CDM Archive

Discipleship Ministries of the PCA

Church Leadership

How We Teach and How They Learn, Part 8 – Teaching All Four Learning Styles at the Same Time?!?

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We have looked at four ways people process information. Now, how in the world will you teach four different groups in one lesson? This is not as hard as you think. Look at this diagram.

Learning StyelesEvery week your lesson will contain four parts. (If you need more details on each of these, re-read the previous Equip Tips.)

1. The Imaginative learner is drawn into the lesson by the introduction. This is used to motivate them into wanting to know more.

2. You can probably guess what the Analytic learner wants. This is where we as Presbyterians thrive. We love facts. This is where we give them the depths of our teaching. However, that does not mean it has to be all by lecture. Remember, the more you draw out of the learners, the more they will remember.

3. The how-to Common Sense learner wants to know what he can do with these facts. This can be taken in many different directions as we teach the learners to move from facts to concrete ways of how to apply the facts to all parts of life.

4. The last part of the lesson will satisfy all the learners, but especially the Dynamic learners. Here you will give them some real-life way they can put into practice this week what you have taught them today.

You don’t think you have enough time to do what seems like four separate lessons? Actually, if you look at almost any curriculum, they are divided into these four parts, even though they might call them by a different name. The easiest way to do all this is by a careful division of your time. If you have an hour, then you only need to spend about 5-10 minutes on your introduction; 20 minutes on the main part of the lesson; 20 minutes on the how-tos; and 5 minutes on the final application. If you have less than an hour, use these proportions to plan your lesson.

I am going to post a sample lesson planning sheet on the website. If you follow this plan, you will be able to teach any lesson, even if you don’t have a curriculum to follow.

Next time we will look at how much people remember, as we use different teaching methods.

The Challenge of Discipling Youth in This Age of Indifference

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American young people are, theoretically, fine with religious faith-but it does not concern them very much, and it is not durable enough to survive on after they graduate high school. One more thing: we’re responsible.

So begins Kenda Casey Dean’s book Almost Christian: What The Faith of Our Teenagers Is Telling The American Church (see the book review in this edition of Equip to Disciple). As one of the original researchers for the National Study of Youth and Religion and Associate Professor of Youth, Church and Culture at Princeton Seminary, Dean has been forced to come to the same conclusion that so many other researchers have come to: young people in our churches are not being discipled in a way that leads to active faith as adults. Here is another observation from Almost Christian: “Since the religious and spiritual choices of American teenagers echo with astonishing clarity, the religious and spiritual choices of the adults who love them, lackadaisical faith is not young people’s issues, but ours.” Let me add just one more pointed conclusion that comes from the National Study of Youth and Religion: teenagers mirror their parents’ religious faith…by and large parents get “what they are” religiously.

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Now those of us who hold to a covenantal theological framework for understanding God’s relationship with humanity are quite fond of pointing out the blessings for our children that come from God’s covenant promises to his people. Parents love that the promises and blessings extend from generation to generation. However, we tend to get a little squeamish when the topic of covenant “curses” comes up in relation to our faithfulness. After all to suggest that one’s lack of faithfulness might have generational implications is a pill that does not go down smoothly for many folks. So, in light of Dean’s findings, I would like to suggest another category for us to think about that lies somewhere between blessings and curses. I call this third category “generational consequences.”

menTo use a biblical phrase from Galatians 6, the church is quite possibly now reaping what we have sown. On occasion, I will hear people say something along the lines of “this current generation of young people is more biblically illiterate than at any point in church history.” Let’s lay aside for a moment the difficulty of quantifying such a statement and for the sake of this article take it at face value. If the myriad of researchers who have concluded that young people imitate the religious faith and actions of adults who love them are right and if this current generation of young people is indeed biblically illiterate, then it does not take much of an intellectual leap to conclude that the generational consequence of adult actions in regards to knowing and applying scripture is being seen in our young people. I suppose this is actually a simple mathematical equation: A (adult religious actions) + B (youth emulate adult religious actions) = C (generational consequence: biblically illiterate youth who are abandoning the church).

