Should Church Leaders Model Effective Learning?
Wendy Wickham observes:
Why would we expect students to learn or want to learn anything if we, as staff and faculty, don't model that ourselves? So what would that entail? What observable behaviors would there need to be?
How often are they collaborating? Are people actually talking to each other?
Within the department?
Outside the department and within the University?
Outside the University walls?
How often are people reaching for help?
Are they leveraging self-serve resources?
How much time are they spending looking for said resources?
What triggers people to look for resources?
How much of this stuff is "mandatory" or "assigned"
How much is related to their job or a performance evaluation
More interesting to me - how much of this is self-motivated?
Chris Eller's insight:
The concept of a church as a learning organization has been focus of many discussions for the last 20-plus years. I first read Peter Senge's foundational work, The Fifth Discipline (1990) in the early 90s.
Briefly, Senge defines a learning organization as,
…organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to see the whole together.
The challenge for Christian educators and pastors is to harvest the knowledge from a theory like Senge's learning organization and apply to to the biblical mandate to make disciples within the local church.
Back to Wickham's question paraphrased, why would we expect our church members to learn--or want to learn--anything if they do not see this modeled in a church's leaders?
Apply Wickham's questions to the church:
How often are leaders collaborating and discussing the vision and strategic objectives of the church? Are leaders focused on their own area of ministry and refuse to acknowledge the contributions or work in coordination with other areas of ministry?
How often are leaders reaching for help? When a church leader hits a brick wall, does he pretend it doesn't exist or acknowledge the barrier and begin looking for ways up, over, or through the barrier? Does he seek help?
What triggers a leader to look for resources? Is it self-motivated or is it something they must do because it is part of their job or their manager insists they look for additional resources?
Within a church, we expect our church members to be self-motivated learners who must balance the extremes of life along with the requirements of a growing relationship with God.
As leaders, much of this falls inside of our daily job description, but how do we model for our church members a lifestyle of discipleship that is built upon a desire to master the Scriptures, apply these to a life of discipleship, and engage others in doing likewise?