Doing is the Second Half of Learning

Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.

-- Benjamin Franklin

Last week, I asked a pair of questions during the sermon. The first was, "What kind of verb is the word follow?" Immediately, the right answer came from several directions: "Action!" Then the second question, "How similar is that word to what we're doing right now?" Crickets, at least for a few seconds. Then the realization ... it's impossible to follow Christ by just sitting down.

There are times to sit and learn, but we will never be followers of Jesus if sitting down "learning" is the bulk of our Christian experience. Sitting to listen to a sermon, sitting to learn in a Bible study or Sunday school class, sitting in a circle in a small group. All of these are valuable and important. But they do not comprise the phrase following Christ.

To follow anyone, we must do what they do. That's the simplest definition of follow. The word in the original language of John 6:66-71 carries the idea to follow a teaching by obeying it. A follower of Jesus does the same kinds of things He does (within the sphere of human ability). It is a stretch to call oneself a follower of Jesus based just on regular attendance to sitting-and-learning events.

Let's look at this another way. Let's consider the word obey in terms of being a learner. But before we do, let's also look alternate ways to think about the word obey.

Obedience as "ought". Perhaps this is the most common view. We do because we're supposed to. It's what good followers do. We ought do some things, and we ought not to do other things, and getting those categories sorted out well means obedience.

Obedience as righteousness. Take that a step further, and you can look at obedience as a form of righteousness. By obeying, you're becoming more righteous - a better person, a purer person.

Both ideas have some merit. There is some sense of "ought" to obeying Christ - we certainly ought to. There is even a sense that we do become more righteous the more we walk in His ways (even though we cannot merit His favor or earn salvation in any way). However, I think there's a stronger motivation than these that God has for us for obedience.

Obedience as learning. Jesus taught His disciples, sometimes sitting down as a group, sometimes on a hillside or in a boat, and sometimes along the way. But teach He did. However, He also had His disciples do. They handled the fish and the loaves, they retrieved the donkey, they prepared the Last Supper, they went out by two's to tell others about the Kingdom. He did not expect them to obey just because they ought to or to make them more righteous. He did this to teach them! As they obeyed, they would learn. 

Why do we expect Him to teach any differently today? Have we outgrown the need to do in order to learn? Can we just study forgiveness and learn it, without actually ever forgiving anyone? Or, will we only learn forgiveness when we actually forgive someone?

That would mean that Jesus wants to me forgive not just because I ought or in order to be more righteous, but to really, truly, actually learn forgiveness. And I need to learn forgiveness because that's one of His key attributes. I cannot get to know the forgiving Christ well without learning forgiveness by forgiving people.

Not just forgiveness. Apply this same idea to anything He wants us to learn: love, joy, grace, generosity, compassion, humility, patience, endurance, surrender, and so on. We won't get to know well the Christ who loves unless we learn love by loving people. Go on down the list.

So, why do so many of our Christian teaching venues have chairs?

Consider the seated learning as the "first half of learning." Then consider the unseated, action verb learning as the "second half of learning." Whenever you learn something about walking in the way of Christ, don't consider that you've learned it until you're doing it. Take that lesson and find some way to do it right away - that day, that week, sometime before you try to learn the next thing. Don't declare you learned something awesome in a sermon until you're doing that awesome thing or actually living according to that awesome thing. Then you've learned it!

The last thing we want for our Bible studies is for us to learn something that we're going to disobey only to come back the next week and learn something else we're going to disobey.

You will get to know Christ better by this. It's a way of learning! Jesus even says so Himself in John 14:21. Rather than some mystical appearing of Jesus for those who obey, I rather suspect what He means is, "As you obey, what you are doing is getting to know Me in ways you can't learn by just sitting in a chair."

The one who has my commandments and keeps them—that one is the one who loves me. And the one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and will reveal myself to him. (John 14:21)

I retreated like a man

Last Thursday night and Friday, I was finally able to peel away for a personal retreat - 24 hours alone with the Lord and His Word at a retreat center nearby. These retreats are for turning off the world and focusing on prayer, reading, and even just resting. During these retreats, I also love to take long walks or go for bike rides, although I was a bit discouraged from that by the single-digit temperatures! I used to be in the habit of taking about one a month (plus a three-day retreat once a year), but fell out of the habit when I went back to school. I have yet to get back in the habit.

These retreats are almost always beneficial (I've had a few clunkers!) - there is a depth of relationship with the Lord that's just harder for me to experience in the midst of the hustle and bustle of life. I believe that's the model Jesus set for us when He would get away from the fray to be alone with His Father.

