Launch Your Ministry Chapter 11 of 27
<-Chapter 10 Chapter 12-> Return to FulltextTheoretical vs. Experimental (Practical) Knowledge
Condensed Version (Completed)
What is the pattern for training? You need to first gain two different kinds of knowledge.
The first one is theoretical knowledge and the second one is experimental knowledge. Do not confuse this with experiential knowledge, because it is not exactly the same.
Experimental knowledge is knowledge gained through practice or experimentation. Experiential knowledge is the ultimate knowledge and it embraces both theoretical knowledge and practical knowledge.
I like to use the word 'experimental' to emphasise that we need to try things out after we have learned the theory. That is the only way to gain true practical knowledge.
Then, the experiences of learning both via formal training for theory and practical knowledge via experimentation will lead to full experiential knowledge.
The Importance of Grounding
So where do you need to start? Firstly you need a foundation or groundwork for your ministry. Without that you will get off to a bad start.
If you go back to the picture of the dove, it is clear that things are fine while the dove is flying. It has the power of its wings, the tail feathers are working and the dove is soaring high.
But a bird cannot stay in the air forever. It has to eventually come back down to the ground. That is when the two body parts called the feet come into play.
There is not much power in those little feet, but they give the bird stability. Without those feet it cannot survive on the ground. It cannot land on a tree or on the ground, and this prevents the bird from doing much at all.
What do these two feet represent? What is the most important thing that you need as a grounding to carry you when the anointing is not present? Surely it is the Scriptures or the Word of God.
We know that the Bible consists of two parts - the Old Testament and the New Testament. This is what the two feet of the dove represent. And the feet themselves represent the Teaching Office. (The Teaching Ministry is contained in the five feathers of the tail and is different).
The Place of Bible Doctrine
The first and most important part of your training, which starts under the heading of theory, is getting grounded in the Scriptures. So the first part of your training should be in Bible Doctrine.
What is Bible Doctrine? It is simply the teachings of the Bible or what the Bible teaches.
Bible Doctrine gives you a kind of skeleton on which to hang all the meat. Or you could think of it as being a pile of boxes or compartments that you can put things in.
If you could set up a spot with lots of compartments or boxes, then the easiest way to study the Scriptures would be like this. As you read and come across an interesting passage, you say,
"I recognize this. It fits into that box over there."
So you put it into that box and you read on. As you continue to read the Bible, you can take everything that you read and put it into all the right boxes.
Then when you put all the boxes together, they become like a jigsaw puzzle. You have many little pieces that made no sense at the beginning, but now they start fitting together. And now the Bible starts to make sense.
You could spend your whole life reading the Bible and trying to discover those boxes. Or you could let someone else, who already knows the boxes, show you what they are.
Such a person could give you a grounding in the main teachings of the Scriptures. Then as you read the Bible, everything starts to come to life.
You start with something that you know, then move to something that you did not know. In other words you must move from the known to the unknown.
It is much easier to take something that you already know and add some extra information to it. Then, because you already know a bit about it, it makes sense. The pieces drop into place.
If you read the Bible alone, you are reading a lot of unknowns. All you have is a box of jigsaw puzzle pieces. You have a head full of Bible knowledge, like a puzzle.
You may know the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. But can you put it together into a picture to show people that they can understand?
You must start with a known, and Bible Doctrine becomes your known.
Adding Knowledge of History
Now you start adding other things to that. You could learn about history. The world in which we live today came about because of what happened in the past.
Sometimes you are not fully able to understand where you are now, until you learn about some of the things that happened back there.
It helps to know a bit about Bible history. It is good to know what kind of traditions they had, what clothes they wore, what kind of food they ate and what kind of lives they lived.
Then when you read the Scriptures you understand a bit more clearly what the writer is talking about. You can then see it through the eyes of that person and the kind of life they lived back there.
You cannot get this knowledge from the Bible. You will have to get it from the world. You may have to get it from history books and other secular writings that tell you about people and cultures from the past.
Learning about Human Nature
You also need to learn a bit about human nature. And if you think I mean learning psychology you are wrong. Please do not go and study psychology.
Psychology and psychiatry were created by godless men who tried to explain God away and get rid of sin.
You simply need knowledge about people. You can learn some of this through your own experience. Or you could learn from the experience of others who have lived a bit longer than you.
Then when you come to ministering to people, you will understand a bit better what kind of person you are dealing with. Without some of this knowledge, you cannot be very effective in ministry.
Of course you must then move beyond that into experimental knowledge. And we will be looking at that in more detail in the final section of this study.
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