Always Learning

I am a learner. If you ask the many wonderful people who labored in the field of education when and where I sought out a diploma and then a few degrees they will tell you that I was not a particularly good student. My grades were okay, but never the top of the class. But I do know how to learn.

 

I did not excel at school for several different reasons. I generally thought school was boring. The teachers were working hard to teach me things in which I had no interest. Also, I don’t have a mind that is designed to remember specific information and then regurgitate that information during a test. I struggle with remembering dates and names and times and places. Concepts: I do concepts and big pictures really well. Details – not so much.

 

As a learner, I approach every life situation as a learning situation. I ask questions. Questions like: What is really going on here? Why are we doing this? Does what we are going make any sense? What are we trying to produce? Are we being successful? How could we do what we are doing, better? I’ll ask you those kinds of questions. I’ll ask me those kinds of questions. They are questions that need to be asked and answered. And after asking questions, I am willing to dig for the answers.

 

I find answers by listening to people or reading books by people who have some proven expertise in the areas I am researching. “Proven expertise” is a key phrase in this deal; especially when it comes to doing church. Because just about everyone I talk to imagines her or himself as an expert on the subject. There are theoreticians who dwell in the bowels of academia and crank out articles and books on theories of church growth, management and leadership. But if they have never done it, how do they really know how it is done? I remember listening to a seminary professor lecture for an entire morning on church transformation. Following the lecture was a question and answer session that included some great questions that allowed him to flesh out the concepts he had shared with us. My question was, “How is the process of transformation going in the church you are a part of?” His answer was something like, “Transformation? We aren’t doing any transformation.” Pretty much shot the lecture for me.

 

In my work consulting with churches across the nation in the areas of transformation, church growth and having a healthy church, I have discovered a common trait among churches in need of transformation. Many, if not most, of the church members believe they don’t need any help because they already know how to do church. They have an amazingly difficult time understanding that what they are presently doing is not working. Their viewpoint is that they have been going to church all of their lives so they know that they know everything there is to know about how to do church. They can’t seem to appreciate that they have a very limited viewpoint that has given them a narrow bandwidth of knowledge. Such people remind me of the ads in the papers for people running for election to local offices. Many list as a positive – “Lifelong resident of the community.” This strikes me as a negative. How will these candidates bring new ideas to the community if this is all they have ever experienced?

 

The church I am serving as an Interim Minister has called a new Senior Pastor. Our new pastor will be arriving in a couple of weeks. He is not from around here. He has been serving in the ministry for several years in several different churches in several different places. This is just a guess, but he seems to be a pretty smart fellow and I have a feeling he has learned a few things along the way. Permit me to encourage our church to learn from him. Allow him to share new concepts and ideas. Allow him to share what he has learned along the way. Allow him to lead this church forward into places we have never been before. Open your hearts and your minds to your new pastor. God has brought him here to lead us. Let him lead.

 

Copyright © 2012, William T. McConnell, All Rights Reserved