On his return to Lystra during his second missionary tour, Paul had his eye on a potential companion to work alongside him. Previously, Paul had worked closely with Barnabas, but had parted ways at the outset of his second journey. Even though he had brought Silas along with him, a vacancy remained. So when he arrived at Lystra, he identified a young man full of faith to join in this gospel ministry. Timothy represents in many ways the central point of the book of Acts. The Jerusalem council had just met to delineate exactly how to blend new gentile believers into the church comprised mostly of Jewish believers (Acts 15). Timothy was of mixed parentage. His father was Greek. His mother was a Jewish believer (Acts 16:1). Raised in the faith of his mother and grandmother, Timothy would have already been familiar with the scriptures of the Old Testament. As one of the disciples from Paul’s previous visit to Lystra, what Paul found upon his return was a young man of profound faith. We cannot know for certain his age, but it seems likely that Timothy was still only a boy, around sixteen or seventeen years old.

Timothy joined Paul and Silas on their journeys, traveling throughout Macedonia and Greece. At times, Paul entrusted Timothy with the care of local churches, such as at Berea or Thessalonica. We can picture, though, that Paul valued Timothy as a close companion, referring to him as his “true child in the faith” (1 Tim. 1:2). At various points, Paul commends Timothy to various churches, such as when Timothy was sent to minister at Corinth (1 Cor. 4:17 and later 16:10), or when he was sent to minister at Philippi (Phil 2:18-23). Timothy was included as a co-author of several of Paul’s letters, including 2 Corinthians, Philippians, Colossians, 1-2 Thessalonians, and Philemon. From all of this we gather that Timothy was a gifted and capable companion, even during his earliest days traveling with Paul.

What Timothy exemplifies is a young person exhibiting spiritual gifting in a powerful way. Later in his life, even after many years accompanying Paul, he was still a young man when Paul advised him to “let no one despise you for your youth” (1 Tim. 4:12). The point I am making here is that spiritual gifting can be evident and powerfully expressed by young people. Therefore, I believe that we can begin exploring gifting during the high school years, enabling students to begin a process of discernment and practice that will put feet to their faith in powerful ways.

Learning about Spiritual Gifts

In this year’s Bible class taught to freshmen, we walked through 1 Corinthians 12-14. Here we get one of several lists of gifts in the New Testament. Compare, for instance, the list in 1 Cor. 12:7-11 with that in 12:28-30 as well as with those in Romans 12:4-8, Ephesians 4:11 and 1 Peter 4:9-11. Each list contains different gifts. This means that no single list is comprehensive or exhaustive. So the first lesson to learn about gifts is that they can be tricky to pin down and define with exactitude. This points to the need for discernment and dependence. By discernment, I mean the process of continually asking the Lord for clarity as to how he desires to work through someone to edify the people of God. And by dependence, I mean that the gift itself is not actually the most consequential part of what we are learning. Instead, using a God-given gift is really the training ground for prayerfully and faithfully connecting ourselves to his work in and through us. 1 Corinthians 13 shows us that the gift itself will pass away (13:8-10). It is the love that is expressed through the gift that will endure forever.

Walking through the three chapters of 1 Corinthians 12-14, we are presented with three major ideas. First, we learn the nature of spiritual gifts in chapter 12. Here we get a couple listings of the gifts, but also ideas such as the unity of the body of Christ and the empowering of the Holy Spirit. In chapter 13, we learn about spiritual gifts as the “homework” we receive to practice loving one another. Paul anticipates that we will one day see our Lord face to face, so our current practice should be a training ground for learning how to live a serving and sacrificial love towards our brothers and sisters in Christ. Then in chapter 14, Paul teaches about how gifts ought to be exercised in an orderly and considerate way. Here we get the principle that gifts are meant to build the church up (14:12).

