The Flipped Classroom; the Flipped Church
Schools Flipping the Model of Learning
Will Fuel Discontent Among Future Worshipers
Enlightened educators realize that the world has changed. In response they are flipping their classrooms.
A flipped classroom realizes that the educational world does not have to subsidize one expert lecturer teaching the same material in every classroom across the United States and beyond.
The old model had 30 or more disengaged pupils listening to lectures in school and going home to work in solitude on solving sets of problems. Working together was considered cheating. Students who encountered difficulty didn’t get help when they needed it and often lagged hopelessly behind.
The new model has students listening to online presentations of material. They come to school to work together on solving problems. Students can view the best deliverers of facts and theory online. Students and teachers can choose the ones that fit their learning styles and curricula! When teachers work more closely with students, problems are identified and addressed at the best time for learning to take place.
Local teachers are free to facilitate learning in more hands-on ways. Classrooms are used less frequently as lecture halls and more frequently as workshops and labs with the added benefit of collaborative learning. Working together is no longer cheating but expected.
Teachers are loving it. Students are getting used to it. It’s a bit harder to dodge the homework.
This is providing a future work force that is accustomed to collaboration and innovation and using resources from many sources to solve problems. Eventually the flipped classroom will be a flipped work environment. It already is in many cases.
But how does this major societal change affect church? Will worshipers who have never experienced lecture-style teaching sit still for sermons? Probably not.
Can we flip the church experience? Can worshipers follow the scriptures and teaching aspects of worship at home and come to together in church to collaborate in worship and mission or will mission continue to be the optional “homework”?
Does every little church have to pay a professional theologian in order to work together in mission?
The answer, hard as it may be to accept, is no. This is nothing new. The small churches which are now struggling to meet unrealistic budget expectations of the modern world started out with itinerant pastors in many cases. They were built on the passion and work of lay leaders who maintained the mission between pastoral visits.
The model of the flipped church has yet to be developed. It must happen. 2×2’s experience is a start. We’ve flipped by necessity!
As the numbers of children reared in flipped classrooms grow to maturity, the experience of spectator worship will become anachronistic. It will seem demeaning and purposeless. Small churches with minimal professional leadership are learning that their members have leadership skills that larger churches purchase.
Talk to the majority of Christians. Most are already less involved in church. When they come to worship, they are going to want to know their involvement will make a difference.
Churches need to find ways to engage, beginning with worship. That will change the way everyone thinks about their relationship with Christian community.
If you want to transform, start flipping!
Here’s what we are doing: 2×2 offers a weekly object lesson for use with adults. We’ve called these “Adult Object Lessons.” We will keep using this term. It helps drive search engine traffic. We will start using the term “experiential worship or experiential sermons.” That will help flip the concept of worship from spectator to participatory. That’s where worship needs to go if it is to remain the communal experience we expect it to be.