Archive for the ‘Learning’ Category

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Love Language of Receiving

January 20, 2015

He then realized that his wife’s “love language” was receiving. So he decided to give her something every day for a week, and then to give her something every week for a year.

John Ortberg mentioned as an example this story from a book called “Five Love Languages” or something like that. Disclaimer: I have not read the book.

But that example really threw me. A love language of receiving? I suppose that everyone likes to receive a gift. Even me, although I have few wants or needs. But, as a way of life?!

I have another word or two for that “language” or life attitude. Spoiled. Self-centered. Self-absorbed.

Maybe I’ve taken the illustration too far. Maybe there is a nuance I missed or that Ortberg didn’t mention.

It seems to me through observation and reading that one of the major problems of our times–and this isn’t only America–is just that self-absorption or self-centeredness. I’m amazed at the number of times in a day I can observe examples of people thoughtlessly unaware of others around them. (Oh, and you can tell a self-centered person by asking them–they’ll think that there is nothing wrong in the example I just cited.)

But there is a spiritual gift, agape, that entails giving. I don’t know what we learned about the wife, really, from Ortberg’s example. It is obvious that at least one person made the leap from self-centered to thinking of someone else.

For that, the apostle Paul would rejoice. He taught that many times.

Receive as a blessing; give to be a blessing.

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Posted in Compassion, Learning, Service | 3 Comments »

Master The Art of Storytelling

January 8, 2015

When Jesus wanted to make a point, he told a story.

Yes, sometimes he did “wisdom” teaching putting a new twist on sayings from Proverbs. What you remember most are his stories. The lost coin. The lost son. The lost sheep.

There are people who bludgeon you with facts or “you should” statements. But if they would simply share their story, it would be more effective.

In my profession, I write a lot of “factual” stuff. News and analysis in the world of technology, manufacturing, automation. Yesterday, I was interviewing someone about a survey they had completed. They had sent a news release and I printed it with some commentary and analysis.

But while I was talking with Linda, she told the story about why they do these particular surveys, who the people are they talk with, how they collect the information. Then she told the story of three business owners/managers. The deeper she got into the story, the more interesting it was.

Part of the survey news was that a majority of owners and managers (perhaps almost all) of small manufacturing businesses believe that “millennials” have poor work habits and motivation. Most were “baby boomers” but one was Gen X–the so-called “slackers”. Go figure. People originally thought boomers would never work out. We were too self-centered and pampered. Remember that?

Well, we got to stories of owners who were doing something about the skill shortage and need to recruit engineers and skilled trades people. That is interesting.

I will follow up with more interviews and write the stories on my business blog, The Manufacturing Connection.

I am by nature and training analytical. So this blog is mostly analytical. Maybe a skill for me to hone this year is story telling. Maybe that would be a good skill for you to develop this year. Telling a story to make your point may be more persuasive and interesting than acting like Sgt. Friday–“Just the facts, Ma’am.”

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Teach Your Children Well

October 9, 2014

OK, so the song by Crosby, Stills and Nash is one of my favorites (although I never got the sheet music and added it to my repertoire). In this 60s song, one verse says parents teach your children well; then in typical fashion for the times, it flips it over and tells the children to teach your parents well.

This week my travels took me again to Orlando and another engineering conference. A friend of mine put together a session on transferring engineering and process knowledge from the aging baby boomers to the new millennial generation. His co-presenter was not only young but also female. She has a BS degree in Chemical Engineering, is 29, and a staff engineer for Eastman Chemicals Co.

Their topic was learning styles.

Collaboration. Younger people are much more collaborative than we were when I was learning engineering. We were given tasks by the almighty and all knowing manager, and we went out to do them. Because knowledge is more easily found on the Web, young people don’t look to their superiors (organizationally speaking) as the fount of all possible knowledge. They look at them as mentors and coaches who collaborate with them and teach how to approach problems.

New data sources. They have books on iPads, smart phones to look up things on the Web and to text peers to find answers to questions.

Conclusions. What surprised me in the session which was well attended by a mixture of ages was the attitude of several of the older engineers. “Well, if they get all knowledge from the Web, will they have any depth? Any problem-solving skills?”

In this case, they all have college engineering degrees. An engineering degree is primarily a course of study on problem solving. Depth comes through experience. If the guy would mentor a young person, then growth happens.

So, I’m thinking about this paradigm in relation to other organizations. I’m not a youth pastor, but are they able to incorporate this collaborative learning style and mentoring capability? Today’s crop of younger pastors tend to be more “teachers” than “preachers.” People don’t like to be preached at, but most people enjoy learning new ideas.

The weird thing is that even though I am technically a “boomer,” I’ve never felt like one. I’m much more at home with the style and thinking of the millennials. I hope more people of my generation can adapt and help bring the new generation along–whether it’s engineering or become a disciple of Jesus.

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Twisting Scripture To Fit Our Ideas

August 29, 2014

It is not a new idea–picking out phrases from Spiritual writing and twisting them to suit an individual’s point of view.

I remember reading John Calhoun and other early 19th century writers using Scripture to justify slavery and treating black people as not human. Just so, there are people still today who do the same thing regarding women. That would be Christians–not just Muslims.

