A few months ago I was teaching a class on preaching to a group of people who had all been preaching longer than I have, but who were eager to get better and wanted to hear a different perspective. I am not a well recognized or published expert on preaching, but I was asked to share how I prepare and how I preach and I think we all (including of course me) got something out of the experience. I guess that’s the thing that separates the person who sees themselves as a teacher and the person who thinks of themselves as an expert. Good teachers are often experts in their field, but more than that they are those who know that they don’t know everything and are excited about the process of learning together by bringing collective knowledge into a form so that it can be both useful and insightful.

I was sitting the other day and listening to an “expert” say a lot of things that seemed really obvious and I would have much rather spent the time talking to the other people around the table about what they were doing (this may have something to do with my learning style, but I was not the only one who felt this way). The person talking certainly knew the subject and had great things to share, but there were disconnects for the way it had worked for him and the way it might work in our contexts. Sometimes we try really hard to listen to the right consultant, to take the right class or read the right book so that we will know what to do, but the problem is you never really know until you have tried it. I love teaching and I love learning, so I am certainly not saying we shouldn’t take classes, read books and attend lectures. I know that sometimes we do benefit from the “expert” and their experience and knowledge, but sometimes I also think we sell ourselves too short. The “non-expert” who has tried something will often have insights that an expert for whom everything worked (they are an expert after all) would never have noticed. There is so much which can be learned from the person who is experiencing something for the first time, that the person who has done it a hundred times has already forgotten.

I believe that there is something to be learned in every situation and that everyone is an expert on their own experience. We have to be open to every opportunity, every experience that’s presents itself. The person who doesn’t understand something is most significant to anyone who seeks to reduce the amount of misunderstanding and ignorance in this world. If we ignore the “non-expert” we loose an opportunity. If we leave behind the person who wants to understand, but doesn’t we have failed. When something seems perfectly clear to you, but doesn’t to someone else it should force you to think about it in a different way. If you want to be an expert, teach and never stop learning. If you want to be an expert become an expert in helping people erase their misunderstandings. All that is wrong with our world has at its very core the seeds of misunderstanding and ignorance and an unwillingness to learn or to try.