Editor’s Note: Ken Sande is president of Peacemaker
Church Leadership
How We Teach and How They Learn, Part 4 – The Imaginative Learner
Previously we have covered in brief the four basic ways we process information. Now we will focus on each one. First the Imaginative, or Concrete-Experience, learners.
Each learning style is asking a different question, and unless you as the teacher or preacher understand how to answer that question, you may not reach this learner. (These same learning styles characteristics are true of those sitting in the pews listening to sermons as well. So pastors, listen up.) The Imaginative learner is asking why – why do I need to know this? Convince him or her that what you have to say is important and you will have a willing listener.
Imaginative learners like to talk in broad overview and not details. They see the big picture, but not the tiny dots that compose the picture. They learn by listening and sharing ideas. What scares teachers is that the more they talk the more they learn. This is hard for many of us to grasp, but they need to talk through the information they are processing. They don’t learn well from lectures, which is true of 3 out of these 4 learning styles (sorry those of you who like to speak a lot!).
Read the entire issue of Equip in PDF format (Acrobat Reader required)
These are very social folk who are sociable and sensitive, sometimes too much so. They are willing to help others sometimes even to their own hurt. They are empathetic over against sympathetic.
When they are confronted with truths, they translate it into what they see in people, usually other people.
These learners enjoy interactive activities, and they work best in a noisy environment (sorry teachers).
Win-lose activities don’t work for them as they do not want to see anyone left out or ‘hurt’ by not winning. (These are not the ones you want on your debate team!)
People in this category can be very color sensitive. I can work in a sterile white room, but for them this would be a distraction. If you have ever studied the effects color has on people, you know that pastels work best. But be careful not to have too much color as that distracts almost everyone.
Now, how do you reach these folk so that they learn? First of all don’t expect to be the director of information. They want to be actively involved in the learning experience (true of 3 of the 4 groups). If you want them to learn, direct them to finding the right answers you would have otherwise told them yourself. (Remember, the things they hear once, they will forget 90% of in one week. The things they are involved in they can remember as much as 90% over their lifetime! Make your teaching count.)
What is interesting about the question they ask, why, is that it is easy to answer. When you begin any lesson or sermon by motivating them to what to hear more, you’ve got them. This is what we tell preachers in homiletics to make the introduction to the sermon. Let me explain. I have had many students tell me that they did not like history. So, whenever I taught a course that was involved history I had to begin by explaining what difference knowing this information could make in their lives and ministries. Once they understood that, they were now motivated to stay with me for the rest of the course.
Remember, in any class you teach, or any sermon you preach, you can probably expect that 75% of your listeners do not process information the same way you do. The more you understand, and implement, what you now know about these other learning styles, the more effective you will be. This is not ignoring the work of the Holy Spirit, it is understanding how He made us in the first place.
The Church and Cultural Diversity
Editor’s Note: By Dwight Linton. Dr. Dwight Linton was a missionary to Korea and an 11 year staff member with CEP. Dwight assisted primarily in multicultural ministry and training. Dwight died recently in a car accident after attending another pastor’s funeral. Click here to find out more…
Unity – based on sinful human beings’ desire to control their own destiny – was the goal of the builders of the tower of Babel in Genesis. Yet God saw that it would only result in manipulative uniformity, so He brought about the breakdown of communication by frustrating the project and causing the monolithic cultural group to split up and go their separate ways. This resulted in the development of the different cultural groups. Today there are about 6,000 distinguishable cul
Adult Biblical Education Series Teacher’s Guides
Click on the links below to download the PDF teacher’s guide for each study. You will need Acrobat Reader in order to view them.
Kingdom Discipleship Conference to be held in Northeast
Christian Education and Publications will co-sponsor a conference on discipleship along with the Presbyterian Church of Coventry May 15, 2010 in Coventry, CT.
The theme for the Saturday conference is Making Kingdom Disciples. Its aim will be focused intentionally on the church’s role and assignment to make kingdom disciples and will feature a number of seminars incorporating the ministry of discipleship for children, youth, and adults. Specific details relating to registration, faculty, and time will soon follow. The target audience for the conference will be the churches in the Northeast area.
Understanding The Church’s Role in Kingdom Education
Understanding the Kingdom of God and its relationship to the church are vitally and strategically important, especially at this time. Many problems, struggles, and divisions have stemmed from either an incorrect view or a misunderstanding or misapplication of the topic. Not only are mainline Protestant churches losing ground, so are the more evangelical churches. This is at a time when a religion like Islam is growing, not only globally but in North America as well.
Click here to read entire publication in PDF (Acrobat Reader required)
According to George Barna, George Gallup Jr., and Michael Lindsay, there are more than 200 religions and denominations in America at the present time, definitely a religiously pluralistic context. This pluralism has added to a lack of knowledge and understanding of the church and kingdom of God. As a result, Christianity’s influence is being marginalized and neutralized. In our pluralistic culture Christianity is fast becoming simply one religion among many. While chartered (religious) pluralism was built into the founding principles of the United States, Christianity was the predominate influence in those early days. However, in the past 150 years we have seen steady decline in Christianity’s influence. Today, there are those groups and individuals who challenge using the name of God in the public square and insist that religion is a private matter. A most recent case has arisen against a group of adults for giving thanks at a school dinner.
The entire church and state separation issue is premised on the basis that we must embrace a secular view of politics that leaves God out of the picture, otherwise, there is division rather than unity. We have seen those attempting to rewrite American history in an attempt to challenge the role of God, the Bible, and Christianity, claiming that America did not begin with a distinctively Christian influence, but if, so what? Several years ago the late Arthur Schlesinger of Yale University, a philosophically liberal historian, wrote The Disuniting of America. I was appreciative for his honesty regarding those attempting to deconstruct and re-write history, ntentionally, leaving out some of the basic foundational ideologies. Some of this has happened because of a dualistic misunderstanding or equating what we called church and state separation with religion and state separation. Much of this has grown from a failure to understand the kingdom of God and the church, their unity and diversity.
Consider a different paradigm relating to Christian education. As you do, I would encourage you to evaluate its merit from a philosophical/theological perspective and not simply a school model at all different levels of the learning process.
While some of us have concluded that a failure to understand the Kingdom of God world and life view perspective has short-changed Christianity by focusing on pieces or parts rather than the whole, many have also failed to see the connection of education with the Kingdom of God. In a similar fashion, as liberal secularism has done with religion and politics, i.e. separating the two and ultimately keeping the religious aspect quiet or merely assigning it to one’s private life which only trivializes religion, so have we done the same with education and the kingdom. This tends to leave God out of the education paradigm or at least place him on the periphery of the process.
We have to realize that education in general has a broad definition which would include the entire learning process: content and context. It also has a specialized definition which deals with the many different subjects, as well as teaching and learning techniques involved. Also, in the somewhat limited scope from a Christian perspective, it refers to the process of learning, teaching, and understanding biblical data, which of course is a legitimately necessary part of the process. However, in the broader or more general sense Christian education also has to incorporate the whole of God’s truth, including that which is not specifically revealed in the Bible. It also has reference to the more formal teaching and learning process while incorporating the less formal or less structured that comes from day-to-day life and relationships in general. Education in its content and implementation includes both aspects.