Creativity in Evangelization

Over the last thirty years of teaching experience in many different countries and cultures, we have come to believe that the American mind is “programmed” from birth to learn through creative experience confirmed by knowledge transmitted through classroom teaching. The teacher’s teaching should be built around how the student learns. (In Africa, Danelle successfully taught all three of our children from primary school to the university.) The student, not the teacher is the most important element in teaching. If a student fails, we feel, it is more the teacher’s fault than the student’s, because the teacher’s job is to present the subject in a way that draws the student into creative, productive study. Teaching through encouragement produces hard work.

We were asked twice by a French company to create modules of teaching for the heads of major corporations in France to prepare their workers to confront the difficulties of the 21st century. The idea was to train leaders how to develop creative, imaginative, innovative work forces where every worker innovates rather than having a department of creativity.

From primary school on Americans are taught to be innovative and to use their imaginations. They learn more easily through finding answers to questions than by rote memorization. In our years in Africa it was necessary to retrain the African leaders minds to be innovative in ministry style, because they had been taught to memorize and repeat what they had memorized rather than be creative. We found that the “naturally” creative Africans were those who had had little education. In certain education systems there is a tendency to train people to conform which can stifle creativity.

In direct contact Evangelization in the U.S., moment by moment creativity and imagination are absolutely necessary for fruitfulness. Therefore, direct contact evangelization which precedes study primes the mental pump to seek answers and receive teaching through dialogue. That way the answers come from within and are not imposed from without. Often what does not come as a result of personal decision from within will eventually be rejected.

At baptism, Catholics receive a Grace and the Person of the Holy Spirit in them to help them intuitively solve life’s questions. Experience gained through Evangelization opens the inner communication with the Holy Spirit which if followed to fruition will reveal the Truth. Helping a person ask the right questions, which comes naturally for a baptized person, is much more effective for growth than telling a person what and how to believe. The healing transformation of life’s wounds comes by touching the Divine Mercy and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

In our own case, we had been trained through our secular education to ask questions. Those questions asked in our Hearts led us to the Catholic Church. We believe that most Americans have been “programmed” to learn basically the same way. Evangelization opens the way to questions and answers which leads the evangelizer to seek the One who has all the answers, the Holy Spirit. So, learning flows more easily from experience than from intellectual knowledge.

Unfortunately, many Americans have had neither experience nor knowledge of the Trinity-Mary-Church triangle. We believe that many hearts will say yes to the experience if it is shared by Divine Mercy filled evangelizers. Then, through Spiritual Conversations and the study of the riches of the Church they may grow naturally into the Fullness of the Revelation, begun through experience and buttressed through knowledge.