I mentioned at the close of yesterday’s blog that maybe one reason we don’t know about Loyalty Day is that “telling is not teaching.” The law might be on the books, but if no one is paying attention…

I was forcibly reminded a few days ago that telling is not teaching when I sat in on a web-based “training” from Mathematica, a high-end, very powerful mathematics program. I bought it several years ago, thinking it might help me in some of my data analysis projects, and I’ve used it “a little,” but not enough to take advantage of its power. So I thought the online seminar “Quick Start to Wolfram Tech” might help.

I was wrong. The lecturer (I use that word deliberately: it was a lecture, not a “training”) had sent us some Mathematica notebooks in advance, and he just stepped through them. Rapid fire. We hardly had time to even see what he had done before he was on to the next thing. And when he finally got to the third notebook, the one that might have had some useful tools in it, the one he had sent us was not the one he was using! Someone tried to tell him that, but he didn’t understand and kept right on going.

It would have been way more effective if he had covered (I use the word loosely) 1/3 or 1/4 of what he had raced through and spent more time on each part.

We in the church are often guilty of the same thing. A pastor friend of mine told me confidently that most of his people were having daily time with God: “I preach about it at least once a year.” Telling is not teaching.

Way back in the 1920s, Bishop Roland Allen of the Anglican Church wrote a provocative book Missionary Methods, St Paul’s or Ours? One of the methods he decried was his tradition’s around-the-calendar schedule for teaching major concepts over a 3-year period. The problem, as he saw it, was that a concept would be introduced, and a couple of weeks later, the church would be on to something else with no regard as to whether the people understood anything. Bishop Allen said something like, “You wouldn’t experience that too many times before you conclude that if church leadership had wanted us to understand that concept, they would have spent more time on it. Since they don’t, people conclude that they’re not supposed to understand.” Telling is not teaching.

Listening is not learning. A couple of years ago, I was working through applications of five sessions I had taught to the high school and college staff of Spring Canyon. When we got to the one on generational disciple-making, I realized that when I said “disciple-making” they heard “evangelism.” For kids that have grown up in conservative churches, this is understandable. They’ve been encouraged to “do evangelism,” but many have never seen relational disciple-making modeled, so despite what I thought were clear explanations, they weren’t making the distinction. Listening is not learning.

Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it. (Matthew 7.24 – 27, ESV)

But the word of the LORD was unto them precept upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little. (Isaiah 28.13, KJV)

Nevertheless, in church I would rather speak five words with my mind in order to instruct others, than ten thousand words in a tongue. (1 Corinthians 14.19, ESV)

Or, as an old Air Force master sergeant from the hills of Kentucky used to say, “Write to express, not to impress.” I came away from the Mathematica seminar impressed…but untrained.