Equip and Educate

What comes to mind when you think about the words equip and educate?

The local church is crucial in both equipping and educating the believer in their walk with Jesus.

These two terms while different are connected to one another.

What are the basic definitions of each term?

Educate? Christian education is to give someone training in or information on/or about God.

The primary way one educates someone about about God is through his word. The word of God is inerrant and infallible. Meaning it is without errors. and it means the bible is free from error. Christian education starts with the idea that there is a God and he has something to say. Christian education goal is to glorify God, and to know Christ.

So this means that the bible is the perfect way to teach someone about God.

Christian education also takes place through a variety of other means. This includes, schools, books, sermons, teachings, podcasts, ect… God teaches his children about himself through a variety of different ways. But always does so with his word being the focus.

Equip? To equip means to prepare believers to live out their faith.

What good would it be if we were only hearers of the word and not doers.

Here at agape we believe the word of God has life application. But in order to have life application you must know be fed the word of God, and the word of God teaches you how to live our faith. This includes but is not limited to, How to study God’s word, pray, worship, evangelize, serve, stewardship, fasting, silence and solitude, ect…

The primary scripture we see both of these fleshed out is in 2 Timothy 3:16-17

2 Timothy 3:16–17 ESV

16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

So word of God gives you all the tools to live out your own faith.

When we look at the wall we see Equip as the third term listed, the question is how are we equipped. A good text to see how we are Equipped is Ephesians 4:11-16

Ephesians 4:11–16 ESV

11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, 14 so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. 15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16 from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

Maturity. verse 13.

Consistency 14

Integrity 15

Community 16

The result of being equipped means your growing, looking more like Jesus. You are not wavering, your knowledge of God is helping you in every circumstance, and your character is changing, and you are apart of a community serving where God has called you to do what he has called you to.

I found an article that I found extremely helpful in our understanding of Christian education.

https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/the-great-vision-of-christian-education

When we hear about “Christian education,” we often think first about schooling that seeks to operate according to biblical principles. Perhaps we think of Christian private schools or homeschooling or Sunday School. We think of desks and homework and assignments and teachers.

These are important forms of Christian education, but these institutional forms are only the tip of the iceberg. Have you ever considered, for example, that Jesus’s Great Commission (Matthew 28:18–20) is a charter for Christian education?

Precisely because Jesus has been invested with “all authority in heaven and on earth,” he can command his followers to “go and make disciples of all nations.” We do this, Jesus tells us, by doing two things: (1) after they repent of their sins and trust in him, we baptize them in the name of the Trinity, and then (2) we teach them to observe all that he commanded us. We can do this with confidence because Christ himself will be with us always, even to the end of the age.

Christian education is as big as God and his revelation. It goes beyond parenting and teachers and classroom instruction to infuse every aspect of the Christian life. It involves not merely donning gospel-centered glasses when we study “spiritual” subjects, but being filled by the very presence of almighty God as we seek by his Spirit to interpret all of reality in light of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

If we are to practice an education that is truly Christian — in both word and deed — there are at least ten foundational presuppositions and principles that should shape our approach.

1. True Christian education involves loving and edifying instruction, grounded in God’s gracious revelation, mediated through the work of Christ, and applied through the ministry of the Holy Spirit, that labors to honor and glorify the triune God.

2. Christian education begins with the reality of God. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit — one God in three persons — create and sustain all things Genesis 1:1–2 ; Colossians 1:16 Hebrews 1:3. It is from, through, and to the one true God that all things exist and have their being (Acts 17:28). The glorification of God’s name in Christ is the goal of the universe (Colossians 3:17; 1 Corinthians 10:31; Isaiah 43:7; 48:11).

3. Christian education seeks to rightly interpret and correctly convey all aspects of God’s revelation, both his self-disclosure through the created world (called “general revelation”) and his self-disclosure through the spoken and written word (“special revelation”; Romans 1:20; Hebrews 1:1–2).

4. Christian education, building on the Creator-creature distinction, recognizes the fundamental difference between God’s perfect knowledge of himself (called “archetypal theology”) and the limited, though sufficient, knowledge we can have of God through his revelation (“ectypal theology”; Romans 11:34; 1 Corinthians 2:16).

5. Christian education recognizes that the recipients of our instruction — whether believers or unbelievers — are created in the image of God, designed to resemble, reflect, and represent their Creator (through ruling over creation and relating to one another; Genesis 1:26–27).

6. Christian education reckons with the sobering reality of the Fall — that because of Adam’s rebellion as our covenantal head, all of us have inherited a rebellious sin nature and are legally regarded as guilty (Romans 3:10, 23; Romans 5:12, 15, 17–19), and that the creation itself is fallen and in need of liberation (Romans 8:19–22). Our disordered desires and the broken world around us affect every aspect of our thoughts, feelings, and actions, such that even after regeneration, we must still battle indwelling sin (Galatians 5:17).

7. Christian education is built upon the work of Christ — including, but not limited to, his substitutionary atonement and triumphant resurrection victory over sin and death — as the central hinge of history (Galatians 4:4–5; 1 Corinthians 2:2; 15:1–5). All of our instruction is founded upon this great event that makes it possible for sinners to stand by faith in the presence of a holy and righteous God through union with our prophet, priest, and king.

8. Christian education recognizes that to reflect the mind of Christ and to take every thought captive (2 Corinthians 10:5), we must be born again (John 3:3), putting off our old man (in Adam) and putting on the new man (in Christ), renewed in knowledge after the image of God (Colossians 3:10).

9. Christian education insists on the indispensable work of the Holy Spirit, who himself is a teacher (John 14:26; 1 Corinthians 2:13), who searches everything (including the depths of God) and alone comprehends the thoughts of God (1 Corinthians 2:10–11). He helps us in our weakness, intercedes for us (Romans 8:26–27), and causes us to bear good fruit (Galatians 5:22–23).

10. Finally, Christian education recognizes the insufficiency of merely receiving, retaining, and relaying notional knowledge (1 Corinthians 8:1; Matthew 7:21–23), but insists that our knowledge must be relational and covenantal (1 Corinthians 13:12), such that our study results in delight (Psalm 37:4; 111:2), practice (Ezra 7:10), obedience (Romans 1:5), and the further discipling and teaching of others (Matthew 9:19–20; 2 Timothy 2:2).

Christian education no longer involves physically sitting at the feet of Jesus and walking with him down the dusty roads of Galilee. But Jesus himself tells us that it is to our advantage that he goes away, so that the Helper — the Holy Spirit — can come to be with us (John 16:7).

And now, as lifelong learners in Christ, we can truly say, “Though [we] have not seen him, [we] love him. Though [we] do not now see him, [we] believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory” (1 Peter 1:8). That is a truly Christian education.

To sum of the education for me its this. The higher the theology brings greater doxology. which means the more we know about God the more we worship him.

Ephesians 3:20–21 ESV

20 Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

My Goal is on the first Wednesday every month is to have a discipline or doctrine we study and meditate on that month, and add it to our tool bag. March disciple will be stewardship. I also want to incorporate Catechisms to teach our children and young believers more about God.