There are challenging points of discussion that accompany these passages. It can be difficult to walk through these chapters without tackling one or two of the controversies contained in them. For instance, we encounter topics such as the availability of all gifts today (some Christian traditions view the miraculous gifts such as tongues and prophecy as no longer available). There are topics pertaining to authority in the church, which can erupt into differences in church polities in a multi-denominational setting. Perhaps the most difficult controversy to tackle is the roles of women in the church. A teacher resource I found to be extremely helpful is D.A. Carson’s Showing the Spirit. He carefully lays out different theological positions and proposes reasonable solutions to thorny issues.

Learning to Own One’s Faith

One of the chief goals in learning about spiritual gifts is to help students make the connection between their emerging biblical faith and the practical outworking of that faith in their lives. To accomplish this, it is imperative to lay a strong biblical foundation. One must know what one believes. Some students will have a very detailed and robust knowledge of the Bible and theology, while others will have less knowledge. So, I advise a program whereby students come away with a good grasp of the storyline of the Bible and the essentials of the faith. As high schoolers, students can be entrusted to read on their own and begin practicing disciplines such as daily prayer, regular Bible reading, and so forth. Learning about spiritual gifts, then, gives them further ownership of their faith and new avenues to put feet to their faith.

Having students take a few spiritual gifts tests is the next step in their learning. After laying a strong foundation in the biblical text, we then have them explore by way of tests some potential giftings the Lord may have bestowed upon them. Here are two tests I found online. The website Spiritual Gifts Test is run by the ministry of Jeff Carver. I like this site because it has a test geared towards youth. To take this test and receive results, students must create an account. I found that this site has really solid definitions of the gifts for students to learn about their personal gifting and connect that to solid biblical teachings. Another site is giftstest.com, a free online tool produced by the Rock Church in San Diego. There are other tests available out there, but these are two good examples of questionnaires aimed at elucidating an individual’s possible gifting. I want to emphasize the word “possible,” because no single test can definitively tell a person what the Holy Spirit is accomplishing within a believer.

This is why we need to spend time reflecting. Once students have taken a couple tests, they have some results to read and digest. They now begin a process of writing up what they think their gifting is by listing the top results and using scripture to clearly define their gifting as best as they can discern. For students who may not have had much opportunity to serve in any ministry context, it is important to consider moments when they have experienced genuine joy, or times when others have commented on their potential gifting. I also spend time working one-on-one with them in order to hear their thoughts and provide my own insights.

I also have students write up plans they can make now that they have discern one, two or three possible giftings. These plans might be along the lines of learning more about spiritual gifts, or speaking with a youth pastor about spiritual gifts. They might consider opportunities to use spiritual gifts in a ministry at church, or to join a missions trip. In other words, having considered what the Lord is doing through them, they should now follow Paul’s teaching that these gifts are for the edification of the church.

Learning about Life’s Mission

Having spent the better part of a decade providing college guidance, the major framework I use with students is to consider their life’s mission. I can think of no better way to think about college than to view those years than within a context a long-range vision of why God has placed this person on the planet. It can be difficult for students to have a clear vision of this life mission, so it takes time and good counsel to draw this out of them. Here’s where I think learning about spiritual gifts can be a moment of clarity for students. By gaining an insight into their relationship with God, and a sense of where God wants them to serve, they begin to understand that their life has a mission, and that whatever kind of schooling they do, it should be intimately tied to that mission. It is imperative that counselors use effective questions to draw out of students their own values and sense of their life mission. We must restrain ourselves from inserting our own vision or coaxing them into a preconceived notion of what they ought to want in their lives. Only when they have come to their own conclusions can they genuinely be satisfied with this vision of their mission in life. Some of the questions I ask have to do with what kinds of values to they hold, what kind of person do they want to be when they are 20, 30 or 40, and what kind of parent would they want to be.

This does not mean that one’s spiritual gift is somehow tied to a college major or career. That being said, it could be that discerning a spiritual gift could lead some students to pursue training in ministry. For many or even most students, they can start to map out a mission where their interests, talents, and giftings come together into a clearer life plan. The aspiring architect can now see how their talent in physics intersects with their interest in design as well as their spiritual gifting of mercy. How these come together is very personal and unique to that person.

