To be a teacher is more than just knowing stuff. It is more than simply telling answers. It seems to me that anyone who only wants to walk among other people, never asking questions but only telling answers, doesn’t want to really be involved with the body but only needs subordinates. i figure teaching is a lot like being a pruner. If someone is considered a professional pruner for grapevines and fruit trees, they’ve got to have a deep appreciation for the vine or tree, they’ve got to be patient, gracefully disposed, willing to be involved, possessing a huge understanding of how it works, and an ultimate goal of making the vine bear as much fruit as possible.

In early Greek culture, someone who was a teacher was spoken of as you would speak of someone who was a choral master, someone who blended voices and choral poetry for public performance, and was also responsible for a correct performance. Aren’t pruners and teachers very similar? i think yes. The pruner helps train the vine to go a different way for the reason of keeping the vine healthy and to bear more fruit. The calling requires real wisdom and insight for a plan of action. It may take the pruner several seasons of tying up branches and limbs in a certain direction, trimming some off and letting others grow in order to achieve the goal of the master of the vineyard. Can you see how the pruner, like a teacher, creates a grape vine which functions like choral poetry? Sure you can. It can also be said that anyone who teaches is also characterized with learning, for to teach is to learn, and every time a pruner puts his hand to the vine he learns a little more about the characteristics of what makes it tick.

i’ve heard it said that every vine, to the discerning pruners eye, has unique characteristics, and each variety of grape vine is as an individual. We, as the people of God are individually unique, and every good teacher should carefully become familiar with their subjects, gently being involved with their pupils, shaping them, snipping a little, directing in a better direction, all with the purpose of improving each one to be more fruitful. That is a good teacher, or a good pruner.

Yet here, i want to point out an observation about the teachers/pruners of today. There are indeed some very good teachers/pruners around. But there’s also a multitude who are pruning the vines, not with a set of sharp shears, a well honed knife, and a keen eye, but they’re pruning with a club, beating the branches off the vine. Many who say they are teachers are brutalizing others by only telling answers, being very unsympathetic to the agony of their pupils, and filling their heads with twisted notions and half-answers framed more to control rather than make them fruitful. A good teacher is a poet in the classroom as well as in the field, instructing and explaining specific talents, and even strategy. Don’t professional pruners also teach the vine the best way to go, and strategize with the vineyard owner? The vine is purposely planted north to south so it gets as much sun as possible, with the sun going east to west. As a result, the pruner must prune some leaves to cover parts of the grape cluster from the heat of the sun, as well as remove just enough so as to allow the sun to ripen the yield of the field evenly. It’s a very intuitive business, and one requiring great understanding about how the vine grows.

If, in God’s constant agriculture analogy, from Adam and Eve being tenders of the garden to the call for us all to be fruitful, i see apostles as planters, and teachers as pruners. In the O.T., the word for pruners came with the idea of someone who strikes the strings with their fingers. It was a delicate touch on the strings to make a beautiful sound, not in the sense of pounding the instrument in a effort to beat a melody out of it, which would be like pruning with a club. In fact, the way the Lord gave us the Hebrew word, the first letter is a knife, and the last letter is a picture of constructive or destructive cutting away, and the letter right in the middle is one of wisdom. So, for pruners, between the knife and trimming of the vine is a flowing stream of wisdom. Can you see the picture there … can you see the sequence of a knife, wisdom, and cutting? With a little knife, choice and wise constructive cutting away draws out the greatness of the vine, as in a creative process to prosper all the little knife trims.

If we prune with a club, the vine will be years in recovery before it bears fruit again. Aren’t brutal teachers who choke their students down to “make” them learn, aren’t they trimming the vine with a club, and their brutalized students might well be years recovering to become fruitful again? No wonder in James 3:1, scripture reads, “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.” Why? Because the fruitfulness of the vine is in your hands as a teacher, probably more than anyone else. Pruning 101 says you’ve got to be gentle, prayerfully consider to understand each branch and vine, use wisdom and think carefully before you cut one back or let another stand. Be wise and don’t cut down fruitful trees. C’mon, i know you’re probably irritated with a lot of poor students, but in the mean time, don’t cut down fruitful trees.

What do you think?

i’m Social Porter with Living In His Name Ministries