Content and process

It seems to me that there are two sides to our teaching and training in the church. The first is content, the substance of the faith. The other one is process, what we do as followers of Jesus.

Most of the material that I've seen for people that are just beginning their Christian life is focused on content,  with questions like: Who is this God, who is man and who is Jesus Christ, just to mention a few. Laid out according to varying ways of learning, naturally. Some has been plain books, perhaps with a study guide after each chapter (does anyone ever use these?), some are more fill in the blanks stuff, some are group material, other individual. But they are geared to get as much content into the heads as possible.

The supposition is, probably: "If they understand it, they will do it." The teachers dream world naturally :-)

Now I like teaching, reading and all that. I'm a content kind of guy. I really wish that the world would work in the above way. In that way we could just make a better power-point, use a better illustration, or even use drama, art and music to transfer our content in a more effective or impacting way.

But it doesn't seem to be like that. It seems to me that the key questions for a dynamic Christian life does not depend on content. What really changes your life in the long run is learning some key processes. The How-to-questions. To do certain things.

What really changes your life in the long run is learning some key processes.

For example: prayer. Very important. A key feature of a life with God. The traditional approach aims at content: What to believe about prayer, foundations in Scripture, promises, various forms of petitions etc. All very valid. However, these days it seems to me that the the key questions about prayer is not the theological ones, but the "how"-questions. How do I pray? What does it feel like? What do I do with the stream of thoughts in my head? Is my attitude OK? Questions like these are not aimed at content, what to believe, but at process, how do I do it. And in the long run, if I don't learn the process of praying, the content won't help me. We could go on, forgiveness, Bible reading, service, all important areas where the key factor in the long run is process, not content.

So what am I learning from this? To balance content and process, but to prioritise process. I believe as well that over-teaching is harmful in the long run. It dulls us and makes us feel like we already know things, and worse, that we already practise things. So I will aim at practise, do things with people and try to restrain my content-side a bit.