9.17.2003
How Did Jesus Teach?
The Divine Conspiracy continues:
We must recongnize, first of all, that the aim of the popular teacher in Jesus' time was not to impart information, but to make a significant change in the lives of the hearers. Of course that may require an information transfer, but it is a peculiarly modern notion that the aim of teaching is to bring people to know things that may have no effect at all on their lives.
Willard is both insightful and naive at the same time here. Naive because those of us who are professional educators know this alredy. We understand that there are cognitive and affective components to education. Any class that does not have as its goal a behavioral or performance objective is an exercise in futility.
otoh, pulpiteers of today are rarely professional educators. They somehow think that given enough information, someone is going to change their behavior. It is this flawed assumption on the part of our former pastor that caused us (in part) to leave Candy's home church and move to the C@CH. A pastor who operates under this flawed paradigm is going to be largely ineffective and won't grow people. In that, Willard is right. There are people who think information transfer = behavior (and character) change.
Our challenge then is to speak in such a way that we motivate and bring about a change in people, not just transfer information.
So how do we do that?
I have some opinions and may even share them as we go on.
The Divine Conspiracy continues:
We must recongnize, first of all, that the aim of the popular teacher in Jesus' time was not to impart information, but to make a significant change in the lives of the hearers. Of course that may require an information transfer, but it is a peculiarly modern notion that the aim of teaching is to bring people to know things that may have no effect at all on their lives.
Willard is both insightful and naive at the same time here. Naive because those of us who are professional educators know this alredy. We understand that there are cognitive and affective components to education. Any class that does not have as its goal a behavioral or performance objective is an exercise in futility.
otoh, pulpiteers of today are rarely professional educators. They somehow think that given enough information, someone is going to change their behavior. It is this flawed assumption on the part of our former pastor that caused us (in part) to leave Candy's home church and move to the C@CH. A pastor who operates under this flawed paradigm is going to be largely ineffective and won't grow people. In that, Willard is right. There are people who think information transfer = behavior (and character) change.
Our challenge then is to speak in such a way that we motivate and bring about a change in people, not just transfer information.
So how do we do that?
I have some opinions and may even share them as we go on.