Thirty six years ago, Francis Schaeffer saw his generation moving from absolute truth, sound doctrinal positions, and biblical knowledge. With regularity he began exhorting the church to wake up to the potential outcomes of the slippery slope Christians were sliding down head first. One such occasion was The International Congress on World Evangelism in 1974 where Dr. Schaeffer presented a paper entitled Two Contents, Two Realities. This paper is now paired with his 25 Basic Bible Studies and published as a small book by Crossway. In Two Contents, Two Realities he warns “…if we have a latitudinarianism in religious cooperation, the next generation will have a latitudinarianism in doctrine, and specifically a weakness toward the Bible…We must have the courage to take a clear position.” Earlier in the paper, Schaeffer says that having strong doctrinal content is not enough by stating that “we must exhibit to our own children and to the watching world that we take truth seriously. It will not do in a relativistic age to say that we believe in the truth and fail to practice that truth in places where it may be observed…” It is disquieting that nearly four decades later many of the concerns of Dr. Schaeffer are coming to fruition. However, it would be egregious if the Church-the adults tasked with loving and raising the next generation-did not jump, holding tightly onto the next generation, from the sinking sand of biblical infidelity onto the solid foundation that is our only rule of faith and obedience; God’s Word.

The intention here is not to try to free young people from culpability for their apathy toward God’s Word by placing it totally on adults. Likewise, the intention is not to suggest that this generation of young people is hopeless. Instead, this should serve as a call to confession for being more akin to the “forefathers” spoken of in Psalm 78:8 who were a “stubborn and rebellious generation, whose hearts were not loyal to God, whose spirits were not loyal to him” more so than we are to King David in Psalm 71:17 who desired, even in old age, to proclaim the power of God to the next generation. It should also be a call for intercessors to plead with God on behalf of our youth that they are freed from the generational consequences of their forbearers’ actions. Finally, this is a rallying cry for adult disciplers to step forward to begin building this generation as “the generation of those who seek him, who seek your face, O God of Jacob (Psalm 24:6).” In my travels as Christian Education andPublications Youth and Family Ministries Consultant, the constant refrain that I hear from youth pastors, directors, and leaders across our denomination is “we need more adult leaders.” That statement is most commonly followed by this question: “why is it so hard to get adults to help with youth ministry?” While the answer to that question may be complicated, the generational consequence is straightforward…without adults to teach the scriptures and demonstrate faithful living to our youth, biblical illiteracy and church abandonment as young adults should come as no surprise to anyone.

I asked a group of adults recently who work with youth whether Bible teaching was the primary purpose of their church’s youth program or if the teaching was a part of the whole. In other words, do the programmatic aspects of youth ministry (games, singing, refreshments, etc…) exist to enhance the Bible teaching or is Bible teaching just one of many parts of the program? The length of debate following my question and the nature of the comments verified for me one of the secret fears that many of us who work with youth harbor: If Bible study is too deep, too frequent, or too long then youth won’t come. One of my concerns as it relates to this fear is that we not dumb down the scriptures in an attempt to make it more palatable, easily digestible, or relevant. If you work with youth in your church then you understand the tension here: if no youth come then there is no one to hear God’s word being taught but if they come and are bored then they won’t come back and then there will be no one to hear God’s word next week so I need to make sure to make Bible study short, funny, relevant and non-offensive. This is a classic youth ministry conundrum.

WhateverPerhaps the best solution that I can give to this conundrum is anecdotal evidence from two youth groups. The first is from Safe Harbor Presbyterian in Stevensville, MD. When the youth director, Christian Graham, decided to make significant changes in the youth ministry moving from a more traditional youth program to one that revolved around a deeper Bible study in order to better foster Christian community, he did so with some trepidation. Not that he was going to stop the occasional games and other relational activities but Christian wanted to elevate the Bible study within the program. The first week a grand total of 2 students showed up. That would be fine if there were only 4 students in the youth group but this was a decrease of over 30 students. Perhaps teaching Romans verse by verse to teenagers was not the best idea for growing a youth group. However, within a month the group had grown again to over thirty students who each week eat homemade waffles and then feed on God’s word together. The second is about the youth group at Carriage Lane Presbyterian Church in Peachtree City, GA. Assistant Pastor of Youth, Brian Cosby, began feeling like his students were hindered in their study of the New Testament by not knowing Greek. So, he did what all the latest youth ministry books say to do for growing your youth group; he offered to teach a Greek class. Expecting 2 or 3 of his more academically minded youth to show up, Brian was shocked when fifty youth showed up to learn biblical Greek in order to be able to study scripture more fully. As with all anecdotal evidence, there are always instances that prove the opposite to be true as well. So, I cannot suggest that youth will show up in droves at your church if you start teaching God’s word in deeper ways. Yet, I am convinced that as adults who are charged with discipling our young people, we must begin teaching in a deeper, more satisfying manner and then demonstrating with our lives the transformational power of the Word.

