I invited my Taichi friends over for lunch this week. My house is rare in Hong Kong, in that we had enough room to practice a little Taichi. My daughter Jennifer came out and practiced a little "fan" Taichi with Mrs. Taam. It was great fun.In Taichi you learn by doing. You do first, and the explanation follows later. This is the way of the master and apprentice. You do, and later the master will explain why. If you remember the movie "Karate Kid", the young protagonist went to the home of master to learn karate. Instead he was sent to wash and wax his cars: "wax on, wax off". When the young man got fed up and wanted to quit, then and only then, did the master explain what the "wax on" "wax off" motion was used for.
I am convinced that most of the training we do in churches is actually counter-productive. We train people as they sit in rows and take notes. The context of our training is all wrong. Training needs to happen in the world, Jesus style, with the classroom setting saved for the debriefing, explanation phase. The context speaks louder than our words.
