Clergy/Leaders' Mail-list No. 3-046 (Leadership Issues)

HOW I'VE LEARNED WHAT I'VE LEARNED - LIFETIME LEARNING IN LEADERSHIP

by Paul Grant

The great cellist Pablo Cassal was once heard practising when he was well into his eighties. Someone asked him why at his age and level of accomplishment he was still practising. He replied, "I think I'm noticing some improvement.' He was a life-long learner.

Recently reflecting on the theme of lifelong learning I asked myself: How have I learned what I have learned? After these sixty five years of Christian living and fifty six years of Christian ministry I thought I should write down a few perceptions that address this question and perhaps help some who are in leadership today.

What do we mean by learning while in leadership? Can we identify some key processes? To learn while leading and to lead while learning is critical to success in ministry. Here are a few things I have learned about learning.

1. I HAD TO LEARN HOW TO LEARN

My parents encouraged inquisitiveness. I had a sense of destiny at eight or nine years of age, and was converted at twelve. As with Nathanael, Jesus knew me before I knew Him. But when I began to know Him I began my journey of discovery by asking questions and then waiting and listening for the answers. God gave me a yearning for learning. I found that revelation must descend into reason and the mind and heart must be transformed to think and obey God's thoughts after Him (Rom.12:1-2). A student becomes a scholar, a learner becomes a know-er when he/she attunes the hearing to God's voice and submits the thinking to God's mind. (I learned that I needed to unlearn assumptions and biases that were culturally inherited, but that is another topic. Yet to unlearn in order to learn is important.) Moreover, like Samuel, I learned to observe right behaviour and appropriate service in men and women who lived what they taught. They became models for my learning.

2. I HAD TO LEARN WHAT TO LEARN

The Holy Spirit was my Tutor. God had set the curriculum. The tests were not in the ability to know and remember but in the grace of obedience. Christians are people of a freed will, not a free will. My mind was freed to become captive in obedience to Christ (2 Cor.10:5). The fear of the Lord was both the beginning of wisdom and knowledge (Prov.1:7; Psa.111:10). What did God want me to learn?

Learning demands discerning. I learned to distinguish between what was junk and what was genuine. I set my affection on heavenly things and the kingdom of God. I renounced 'trivial pursuit' of the transient, banal things of life. I sought the transcendent. I began to learn what to learn. The noble, the true, the pure, the lovely, the admirable (Phil.4:8). I learned to junk junk and quest God's best. I learned to be selective. I am still learning. Like never before there is so much in this "information age" and the "info-tainment" market place we need to be discerningly selective about what we allow to be "downloaded" into our minds. I learned to get wisdom with all my getting.

Films, books, papers, magazines, radio programs, television . and other things in my cultural heritage had to be checked out against the Word of God that endures for ever. My spiritual birthright was not going to be traded for a take-away snack.

3. I HAD TO USE WHAT I LEARNED

Knowledge is for circulation. Ideas are to be sown, not kept. No Christian, no church, no theologian has a franchise or owns a copyright on truth. It's not for storage. A book, a tape, or a CD by itself is impotent. It needs a process or mechanism for its function. Biblical knowledge calls for the dynamics or electronics of God's Holy Spirit for its outworking. Truth is for use. Therefore I found that my obedience was the "operating system" by which the Spirit could most effectively convey God's mind in my social and cultural settings. "The truth will set you free" (John 8:32). Theology cries out to be used. It's not for show-room purposes! Learning is for living. Theology is for incarnation, not debate. I make a point of asking my students: What are the implications of this truth for Christian life and service?

4. I HAD TO EARTH WHAT I LEARNED

I once discovered that half of Paul's epistles explained truth; the other half was about how it was to be practised. (Bible Colleges can get unbalanced by favouring one over the other. Oh! For what we can call 'radical balance') In the end truth must be "earthed" in terms of translating it into everyday world experience. However, here's the rub: If my learning and teaching is to be authentic it must firstly show itself in my own attitude and behaviour. It's dangerous to be a learning leader! You are called to be an organic audio-visual of what you are teaching. Which is why Paul could boldly expect his disciples to follow him (Phil.4:9).

When the Vanuatu Apostolic Church farewelled us after almost thirteen years of ministry among them, one of their leaders said to me - "When we wanted to know what to do we watched you!" It's as significant as it is sobering: as a leader I have to earth in my own life what I am teaching. Learning without living it is sterile. Living without learning it is futile.

5. I HAD TO GRAFT WHAT I LEARNED

My learning had to be transmitted or transplanted. I had to write it down, craft it into a meaning that was appropriate, then graft it into my people's experience. It became a drafting, crafting, and grafting of what I had learned.

Jesus did just that. He lived it out. He sorted it through. He put it in forms the people would understand (stories and parables), and then skillfully applied it to their everyday social and cultural worlds.