I confess, I have utopian like intentions for this article. In the part of my brain that I reserve for imagining the big things that God is doing among the next generation, I am right now imagining that if you are an adult who is not currently involved with young people in your church that the Holy Spirit is starting to tickle your imagination about becoming a discipler of young people or becoming an intercessor in prayer on their behalf. I am also dreaming if you are already discipling youth that you are beginning to think about deeper, more satisfying ways to teach God’s Word. I do not want to be just a doom and gloom prognosticator because I am praying first and foremost that this current generation of youth will become known as the “revival” generation but I fear the generational consequences to the youth of 2040 if the church does not heed warning signs in 2010 and begin to send more adults into the battle for the souls of our young.

How We Teach and How They Learn, Part 7 – The Dynamic Learner

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Of the four learning styles, the dynamic learner (DL) is the most disliked by teachers. Why? Because teachers do not understand them, or know how to work with them. I hope, after you have read this, you will have a much better appreciation for these misunderstood learners, and know more about how to work with them.

There is a reason teachers don’t like them. Most teachers fit in any of the other three learning styles, but few are dynamic. DLs want to be in charge. Can you see the conflict?

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My best example of a DL is the comedian Robin Williams. Do you remember him in Dead Poets Society? Remember him standing on top of the desk quoting Shakespeare with a John Wayne accent? Remember him drumming into the students Carpe Diem? The DL isn’t into details and facts. The DL will tolerate details only if you can show the relevance over time. If you can prove what you are teaching has benefit for real life and the future, you will have them.

If you want to reach this learner there is one word you must embrace, it is the word flexibility. They demand this, and need it. This means that whenever you give an assignment and tell the students there is only one way to do this, you KNOW that the DL will come back with a “what if I…?” or “can I try it this way?” If you really care about reaching them, then work with them.

Dynamic LearnerWe adopted our oldest son at age 17. He is a true DL. We soon learned that if we wanted him to stay within certain parameters, we had to draw the lines in closer knowing he would stretch them as far as he could. This is usually viewed as both a strength as well as a weakness. The strength of the DL is their ability to think with great creativity. While analytics will scrutinize everything and find few ways of doing things, the DL will list any number of ways to try something. The weakness of the DL is they need the analytic and common sense learners to work through the details in order for the project to work. If you want to motivate a DL, tell him that something is beyond his ability. In class, your best method of keeping this learner under control is to keep him close to you physically. The further he is from you the more likely he will be to be leading other students to try something a different way than you instructed.

I could tell you about a few well-know Christian DLs, but I don’t want to use names. One leads an organization that has been blessed by God sometimes in spite of its leader. This CEO has many ideas, but lacks the know-how to get them done. So, rather than finding the right people who can give him the details he needs to get it done, he goes ahead and does it anyway. For all the good this brother has done, he has also hurt a great many others.

If you want to reach them, let them have some flexibility while keeping them within your bounds. If you can figure out what inspires him, encourage him to try it, while you convey love and acceptance to him no matter the outcome. Doing this will generally keep him from manipulating others into doing things his way.

One last point about the DL. If you compare the characteristics of a DL with someone who is ADHD, they are very similar. This is one of the reasons so many schools have attempted to put too many kids on Ritalin. I have ADD and take Ritalin. It makes an enormous difference in my ability to function here at CEP. But I am not a DL. Too many DLs have been misdiagnosed as ADHD. Be careful here.

In the next issue I will tie all four of these learning styles together so you can see better how they work as a unit.

Teach a Man to Teach and He Will Feed Thousands

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The Why

Your pastor went to seminary. During that time he learned the Bible, biblical languages, theology, church history, and how to preach. In other words, he was trained. When your church is preparing to select new elders and deacons, they are taught the basics of what the church is, how it is run, and their role in overseeing the church. In other words, they are trained.


Aside from the leadership, which group in the church would you say is the most important? My answer would be the teachers – on all levels. Think about the fact that these people are the ones we are entrusting with the very training of the next generation of your church. Do they deserve to be trained any less than those who oversee the church?


How would you respond to this? Your teachers come to you all excited about a new curriculum they discovered. The three basic truths taught are 1) Wisdom – I need to make the wise choice; 2) Faith – I can trust God no matter what; and 3) Friendship – I should treat others the way I want to be treated. Does this sound good to you? If it does, then you need more training than you know. These are not Biblical objectives, and you must know the difference if you are going to be able to protect your children from such teaching.

