Learning in a Christian Community

It’s a new year and I am at the tail end of another course at ACTS Bible College. This time, it is a new compulsory module titled “Learning in Christian Communities”. Going through this course has reaffirmed some of my reflections about my learning journey during my first year at ACTS in 2016.

Coming to Bible College, I sincerely wanted to learn more about Jesus and how we can make him relevant to our world. However, pragmatism kicked in with all the assignments and deadlines. It became my natural instinct to finish the assignments with satisfactory quality, failing to do so I would feel that I have failed the course. However, at the back of my mind I knew that was not true. Being able to do all my assignments well does not indicate that I have actually learnt anything significant; not if I were to measure significance according to God’s standard. If what I learn does not have an impact on the way I think after the module is over, and consequently the way I live and represent the Gospel, then my learning would have gone to waste. On the other hand, it is possible to have life transforming revelations through the module while not doing well for our assignments. Essentially what determines whether we take anything significant away from the module is how much we reflect about the issues surfaced through the module and what they mean for our lives. (Something like what I am doing right now.) Assignments then should thus not be seen as more than means that facilitate this learning process. This creates a second step of learning that occurs outside of the classroom, and is where the real learning begins.

Then comes in the community aspect of learning. Without a community, our learning will always be limited to our own perspective, which can be very limited sometimes. As a learning community we are able to debate and refine our ideas and reflections collectively. A point to note is that people would have different preferences of how they wished to be engaged during this process. In particular, while extroverts in general do not mind engaging in dialogue while their thoughts are being formed, and allow their learning to concretize during conversation itself, introverts very much rather complete their own personal reflection before engaging in any form of dialogue. And I guess this is why hospitality is as important a practice in a learning community as it is in any other type of community. We need to be sensitive to the different ways people prefer to engage in dialogue, make each individual a safe environment to share his or her views without fear of being belittled but instead allow each voice to be treasured and heard. Furthermore, if each view of another is to be considered seriously and not merely listened to, the community needs to be interested to find out where the person is coming from, and each person explaining his viewpoint has to be willing to open up in order to be understood. And while having differences in opinion is never pleasant, resolving them in a hospitable fashion will always lead to a closer community and a wiser community that learns from each other. 

Personally, striving to transform the communities I am in, namely my small group as well as in my secular workplace, into learning communities is something that I am striving towards. And I realize that everyone has different levels of tolerance of engagement in debate. Most people do not wish to expand energy debating things that do not matter to them, while I can sometimes find joy in debating on trivial matters. As such, I think it is important for me to know what the battles worth fighting for in my communities are. What are matters that is important for everyone to agree upon, and what are matters that is more profitable for the community to agree to disagree, to live with our differences.

Out of the four practices of a Christian community mentioned in Christine Pohl’s book, Living into Community, namely gratitude, promise making and keeping, truthful living and hospitality, I found the fourth practice of gratitude most lacking in myself, especially when I think I have given too much and received too little, or when I feel that I have been unjustly treated. Too often I find myself grumbling about trivial things and forget about the good things I have already received, which really include many things I do not deserve. And in addition to having received a lot, I also have a Father who is sovereign over my life. As a person living in grace, I think I ought to be more resilient when unpleasant circumstances occur or when I do not get what I want because what I have at this present moment is better than what I would want for myself. To grow in this area, I will have to slow down now and listen to his still, soft voice that assures me that I am exactly where He needs me to be.