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Our teaching ethos

Christianity is not a trendy modern worldview. It is the ancient living story.

What is the point of teaching?

Christian teaching should help people understand that Christianity is not a trendy modern worldview seeking validation from ancient sources. It is the ancient living story: the story of the God who created us, came looking for us, and ultimately came among us in the person of Jesus the Messiah. This story isn’t fiction. It is history, and it is now. So we read Scripture as one unfolding story, culminating in Jesus.

Christian teaching is formational, not merely informational

Understanding the Bible matters enormously. But its purpose isn’t to collect theological facts like a diehard Disney fan collects pins. Nor is it to master religious principles or learn Christian terminology so we can solve God. God is not a problem to be solved; he is a person to be known.

Principles, theology, doctrine, history, context and careful study all matter. Processes and programmes can be enormously useful. But they must never become ends in themselves. They serve a greater purpose: helping us see Jesus our Messiah more fully and live in a way that honours him.

When Moses met Yahweh at the burning bush, he wasn’t asked to write a paper on spontaneous combustion or the nature of fire that does not consume. He was told to take off his sandals. That is where all teaching should eventually lead: to a recognition of the living God, who will always be with us and always beyond us.

What do we need to understand about the New Testament?

Jesus did not suddenly appear at the start of Matthew’s Gospel as the founder of a new world religion. The infant Jesus belongs to a story stretching back through Israel, Abraham and ultimately creation itself.

The Old Testament is not an awkward preface we hurry through to get to Matthew. It provides the vocabulary, the concepts and the stories that allow us to make sense of the New. The apostles understood Jesus as the fulfilment of God’s story, not a departure from it.

The more we understand the old story, the more weight the New Testament carries. Words such as Messiah, Kingdom, glory, covenant, salvation, temple, sacrifice, redemption and Spirit come alive when we hear the centuries of biblical story behind them.

We don’t study Israel’s story to recreate the ancient world or live like first-century Jews. We study it because it helps us recognise Jesus. The Jewish roots matter because they help us understand our story, the world we live in and, as the Apostle Paul puts it, the stock we have been grafted into (Romans 11:17–24).

Can’t we have simple answers?

We live in a world of soundbites and memes, and we usually want the bottom line. We want truth in two sentences, but glory doesn’t work that way. We serve a limitless God who made everything we can and cannot see. He fills it all with his presence, yet he is entirely other and cannot be contained by heaven or earth. That will take more than a meme to understand. That being said, we will certainly share a meme or two to bring a smile!

Is it always about Jesus?

Jesus is not one subject among many; he is the centre around which everything else is understood. The eternal Son, through whom all things were made, took on human nature and became truly human. He was born of a woman. He ate, slept, laughed, wept, grew tired, touched people, welcomed outsiders and sat at tables. He suffered horribly at human hands, was crucified, truly died and was raised bodily from the dead. Unpacking that will take more than a paragraph, more than a course, more than a career, more than a lifetime. It’s an eternity in the unfolding.

How has God chosen to reveal himself?

If we want to grow in the knowledge and experience of the living God, we need patient humility. We might prefer an instant download or a handbook, but God cannot be reduced to tidy propositions. He has chosen to reveal himself through his Son, the ministry of the Holy Spirit and his Word. Life gets a lot easier when we go along with that rather than fight it.

Every time we pick up our Bible and read with even a little reverence, we encounter the living God, whether we feel something or not. If our learning is real, it will eventually produce worship, obedience and changed lives.

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