A Different Perspective

Experience

The role of experience in learning and spiritual growth is hotly debated in the Church today. In general, postmodern persons tend to place a higher value on experience.

The established church, again in general, tends to be afraid of attaching any value to experience when it comes to learning. The method of teaching which focuses on a half-hour to forty-five minute lecture every week does not sit well with postmodern people. Even in the education system, public and private, activities are often stressed along with the “book learning.” But in the Church, it seems there’s only an emphasis on learning the words. The method, as well as the content in many cases, teaches that learning the right words and affiriming them is what the faith is all about.

If learning was entirely cognitive, then perhaps there’d be no change in regards to how we teach the things of the faith. Experience plays a powerful role in our learning.

Modern Christians fear that admitting that experience shapes our knowledge discredits absolute truth. But the issue is not whether our experience shapes truth. Rather, it is how experience helps us understand and learn.

Take, for example, the absolute truth of a table in your dining room. It’s there. It’s absolutely there. Now, say you have a tribal person from some remote place, and in their culture, they have no tables. That person comes into your home, and you teach him to say, “That is a table.”

Is he right? Is his statement true? Is it absolutely true? Yes! But does he have any understanding of what that actually means? He learned the words, but how much does he understand?

The Church today acts as though the right words about truth are more important than true comprehension. For a more spiritual example, let’s talk about some words from the Bible. “God is love.” Is it true? Absolutely.

What good do the true words do if I have no comprehension of God or love? If I haven’t experienced either, is it really a good thing if I affirm the words, “God is love” ??? Better yet, is it even true any more? I’m not saying God is not love if someone does not know God or love, but I’m suggesting that someone saying, “God is love” and not meaning what those words mean is not necessarily making a “true” statement.

In the same way, if I talk about serving but have not experienced being served or serving, acknowledgement about its role in the Christian’s life means very little. If I learn to affirm many words about the traits of divinity, but do not experience God do I actually learn a thing?

Structure Analysis

This is very similar to my Core Issue #1 post, so the structural analysis is much the same. If you haven’t read that, I reccommend you give that a look.

I also want to make some general suggestions. I’ve racked my brain on making more concrete suggestions, but to be honest, my preferred structure of Church makes it difficult for me to wrap my head around fitting this idea into a more established church structure. So, I hope what I have to offer can be expanded upon by others.

First, we need to find ways to connect learning to the activity of being a follower of Christ. Right now, structure clearly tells us the words are all-powerful. The danger though, in my mind, would be that we create activities solely to teach people. I don’t think that’s the solution either. We need genuine experience to facilitate learning and growth. Life isn’t always planned, and there’s a huge difference between doing a couple of activities amongst the poor, for example, and ordering your life around serving the poor.

Second, we need to find ways to affirm understanding based on experience. Moving the lecture-type methods of teaching to a less central focus would be a good start. I believe this can be done without losing a belief in absolute truth. The jump does not have to be from modern objectivism to postmodern relativity. And it shouldn’t be.

Lastly, building a discipleship program based on mentoring could go a long way in facilitating learning. The experiences of each Christian would be the basis for much learning as the mentor helps the mentored navigate the rough waters of their life. Instead of a general weekly sermon aimed at a general crowd, teaching and learning will come from the raw experiences of life. There’s a place for the sermon in Christian teaching, but that place is not at the center of our church life.
Core Issue #1 – Knowledge

Core Issue #2 – Power

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 10th, 2005 at 1:49 am and is filed under Emerging Church. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.