The Learn-You Police

“Yeah, but what are you LEARNING?"

A couple of times stand out in my mind where I’ve been asked this question in an way that implied I wasn’t learning anything.

One time as a teenager I found myself almost being grilled by a guy who was an occasional youth leader. I think initially he was (for whatever reason?) trying to pin me to the wall for not having a devotional life. Or at least not reading my bible. But I responded simply (truthfully) that recently I had been spending time reading 1 Corinthians. That’s when he pulled this whole learning bit on me.

It’s actually a really good question – it just depends on how it's asked.

So I told this guy some of the things that had been standing out to me as I read, which were not earth shattering or sermon material by any means. But he wouldn’t be dissuaded from lecturing me from a superior position of understanding and authority. Wow.

The second time was during my pastoral ministry internship. I did my internship in Toronto and somewhere near the middle of it I was having a conversation with a pastor from another church in the city. It started off with chit-chat about who I was and what I was doing. I talked about the different experiences and responsibilities I had been given up to that point.

And then he pulled the trigger. Again, good question. Kind of a conversation killer when you ask it in a rhetorical (ahem, arrogant) way. But, if I give him the benefit of the doubt, maybe his point was what you’re doing isn’t as important as what you’re learning from it.

The truth was – I was being really busy. Internships are designed to be that way to provide as much experience as possible. And I guess I wasn’t sure what I was learning. So much of what I was doing was so brand new to me that I’m not sure that I was learning how to do things as much as I was just being exposed to them. And because there was so much new, stretching, stressing, busy stuff, not a lot of reflection was taking place – I wasn’t really locking down any principles, proverbs, or proficiencies.

Deer. Caught. In. Headlights.

Years later I’ve thought about it some more: Experience continues teaching lessons after the fact. Experience is like a text that you can keep returning to, and find new lessons.

And the other side is: you can read things, and know principles and proverbs . . . but maybe you don’t really learn them until you experience what they are talking about for yourself.



(And maybe another lesson learned is: strike first. SO . . . what are YOU learning?)