EXPERIENCE: Character Quality # 21

Experiential learning is the process of making meaning from direct experience.  Aristotle said, "For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them."

Mark 6:6-13                   Then Jesus went around teaching from village to village.  Calling the Twelve to him, he sent them out two by two and gave them authority over evil spirits.   These were his instructions: "Take nothing for the journey except a staff — no bread, no bag, no money in your belts.  Wear sandals but not an extra tunic. Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you leave that town. 11 And if any place will not welcome you or listen to you, shake the dust off your feet when you leave, as a testimony against them."  They went out and preached that people should repent. They drove out many demons and anointed many sick people with oil and healed them.

Why did Jesus choose this time for experiential learning?  Look at the verses just before sending them, out.  He wanted his disciples to grow their faith and the only way would be through experiential learning.

According to David Kolb, an American educational theorist, knowledge is continuously gained through both personal and environmental experiences.  He states that in order to gain genuine knowledge from an experience, certain abilities are required:

1)     the learner must be willing to be actively involved in the experience;

2)     the learner must be able to reflect on the experience;

3)     the learner must possess and use analytical skills to conceptualize the experience;

4)     the learner must possess decision making and problem solving skills in order to use the new ideas gained from the experience.

      James 2:26     As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.

 I see John Mark as a great example of an experiential learner.  He watched and heard in his own home the things of Jesus, he was in the garden, he went on a missionary journey with Paul, he failed, he was reconciled, he wrote a gospel.  Can you think of others from scripture who really learned by experience?  How so?

          How has experience taught you about your Christian Faith – your life with Jesus?