School of the Spirit
Letters to Leaders
by Stan Smith
Letters to Leaders
by Stan Smith
Recently I was talking with a friend who used to be involved in a spiritual-gifts training class every week. She and her husband had learned -- �All we have to do is give people a platform and turn them loose. The people are ready to go.�
As JoAnn and I have ministered in several regions in the USA, we have received many invitations to get involved in planting a new Bible school. Wherever we go, we meet ministers who sense a call to plant a non-traditional school that focuses not on classroom instruction but on workshops that will release people in spiritual gifts so they can minister outside the church.
We have been nonplussed at the many invitations we have received: develop a curriculum, put a whole school together, develop a department devoted to prophetic worship and the corporate anointing� As we have moved back to California�s central coast, I have been asked to speak in my home church in some of our Wednesday night services, conducting a �school of the Spirit.�
I might have thought this is just a new wrinkle in my personal calling. But meanwhile, several other leaders in our region feel called to start schools of the Spirit. And as I travel, I hear many others saying the same thing. It seems clear to me that God wants to pour a new ingredient into the church � and if so, we are going to need a new kind of teaching.
Twenty-five years ago, the church was in a teaching revival.
We crammed our notebooks with outlines; we lined our walls with Christian books and tapes. Our passion was to fill ourselves with the word.
In those days, we saw worship as a means to open the church to the things of the Spirit, softening our hearts so the word would touch us more deeply. The gifts of the Spirit flowed through unusually anointed people, specially chosen by God for the purpose. But we didn�t go to church to see the Spirit of God move � we went to receive the word.
With our emphasis on the ministry of the teacher, there are two passages of scripture we often overlooked:
But the anointing which you have received from Him abides in you, and you do not need that anyone teach you; but as the same anointing teaches you concerning all things� (I John 2:27)
And another:
This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord; I will put my laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. None of them shall teach his neighbor, and none his brother� (Hebrews 8:10-11, quoting Jeremiah 31:33-34)
These verses all have a context, while many other passages say God has set teachers in the church. It would be a mistake to infer that we don�t need teachers. But at the same time, we need to look squarely at these overlooked promises.
For as I wrestle with my own calling, and what it means that several ministries have asked me to partner with them in raising up schools of the Spirit, I am realizing that the teaching revival of twenty-five years ago may have caused me to read false assumptions into what a school of the Spirit really is.
A school of the Spirit needs the anointed teaching we had in the 1980s. It demands that the teachers flow in spiritual gifts, so they can model a mature flow for the students. It calls for activation times, when we coach the students as they take their first steps. But it also requires us to provide a safe place for the students to activate the anointing that teaches them about all things, so they will live in a flow of revelation after the classes are over.
It is one thing to be an anointed teacher, and to flow in the gifts of the Spirit. But the �school of the Spirit� begins when the teacher stops talking, and allows the Holy Spirit to start a one-on-one dialog with the students.
This isn�t an either/or proposition, but both/and. The problem isn�t that we do too much teaching; it�s that we don�t always think to make room for the students to carry on with the Holy Spirit when the class is over.
The church has taken positive steps. Many ministers include activation times at the end of their teaching, and stir the whole congregation to step into the flow of the Spirit. Many pastors use small groups in their church, making room for leaders to emerge within the congregation. Others involve their congregations in evangelistic outreaches, giving everyone an opportunity to be used by God.
Like many others, I have learned in the school of the Spirit. I attended Pinecrest Bible Training Center, where I spent five years completing the two-year course. (I had issues.) They encouraged us to spend some of our free time studying the word and praying; in my final year I did, and my life changed radically. This year of intensive prayer and study launched my teaching ministry.
But then, the Holy Spirit began to teach me the things I couldn�t learn in a classroom. He taught me how to relax when I stand in front of a group of people. He taught me to shorten my messages because people can receive only so much at once. And He taught me that some of the seemingly off-the-wall illustrations that come to mind when I teach are in fact words of knowledge that touch people deeply.
Then I became a pastor in Detroit. Year by year, people went with me to the inner-city for street witnessing, or to the suburbs with servant-evangelism, or out in the neighborhood for prayer walks. Together, we were in the school of the Spirit. It�s one thing to listen for God�s voice in an activation time in a meeting; it�s quite another to walk through a neighborhood with burned-out and boarded-up houses sprayed with graffiti, where even the police never go alone, but always two-by-two. In neighborhoods like that, you learn to hear from God.
It was the same with the cell groups. We learned to encourage one another, to confront when necessary, and not to run away from conflict. Shy people became outgoing; talkers learned to listen; sometimes we simply had to put up with one another until God enlarged our hearts.
We also made room for the whole group to participate. The Holy Spirit didn�t confine Himself to the meetings. As people reached out in street-witnessing every Friday night, they began to notice witnessing opportunities elsewhere. As they participated in servant evangelism, it spilled over into a �random acts of kindness� lifestyle that led them into divine appointments throughout the week. And the cell groups became a laboratory for applying God�s word in relationships..
There are some things we can teach each other, and some that are reserved for the Holy Spirit alone.
The key is action. When we begin to act on what we know of God�s word, the Holy Spirit teaches us the things no man can teach us.
Frankly, as I travel in ministry my own role as a teacher is limited. In one or in a few meetings, I have time to do little more than to teach and to make sure there is a ministry time at the end of the teaching. And then I move on.
But the Holy Spirit stands ready to pick up where I leave off. And if this is true for me, it is true for every other teacher in the body of Christ. The challenge I face � and the challenge that confronts every pastor and teacher � is to put people�s hands in the hand of the Holy Spirit, and turn them loose. We have to give them a platform, a safe place to act on the word. The Holy Spirit will do the rest. He is a great teacher.
Visitor Comments (0)