This retreat was by no means a clunker. I certainly could have been more focused during my time, but there were some rich times in the Word and in prayer. Some issues in life took on some good clarity, and there was just a sense of exhaling, instead of what feels like holding my breath for the last several weeks. I spent Thursday night just reading through Ezra, summarizing it, looking at the structure (which always helps me understand a book or a passage), and focusing in on his great prayer in chapter 9. You heard a little about my benefit from Ezra during the worship service on Sunday.

On Friday, it was also my goal to go through the stewardship worksheets that we've been handing out each week during our sermon series. I thought that maybe I could get some benefit from it, even though I'm the one who put the worksheets together. I was amazed at how much benefit I actually did get! I came to a lot of life decisions as a result - shifting priorities, clarifying my focus, adjusting our financial management, all kinds of good things.

One of the most important benefits is something I was already planning on talking about this Sunday, but the concept took on a far more personal, impacting, and even convicting nature during the retreat. The role of pastor's wife is difficult because it's hard to be of help when the husband simply cannot share much of his week because of professional confidentiality. Lynne and I have persistently looked for better ways for her gifts to make me more fruitful despite this limitation. The retreat yielded fruit here - one clear way that we can improve is to complete these worksheets individually, but then also  walk through our individual worksheets together and discuss them. Even more beneficial, however, will be to generate another set of worksheets for us as one flesh. Not just two full sets of worksheets, but one additional set that is for us together as a family, pulling ideas from the other two.

This is great for any couple, but I see particular benefit for a pastor and his wife. It will be a way for both of us to help the other, a way for us to draw closer together, a way to pull our "one flesh" lives into clearer focus, and to set our sights on stewarding the various arenas our lives for Christ more effectively than ever before.

I highly encourage you to do three things:

1. Complete the stewardship worksheets (or some other similar exercise to assess your life's priorities). We have copies available of all the worksheets we've introduced so far.
2. Per the message coming up on Sunday, go through the worksheets together as a couple, as a family, or with a trusted friend. Also consider coming up with a set for the family as a whole.
3. Make time at least once a year to spend alone with the Lord - away from all the noise, with nothing but a Bible and a way to journal, for no less than 24 hours. I usually have to get through at least two hours of "boredom" before I'm really ready to focus - that's just my body and mind going through "noise detox," but then finally I'm ready to meet with the Lord. Some of my richest times with the Lord have come during personal retreats (most of which started off "boring"!).

If you have any more questions about any of these three things, I'm here to help - just ask.

The Not-so-planny Plan

Biblical literacy is a high value at Grace Fellowship. We want all attenders to be able to dive into the Word on their own and be able to draw richness from the text, without needing anyone to tell them what they should conclude from the text. It's the proverbial teaching someone how to fish - we believe that those who know how to fish will eat better than those who don't.

In 2011, we had a church-wide reading plan to read the entire Bible together on the same schedule. Last year, we had a plan to read through the entire New Testament together, but in a order that roughly followed the timeline of the Book of Acts. In both cases, I have heard people mention how much they got out of the plans - having a goal to read, reading large sections at a time showing the big picture, and being encouraging by reading along with others.

For 2013, we're trying a different kind of plan. Rather than having a goal of reading a certain amount in a year's time, we are selecting readings that correspond to the weekly message. The week following a sermon, there is a set of passages to read that relate to that sermon.

Each week, we will publish in Grace Notes and in the weekly bulletin, plus on our Facebook page, the passages to read. For a given week, there will be five passages to read, one per day. Some will be long, intended to be read at a high level, and some will be short, intended to be read with more attention to detail. We recommend that you journal what you are learning from Scripture, what prayers are evoked by the passage, and even steps you intend to take to incorporate the Word into you life. The sixth day is for reviewing the previous five passages and synthesizing them together. There is nothing scheduled for the seventh day, in order to give you a day to catch up or to allow for one day a week that you just can't get to it.

The benefits of this approach are that it helps simplify our lives by not having so many different things to study in a given week, by repeating a lesson to help reinforce it, by actively digging into a passage that you heard someone else talk about, and by going deeper into the Word.

The downside of this approach is that I can't write out an entire year's worth of passages in advance. I just don't know all that I'll be teaching that far away, or where I want to put the emphasis in a given week. So, this means that we can't hand out schedules at the first of the year like we have the previous two years.