What biblical objectives should You be watching out for?

Great Commission Publications, our denomination’s official curriculum publisher, puts it this way:


How We Teach and How They Learn, Part 6 – The Common Sense Learner

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Don’t you just love it when you know someone who can take all the information you have and make something useful with it? This is the strength of the Common Sense Learner. He is able to take all the facts gathered so accurately and sequentially by the Analytic Learner and put them to good use.

Some of the characteristics of this learning style include:

  • Goal oriented – not just satisfied with facts unless they can test them
  • Excel at problem solving “how tos”
  • They live in a realistic world and not an “idea” world (concrete thinking vs. abstract)
  • They see skills as knowledge rather than facts
  • They don’t want to be given answers; they prefer to work out the solution. And here is the key, they want to be active and involved with discovering the solution.
  • They prefer to work by themselves rather than in groups (very unlike the Imaginative or Dynamic Learners)
  • They too do not like lectures! This is true of three of the four learning styles, yet most teachers insist that this is the most effective method. Well, remember next time, that

An Interview with Anthony Bradley

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An Interview with Dr. Anthony Bradley


We recently read and reviewed the following book by our friend Dr. Anthony Bradley. Because we believe this is an important and timely book, to be read especially by church leaders, we asked Anthony several questions to lead into the book review. Dr. Bradley is presently visiting professor of theology at The King’s college, New York and serves as a research fellow at the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty. He has appeared on numerous TV programs.

Anthony has been a good friend, a scholar, and g rowing spokesman in our circles. His presentations at our 2008 discipleship conference were outstanding. (They are available from the CEP Bookstore).

In connection with his book, Liberating Black Theology, the Bible and the Black Experience in America, I asked Anthony the following three questions:

1. Would you highlight how your book can help us better understand and implement our desire to make a difference in reconciliation?

It is important to remember that black liberation theologians in the late 1960s and early 1970s had legitimate questions regarding the lack of attention paid to intersecting the Kingdom with loving one’s neighbor on issues of race. In those days, both mainline and evangelical Protestant theologians were generally silent on issues of racial justice and the need for the church to speak out against the dehumanization of blacks.

In my book, I highlight specifically the deleterious consequences of not acknowledging past social abuses and corporate sins for reconciliation. My sense is that those in the dominant culture are not sensitive enough to the importance of this issue for minorities. Even though the Bible clearly presents a model for confessing the sins of previous generations, there are some within the Reformed community who seem to want us to explain away the past racial oppression without discussing present implications. Some have suggested, for the sake of looking past those sins to “move on,” that we primarily accentuate the positive aspects of sinful history.

Thankfully, this is not the biblical pattern. Nehemiah 9:2 provides a fascinating standard of corporate confession and repentance: “And the Israelites separated themselves from all foreigners and stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of their fathers.” God’s people spent time repenting of the past sins of multiple generations within the confines of intimate covenant community because it was a necessary component of moving forward in sanctification. Perhaps some of the Westminster Divines were influenced by this aspect of the biblical narrative by calling Christians to repent specifically: “Men ought not to content themselves with a general repentance, but it is every man’s duty to endeavor to repent of his particular sins, particularly (chapter 15, paragraph 5). This is beautiful!

My book aids in understanding why this is important for both blacks and whites to suggest a way forward that maintains orthodoxy while making a case for the church to continue to speak publicly about sin like we regularly do with issues like abortion. The writings of Herman Bavinck have been particularly helpful to me in this regard. I hope that reconciliation does more than dismisses the opportunity to corporately wrestle with the gospel in community for the sake of embracing cultural norms to “hush up” about granddaddy’s sins.

Admittedly, I don’t have all the answers but I think the denomination will benefit greatly when men like Rev. Ligon Duncan and Rev. Randy Nabors help the denomination articulate confessing of past sins, repentance and reconciliation initiatives. Both Rev. Duncan and Rev. Nabors and others older and wiser than me, and who have been involved in reconciliation efforts in their cities, are better positioned to lead on this. For starters, Rev. Nabors says,”[o]ne thing I try to do at Presbytery exams on church history is to ask candidates if they know the ‘racial’ history of the PCA, and what have we done about it. I encourage all Presbyteries to make this part of their church history expectations. Those who are ignorant of history seem condemned to repeat it.” Knowing our own story and talking openly about it will help us not repeat it.

