Years and years ago I like many of you was born into a world that overwhelmed my senses. Yet over time I learned to make sense of the various stimuli and how to respond to each one. Fast forward to childhood I grew up in a household dedicated to their relationship with Jesus. I heard stories of my great-grandfather’s days as a preacher. I helped my mom’s parents prepare the Lord Supper for their church and saw their dedication to their congregation. I remember singing alongside my dad’s parents at church, in depth conversations about faith with his father, and his mother’s dedication to serving international families new to their community. My mom’s well-worn Bible was always a visible sight and my father was instrumental in helping develop my early devotional life. All these experiences taught me about faith and formed me. I am sure as we flip through our memory banks we can come up with volumes of experiences we can point to as being critical in developing who we are as people and specifically our spiritual formation.
Now in college this common sense understanding that development comes through experiences collided with a real genuine educational model. I served at a Christian camp formed around this model of creating intentional experiences that challenged participants and then facilitated conversations around those experiences. I was studying education and recreation at school and soon I learned the academics behind what is called experiential education. Now if you have been around camps or a ropes course you may have heard the term, experiential education, I want to expand on this term. Experiential education is much more than just labeling the natural process of discovery leading to new knowledge. In fact there is a huge academic field dedicated to it. I have found that understanding this model and some of the academics around it quite helpful. Especially, as I think about spiritual formation and all aspects of the Christian life. So I want to make some of my research and understanding more accessible. So my goal is to write about experiential education each month and hopefully you will find as much benefit in it as I do. But, for today if it has been a while since you have thought back on how past experiences have formed you this might be a good starting place to understanding experiential education.