Handout
Click here to view: Things to Consider when Learning the Sources
Transcript
[Tape begins after Mike has already begun speaking.]
MIKE: . . . Why don’t pirates take a shower before they walk the plank? Because they just wash up on shore! [Laughter, groans in the audience.] Ah, I live on groans! That was wonderful. [Laughter.] This talk is brief. It’s on learning the sources. So, you might have your “Sources” book with you; I’ll refer to that if it’s handy. Don’t worry if you don’t have it on you.
So how do I help the people that I am mentoring learn the sources? Many people have a way of learning that works for them, and that is great. This talk is for anyone that you are helping who doesn’t have a way and wants some help, or tips. Some of the people you’re working with haven’t studied anything in a long time. Some don’t read, or listen to audio recordings. So we’re not trying to get everyone to learn the same way. We want to help people learn the way they want to learn.
That said, many of us are like Saint Paul, who—and we don’t do what we want to do. An Action student once said, “I want to learn how to play an instrument, but I just sit on my beanbag chair.” [Laughter.] His problem wasn’t just laziness; there’s lots of obstacles to overcome if you want to learn an instrument. You have to pick which one to start with, out of the many choices. Then you have to figure out how to acquire the instrument you want to learn. And then you need a plan: “Am I gonna just watch YouTube videos? Am I gonna hire an instructor?”
Whether we’re learning an instrument or the sources, it helps to come up with a plan. There’s a surprising number of decisions. And each decision can become like a little “speed bump.” And if you’ve ever been in a car, an automatic car that’s moving forward on its own impulse, and—if it hits a speed bump, it just stops. It doesn’t have enough “oomph” to get over. So, someone who’s highly motivated to learn the sources, they’re gonna figure it out. But someone who’s, you know, not hitting the gas or the brakes: if they hit a little speed bump. . . . They’re willing to keep going, but any choice could become a speed bump that stops them in their tracks. So, we’d like to help find ways to lower those speed bumps, to help them out.
So, what are some of the decisions that you can make ahead of time to help reduce those speed bumps? Well, there’s a variety of areas to look at. One is the time: when and how long—this is gonna be in a worksheet you’ll get, so you don’t have to write it down. Another is where: what’s the location? Is there a good environment to learn in? And then there’s the choice about listening or reading, paper or electronic. And then, if you want to read, what are your options for doing that? Do I— if it’s—for me, I know that I need to underline it. It’s gotta be paper so I can mark it up. For someone else, it’s gotta be electronic, so they have it with ’em. So we just want to help each person figure out what will work for them.
So, I’m gonna—I’ll go through each of those categories in a little bit more detail. So, a time. It helps ahead of time to know that taking notes requires time. I’ve found—if I think, yeah, I have 15 minutes to learn a source, I pick a 15-minute talk, I listen to it—and then I don’t have time to take any notes on it; I wind up having forgotten it later on. Last week I was driving the car; I was listening to a talk—I listen to talks while I drive—I think I was 10 minutes in before I realized “I listened to this last week!” [Mike and all laugh.] It was like, I finally hit a story that I recognized. But it’s [sic] because I hadn’t taken any notes and so. . . . I have found for myself, when I don’t take notes, a lot of things slip through my fingers.
For some people, it’s not a matter of just finding—for some people, we can help them find a spot in their schedule, a time of day that works. But there’s gonna be other people who don’t have a spot in their schedule. It just is full. And the only way that they’ll be able to do any studying will be if they make room. So, we might have to help people have conversations with their spouses about how to rearrange their schedule, or put something that’s important aside for a couple months to do this, if they want to.
And then there’s location for studying. It does help to have a good place that works. YOu know, I find my office is too distracting, because it’s calling to me with things to do. And the sofa is too comfortable. It calls me in a different direction. [Laughter in the audience.] But that one wicker chair with a cup of coffee, that works. I once read a biography of a—he’s a medical doctor, who said when he was a kid he was home-schooled and he did all of his homework in a tree. That worked for him. So, the right environment can make all the difference.