But way back in the beginning of our faith, Peter writing to the churches says

So also our beloved brother Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, speaking of this as he does in all his letters. There are some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures.

Peter calls these people “ignorant” and “unstable.” He has been criticizing those who perverted the teachings by preaching a gospel of sexual license and straying from holiness and the teaching of Jesus.

Peter says that we should wait out the coming of the new heaven and new earth while striving to be found by God to be at peace, without spot or blemish.

Like I said yesterday, my rather superficial reading of Paul in my youth led me to conclusions that were wrong. I am blessed with a personality that enables me to change when I discover new facts. I’ve learned much more about Paul and discovered he has much to teach us.

Just quit picking up odd phrases and building a theology and political philosophy around them. Paul says we are all equal before God–equally sinners and equally provided grace if we should so choose.

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How To Come to Understand Righteousness

August 28, 2014

We find in Proverbs 2:

making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding

leads to:

For The Lord gives wisdom; from his mouth comes knowledge and understanding;

concluding:

Then you will understand righteousness and justice and equity, every good path;

This is like one of those “if…then” statements in computer programming. Only in this case, it is God teaching us about our programming.

If we tune into God, because God gives wisdom, knowledge, and understanding, then we will understand.

Henry Cloud, speaking last Sunday at Willow Creek Community Church, told a story about “Joey” and his dad.

Seems dad owns a very large business. He is thinking about succession planning and wants Joey to take over. But Joey doesn’t seem to have the fire in him to run a big company. Dad wanted to keep on providing experiences for Joey in the hopes that he might eventually catch on. Henry told dad, the fire must come from Joey. It can’t come from dad, or anyone else.

God is that way. He is always out there ready for us. But we must be the ones to catch on and ask.

If we tune in to God. How do we do that? First we decide. We’ll do a 15-minute “chair time” with God, reading from the Bible and listening for what God is saying. Then we find a small group of like-minded people with whom to share. That would be a great start.

Oh–a forewarning to you poor readers. I just got my sweaty little hands on 1,500 pages of N.T. Wright’s “Paul and The Faithfulness of God.”

In my college years while full of the liberalism of the time, I had great dislike for Paul and his supposed dislike of women and his preaching conformity to the state. (Hey, it was the late 60s. Need I say more?)

Over the years, I’ve come to appreciate Paul greatly. I can look beyond all the vast misinterpretations that have been spouted as theology. Romans is the greatest spiritual formation book I’ve ever read.

So, there will be more of Paul to come.

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Posted in Disciplines, Faith, Learning | 1 Comment »

Get Connected To The Outside System

August 27, 2014

Successful, or as the Bible says “fruitful”, people have the ability to see the patterns in their lives that don’t work. They go through the door and leave those old patterns behind to “Never Go Back” and get caught up in them. So says  Henry Cloud in his new book.

This morning as I was about to post to this blog, I had no connection to the Internet. I was cut off from the outside world, so to speak. I couldn’t post. I couldn’t check news. I couldn’t see what happened to all the soccer games where I’m responsible for the officials. I was disconnected. My post would be late–way late.

Let me tie these two thoughts together.

People get into a pattern of behavior. The pattern becomes hard wired in the brain. But…it is possible to change the pattern. You do have to go outside the pattern.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that  in a closed system chaos will occur. So, we need to become an open system to go beyond ourselves. We need to get connected to God. Then we can intentionally begin to develop new patterns to replace the old ones.

And that is just what successful/fruitful people do. They go out of the door and Never Go Back to the old, unsuccessful pattern.

This all leads me to some deep meditation, though. Several times in my life I have gone into business with men who were openly Christian. You know, they always  talk about it, they have tracts laying out, talk of going to church meetings, and so forth.

Every one of them owes me money. Every one of them backed out on his word. That’s a pattern.

Now, I’m about to make an investment into a company with avowedly Christian people.

Am I about to fall into the old pattern?

I think not. This time I have done much more due diligence. This time I have taken months to understand the situation. This time I think I got connected.

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Seek Out Advisors

August 13, 2014

If you are the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.

Yesterday afternoon I was at a table in the local Tim Horton’s drinking my tea and researching for an article. A couple of young women were talking at the table beside me. One of them had a problem, and I guess I looked sympathetic or something. So, they turned and asked my “advice” about it. They are college students making major decisions and buffeted by conflicting desires and forces.

Then they told me they were “Millennials”. I never get a chance to talk with that demographic (as marketers would call it), so I asked what defined a Millennial. And I learned something.

My orientation toward life is one of always trying to learn something new. And I’m interested in a lot of things. In this case, these young women were smarter than I about what it means to be 20 today. And they were articulate. In fact, they seemed normal in every way, but they blew away the stereotype. Just giving them the ability to be heard allowed them to teach me things.

The phrase I opened with has popped up in a couple of leadership books I have read recently. It makes a lot of sense.

Do you know everything? Or, try to show everyone that you know everything?

Has that ever cost you the chance to learn something new?

Do you surround yourself with people who can’t (or won’t) teach you anything new?

