6. Active Learning Environments

Podcast/Transript - Jen Wilkin Conference Session:

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/tgc-podcast/jen-wilkin-reclaiming-sunday-school-new-generation/

Favorite Quotes:

• Expert-Amateur Divide: "Over time, there developed a divide between the person who stands up here and the person who sits out there. And I call that the Expert-Amateur divide. The person who stands up here is perceived to be the expert, and the person out there is perceived to be the amateur. And my job is to teach you in such a way that when I finish teaching, you are left with the impression,  "wow... how did that person do that? That was amazing..." And I would say that the people who inhabited the expert area of this analogy even got comfortable with it. We liked the way that it felt. But a disciple is a learner. And if the Church is to fulfill the Great Commission, that we might go and make disciples, teaching them to obey all that He has commanded - then we are going to have to diminish the Expert-Amateur divide. Because what resulted from this were people sitting in the pews with a sort of learned helplessness, “I need someone to tell me what the Bible says.I need someone to tell me how doctrines work.” And we began to have almost entirely passive learning environments. Not only that, but there was a proliferation of materials available to us through other sources."

• "We believed that content was what would make us grow and develop. We lost a sense of the importance of incarnational teaching."

• "People have discretionary time and they’re going to choose where they spend it, but they’re not going to spend it with the person who asks the least of them. Your people do Whole30, they run marathons, they are able to commit and to be disciplined. They are going to commit and be disciplined to the most compelling message. So we, in the church, need to make sure that we’re communicating to our people that discipleship matters and that it’s worth the time that you invest."

• "But you realize that here, this thing you’re doing right now, it’s a passive learning environment, because it required nothing of you before you came in the room and sat down. And so, what learning is, is it’s partnering in the process. It’s taking on some of the risk and discomfort associated with acquiring a skill or acquiring an area of expertise. So we’re looking in all of our environments at The Village to have what we call dedicated active learning environments."

My Thoughts:

• This is a very practical conference session by Jen Wilkin about how they do discipleship at The Village Church. The main reason I included it is Jen's focus on active learning environments v. passive learning environments. I think this is such a helpful and practical mindset shift we need to include in the church of the future.

• I also love her encouragement to raise the bar on discipleship - not keep putting things on the bottom shelf and continually lowering the bar.

• Jen also talks about what she calls the "Expert-Amateur divide." I thought this was a brilliant explanation of a subtle aspect of the culture of many American churches. As pastors and teachers, our goal should be to teach our people to read the text for themselves, so that we're equipping them to not need us to interpret the bible for them. But Jen brilliantly describes the subtle shift where somewhere along the way, the goal became amazing people in the audience with the speaker's understanding of the text, rather than teaching the people in the audience to find the meaning in the text for themselves.

Implications:

• Churches who aim to be effective in making disciples who can make disciples should emphasize active learning environments, not just passive learning environments. No church would expressly state that their goal is to create passive consumers who sit in the audience and receive information from us. And yet, that's the fruit that many of our passive learning environments creates. If our goal is to equip our people to rightly find the meaning in biblical texts for themselves - to wrestle and seek the Spirit on their own - then we should give them opportunities to practice that in a constructive environment, through active learning environments.

• Raise the bar and require more buy-in from your people. They're willing to offer it in other areas of life. If they're not willing to buy in and partner with you for their own spiritual growth, maybe they're not the right people to be pouring into, in this moment.

• The Expert-Amateur divide needs to go. We need to spot it and work against it in our hearts, minds, and practices. Our goal as speakers should be to raise others up and equip God's people to do His work (Eph. 4:12). Whether we're intending to widen the gap or not, if that's the fruit our teaching is bearing, we need to change our approach.

Pushback:

• I'm not a fan of the Sunday school system, so I don't share the same affection Jen has for it. I grew up in Sunday school. But I don't think Sunday school is the answer for the future that we're looking for.

• Jen spends a lot of time in the talk focused on the X's and O's of how they do it at The Village. That's not the part I wanted to emphasize, and I'm not saying we should replicate their system. But I love many of the philosophies she shares that helped The Village shape the system they use.

• Jen didn't necessarily speak to this, specifically...  I wonder if they emphasize obedience to the things that they're learning within their active learning environments. For example, "what are you going to DO this week, in order to follow the Spirit's lead and obey what He is teaching you?" It's easy to fall into the trap of just gaining head knowledge without letting it change our lives out in the "real world." I'm not saying that's what's happening here. But it's a question I'd ask if I were in this conference session's Q&A.

Comment and let us know what you think!