{"id":19474,"date":"2018-10-17T11:49:24","date_gmt":"2018-10-17T18:49:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=19474"},"modified":"2018-10-17T11:53:12","modified_gmt":"2018-10-17T18:53:12","slug":"dont-skip-the-vocabulary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/dont-skip-the-vocabulary\/","title":{"rendered":"Don’t Skip the Vocabulary"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWhy are you reading this paragraph?\u00a0 It is not lettered A, B, or C, so it does not correspond with any of the answers.\u00a0 If you want to get the best out of a programme (or any other reading for that matter) you must watch out for clues that will help you skip<\/em> material you do not need.\u00a0 Otherwise you will waste a lot of your time.\u201d[1]<\/a><\/p>\n

Derek Rowntree drops this gem of insight early in his book Learn How to Study<\/em>, that walks students through the very best of how to study.\u00a0 Much of the book is about organization and time management but this line is what I was sharing with my co-workers the last few days.<\/p>\n

There are two of us who are going \u201cback to school\u201d here on the staff of Huguenot Memorial Church.\u00a0 We share funny class incidents and encourage one another as students.\u00a0 I showed her this quote yesterday and explained this was what my study methods have always lacked.\u00a0 I pulled a Church History book from the shelf and demonstrated my seminary conundrum.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

[2]<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This is from a book called The Rise of Christianity<\/em> from the church historian WHC Frend.\u00a0 This book is 1022 pages long.\u00a0 If you combined all three Lord of the Rings<\/em> books into one massive volume you would get 1178 pages.\u00a0 In other words, you can wander into Mount Doom with your gardener and back in about the same amount of pages.\u00a0 I was assigned to read Frend throughout the first half of my first semester of seminary.\u00a0 Needless to say, the inside joke amongst my classmates was that \u201cFrend, was not our friend.\u201d<\/p>\n

Do you see all of that orange highlighter?\u00a0 Do you think I remembered all of that information at the end of the semester fifteen years ago?\u00a0 Do you think I remember it all now?\u00a0 Of course not!\u00a0 I was basically highlighting two-thirds of every page thinking that everything was important.\u00a0 Thank you Rowntree for cluing me in on the fact that there is material I need to \u201cskip.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of equal value was the substantial recommended vocabulary list found later on page 98.[3]<\/a>\u00a0 I wonder how each of us scored on this vocabulary test.\u00a0 How many of us could spell these correctly if given only the word and part of speech, spelling bee style?\u00a0 \u201cA wide vocabulary is essential, both for understanding other people\u2019s ideas (whether in speech or writing) and for expressing your own.”[4]<\/a> This truism was touched on recently, especially in regards to the way people discuss their faith by writer Jonathon Merritt in this recent piece in the New York Times.<\/a>\u00a0 Merritt shares that for \u201cwhatever the reason, for most of us in this majority-Christian nation, our conversations almost never address the spirituality we claim is important.\u201d[5]<\/a>\u00a0 His premise is that it is because our own spiritual vocabularies are inadequate.\u00a0 Could it be because of the lack of proper faith \u201cstudy\u201d that Rowntree describes?\u00a0 How do we as faith leaders discuss our calls, positions, jobs, even our doctoral research with others?<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Derek Rowntree, Learn How to Study (London: Macdonald and Jane Publishers, 1978) viii.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> WHC Frend, The Rise of Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984) 234.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Rowntree, 98.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Rowntree, 99.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a>\u00a0Jonathon Merritt, “It’s Getting Harder to Talk About God,” The New York Times<\/em>, October 13, 2018, final edition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cWhy are you reading this paragraph?\u00a0 It is not lettered A, B, or C, so it does not correspond with any of the answers.\u00a0 If you want to get the best out of a programme (or any other reading for that matter) you must watch out for clues that will help you skip material you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":108,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1321,1365,1322,1366,913],"class_list":["post-19474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dminlgp9","tag-jonathon-merritt","tag-lgp9","tag-nytimes","tag-rowntree","cohort-lgp9"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/108"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19474"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19474\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19476,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19474\/revisions\/19476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}