Whether a unit on spiritual gifts is explicitly connected to college guidance or not, teaching students about spiritual gifts can be a key moment in their growth as young Christians. During the high school years, most of these students will learn how to drive and work their first job. Shouldn’t we also hand them the keys to a deeper walk with Christ that gives them a start in how to practically live out their faith. Just like Timothy was entrusted with responsibility at a young age, we can likewise guide our students toward a mature faith.

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In a similar way, the young church leader Timothy benefited from the counsel of the apostle Paul. The Book of 1 Timothy is essentially a letter of mentorship that Paul writes to Timothy to support the young leader as he seeks to shepherd the Ephesian church. Contextually, pernicious false teaching had infected the community, located in a wealthy, coastal city of the Roman Empire. Paul knew that if Timothy was going to successfully lead the Ephesian Christians through such troublesome times, he was going to need guidance.

In this article, I will explore the guidance Paul provides Timothy with the aim of drawing out general principles of mentorship. By doing so, I hope to introduce a biblical approach to mentorship that moves from theory to practice in the context of local church life. 

Right Doctrine

To begin, it is worth noting that Paul addresses his letter “To Timothy, my true child in the faith” (1:2). From the offset, Paul makes his relationship and love for Timothy clear. Though he will soon proceed through a list of mandates, the security of the relationship is never in question. Thus, Paul begins his mentorship letter with a key move: establishing trust.

Following the introduction, Paul transitions quickly to the root issue in the Ephesian church: false teaching. As biblical scholar Frank Thielman notes, “Letters like this were commonly sent in antiquity by a government official to a subordinate upon the subordinate’s resumption of some new public responsibility”.¹  In this way, the letter serves as both a reminder of duties and as a public commission.

False teaching had plagued the church in Ephesus, spreading as such. The only way to end the plague is to remove it from the organism. In this case, Paul’s counsel for Timothy is to charge the church to teach only what is true and in full alignment with the gospel of Jesus Christ (1:11). 

The key takeaway for mentorship is that ideas matter. They serve as the rutter of the ship. Mentors should be careful to not move too quickly to behaviors and practices when these are simply visible manifestations of some animating idea. In the case of the Ephesian church, the congregation was moving toward disorder as a result of the inception of heretical doctrine. Likewise, a person’s life trajectory can shift radically by the ideas they embrace and live by. Thus, the very first mentoring conversation should often focus on ideas and what the student views as her basic life principles.

Godly Conduct

Effective mentors cannot stay in the ideological realm for long, however. Following true doctrine, Paul impresses upon Timothy to promote conduct, or behavior, and godliness in the church. From worship approaches to style of dress, Christians are to live peaceful and quiet lives, “godly and dignified in every way” (2:2).

This godly approach to living must first and foremost be modeled by bishops and deacons. Notice that Paul does not leave it to Timothy’s imagination to determine the specifics of the godly conduct Paul envisions. Rather, he specifically elaborates on key character traits, familial relationships, and self-control over potential vices such as drunkenness and greed.

With these qualifications of church leaders in view, we can easily make a connection to the classical idea of virtue, that is, human excellence directed toward human flourishing. If the church in Ephesus is going to emerge from the disorder generated by false doctrine, its leaders must be freed from the slavery of the appetites, and become servants of Christ alone.

Likewise, effective mentors should discuss with their students what portrait of their future selves the Lord is calling them to become. Encourage them to be as specific as possible. What will they do for fun? What skills will they have mastered? How will they treat other people? How will they navigate complex topics like social media or peer pressure? They can then begin an honest conversation of whether their current conduct matches this desired trajectory. 

The Will to Train

Right doctrine and godly conduct will establish the path for Timothy, but to go the distance, an additional step is required: the will to train. Train for what? Godliness according to the words of the faith (4:6). He compares the reward of bodily training to training for godliness in that the latter reward is experienced both in the present life and the life to come (4:8). 

The idea of training appears often in our work at Educational Renaissance, particularly as it relates to the modern notions of possessing a growth mindset and engaging in deliberate practice. Research in elite performance has shown that the key to mastery in any skill or discipline is to practice with the right attitude and in the proper way. 

