed properly. Everything, I mean everything, depended on the teacher.
I'm preaching to the choir here, if you're in my circle. We came out of that. But there can be a tendency to backlash against the imbalance of the old mindset.
So what does it look like when teaching comes back into balance in the setting of the simple gathering?
Not everybody demonstrates love in the same way. Some people like to hug and some don't. For some guys it's easy to say, "I love you brother," and for some it's awkward. Some guys aren't great at working with their hands, or don't have an ear for music, or a green thumb. But they still have tokens of love to give us. I think that this is how teaching (and other intellectual pursuits) should fit into the life of the body. Not elevated over every other expression, but not despised either.
Rather, teaching can re-orient itself as one of the various pursuits and crafts. Not everybody can knit or make goat's-milk soap. Nevertheless, in our gathering, everyone has soap and knitted items. In the same way, I recognize lately that not everybody can afford the time and effort to do seminary-level study. But fortunately there are brothers and sisters with experience that can whip up something intellectual for us once in a while as a token of their esteem.
It takes two to tango. Teach as a token of your love for your brother, not the emblem of your special status, but as an item from your craft. Receive a teaching as a token of love from your brother, and use it along with your hat and soap and other goodies from the body. There shall be no poor among you.
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