by Ken Morgan | Jun 23, 2025 | Uncategorized
My Family still has my great grandfather’s apprenticeship indenture, dated 1897. He was to live with his master, work six days a week, to abstain from strong drink and was forbidden to marry. A tradesman of old was formed by socialisation, modelling their life on their master’s: embracing their values while developing their skills and absorbing their knowledge. It’s the same process that formed the great artists of the renaissance like Leonardo and Michealangelo. Jesus first requirement of his newly-appointed apostles was to be with him – for his thinking, his values, his life to rub off onto twelve young men. Socialisation is more powerful that education. Socialisation works by immersion in a way of life. It’s how we learn nearly all of the foundational understanding and behaviours that allow us to participate productively in society. The Celts and the Wesleyans instinctively knew this, and built their communities around people observing and participating in prayer, repentance and renewal as a way if life, not just a weekly ritual. Paul was accompanied by a band of apprentices as he travelled, and lived his life ‘out loud’ before his fledgling churches. He implored then to “…imitate me as I imitate Christ.” To socialise others in the ways of a disciple, I must be a growing disciple myself: on a constant journey toward Christlikeness and toward fruitfulness in his kingdom. Beyond providing an example of piety and maturity, I need to share the inner workings of my effort to cultivate a life dedicated to the ways and mission of Jesus. My ‘apprentices’ need to observe my struggles and setbacks as well as my triumphs. Jesus invited his inner circle to watch with him during his travail in Gethsemane....
by Ken Morgan | Jun 10, 2025 | Uncategorized
Remember all that trigonometry stuff you learned at high school? Sine, cosine and tangent: sides and angles of triangles? Unit circle trigonometry – I used to be good at it. I could apply the formulas and get the correct answers and pass the tests. Thirty years after I aced my last trig test, one of my kids asked for help with their maths homework. I recognised the terms and formulas, but I just couldn’t remember how to put them to use. Conversely, I still know how to write, do arithmetic, construct basic woodwork joints, weld, solder and analyse a newspaper article. These too are skills I learned at school decades ago. I have retained them because I use them. I have no occasion to put trig to use in real life, and I’ve forgotten how to do it. So much of the western-world education system socialises us to sit and soak up information, with no consideration of integrating it into daily life. ‘Learning’ is about right answers and good grades. We’re effectively taught to disconnect what we hear from how we behave, even if we give our nodding agreement to what we hear. When we take an information-transfer model to discipleship, we risk creating churchgoers who can recite correct answers to Sunday school questions, but never mature into disciples who exemplify the ways of Jesus. Jesus commissioned his disciples to “…go make disciples…teaching them to obey…” Note he didn’t say “teaching them to believe” or even to “understand.” We think of formation as catechesis, the teaching of doctrine. This may be an important precursor, but disciples obey – they don’t merely subscribe. I like to think of the prophecy about the sheep and the goats in Matt 25 as a kind of ‘entrance...
