Mentoring Lessons- CreativitySample

Get Outside The Walls

Where does most education and training happen? In classrooms and halls. Why?

We arrived on one occasion to find the training room was a long narrow space with 70 chairs packed in tight and no room to move! It was not at all suitable for us. So we did something simple but bold – we decided to take the training outside.

We were pleasantly surprised by the response. The learners were totally engaged and said they had never even thought of doing Bible teaching outside.

This is curious considering that most of the examples we read in the Gospels of Jesus’ teaching are outdoors - on hillsides, beside lakes and in the streets.

It was one of the most joyful, enthusiastic, and beautiful trainings we have done and the start of many more across the country and the world. It was amazing that changing just one aspect of the training, moving outside of the four walls, would be so simple and yet so helpful in enabling people to engage fully.

Our training is very active. We like to move, run experiential activities and drama, and need a good amount of space to do it. We realize it’s important to use multiple intelligences.

Outside training also limits the types of resources we can rely on which prompts creativity. People then go from the training knowing they can reproduce it because we didn’t use lots of technology – instead nature, space, rocks and leaves.

Scripture to ponder –

Mark 1:45b

As a result, Jesus could no longer enter a town openly but stayed outside in lonely places. Yet the people still came to him from everywhere.

Key Lesson: God has given us a wealth of resources outside that point to His Kingdom. It is His own classroom and He invites us all there.