Insights Into The Covid-19 Church Era – Part XI
“No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. Otherwise, the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse. No one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins.” (Mark 2:21-22)
Institutional school buildings were forced closed in the spring of 2020 due to Covid-19. Educational instruction was forced to go virtually “online”. Teachers, never trained for this experience, had to innovate new wineskins, new structures. Parents were forced into becoming educational tutors when confined to their home with their children. Home school became the norm, the only alternative.
We’ve learned several things: 1) 9 month schools built around an agrarian calendar of planting and harvesting is now archaic. 2) The public realized what teachers already know: Most parents need “school” to be a baby-sitting service, so they can work. Some politicians believe that the economy cannot fully rebound unless the public school baby-sitting service is open again. 3) Covid-19 had defined where American now work and where their children can be educated. Self-quarantining exposed the need for social education as part of the educational process. 4) Jesus modeled small group individualized instruction by personally interacting with only 12 students. He never founded a Christian School nor a Bible College or University. He taught common laborers how to be “fishers of men.” He never used a textbook, a website, Wikipedia, or search engine. He modeled everything, even how to lay down your life for one another. Experience overrode academic. The book of Acts records the Holy Spirit continuing this teaching strategy as believers were forced to “act” out, or experience, their faith.
After experiencing isolation due to Covid-19 quarantines, the majority rushed to the return of person-to-person, teacher-to-pupil instruction while social distancing, providing small groups and personal protective gear to staff. The 24-36 students in a room is an inadequate, old wineskin. Educators are struggling to figure out new wineskin structures to hold new wine methods of instruction through the use of the Internet, Social Networking, and other virtual paradigms. “No one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined.” Putting new forms of instruction into old paradigms or old forms of instruction into new paradigms will not work, so it is time for true educational reform to come to America.
Jesus used the Jewish Lamad method of learning, which is the working and living out of life experiences. Heart knowledge and the Spirit’s leading supersede head knowledge. Living the Word is more important than reciting the memorized Word. Jesus is the Word because He lives the Word. Academic studying of the Word has always led to legalism, sectarianism, and has divided the Church.
I believe Covid-19 has thrust the Church towards a season of revival, forcing it to reexamine itself. Many great men were made when isolated. Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness before He ministered. Paul was detoxed from religion that a wilderness experience. Moses spent 40 years isolate with sheep to prepare him or another 40 with the nation of Israel isolated in the Wilderness of Sin. Jesus actually sought isolation from the masses, so He could hear the voice of His Father. Even Mandela spent 24 years in prison on an isolated island to prepare him to lead South Africa out of apartheid. Covid-19 period should have been a time for listening, but the church instead ran back to its old wineskins as soon as possible. Church, let’s start listening!
Without a school building or a church building in the 1st century, education prevailed. The Covid-19 era is demanding educational change and reform demanding new paradigms and new methods of teaching. The question is, “How will we respond?”