I like to study people.
I’m one of those people that loves psychology and sociology.
What’s interesting to me is that the more I watch and study people the more I’m noticing something about the way we learn as people. Tradition tells us we learn most by reading, writing, etc. Which, it’s true, there is A LOT of learning that takes place this way. Ironically though, I’m noticing that the best learning comes from what we experience.
Think about it…
When we were young we didn’t just all of a sudden decided to stand on the feet we’d been crawling with, we saw others do it and copied. No one told us to. We definitely didn’t read about it.
When we first began to talk. No one told us how to use our tongues and lungs to make sounds. We copied what we saw, we repeated sounds. We learned from experience.
No matter how much we read about driving a car, we learned best when we got behind the wheel (and our parent’s weren’t yelling at us).
Swimming…yeah, a book can’t teach you to float.
We learn more from experience more than we realize. How to clean a house, how to pump gas, how to change paper in the printer paper tray, how to twitter. Someone may have spoke into us to get us started, but we learned the in’s and out’s of it from experience.
What’s interesting to me, is that, if that’s true…what are people learning from us right now?
- What kind of joy is a lost world seeing?
- What kind of love are our spouses feeling?
- What kind of community are we setting?
- What kind of example are our kid’s seeing?
- What kind of service are our people seeing?
- What kind of leadership are our volunteers learning?
The truth is. We learn from experience more than anything else. It sticks with us best that way.
The scary part is…all the people watching us, learn the same way. How we do what we do, is how they will learn to do what they do.
Our influence will impact their experience and affect HOW they carry out their calling; whether they’ll LIVE out their ministry, or just DO it.
People are watching.
How are we doing? 
June 30th, 2009 at 8:03 pm
Great thoughts. Convicting. Great stuff always is.
My struggle seems to be in my responses to drama. I need to be a better example when people are being unreasonable.
June 30th, 2009 at 8:10 pm
No matter how much we read about driving a car, we learned best when we got behind the wheel (and our parent’s weren’t yelling at us).
easy, easy I was never ever near the place!
June 30th, 2009 at 9:14 pm
Dang. That was even more smack-you-in-the-face than the real-life convo today. Need to soak this in.