Testing the Techniques

This morning I spoke at a Christian, residential drug & alcohol rehab facility. I used this as my first opportunity to try out the Whole Person/Whole Brain Teaching techniques in a group. With thirteen men present, one had to pair up with my wife Laura.

I started by introducing them to the "Class!/Yes!" and "Teach!/Okay!" responses. They got this very well and needed only a little practice. I also taught them a response that I made up for whenever I quoted Scripture: "Hear the Word of the Lord/Speak, Lord, your servant hears." (More on this in another post)

Some of the men have come from Christian backgrounds, while others have not. In either case, I wanted to give them something that would help them when they left the home to rejoin society. Therefore, I spoke to them about the place of daily prayer and Bible reading in their walk with God.

Here's the simple outline, without all the Whole Person techniques:

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Discipleship: Prayer, Bible Reading & Obedience

1) To be a disciple you must not only believe, but follow and obey Jesus.

Matthew 9:9 - As Jesus passed by from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax collection office. He said to him, "Follow me." He got up and followed him.

Matthew 28:19-20 - Go and disciple all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things, whatever I commanded you. And, behold, I am with you all the days until the end of the world. Amen.

2) The best way to follow and obey is to pray and read your Bible every day.

I Thessalonians 5:17 - Pray without stopping.

John 5:39 - In this scripture, Jesus says, Search the Scriptures . . . these are they which testify of Me.

3) You also need to ask questions about what you read that will help you see how God wants you to change the way you think and the way you live.

i) What does this passage tell me about the character of God?

ii) Does this passage teach me a good thing to imitate? Does it teach me a bad thing to avoid?

iii) If I really believe this passage is God's truth, how should my life change?

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On the way home, Laura and I evaluated this new -- or at least, new to us -- method.

1. On the minus side, some of the men who had been there a only few days still had to cope with foggy brains and had a hard time with these "strange" procedures. On the plus side, they did not give up, even one man who got pretty frustrated.
2. No one fell asleep. I've had men fall asleep on me before, and I expect this because at first they spend sleepless nights coming off drugs/alcohol plus facing issues of conscience. Today I had full attention and full participation.
3. Even though some did not perform perfectly, by and large, they seemed to enjoy themselves. Teaching accompanied by an emotional response tends to stick in the memory better.
4. The one man who spent the whole time in frustration came up to me afterwards and said, "I've been here eight days, and I'm lost." Now, I'm pretty sure by "lost' he meant confused rather than unsaved, but I'm sure both meanings applied to him. 

I prayed with him, asking God's grace to open his mind and heart to the Word, to give him focus and understanding." If you're a believer reading this, take a moment to pray for Steve. I know he hears the Gospel daily at Home With a Heart. What he needs is the quickening power of the Holy Spirit.

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.