How did Yeshua teach His disciples?
In 2009, I attended a Family Integrated Church conference at Antioch Community Church in Elan, North Carolina. We had just planted a church, and a friend invited me to join him. At that point in my life, I hadn't visited many churches, but this church, even to date, has been the most mature, well-organized, and well-run church I have seen. I was only there for a weekend, and they were probably on their best behavior because of the conference, but I was thoroughly impressed with what I experienced. One element of their service that I borrowed from them and immediately implemented at our church was congregational sharing.
At Antioch, after the sermon, the microphone would be passed around for folks to share family updates, give praise reports, offer prayer requests, and comment on or ask questions about the sermon. At Front Range, our church in Colorado, I would normally field questions during my sermon. I didn’t mind the interruptions; in fact, I encouraged the questions as long as they were related to what I was teaching. The group was small, so treating the sermon as a discussion was manageable. After a while, I noticed it was the same people asking questions, and in most cases, the questions were off-topic or led us down a different path. Many times, because of my inexperience in moderating, I would take a question as I was building up to make a point, and I’d lose my train of thought or lose momentum. After the conference at Antioch, we decided to move the Q&A to the end of the service so I could deliver my sermons uninterrupted. This change made more sense, and it fit our needs.
Recently, I stumbled upon this House Church YouTube channel and watched the episode below. I resonated with their conclusion that we should be “teaching” the same way Yeshua taught. I have several books that examine Yeshua’s teaching methodologies and then encourage pastors to use these techniques in their own sermons. The most notable observation is that Yeshua asked questions to engage His followers. Helping a student reach the correct conclusion on their own is the best way to deliver memorable teaching. However, this takes one-on-one time with the learner, which is hard to do in a church service with other people in attendance. In this episode, they also mention that Yeshua sometimes delivered monologue-type teachings (e.g., the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5-7) in which He neither asks nor takes questions. This is because He was speaking to larger groups of people, not just His closest followers. So you could argue that the Bible supports both Sermon Monologues and Guided Discussions, and if Yeshua did both, then why can’t we?