In the Christian faith, we are to train as well, though we must be careful to train for the right objective. The Bible is clear that we do not train to earn our salvation, but to live out our salvation. Salvation is a free gift for a person to accept. It is the result of the gracious work of God, the exact opposite of any sort of result through human training. And yet, when we did receive salvation through conversion, the training regiment sets in.

The topic of training for godliness is a fascinating one to bring up in a mentoring conversation. The metaphor has a way of underscoring intensity and dedication of growing in Christlikeness in a manner that the idea of sanctification does not. By mentors taking their conversations to the deeper level of spiritual growth, they fuse together true doctrine with godly conduct in a way that will cause the student to truly think differently about how to steward their lives most wisely.

Conclusion

This exploration of 1 Timothy regarding principles of mentorship is merely an introduction into what is truly an expansive topic. There is much more to cover in Paul’s school of mentorship found in 1 Timothy, including such topics as devotion to scripture, exhibiting compassion, and practicing true contentment. As mentors plan out their meeting with students, these are all worthy topics to discuss. Following Paul, mentors taking a multi-dimensional approach will help students grow in not just one area of their lives, but holistically, instead, in a way that allows these dimensions to complement one another.

1. Thielman, Frank. Theology of the New Testament (Zondervan, 2005). 413.

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Previous articles in this series, Training the Prophetic Voice:

Part 1: The Educational Heart of God

Part 2: Speaking Truth to Power

Part 3: The Schools of the Prophets

Part 4: Jesus as Prophetic Trainer

Part 5: Internalizing the Prophetic Message

Laying a Foundation in Classical Rhetoric

Aristotle’s The Art of Rhetoric is a starting point for my students as they begin working on their senior theses. We read Aristotle to understand the central tenets of rhetoric that helps to ground their work upon solid principles. Let’s take a look a few central ideas in Aristotle. Rhetoric consists in persuasion – not for the sake of mere persuasion, but to arrive at truth, goodness or justice – in the public sphere. The production of opposing arguments allows an audience to consider the best decision or course of action. Aristotle writes:

“Furthermore, we need the capacity effectively to urge contradictory positions, as also with syllogism, not so that we may adopt either of the two (it is quite wrong to persuade men to evil), but that we should be aware how the case stands and be able, if our adversary deploys his arguments unjustly, to refute them. So, while none of the other sciences produces opposing arguments, this is done only by dialectic and rhetoric, being both concerned in the same way with opposition.”

Aristotle, The Art of Rhetoric (trans. Lawson-Tancred; Penguin, 1991), p. 69 (1355a)

A well-trained student, then, needs to be able to consider multiple, even contradictory, positions on any number of topics. Aristotle demonstrates that this skills acquired through the study of rhetoric transcend the other domains of knowledge, making these skills applicable in fields such as theology, history or science. There is a tension here, then, in teaching truth to our students. We want them to acquire knowledge of truth, goodness and justice. But there are multiple opinions and perspectives on what is true, good and just. Not only that, there is considerable debate on how truth, goodness and justice should be applied in society. This is why educators should carefully avoid approaching teaching as a dissemination of dogma. Instead, effective teaching enables students to consider the many facets and angles of what is true, good and just. Students should be challenged to demonstrate how they arrived at an answer and not just produce the “correct” answer. They should be able to identify opposing arguments and consider where the two sides might be correct and in error. This comes through discussion, dialogue and debate.

There are numerous common elements to persuasive speech that efficiently and effectively enable the rhetorician to communicate his or her perspective on the truth persuasively. Aristotle elaborates, “Scientific explanations belong to education, and, since this is impossible in this case, proofs and arguments must be contrived from commonplaces.” (ibid.) What he means here is that when we have our moment to speak into the marketplace of ideas, we are not given years upon years to develop our audiences understanding of multiple topics and the proofs we are deriving from them. We can give our audience all they need to know in the few minutes we have at hand. We cannot fully educate our audience. Instead, we have a few moments to provide some proofs and arguments to support our perspective. Aristotle references the common topics that help define and shape the necessary support for one’s perspective.

