Thursday, January 24, 2013

Continuing to Learn

As a pastor, whether in a youth pastor, associate, solo, or senior pastor role, I have always tried to maintain an attitude that I always need to learn new skills, and develop new streams of knowledge that relate to ministry as a part of my job.

For a while, I worked really hard at developing technological knowledge. I tried to do things like understand social networking, learn how to use Youtube, find ways to record my sermon with a voice recorder and then upload them to the computer, and more. This was important in Fowler, where in many ways I felt like I was a little bit in a "Fowler bubble", isolated from much of what was going on in the rest of the world.



The last few years, I have attempted to understand more about the purpose, the development, and the creation of liturgical resources. Since this church is more into that kind of thing that any other I have served, it seemed an appropriate time to learn. So, I began to study concepts on how to organize worship. And even today, I learned how to craft a "Great Thanksgiving" style of communion. I did not create the words myself, but I went through a process where I picked from options from each element of this kind of service, and learned how to put them together in a way that seems nice, at least to me.

I think it is important, no matter what job you are in, to keep on track with learning new ideas, new skills, and new ways of doing things. There are times when people can get stuck on autopilot for months or even years in their jobs. This does not just keep them on a plateau, it guarantees that this person is falling further and further behind their peers in understanding their work every day.

What things do you continue to learn in your line of work? What learning projects do you have in front of you in your life? If you are on "stand still", how can you kickstart your mind and your efforts to grow and learn in new ways?

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