FCLP 30 | Why Great Communicators Aren't Necessarily Great Teachers (Spiritual Gifts: Prophecy & Teaching)

In this clarifying leadership episode of the Female Church Leaders Podcast, Kadi Cole continues the Spiritual Gifts Summer Series by exploring two gifts that shape how God's truth transforms people: Teaching and Prophecy. This episode unpacks the difference between communicating well, helping people truly learn, and leading others to respond faithfully to God's truth.

You'll gain practical insight into how these gifts function, why they're often misunderstood, and how to develop people who strengthen both biblical understanding and spiritual discernment within your ministry.

TIMESTAMPS

01:58 - Understanding the spiritual gift of teaching 

03:34 - Teaching vs. transferring information - what really matters 

04:23 - Women and teaching in different church contexts 

06:04 - Introduction to the gift of prophecy 

07:06 - Prophecy as a spectrum of truth-telling 

07:48 - Characteristics of people with the gift of prophecy

Resources mentioned:

The Spiritual Gifts Leadership Toolkit: kadicole.com/spiritualgifts

Next Steps and Resources:

• Take the Quiz: Identify your growth gap with our Sticky Floor Quiz at femalechurchleaders.com.
• Join a Cohort: Be part of our next Closing the Leadership Gap cohort for guided coaching and monthly Q&A with Kadi. Visit closingtheleadershipgap.com to learn more.
• Stay Connected: Follow us on Instagram @femalechurchleaders for daily encouragement and leadership tools.
• Spread the Word: If you found this episode helpful, please follow, rate, and share the podcast to help us reach more female church leaders.

Tune in and get ready to lead with clarity, strength, and joy. Your calling matters, and we're here to support you every step of the way!

