Curious Christian

Alan Hartung has posted an interesting article at The Ooze on experiential teaching. Here are some excerpts:

Any one can commit strings of words together in memory. Some can remember logical arguments and use them to express their doctrinal views. Only those who put their knowledge into practice gain a real understanding of what the words in their memory, their beliefs, actually mean.

If we desire our teachings to take root in people’s lives, our teaching methods must bring action and learning together…steps can be taken to make our teaching and our learning experiential.

For simplicity’s sake, I have listed just this one set of steps to take towards developing an experiential teaching lesson:

1. Pick a doctrine or branch of theology, any doctrine or branch, which you believe should be taught in your church. Identify what you believe to be the ‘main points’ of this particular teaching.
2. Ask yourself in what ways this theology or teaching has impacted your life (if it hasn’t, perhaps you should start with another area of teaching), and write down some of your answers.
3. Ask yourself how a deeper understanding of this teaching would impact your life. What daily habits or routines could possibly be affected?
4. Which single activity would be impacted the most by putting this teaching into practice?
5. From your responses to step 4, identify possible group activities that could serve as living illustrations to the teaching.
6. Determine if a time is needed before or after the activity to discuss or expound on the teaching. Determine if the activity could stand on its own as the teaching.
7. Do it.

I must say after I read this, quite a few Dorathy Dixer bible study experiences came flooding back into memory, you know the ones, where the leader tacks on a ‘practical application’ at the end of a study that’s artificial, superficial and not related to real life at all? Some of Alan’s comments here strike a real chord.

Alan is offering this as a possible corrective to the info glut but, then again, I know heaps of Christians who are oblivious to the surrounding culture because it’s “too much information” for them. So I’m hesitant about comminting the error of the opposite extreme. I recall the Boyd cycle of “observation-orientation-decision-action”. Maybe the real problem is so many observers let infotainment wash over them without ever progressing to the discernment stage. You know, the spotting the difference betwen data, knowledge and wisdom?

Alan’s essay also brings to mind Hugh Mackay’s brilliant little book “Why Don’t People Listen”. One of Hugh’s core communication rules was:

People are more likely to change in response to a combination of new experience and communication than in response to communication alone.

Come to think of it, didn’t a certain Galilean rabbi disciple students action-reflection style?