2. You have said that many of our attempts at reconciling blacks and whites are 50 years too late and outdated. I don’t want our efforts to be impotent. How can your book help us to be more effective?


The last two chapters of the book wrestle with the complexities of applying the gospel in a multi-ethnic, global Christian context like we live in today. Therefore, cultural anthropology and contextualization matter when it comes to applying the gospel to people’s lives.

First, many of our efforts at reconciliation have been too narrowly focused on reconciling whites and blacks as if it were 1970 on the heels of the civil-rights movement. There is still work to be done in this area because many of the white Christians who promoted segregation are still alive today. However,America’s current demographic reality-14.4 percent Hispanic/Latino, 12.8 percent black, 4.3 percent Asian-calls for ethnic initiatives that move the church forward in reconciling various tensions and past sins between all of those groups and sub-cultures. For example, there has been so much emphasis on reconciling whites with blacks that may be missing the need to also reconcile whites with Native Americans or heal the deep tensions between blacks and Koreans.

The black/white focus is too limited and often leads to a false sense of accomplishment. I think conservative evangelicals are among the only communities in America who would consider a church of blacks and whites in 2010 extraordinary.

Second, many of the reconciliation efforts are merely cosmetic and still represent old paternalistic paradigms where a white male is in charge and has a congregations of black and Latinos who are less educated and socio-econoimcally subordinate. Churches where there is a class-based power dynamic of upper middle-class whites with working and lower class blacks and Latinos have been coined “plantation churches” by some blacks I know in the PCA.

If we take cultural anthropology seriously, in the ways I suggest in the book, we would expect the result of racial reconciliation efforts to produce in the future ethnic minorities in denominational leadership as agency heads, seniors pastors of more and more churches, presbytery moderators, and so on. I have an ongoing dream that one day the PCA have a Mexican American serve as Senior Minister of the First Presbyterian Church (in whatever city) with a session of blacks, Asians, Native Americans, and so on, wherever possible. Minorities in leadership will be a powerful witness to our world of the socially subversive and transformative nature of the gospel as was demonstrated in the books of Acts, Galatians, and the early church.

Those yearning for revival and another “Great Awakening” in America will only see it come when the church leads the culture on issues of racial diversity in leadership.

3. You have an unsually perceptive grasp of a kingdom world and life view prespective. You demonstrated that so clearly and effectively at our 2008 conference on Kingdom Disicpleship. Would you give us a few things to consider as we read your book and think about our challenges and opportunities as a church and as kingdom people wanting to genuinely make a difference? Can you help us not to be outdated and too late with the challenge?


The PCA has an opportunity to lead on race issues in ways that no Presbyterian denomination (or any other evangelical denomination, for that matter) has experienced in American history. Despite the racial inconsistencies with the gospel in some aspects of Southern Presbyterian history, the PCA can tap all of her denominational resources to provide an astounding witness of the Kingdom of Christ to the world as we move forward.

The denomination’s churches and educational institutions, like Covenant College and Covenant Theological Seminary, missions agencies, college ministries, Christian Education and Publications provide excellent pipelines to raise up new denominational leadership to America’s truly multi-ethnic reality.In 1900, Europe and North America accounted for 82 percent of the world’s Christian population. In 2005, that number is down to 39 percent. To date 60 percent of world’s Christians are in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Moreover, by 2023, half of America’s children will be non-white. As these trends continue, America will likely have a white minority by 2050. By taking cultural anthropology seriously–as was necessary as the gospel spread to Gentiles–carefully applying Scriptures, holding fast to our confessional standards, practicing particular confession and repentance, embracing new vistas for denominational leadership, and so on, the PCA can position herself to build a church that bears witness to the fact that in Kingdom of Christ includes women and menfrom every tribe and language and people and nation (Rev. 5:9) who earnestly live for the glory of God.

To begin this process, every member of the PCA should listento Rev. Randy Nabors’ August 1, 2010 sermon on unity and reconciliation in Galatians 3:26-28 titled “Right Sight” at New City Fellowship in Chattanooga on their website. Nabors’ sermon is the best first step in seeing the claims of Christ pressed everywhere in a culture like ours where diversity is the norm as we press the claims of Christ everywhere in our world. It is leadership like this that will equip us to reach God’s diverse people.

Anthony, thank you for your insights and candidness. CEP is in the process of planning its third reconciliation for February 2011. Details will be posted on our website as the Atlanta Conference comes together.