discipleship | mission | practical theology

Having suffered too many seminars and workshops at the hand of lecturers.  Having wasted too many hours listening to stuff I already have experience of or knowledge already acquired or learned.  Having sat for so long on uncomfortable chairs calculating the number of hours represented by the group that equate to each minute spent listening to someone say “We’ll skip that bit because we are running out of time!” I just want to ask… is there not a better way?

The real situations of which the previous paragraph is an emotional caricature are usually a room full of adults, with plenty of mixed life experience, passionate about the subject or at least the macro-subject of which a particular workshop or seminar is a part and, usually as a result of the aforesaid, have options, perspectives and questions about the subject in question [or not actually in question as is often the case].

Ok, let’s get really real: I was in a room of 18 adults, a good proportion of which were [and of course still are] parents; all of which had had some lay experience of volunteering in a church in a leadership position; all of which will have completed a CRB application and check and therefore will have some familiarity with a child protection document; all of which had been or about to be ordained into orders in the Church of England; at least two in the room had at least 10 years experience as a team leader of children’s and youth ministry; one person some years experience as a police officer and I am willing to place money on there being at least one person with full-time teaching experience, one with full-time nursing experience and one with some form of social worker experience. To this group of people someone thought it would be a good idea to give a 2 hour lecture on child protection issues with 2 short group exercises, straight after lunch having already being in the room for 2 hours previously listening to someone else.

As an exercise in learning this does not score highly…!

OK, rant almost over… breathing deeply now…

It seems to me that we spend far too long talking about whatever instead of allowing people to participate in the learning process. In the late nineties it would have been fairly easy in the Christian conference and training circuit to find oneself sitting listening to some talk about the encroaching condition of postmodernity in our culture and how this would affect life as we know it and, usually, the threats this would bring to both being Christian and any evangelistic and mission activity we might have or imagine. Almost certainly one of the points to be made in this talk would have been to describe the fragmentation of life, relationships and imagination, highlighting one of the most obvious indicators as an increasingly short attention span as we adapt to the flickering plethora of information and entertainment invading our senses. Almost certainly… you guessed it… these words of truth were delivered lecture-style whilst the subjects and illustrators were sat on, almost certainly, uncomfortable chairs for about a hour, and more if you were lucky!

Research indicates that 7 mins is about the concentration span of adults… by now it has probably taken you about that long to read this so I’ll…