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Thursday, April 30, 2015

Whole Person Discipleship

Did you know that the word soul as used in the Hebrew Scriptures often refers to the whole person? Consider Genesis 2:7 where you can see that body + breath (spirit) of life = soul.

And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. 

Keep that in mind as you read the following passage.

Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. Deuteronomy 6:4-8

Although I have seen this scripture applied to both Christian schools and home education, too often, I have failed to see the text fully implemented by teachers or parents in an educational context. The Reason?

We have inherited from the ancient Greeks a cognitive model of learning. In contrast, look at the total involvement of parent/teacher and student/disciple modeled in Deuteronomy 6: sitting, walking, lying down, and rising up.

Thus, when we engage our student-disciples on spiritual, emotional and physical levels in addition to the mental, we will find that two things happen. 1) Boredom evaporates as they fully involve themselves in the process, and 2) they LEARN as they assimilate your teaching into the totality of their experience.

In future posts, I want to explore how to use Whole Brain Teaching as one tool to achieve your goal of Whole Person Discipleship.



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