Learning Something New

John, my 24-year-old son, is teaching me guitar.  We had our second lesson a couple of days ago.

In lesson one, John taught me four chords.  I practiced those same four chords over and over.  My fingertips ached.  It wasn’t very exciting.

Then came the second lesson.  I learned a strum pattern.  First, the rhythm, then how to hold the pick.  Over and over I tried.

All of a sudden it came together.  The four chords had arisen from my boring repetition.  Combined with the strum pattern – voila, music!  I threw myself onto the couch with a shout of sheer joy.

What happened?  I learned something new, something I wanted to learn, which felt good, real good.  I asked John how he felt as he saw me overcome.  “I don’t know that I experienced the same level of emotion that you have, but there is a feeling of exhilaration when you teach someone and they get it.”

You might think I bring this up to encourage you to learn something new.  That is part of the reason.  Sports Ministry has all kinds of challenges that push us into new environments that we may or may not enthusiastically embrace.  If you fight that pull as you survey the opportunities and challenges on your horizon, remember this joy – the joy of learning something new.  It is there, but it may take some time to experience like it did for me.

While this is true, the main reason I bring this up is to encourage you to help others experience this joy.  Developing people is a very important but often neglected aspect of Sports Ministry.  One of the many reasons for this reality is the false belief that people really don’t want to be stretched.  When we forget the joy of learning something new, we might believe that if we offer to help people learn something, they won’t be interested.

So let’s remember this joy and let it fuel our movement into either learning something new ourselves or helping someone else do the same.

[Image courtesy of evilmutent]