Saturday, November 19, 2011

The Bait of Experience

The only way you can get experience is by doing something. Once you have experience, it can be the most valuable thing you have regardless of your endeavor- work, volunteering, marriage, parenting, athletics, music, etc. Doesn't matter. The temptation though, once you have experience, is to stop there. Since you have a baseline of experience, there's no need to keep growing, keep learning, or keep doing the things that got you that experience in the first place.

Each fall I have the opportunity to talk to seminary students about finances and financial issues in ministry. For me, it's gravy. Just a real neat opportunity to talk about the reality that money plays in ministry, whether it's a church, a counseling office, the mission field, or a nonprofit. Reagrdless of the location or the vocation, you will deal with money. And each year I speak with the group and share my experience (both the good and the bad). After the event is over, I get why those who get paid to teach and speak like it so much (and this is especially true for those who travel as speakers or teachers, often giving the same speech or talk in different settings). You have enough experience to know your stuff, the audience is receptive to it, and the feedback is normally pretty good. What's not to like?!? But if you stop there, you'll lose what you got there in the first place.

If the speakers and teachers in your life are telling outdated stories and remembering the good ol' days of when they used to be in your shoes, the ones that do, they're coasting on past experience.

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