So then there’s the question of listening, or reading, or some combination. The person can decide ahead of time; they know they want to read, so they decide, Do I want to print it out on paper? Do I want to buy that binder that they’ve just made? Do I want to print out some specific talks so that they’re at my house, and when the window [of time] opens up, they’re right there waiting for me? That’s a speed bump that’s just been reduced. One person I talked to said she also listens while she drives. But then to take notes, she’ll listen to it again at 1.5 speed [at a faster speed], and take notes then. I thought that was a nice solution.
Then, the next—another obst- —category is supplies: thinking through, What supplies do I need to have at hand? Whether it’s printing . . . but also there’s the notebook. Where do I want to have—keep the notebook, so that I can look at it when I need to? If you’re like me, sometimes I’ve been in a position where I have a 15-minute window. I want to listen to something. And it takes me too long to pick what to listen to. And the window is gone, so I miss the chance. But someone pointed out to me, in the journal that we have, the front page—the front three pages—is a list of every topic, and recommended just marking on there which ones I want to listen to. So, if I have that 15-minute window, I now have five choices that I already know I want to—and I can quickly find the one that’s 15 minutes and get to it. So that’s a creative way.
Others have wondered, “Is there a way to keep track of the ones I’ve already listened to?” And again, you could use the front two pages of the journal for that, to mark what was listened to, and what I want to listen to.
Someone else I asked, who’s been reading a lot, said she really likes to even read through the short description and the questions before jumping into the talk. So she’ll go back to the front, read the three sentences that are there. That helps orient it: okay, what’s the setting, who’s the audience? And then going back to the page in the journal where the three questions are listed out, just to refresh them, and it helps put on her mind, “Oh yeah, I’m looking for what was said, what was the meaning.” So it gives a lens through which to listen or to read.
It can also help to have a plan for actual note taking. What happens if you run out of space? Wouldn’t—it’d be a shame to—I filled up that one—left hand of the notebook, and there’s still five minutes, and there’s a real gem. So, what I do is, I just—I write on a different part of the right-hand side, because I don’t always fill up that. But then I’ll just switch to a different color, so I know, okay, the blue is carry-over from the left-hand page, and then the black or red is the question to number two. But others just have loose-leaf paper, and they continue their answers on the loose-leaf. And there’s the three-ring binder. So they can use that to keep it in place.
I recommend we just make this whole thing really fun. Like, when you find a nice way to do something, we can just talk about it. I’ve learned tricks by—in just casual conversation. Like, I know Josh Caneff has found this really good pen for left-handers, because it doesn’t smear. It dries—i’s a gel pen, but it dries really quick. So we can find—make it fun in our men’s and women’s groups to share with each other how we’re learning.
Another thing that can help people is to recommend that they try something for a week or two and see how it goes, and then adjust. It can be intimidating to start something that’s going to require a lot over a long period of time. But you can lower a speed bump by saying, “Well, why don’t you try something, see how it goes? You’re not stuck.”
And then a final, general piece of advice is: reading the historical document for each time period is really helpful. So, I know, you can be eager to just jump into a talk and listen to it. But having the context is very helpful. So I recommend that you recommend to your small-group leaders to read that historical document. A lot of work went into making it helpful and answering a lot of the context questions that will make it easier to understand the talks when they are listened to.
So, finally, all of this is advice, again, to help people who want advice. Those who have a plan and are off and running: that’s wonderful. But there are—a lot of us would like just some way to start that can be adapted and changed—kind of like the “21/31” method of prayer [a simple method for personal prayer that can take about 21 minutes or 31 minutes]. It just helps give me a way to start and I can adjust it as needed. So that’s the purpose of this.
And at your table, in yellow, you’ll find the worksheets, and they give a method for studying that can be like the “21/31.” If someone wants a to-do list to get started thinking through how to study, this is it. But it’s not a rule book for what anyone should do. It’s just a help, for those who want a help.
So the top list is those general categories to think through in making a plan. And then, a more detailed instruction—if someone wants extra help, the bottom could be a help to them.
So, I’ll give you a minute to read through that, and then Lucy is gonna come up.
[The recording ends here.]