Maintaining a Posture of Experimentation

Orientation that will allow ministers to explore new tools, try out strategies, and otherwise innovate (and simply keep up) in a fast-changing digital landscape. Evidence would include a comfort taking up novel practices and a willingness to learn from (and not to assiduously avoid) failure.

Maintaining a Posture of Experimentation

Jamie Coats

Research Interview Excerpts

What did the experts say?

“The literacy of the twenty-first century is the ability to learn, to unlearn, and to learn again.”

“I’m very, very [sic] about making mistakes, giving things a shot, learning from an experimental attitude. It may be a complete disaster, and I’ve told them that multiple times. ‘I’ve never done this. Who knows?’ [Use] the educational experience as an opportunity for wonder and experimentation or to just see what happens.”

“A lot of people get so scared about doing all of this stuff: because I just don’t know how, I’m going to make an ass of myself … That’s part of the fun. And you just go with it, and that should be somehow the comic relief part of the training … The biggest failings … are part of the learning process.”

REAL WORLD EXAMPLES

Digital Outreach at St. John’s / San Juan’

This presentation at e-Formation 2017 reports on a series of mostly digital experiments led by Lorenzo Lebrija at a struggling congregation in San Bernardino. His takeaway: try everything!
VISIT

Hybrid Faith Formation Cohorts

This second of three articles about the CMT@VTS’s experiment in online + in-person learning communities gives a sense of the excitement and messiness of developing new ministry models.
VISIT