Next year, we'll probably do something else. But for this year, read with us and dig deeper into God's Word. Let me know how we can make it easier for you, and I'd love to hear your feedback on what you do and don't like about this approach. Pay attention to Grace Notes, the bulletin, or Facebook to keep up with us. I also plan to start posting on the church Facebook page some reflection related to the passage of the day.

The Tech of Worship

Over the last several weeks, the Worship Teams has been investigating the use of a couple of different software packages for displaying the lyrics, announcements, and sermon notes. No software package is the best at everything, but one that suits many of our team's needs well is Proclaim, published by the people at Logos (http://proclaimonline.com and http://logos.com). In a lot of ways, this won't make much difference to the congregation - all proclaims display nicely. Most of the difference is in the ease of putting the presentations together in a team environment. However, there are a few features for the congregation that some may want to take advantage of.



First, you'll need a mobile device, such as an iPhone, iPad, or Android tablet. If you don't, then  you should be able to worship and takes notes as before. If you do, then go to the Logos website or the app store and download the Logos app for your device. This is a great app for Bible reading and a whole host of Bible study tools and Christian books. Many Bibles and books are free, but you can also purchase an amazing array of others. You will need to create a user ID and password for your Logos account. (Note, the support for Android phones is coming - the Logos app is there, but the Proclaim support is not yet functional.)

Then, when the worship service begins and the presentation software goes "on air," your app can detect that there is a presentation being shown. You can use the menu to hunt for a presentation, or you will soon get a pop up asking if you want to follow our presentation.

Then, whenever there is a slide on the screen with the following symbol in the lower righthand corner,



that means that there is a "signal" available. A signal can be a scripture reference, for example. Your app will ask you if you want to jump to that passage of the Bible. If you choose to, then your app will jump straight to the passage in the translation of your choice.

A signal can be a calendar event. For example, when the slide is being displayed for the ladies' tea, your app will pop up a notice that allows you to automatically add that event to your device's calendar. Just click, and it's on your calendar, with the right date and location.

A signal could be a website - click and your device will navigate to that website. There are a few other signals possible, but we likely won't be using them.

Logos is more than a mobile device app. There is a full program for both Windows and Mac with an extremely rich set of Bible study features. This program can also be downloaded from http://logos.com. This is the Bible software I use far more than any other, and I continue to build my digital library with commentaries, theology books, pastoral books, and so on.

You can also access your Logos library through a web browser at http://biblia.com. It's not as feature-rich as the full program, but it's great to be able to get to your books even if you're away from your computer.

The program, the app, and the website all stay in sync - leave off reading in John 3 in the program, and then later go to the website, and after you log in, you'll go straight to John 3. Plus, your entire library is available on all three platforms (for the most part - some book licenses are only valid in the program version).

Many of you use YouVersion (http://youversion.com) on your mobile device. That's good software, too. But we can't sync it with the presentation on the screen. Currently, we are using YouVersion to allow you to follow the sermon and take notes. We are still testing that - some of you like it, some of you don't. We're trying to find a more usable system for notetaking on your devices in a way that connects directly to our sermons somehow.

If you have any questions on getting set up with this, please just let us know!

A Little Nerd Fun ... and Perhaps a Good Tool

As you noticed in last week's bulletin, we have added a couple of "QR codes." QR codes are simply textual information encoded in a graphic form that certain devices, like smartphones, can use to decode back into the original textual information. For example, the following code can be read by smartphones to navigate the phone's browser to our church website:

We added two codes last week. The first is the one above, pointing to the church website. This is on the back of the bulletin and is mainly intended for visitors to be able to quickly get to our website to find out more about us.

The second code we added was to an online version of the sermon notes. That makes it possible to follow along with the sermon points and passages on your mobile phone, if you so choose. This will not become our only way of having notes - we will always have the insert for handwritten notes.

With the growing popularity of tablet computers, these notes could become even more useful than on smartphones.

These notes can also be used to follow along if listening to the sermon online sometime after the sermon was originally given. That helps those who couldn't attend a particular Sunday, people who live away from the area, or those who want to go over the sermon a second time.

We are still experimenting with the format of these notes, and we could use your feedback. Please let me know how the notes could be formatted better to assist (rather than distract from) the teaching.

At present, we don't have any way to take personal notes along with the given notes. We could get there technologically, but they would be quite difficult to manage with the small keyboards on smartphones. Tablets, however, might make it worth the effort. Again, we need your feedback on how to make these notes the most useful.

OK, so it's a little bit of geek fun, but there is real potential to use the technology in a positive way to enhance how we learn and apply God's Word.