Residing as we are in the information age where we are glutted by an abundance of evidence, the use of common topics to define and exemplify what we want to communicate about what is true, good and just is essential. Finding good examples, analogies or comparisons helps support the point one is making. There is so much to sift through on the internet and in libraries. Yet, it really only takes a few pieces of evidence to establish your point. We really cannot arrive at a comprehensive knowledge of all that is out there on any given topic. This is true even for professional experts, let alone we who must be generalists in most every subject.

Persuasion not only occurs through the words spoken, but also through the character of the speaker and the disposition of the audience. Aristotle writes: “Of those proofs that are furnished through the speech there three kinds. Some reside in the character of the speaker, some in a certain disposition of the audience and some in the speech itself.” (Art of Rhetoric, p. 74; 1356a) We can summarize this with the words ethos, pathos and logos. Our choice of words matters, as well as the inflection and tone we use. But equally important is whether the rhetorician is perceived as a truthful, good and just individual. Character and competence matter in the way we present ourselves. We can say all the right things, but if we are perceived as flawed, the words will ring hollow.

One concern that Aristotle addresses is the ability to persuade the fickle audience with showy sophistry. An audience can get riled up by emotional appeals. Knowing this can be an advantage to the rhetorician, since we can inject humor, passion and anger into our speech. But the emotion of an audience can also be unreliable. To this end, we must also be aware that our opponent can also rile up the audience. Therefore, we need to be all the more careful in the way we present ourselves and in assuring that our speech is well grounded in good evidence and argumentation.

In practical terms, here are some objectives for teachers to consider in middle and high school. Students should become aware of their audience as well as reflect on their own character and competence as a writer/rhetorician. You can read more about this in my article on… Beyond just learning the structure of the ten-sentence paragraph and the five-paragraph essay, students should learn the basics of the common topics (definition, comparison, circumstance, relationship, testimony), becoming familiar with how to use these common topics to expand upon basic essay structures. Ultimately, students should learn how to write with clarity, efficiency, and vibrance. There’s a tension here, since we want to throw more words in to clarify our thoughts, but efficiency pushes us to reduce the number of words. Vibrance or eloquence challenges us to find interesting words and phrases to express our thoughts, but this can interfere with either clarity or efficiency.

Paul and Augustine on Rhetoric

As we consider the value of rhetoric, it is helpful to draw upon a biblical and theological evaluation of rhetoric. There are aspects of rhetoric that require refinement in light of a critique of what we might call empty rhetoric. Looking at Paul and then later Augustine, we will find a cautious but pointed appropriation of rhetoric.

In First Corinthians, Paul provides an extended consideration of his rhetorical strategy in chapters 2-4. As he opens his argument, he tells the Corinthians:

“And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.”

1 Corinthians 2:1-2

The concept of lofty speech connects us to the notion of empty rhetoric. Paul is careful not to use a form of rhetoric that is overly ornate and manipulative. It is clear, though, that Paul had a well-formed rhetorical strategy. He continues:

“And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstrations of the Spirit and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.”

1 Corinthians 2:3-5

Picture for yourself the nervous public speaker or the student who speaks in front of the school for the first time. This is the rhetorical ethos Paul chose in his proclamation to the Corinthians. He based this strategy on his reasoning that if there were too much Paul in his proclamation, it would diminish the full realization of the power of God thereby undermining the faith of his audience. Despite his rhetorical strategy, the Corinthians still fell prey to their human inclination by saying “I follow Paul” or “I follow Apollos” (1 Cor 3:4). It is for this reason that Paul elaborates his rhetorical strategy, to continue to undermine the Corinthians confidence in human speech so that they can grow in godly wisdom.

