What was the most formative teacher or educational experience you had? If you think back, what made that event or that person effective in forming the person you’ve become today? Or, to put it another way, what makes education effective in a formational sense?
I’ve just finished reading Charles Duhigg’s latest book, Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Communication. The subtitle is clearly crafted to sell copies of the book, but the content on communication is fascinating to me, largely because I love to be able to communicate well with others. Duhigg’s book is filled with social scientific research, psychology, and communication studies, presented in a highly readable, journalistic style. His knack for writing comes across in how he’s able to quickly and clearly offer categories for complex concepts.
The implications for anyone involved in working with other people or organizational leadership are everywhere. It’s the kind of book that would help pastors, church leaders, managers, and the like. The educational benefits, however, struck me about halfway through the book. It was there that opens a conversation about approaching conversations while giving attention to feelings. Humans, he reminds us, are wired for connections, and our emotions often drive connection. And so, if you want to make stronger connections with others, don’t ignore the emotional component of communication.
One good way to do this is to transform shallow questions into deep ones. Rather than asking where someone lives, for example, ask them what they most like about their neighborhood. Surface-level questions about what someone does for a living can be deepened by an adjustment: “What was your favorite job?” These are the kinds of questions that go deeper, giving someone the ability to quickly reveal more about their feelings and commitments. Now we’re talking. These are the kinds of conversations that can become transformative.
The work of the church and the work of educational communities are both meant to be transformational. It’s probably why I love working in those spaces so much. At their heart, the academy and the church are invested in transformation of people and communities. I wonder if these kinds of questions might help us in that work.
In the western culture, both belief and knowledge tend to be understood in non-emotional terms. At church, we might ask about what we believe, and that often means an idea that we are committed to uphold. Knowledge – the kind we pick up through education – is often understood similarly: “Just give me the information I need,” we might think during a class we are taking. I tend to see this show up when students arrive at a university after having been formed by PowerPoint decks of content or ‘study guides’ that are essentially lists of answers to the exam that will measure whether they memorized those facts. But how can any of that be transformational?
As I consider which educational experiences and educators that have been most transformational in my life, they are the ones that haven’t shied away from the emotion. Maybe the same is true for you, too. Educators who aided in transformation were the ones who asked questions about me, and who were a bit vulnerable with those entrusted to their care. They were the people I connected with and trusted.
Several years ago, it became clear that the graduate programs in theology we offered at the university where I serve were in need of revisioning. The program had been built on the model of adult education that said that shorter courses kept students more engaged. They were, according to the prevailing wisdom, more likely to complete courses if they were shorter, leaving less room for life circumstances to rise up and present insurmountable challenges. The trouble was that faculty had grown weary of teaching and students in the program seemed to be less engaged. We started to dream about programs that would be life-giving for students and faculty alike. We asked a lot of questions and dug into a lot of research. One of the primary things we found is that if we wanted to offer transformational education, we were going to need to connect with students better. We were going to need to foster deeper relationships, and that meant we were going to have to question one of the pillars of adult education: shorter courses are better.
We designed new programs that engage theology, biblical studies, church, and community that emphasize connection. While they are still online, we now include weekly video conference sessions where we can see one another’s faces and hear one another’s voices. It’s more time-consuming for faculty and students alike, but it’s also far more transformational, because it allows us to convey emotion, embracing how humans are actually formed and transformed. These sessions are also what the students say they appreciate the most about the program.
In theological education, the importance of this cannot be overstated. Theological education is far more than offering interesting historical facts or offering hermeneutical strategies (though this is part of it!). Theological formation deals with matters closest to the core of the human heart. It touches on the most deeply-held convictions a person has, convictions that make sense out of their lives and motivate their actions. If we are going to have any hope of transformation, that is going to take trust, commitment, connection, and time. That simply couldn’t be done in intentionally short courses where the students watched lectures, but had no facetime with the professor. We’ve rewired for connection and it’s made a lot of difference.
It’s also allowed us to talk in more depth about difficult and complex issues, and to ask how the gospel is working in the middle of some of our world’s most pressing concerns. These are uncomfortable topics that generate hard conversations, but we cannot shy away from them. We need to, rather, learn how to have these conversations in better, grace-filled ways. Not everyone agrees on the issues or even how the gospel is working in the middle of them, of course, but we do have an opportunity to hear from one another, and to be transformed by those connections.
This is nothing new to Wesleyans, of course. Part of what John Wesley saw when he began his work in England was that transformation is going to call for putting people together, giving them questions to foster a connection, and to dig deep together. In theological terminology, this is a means of grace, the grace that leads to transformation.
Similar dynamics are at work in the church, too. In many congregations, we’ve adopted models of formation that we’ve picked up at school. We teach content, we offer lessons – largely presented much like the content we’d pick up in a class at a school or university. When I sit in on various classes in my congregation, though, I see something else happening. It usually comes before the lesson: a time of sharing concerns with one another. We voice them as requests for prayer, which is good, but consider the vulnerability that comes with voicing the things we long for most. I think this is more than an opportunity to gossip wrapped in a veneer of piety. It’s making deep emotional connection with those in the class, which is how human beings tend to experience transformation.
Whether your work is primarily in the church or an educational institution, or both, how might we be sure that emotion becomes a friend to us in the journey of transformation? For me, I know I will start paying more careful attention to the kinds of questions I ask students, and create more time for us to connect around their answers. I’ll be considering how to move away from surface questions replace them with deepening inquiries. I’ll risk being a bit more vulnerable. And maybe, somewhere down the line, those adjustments may help someone have a transformational educational experience.
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