On Tuesday, I had a scheduled phone call with Gailyn Van Rheenen. Gailyn heads up Mission Alive, working with church planting teams. He wanted to share some thoughts on discipling that he thought could be useful to the Cuban church.
Gailyn shared some things he had learned from a book called Building a Discipling Culture by Mike Breen and Steve Cockram. As I reflected over some of what he shared with me, I realized one concept had a lot to say about our topic this week. (Yeah, I know… I should have realized in time to write this post yesterday. So sue me.)
Gailyn talked about four stages in discipleship, which he described as:
- Unconsciously Incompetent: The new convert doesn’t realize all that he doesn’t know. Enthusiasm reigns.
- Consciously Incompetent: Here’s where someone becomes painfully aware of their limitations. It’s at this stage that many reversions occur.
- Consciously Competent: People know how to do what they need to do and tend to be very aware of the process of doing those things.
- Unconsciously Competent: People reach the point where doing what needs to be done becomes second nature.
I’m not sure if that’s an adequate description of those categories, but maybe you get the idea. I can see this applying to some degree to Bible study. There’s the initial stage, the pick up the book and read it stage. “It says what it means and it means what it says.” When growth occurs, people become aware of the fact that Bible study is much more complicated than they thought. For some, the daunting nature of good Bible study will make them throw up their hands in despair; others will be motivated to learn and move on to the next stage. That next stage involves going through the necessary steps of Bible study until they become second nature. That’s the final stage. A man like N.T. Wright may not go through the steps of exegesis that a graduate student goes through, but he uses the concepts and tools because they have become an unconscious part of who he is.
The problem is, we’re afraid to move people to that second step. We know that we needed it in our own lives, that moment of “wow, I don’t know how to do this” that drove us to learn how to study. We know the richness that comes from a deeper study of God’s Word. But we hate to make people realize they don’t know how to study God’s Word. Instead of a necessary step in the maturation process, it feels like arrogance on our part: I know this and you don’t.
We accept it in other fields. Someone may be very good at arithmetic, but they have to accept that their professor knows calculus better than they do. Gifted athletes never reach the highest level until they understand that other people can teach them techniques that will improve their performance.
We also need to remember that the more we learn, the more we realize that we don’t know. I can say, “This isn’t as easy as you might think” because I know what a challenge it is for me. I know how far I have to go, after all these years.
So, to put it bluntly, we can’t be afraid to show people their lack of knowledge… as long as we’re willing to help them learn the skills they need to improve. Maybe we need to spend more time on teaching Bible study skills and hermeneutics and less time presenting pre-processed applications.
What do you think? Does this process make sense, either as a view of the discipling process or the process of learning to study the Bible? Do you agree that we’re afraid to show people the fact that they don’t know how to study the Bible? Do you have any suggestions as to how we help others move along this process and how we further our own progress?
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.
In thinking about how people love “quick and easy” Bible study, as we discussed yesterday, it’s easy to see how an anti-intellectual spirit can grow in our churches.