Sophistry has no place in prophetic proclamation, and yet there is a role for rhetoric that is centered on conveying the truth from above. Paul writes, “Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away.” (2 Cor 2:6). A mature faith is a philosophical faith, one that loves divine wisdom. Paul seems to be aligned with Socrates, Plato and Aristotle in their condemnation of the sophistic school of rhetoric. In his Nichomachian Ethics, Aristotle writes, “The boaster is the opposite of the truth teller.” (1127b; ἀντικεῖσθαι δ᾽ ὁ ἀλαζὼν φαίνεται τῷ ἀληθευτικῷ) Compare this with Paul’s thoughts on boasting, “For our boast (καύχησις) is this: the testimony of our conscience that we behaved in the world with simplicity and godly sincerity, not by earthly wisdom but by the grace of God, and supremely so toward you.” (2 Cor 1:12) For Paul it is important to “boast (καυχάσθω) in the Lord” (1 Cor 1:31), by which he seems to mean presenting the gospel with rhetorical skill. (Note how Paul uses a different word for boasting than Aristotle, framing this kind of boast more positively.) And yet this must be done with simplicity and sincerity. Here we see an anti-sophistry alignment between Paul and Aristotle.

A similar sentiment can be found in Augustine’s Confessions. He recounts his desire to become a great public orator prior to his coming to faith. Augustine writes:

“This was the society in which at a vulnerable age I was to study the textbooks on eloquence. I wanted to distinguish myself as an orator for the damnable and conceited purpose, namely delight in human vanity. Following the usual curriculum I had already come across a book by a certain Cicero. . . The book changed my feelings. It altered my prayers, Lord, to be towards you yourself. It gave me different values and priorities. Suddenly every vain hope became empty to me, and I longed for the immortality of wisdom with an incredible ardour in my heart. I began to rise up to return to you. For I did not read the book for a sharpening of my style. . . I was impressed not by the book’s refining effect on my style and literary expression but by the content.”

Augustine, Confessions (trans. Chadwick; Oxford, 1991), p. 39

From Augustine’s reflections we can see how vain and empty style works contrary to the genuine search for truth. His shift away from empty rhetoric coincided with and ultimately led to his turn to the Lord. Rhetoric properly understood, then, becomes a vehicle for divine truth to be conveyed.

From Paul and Augustine, we can conclude that training in rhetorical skill enables students to cultivate their prophetic voices. To that end, we as teachers can share the conviction that rhetoric is not about empty or vain style. Instead, we are providing tools to help our students find optimal modes for expressing the message God has placed upon their hearts.

Wisdom and Witness

In his book (Re)thinking Worldview, Mark Bertrand suggests an approach to engaging our culture that is worthy of consideration. He develops an understanding of wisdom that moves Christians from being consumers of culture to people who become discerning critics of the influences of culture. To be a discerning individual, one must have the thinking tools to engage the world for oneself. You can’t just download someone else’s thoughts and think that you’ve been discerning. Critical thinking means that you can extrapolate what is good and worthy in our culture from that which is evil or unworthy. Bertrand writes:

“Discernment is not about flipping a yes/no switch or pigeonholing other people. It is about individual judgment based on knowledge – knowledge of self, knowledge of the world, knowledge of God, and knowledge of the think being judged. Given that, you can see that it is as difficult to be discerning for someone else as it is to think for another. First and foremost, attend to the beam in your own eye.”

J. Mark Bertrand, (Re)Thinking Worldview (Crossway, 2009), p. 151

This comports with what I mentioned in my previous post about internalizing the message God has revealed. A chief objective we have as educators is to enable our students to become wise through their own independent operation. We cannot merely express a set of doctrine and expect our students to have the kind of discernment Bertrand describes. Logic, discussion and debate are some of the tools available to us in training our students in critical thinking.

Bertrand’s goal, however, is not just to make a bunch of cultural critics, and it’s here that I find Bertrand to be so helpful. He reconsiders what it means to have a viable witness in today’s world. We are not only consumers of culture, but also contributors to culture, and Bertrand wants to move us along a pathway from consumption to critique and ultimately contribution. He writes:

“Witness isn’t a method or technique. It’s the sum total of our expression, what we say and what we don’t, what we do, who we help, and who we harm. Our actions and reactions, taken as a whole, constitute a message to the world we live in.”

