What Is The Difference Between Preaching And Teaching? A Bible Study

Is there a difference between preaching and teaching? If so, what are the differences?

The Office of Teacher

For those who have the gift of teaching they have an almost insatiable appetite to learn from the Word of God. They have a deep, passionate desire to dig into spiritual truths. They carefully sift through the teachings of others. They are on mission to discover and then validate the truths that they find in the Bible, taking no one’s word for it. They honor Scripture over their own experience. They keep the church focused on the Word. They have a strong sense of discernment because of their spending so much time in Scripture. They cannot handle not having an answer when someone asks them a difficult question about the Bible or the Christian’s walk with Christ. They readily admit to errors of their own and of others. They know the essentials frontwards and backwards. They don’t focus on non-essentials of the faith. They place a great deal of emphasis on the original languages of the Bible like the Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic. They are never emphatic on grey areas where the Bible is not clear. Their study habits are extraordinarily good. They highly value learning from other Christians (Prov 17:17, “iron sharpens iron”).

The Office of Pastor

One thing that the pastor has in common with the teacher is that they have discernment. They can often smell a doctrinal error a mile away. They can see the “half” in a half-truth and know that it makes it a whole lie. Like the teacher, they are focused on the original languages of the Bible and they also zero in on expository, verse-by-verse preaching. They keep the church focused on Christ, the cross, repentance, the holiness of God, the divinity of Christ, the sinless-ness of Christ, and the need for forgiveness of themselves and of others. Like Jesus, they should be meek and lowly (humble) in spirit (Luke 4:22) but they sometimes express righteous indignation and evils in society when preaching about them. They are not afraid to preach about God’s wrath and hell. They never water down or sugarcoat the gospel; they preach it in full strength. They are not afraid to offend because the Word does cut but it cuts in order to heal.

Differences Between Preaching and Teaching

A teacher, like in a Sunday school class, will try to get the students to ask the questions and he will not give them all of the answers; he expects them to study and find them. Like Jesus when He taught, a good teacher asks them questions when they are asked a question. The pastor does no such thing from behind the pulpit as there is no feedback from the congregation during the sermon, at least not during the message anyway. Pastors can have the gift of teaching but not every teacher can be a pastor. The office of pastor is not a gift; it is a calling, first and foremost from God. For the pastor, there is an overwhelming feeling of “You can do nothing else but preach.” Paul felt this in writing “Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel” (1st Cor 9:16b). For Jeremiah it was like this: “If I say, “I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name,” there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot” (Jer 20:9). Another difference between a pastor and a preacher is that a teacher might not qualify for the pastorate. They might not be called by God. They might have never been ordained and called by the church. They might not have that inward calling.

Is it Teaching and Preaching?

The teacher might not go verse-by-verse in expository teaching…instead, he may be focused on one theme or teach on a certain topic, subject or chapter. A preacher can do that too but the preacher’s main text is always the Bible. It will be focused on the Word of God while the teacher tries to focus on a lesson within the Bible. Preaching is effectively preaching the Bible, from the Bible, and about the Bible. A teacher will focus on the content, stories, or characters within the Bible. The Greek word for preaching is kērussō and it means “to herald” and that is considerably different from teaching as you can read in 2nd Tim 4:2 which says “preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching.” Teachers don’t typically reprove, rebuke or preach (herald) the word in a class, so as you can see, teaching and preaching are not the same things at all. Some pastors have teachings in their preaching but teachers don’t have preaching in their teaching, if that makes sense.

Conclusion

Clearly there are differences between teaching and preaching but the preacher may teach but the teacher never preaches. They are both necessary for the church to grow in the faith and knowledge of the word so the body of Christ can “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ [and] To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity” (2nd Pet 3:18).

Article by Jack Wellman

Jack Wellman is Pastor of the Mulvane Brethren church in Mulvane Kansas. Jack is also the Senior Writer at What Christians Want To Know whose mission is to equip, encourage, and energize Christians and to address questions about the believer’s daily walk with God and the Bible. You can follow Jack on Google Plus or check out his book Blind Chance or Intelligent Design available on Amazon.