This challenged me to become:

* A perceptive watcher (social and cultural anthropologist) e.g. Paul at Athens Acts 17

* A people collector and mixer (a friendly socialiser especially with non-Christians) e.g. Jesus the "friend of sinners"

* An alert, skilful communicator (not a "spin doctor") e.g. Peter in Acts 2

We learn in order to give away. But we are to give away with competencies that are generated and inspired by the Holy Spirit. The Truth - amazing! - can be most effectively communicated without electronic technology! How? Through a faith-enlivened, and life- enhanced witness in our ordinary, everyday worlds.

6. I HAD TO LEARN FROM EVERYONE

Some of my best teachers never had a formal degree. Or even a formal education. Many of my Vanuatu brothers and sisters - and a range of others from my own land and culture, and other peoples, were "illiterate." My ability to teach was shaped, in part, by a cross-cultural situation in which I was forced to put into the simplest forms the profound truths of the Bible. In their craving for truth these illiterate people taught me how to teach. In pastoral leadership I came to the point where I said to myself: Say it in words and terms that the most un-knowledgeable person can understand. (God is unknowable but He is not beyond knowing). I mothers; craftsmen; school children; editors and writers; journalists; pagans; politicians; great non-Christian leaders; etc.

A French proverb says: When an old person dies a library is burned to the ground. In my first five years of pastoral ministry I spent a large amount of time talking with and listening to older people. (God will hold a nation responsible if they willfully ignore or reject its proven human resources. Sadly, in Australia, "retirement" has become synonymous with "unwanted" or "unrecognised" in many organisations and even churches). "What can this person teach me?" is the question I often ask myself on meeting a stranger.

7. I HAD TO LEARN FROM UNLIKELY, UNFAVOURED TEACHERS

My supervisor apostle in the first five years of my ministry was a man I would not have chosen as a mentor, trainer, or teacher. In fact I was initially disappointed to be under his charge. He was not my kind. I hoped he would change! Guess who changed?! Yes, I came to greatly value the influence he had upon my life, and his special endowments. He put me on trajectories of experience and faith I may not have otherwise traveled.

Moses learned from Jethro. Abraham learned from the Pharaoh and also Abimelech. Israel learned from Balaam. Paul learned from John Mark and Timothy. David learned from Shimei and Abigail. I have learned from speakers and teachers who have been written off by other leaders. Men and women of other denominations and Christian genres have been a wonderful help to me. It can be so humbling but also so instructive! Did God speak to Balaam through a donkey because he was so mulish?! Lesson: Try to decode what God is saying to you through the person you think can't teach you anything.

8. I HAD TO DEVELOP A LIFELONG LEARNING MINDSET

William Carey said, "I'm a plodder." 'Praying Hyde' of India said, "I'm a plodder." The tortoise and hare parable teaches us to go the long haul step by step. Robert Schuller says, "Inch by inch it's a cinch!" Ministry and leadership and teaching is on a day- after-day-after-day-after-day basis. But the learning angle is both upwards and towards a goal (Phil.3)

At every stage, in every year, through each decade in life and ministry we are on a learning trajectory. How can we sustain the experience and maintain the momentum? By the disciplines of prayer and study right through life. It doesn't get easier; it just gets better. Leaders in their fifties and sixties should be nicely matured for post-graduate disciplines. (A man or woman of twenty or twenty five years' experience who wants to "ease up" should do his/her people a favour and leave the ministry).

I was once taught: A leader is a reader; a reader is a leader. In my own journey I have been shaped or taught by people such as: Torrey; Sangster; Luther; Calvin; Schaeffer; Colson; Wigglesworth; Gee; Hudson Taylor; Amy Carmichael; Norman Grubb; C.T.Studd; Jack Hayford; Malcolm Muggeridge; Karl Barth; Charles Finney; Billy Graham; Gordon Lindsay; Leo Harris; William Rowe; William Cathcart; A.L. Greenway; Paul Hiebert; Peter Wagner; Charles Kraft; Bobby Clinton; Lesslie Newbigin; Donald Bloesch; Os Guinness; C.S. Lewis; etc. et al! Hundreds of writers and thinkers. God has enriched me through them. And there's more!

A life-long learning mindset means you will have to press the boundaries and seek new horizons. Why is it that "ageing" has been culturally defined in terms of "taking it easy"? There remain four billion people in this year of 2000 who are not yet converted to the Christian faith. How dare we knowingly slip into sloth and atrophy?!

To use Amy Carmichael's line: "Let me not sink to be a clod, Make me Thy fuel, Flame of God!"

The Scriptures tell us: "the path of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn, shining ever brighter to the full light of day" (Prov.4:18). So also is my need and drive to be a learner. After thirty years of Christian living Paul said, "I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation" (Phil.4:12)

So:

Yearn to learn and discern! Know in order to grow! Live the truth in order to give the truth! Reach for the Word in order to teach the Word! Aspire in order to inspire! Cerebrate, leader cerebrate!

- Paul E. GRANT (2003)

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