Bertrand, (Re)Thinking Worldview, p. 182

I like thinking about the prophetic voice as an act of expression. Obviously there is a verbal aspect to articulating our witness in language, which is why we need training in rhetorical skill. But we also express the prophetic voice in our actions. Aristotle would agree inasmuch as the ethos of the rhetorician is established in the good and just actions that contribute to his or her character.

The vision of our educational renewal movement seeks to counter the progressivist agenda of reducing education to a series of outputs, namely college acceptance and job placement. We often frame our educational objectives around equipping our students to be lifelong learners and to live good lives. These are worthy objectives to which can be added this notion that Bertrand articulates about witness as “someone making truthful, positive attempts to shape the culture.” (p. 187). Living good lives and aspiring to lifelong learning are great as long as what we mean is not grounded in consumption. We learn and live in order to contribute something to this world.

Not Throwing Away Our Shot

Preparing students to encounter and engage our world is part of our mandate as teachers. As I think about training the prophetic voice, we are drawing on ancient wisdom to equip our students to meet the challenges of today. There is a technical training component to the art of rhetoric we must have in view. But there is also an imaginative and creative aspect that enables students to take their learning in new and undiscovered directions.

There are very specific challenges we face today for which our students need both the technical and creative skills to address. They won’t be able to solve some of our cultural problems if we approach their learning in the standard lecture, test, forget method. When we train with a holistic approach by nourishing their souls with God’s revealed Word, by creating dynamic learning environments where they can encounter God’s active presence, and by enabling them to engage in today’s current issues through discussion and debate, our students will be able to take their shot at speaking into our culture when the opportunity presents itself.

Training the prophetic voice is as important now as ever. Our students have the opportunity to meet the challenges of our day and to use some of the new formats available to them. Tim Muehlhoff and Richard Langer hint at this in their book Winsome Persuasion:

“Rhetoric is not merely sitting alone in a room and thinking of arguments – accompanies by strong emotions – to support your position or cause. Rather, it is thinking through how to present those emotions and arguments to a particular audience through the use of symbols. Symbols can be any ‘mark, sign, sound, or gesture that communicates meaning based on social agreement,’ such as music, paintings, films, advertisements, televisions shows, and Facebook or Instagram photos.”

Tim Muehlhoff & Richard Langer, Winsome Persuasion (InterVarsity, 2017), p. 25 (quoting Harrick, The History and Theory of Rhetoric).

We can add to this list blog posts, podcasts and Broadway shows. The point is that rhetoric is not just an academic exercise. It is an art that enable people to speak with their prophetic voice into the world around them.

I conclude with a consideration of a very modern mode of symbolic rhetoric, the Broadway hit Hamilton. It struck a chord in recent years because it operated as a vehicle for Lin-Manuel Miranda to express some of his deeply held convictions through an unexpected mix of musical genres. He created something new out of materials available to him, some of which were rather old. One of those old things was the character of Alexander Hamilton. In the show we see the brash, self-educated Hamilton entering the scene as an intellectually astute and forward-thinking revolutionary. For me the most poignant moment comes when he is writing the Federalist Papers. The rest of the cast sings about how he writes “day and night like you’re running out of time.” It is through his rhetorical production that Hamilton became a central figure in shaping the constitutional form of government. This momentous episode in the plot sees Hamilton take on more and more responsibility eventually being asked to take a position in the Washington administration. The piece concludes with Hamilton repeating the refrain “I am not throwing away my shot.”

This episode pictures for me the potential every student has to learn deeply so that they are able to take their shot when their moment comes to speak with a prophetic voice in our world. Hopefully this series on training the prophetic voice has provided for you some inspiration to equip your students for lives of active witness. Along the way there have been some practical methods that I hope have helped you in the craft of teaching. Now may the God of all grace enable us as teachers to use our own prophetic voices, but more especially to raise up a new generation of prophetic voices.

Previous articles in this series, Training the Prophetic Voice:

Part 1: The Educational Heart of God

Part 2: Speaking Truth to Power

Part 3: The Schools of the Prophets

Part 4: Jesus as Prophetic Trainer

Part 5: Internalizing the Prophetic Message

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