On learning, maybes and church

I've blogged (at length I'm afraid, but over several posts starting here) about learning, how we learn, what helps us learn etc. etc. In this post I want to argue that learning and community are closely linked and that one of the reasons that church can be such a dead hand upon us is that we have ignored this point. 

One of my great joys, as a 'teacher', is to accompany people along the road as they learn. To watch someone turn their lives around, change the way they work or attempt previously fearful tasks is just so awe inspiring.  On more than one occasion I have sat listening to a student giving a final presentation about their learning with tears of wonder and joy in my eyes.

Now the sad thing to me is that this sort of life changing learning seems to happen to me quite often in my secular work as a university teacher of management and learning.  It doesn't seem to happen so often in church.  I just don't seem to see the radical changes so often in church. So a question that I want to think about is the "What do we do differently at the university that is so powerful?"  and secondly, what are we not doing in church that our learning seems to me to be so poverty stricken?

First, let me give you a little context about the university courses.  They have all been practice based, and action oriented courses.  Students were assessed as to how they used new ideas rather than how well they could write about them.  The students took the new ideas that they were hearing on the study weekends and reading in the books, and tried them out in their jobs.

So what was different?

I think that what worked was the nature and quality of the relations that the students were involved in.  First, with me (and colleagues) as tutor - the relationship was not the standard lecturer spouting & student taking notes.  I didn't spend time explaining the details of intricate theory. Instead, I offered new ways of relating with colleagues, new ways of understanding what was going on around them and new ways of talking about what actions were possible.  And I did that within a context of talking about their work. Classroom sessions, emails and conversations over coffee were as much about the students struggling to improve their workplace, their work relations and the professional practice of their daily work.  The new ideas I had to offer were discussed in the light of their relevance to difficult work situations - did they offer new options?  Did they offer new ways of seeing things? Did they provoke new actions?  I, the so called expert, was not in authority over the students telling them what was right or wrong.  Rather, I was there in service to the students' agenda there to be disagreed with, there to be questioned, there with a point of view, some understanding of new ideas and some experience of working in organisations.

However, I think that the students' relations with each other were more important than their relations with me.  They were in constant contact with each other even though they often lived more than 100 miles apart.  They knew when each of them had a difficult meeting, they knew when something was going well, they knew when the others were struggling with an essay or a particular work context.  They knew and then they asked after each other.  Their asking was informed by our conversations by the ideas that they were hearing or reading about and their asking carried and undercurrent of "what will you do next?"  They comforted and encouraged, they questioned and doubted, they enthused and celebrated, they helped each other to put things into words.  The learning was about becoming something different and they kept each other company on the journey and helped each other take the next step.

Now my questions to those of you who are linked into churches are these:

1. Do the above descriptions sound like the kind of relations we experience day-by-day within the church family?
2. Is the teaching in our churches anything like that?
3. Does anyone keep asking after us (except for those times when we're in particular trouble)? 
4. Would anyone in our church family know what we want to learn to do next in our discipleship?
5. Come to think about it do I?
6. What do we do in church at present to encourage these kind of learning relations?

That'll do for the moment,

Keep well and encouraged

Comments

[andii]

Really glad to see you back blogging. I found this really helpful. Even to the point of offering a few quick further thoughts of my own; just linking it up with things that are important to me at the mo. Thanks again.
See it at http://nouslife.blogspot.com/2007/02/learning-change-and-church.html

[Caroline]

Great to have you popping by Andii and I'm so glad that you extended the debate to your own blog. For me, and perhaps this reflects my job!, the issue of how we make our church families learning communities is all about who we help each other on our daily pilgrimage and I just get so frustrated that so many ministers and other church leaders just don't seem to 'geddit'