I attend a small study group early Tuesday mornings when I’m in town. Every one of the men in the group has a different education and strength. After an hour of discussing the book we’re reading, I come away with many new insights.

One of those twisted phrases attributed to baseball player and coach Yogi Berra goes, “You can hear a lot just by listening.”

He was right. Surround yourself with people smarter than you and then listen to them.

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Kindle a Fire in Your Mind

May 7, 2014

“The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.” – Plutarch

I have seen variations of this quote from other ancient philosophers–you know, those who sought wisdom instead of argument like most today.

We treat education in all of its forms from school education to Christian education to sometimes even those cool (you’d think) robotic and engineering competition teams for youth all as filling the empty minds of the student. Except that the minds are not usually empty. They are full of something. I spent most of my elementary school daydreaming in class. I picked the subject up quickly and then I was bored. As a result I view school as boring.

Learning, on the other hand, is something that excites me. I’m getting older now and still live with curiosity and a passion to continue learning.

When we teach others–youth or adults–are we trying to kindle the fire for learning more and deeper about the subject? Or, are we merely trying to get them to repeat what we said?

I just spent an entire day with a couple of consultants in a small segment of manufacturing. I may not have agreed with everything they said, but their passion for their subject was undeniable. And it transferred to a few others in the room for whom this topic was new. That’s cool.

We were talking about going to conferences where we saw who the speaker was and where he/she was from and really looking forward to it. Then the speaker read PowerPoint slides without much emotion. How disappointing.

Let’s pray that when we are teaching others about important things, whether formally or informally, that we exhibit some passion so that we transfer that enthusiasm to the student. In that way we can kindle the fire for learning in the next generation.

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Why Do We Feel The Need To Know the Future

April 24, 2014

Why is it that humans keep reaching for a sense of certainty in a life that has always been quite uncertain? We want to know the future. But even today’s most sophisticated computer models can’t tell us with certainty what the weather will be next week.

Even so, there are people who study the Bible looking for hints of the future. It gets so bad that there was a guy I heard about in the 70s who had figured out the size of the “New Jerusalem” and the cubic feet of gold as described in John’s Revelation and the weight of that amount of gold and multiplied by the price of gold to figure out the US Dollar value of that gold. I was so put off by how much that person (and the people who spouted that off as if it meant something) missed the spiritual point, that I still remember the episode.

I didn’t want to write about Revelation. But the small study group I attend is still in the book. It’s still on my mind.

There are many interpretations of the meaning of the writing. Several interpretations hold that it is an actual description of historical events to come. Even though God is explicit in his condemnation of fortune telling–predicting the future. (My interpretation, picked up from some of the early Church Fathers–who, by the way didn’t agree not only on the interpretation of the book but on whether to even include it in the official canon for teaching–is that it “describes” events that have already happened. Its focus is on the horrors of Rome, the destruction of the Temple, and how God’s people will triumph because God has already won the war.)

Don’t bother trying to argue the points with me. I don’t care. Someone in the group asked why our church doesn’t teach from the book. Well, I don’t teach from it. I can understand others.

The purpose of study is to learn how to live a life that’s pleasing to God–the with-God life. If a writing is so open to conjecture and argument, how can we learn from it? Paul condemned idle argumentation. I go with him.

Jesus said, “Follow me.” He said the Kingdom of God was there. I’m with him.

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How Did You Get Where You Are

March 31, 2014

Are you doing now what you thought you’d be when you started out?

I loved science as a kid. Electronics, especially, fascinated me. I learned about circuits. I learned math that was way beyond what they were teaching in school. Enough so, that I always tested well in standardized tests on math. I learned a lot of science that is still with me.

This was all outside of school. I think I learned some things in school, but to this day most of my education is outside the walls of Academe. (Note to educators 😉

Writing always had an attraction to me. So, after working in engineering-related jobs for many years, I started writing (which requires thinking, by the way).

Jesus, John, Peter and the rest of the original group must have been somewhat similar. They were very smart, and they knew a lot. But several times in the Gospel accounts they are referred to as “uneducated.” I think that is because they were educated outside of the “Ivy League” of the day. They weren’t part of the establishment.

As an aside, I looked into studying in a seminary a long time ago. It wasn’t attractive. The course of study was weird to me. And, I viewed it as just an apprenticeship toward getting into the “club” so to speak–being an official pastor. Not an attractive option to me then–or now.

Take a look at John, whose Gospel I’m studying right now. He wrote in Greek. His logic is somewhat complex. I think the same person wrote the Gospel, the three letters and the Revelation because the logic is the same and the vision is consistent–although you can see growth.

John probably came from a wealthy family. Learned the family trade of fishing. Became an intimate disciple of Jesus. Became a leader of the early movement. Probably Peter being the organizer and John being the intellectual visionary. Then he moved to Ephesus and taught a community. Was exiled to an island. And became a writer.

I think what John did was a mixture of intentionally learning and following the proddings of God. I think that’s how I’ve wound up where I am.

So, how did you get where you are? There is, of course, still time to follow the little whispers of God suggesting things you should be learning and doing.

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