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to the Female Church Leaders Podcast, a weekly resource for women who love God, love the church, and are called to lead. I'm your host, Katie Cole, Church Leader, Autor, and Executive Coach. After more than 30 years in full-time ministry, often as the only woman at the table, I understand how meaningful yet challenging your calling can be. That's why I created this podcast to remind you that you're not leading alone. Each week, I'll share practical tools, biblical insights, and honest encouragement for the real challenges female leaders face in ministry. So you can grow your skills, strengthen your faith, and lead with more confidence and joy without burning out or striving to prove yourself. We drop a new episode every Monday because Sunday is coming and you are going to be ready for it. Have you ever had one of those dreaded conversations with a volunteer or maybe an up-and-coming leader who really wants to teach? But you know teaching isn't actually their gift. Oh, those conversations are so hard. Not because they don't love God, and not because, obviously, they're passionate about helping people grow, but somewhere along the way, many people pick up the idea in church that if you really want to make a significant impact for God's kingdom, you need to become a great teacher. The problem is that is simply not true. And loving God's word, knowing God's word, and having the spiritual gift to actually help other people learn God's word. Well, those are three very different things. And when we understand the difference, we don't just become better at developing teachers on our teams and in our churches. We will become better at helping people discover the place where God has uniquely wired them to be the most fruitful. So today we're going to look at two gifts that are deeply connected to how truth changes people: the gift of teaching and the gift of prophecy. One helps people understand God's truth, the other helps people respond to it. So let's begin with the spiritual gift of teaching. Have you ever listened to a message and thought, that was really inspiring, but by Tuesday you couldn't explain what you learned? Or maybe you've walked away from a Bible study thinking, I know a lot more information now, but I'm not exactly sure what to do with it. That's the tension this gift helps solve. People with the gift of teaching have a remarkable ability to explain and apply scripture in ways that help others understand it, grow from it, and actually live it out. They don't simply communicate information, they help people move from confusion to clarity and from understanding to application. This is one of the gifts that I've carried myself. But to be honest, for years I felt frustrated. I wanted opportunities to teach, but they didn't seem to come along very often, if at all. Looking back though, I realized God was developing this gift long before he ever gave me a larger platform. It happens in one-on-one conversations, teaching three and four-year-olds using pre-written Sunday school curriculum, leading small groups, discipling one person at a time. Those weren't detours. They were training. Because teaching isn't primarily about standing in front of a crowd. It's about helping someone else learn. In fact, I sometimes wish we would call this the gift of facilitating learning. Now, that doesn't have quite the same ring, I know, but it would keep the focus where it belongs. Because the real fruit of this gift isn't whether people tell you great message. The fruit is that people actually learned something that changed, how they think, live, or follow Jesus. Teaching isn't simply transferring information, it's helping people understand and apply truth to their everyday lives. And as leaders, that is a very important distinction. Sometimes we accidentally reward charisma more than learning. We applaud communication style. We prefer comedic delivery. Meanwhile, the quiet but effective teacher whose class consistently produces mature disciples can easily be overlooked. But as healthy leaders, we need to learn to ask a different question. Did people actually learn something? Did they understand something new? Can they now live differently because truth became clear? Did God use this person's gift of teaching to nurture transformation into Christ-likeness? That is what we're looking for. One of the other reasons I wanted to mention my own journey is because teaching can become complicated in different church settings, especially for women. Some churches have different convictions about who women should or should not teach, others don't. But wherever you land theologically, don't confuse the environment God has called you to with the gift he has placed in you. The opportunities God gives you to teach may vary. The people you're called to teach will probably vary also, but neither of those determines whether your gift is present. God develops gifts long before he expands opportunities. And as leaders, one of the greatest things we can do is create environments where people can keep on developing this gift, not only on a stage on Sundays, but also around tables, in mentoring relationships, in classes, with kids, with students, with new believers, anywhere people are hungry to learn. One of the growth areas for this gift is remembering that knowledge alone isn't enough. Teaching, especially in the church, can easily become overfocused on information, details, or explanations while forgetting to engage the learner and connect truth to real life. That's why one of my favorite questions after someone teaches isn't, how do you think it went? It's what did people learn? Because if people didn't learn, it doesn't matter how polished the presentation went. If you have someone on your team with this gift, keep giving them opportunities to practice. Observe them, coach them, ask the learners what helped them most. Encourage them to become students of how people actually learn, not just students of the Bible or leadership. That's where this gift becomes an act of servanthood and the fruit becomes exponentially impactful. Now, let's talk about one of the most misunderstood gifts in the church, the gift of prophecy. Now, just hearing that word probably brings different reactions depending on your church background. For some of you, prophecy was maybe talked about all the time. For others, if you're like me, you barely heard anyone mention the Holy Spirit, let alone the gift of prophecy. Churches genuinely hold different theological views about how this gift is expressed today. But rather than getting pulled into those debates, I want to stay focused on what this gift consistently does throughout scripture and what you'll see reflected in the spiritual gifts leadership toolkit that accompanies this summer series. At its heart, prophecy is a spirit-led ability to communicate truth that aligns with scripture and produces spiritual fruit. Sometimes that truth helps people see what's happening beneath the surface. Sometimes it brings conviction. Sometimes it offers clarity in confusing situations. Sometimes it calls people back into alignment with God. And yes, sometimes God may even give someone unusual insight into what the future holds. I actually think it's helpful to picture this gift along a spectrum. For one person, the gift may consistently show up as courageously speaking the truth everyone else is avoiding. For another person, there may be occasionally a stronger sense that God is revealing something about what he is preparing all of us to do. Those are different expressions of the same truth gift. One isn't more spiritual than the other, one isn't more powerful than the other. There's simply different ways God chooses to speak his truth in different moments. What matters isn't how dramatic the experience feels. What matters is whether it aligns with scripture and whether it produces the kind of fruit God desires. People with this gift often sense spiritual realities others don't notice yet. They may recognize unhealthy patterns before they become obvious. They often feel a holy urgency around truth and helping bring that truth to light, not because they enjoy confrontation, but because they genuinely want people to experience God's best. That urgency, however, is exactly why this gift needs your healthy leadership. People with this gift, especially when they're new in it, need accountability, humility, wise timing, relational awareness, and leaders like you who can help them process what they're sensing before just immediately acting on it. One of the healthiest questions you can ask someone on your team with this gift is what are you sensing that we need to pay attention to? Or even more personal, what are you sensing that I, as the leader, need to pay attention to? Not because you're going to automatically treat every impression as God's final word for you, but because you've learned to value the gift while also weighing it carefully against scripture, wisdom, and trusted leadership experience. Healthy prophecy doesn't create confusion, it brings needed clarity. It doesn't draw attention to the messenger. It helps everyone pay closer attention to God. So here's your action step for this week. First, think about someone on your team who has the gift of teaching, who consistently helps people understand difficult ideas, who naturally explains scripture in a way people can actually apply. How could you create another opportunity for them to teach, receive feedback, and keep developing that gift? Then think about the gift of prophecy. And maybe you need to spend a little time even considering what this gift is if you haven't studied it in scripture very much. And then look around and think who consistently brings spiritual clarity? Who asks questions that help your team pay attention to what God may be doing? And how could you create a safe, accountable environment where they can share those insights and continue growing in wisdom and humility? Now, if you haven't downloaded the Spiritual Gifts Leadership Toolkit yet, this is a great time to do it because the teaching and prophecy profiles go much deeper in how to identify these gifts, develop them well, and avoid some of the common ways they're misunderstood. You can find a link in the show notes, or you can go directly to www.katiecole.com forward slash spiritual gifts. The people who help others understand God's truth and the people who help others respond to it are shaping your ministry in ways that could last for generations. Learn to recognize them, learn to develop them, and watch what happens to the impact of your ministry and your leadership over time. And remember, we are here to cheer you on every step of the way. I'm so glad we got to spend this time together on the Female Church Leaders Podcast. I hope you're walking away encouraged, equipped, and reminded that your calling truly matters. To keep growing, join us for our next Closing the Leadership Gap cohort at ClosingTheLeadershipGap.com. It's a guided coaching experience, including live QA with me, designed to accelerate your leadership journey. If this podcast has been helpful to you, would you please take a moment to follow, rate, and share it? Your engagement helps the algorithms suggest our resources to female church leaders we haven't had a chance to meet yet. And don't forget to follow at female church leaders on Instagram for encouragement and leadership tools designed just for you. You can also follow my personal feed at Katie Cole, spelled K A D I C O L E. Keep leading faithfully, keep growing your leadership gifts, and I'll see you next Monday because Sunday is coming and you are going to be ready for it.