What do you need to unlearn?

John Balboni, a columnist for HarvardBusiness.org recently wrote a column entitled "Never Let Your Ego Stop You from Learning." In the article he tells a story about Jim Collins the author of Good to Great understood that as he entered his forties he needed to relearn his climbing technique. Collins came to realize that "the most important lesson was not what I needed to learn but in what I first needed to unlearn." Collins had been climbing since his teen years but had to learn new ways. After much difficulty Collins relearned how to climb better. In honor of his 50th birthday he climbed Yosemite's famed El Capitain 3000 foot vertical face in 19 hours, an event that most experienced climbers required 24 hours! Only by unlearning was he able to climb higher!

So that story got me to thinking, "what does the church need to unlearn in order to climb higher? What do I need to learn in order to climb higher?" The state of the church in North America requires we unlearn in order to climb higher. Here are some of things we should unlearn:

• Pastor, we tried that years ago and it didn't work.
• Those folks aren't our kind of people.
• We could never do that!
• Dual Sunday Schools? It'll split the church.
• We need to get our act together before we can reach out.

What do I need to unlearn to climb higher?

• Why would I twitter at all?
• What will people this if I tried to do that?
• Done too much ministry by myself, need to delegate and share the victories.
• Learn form life's disappointment and defeat.

What do you need to unlearn? What does your church or ministry need to unlearn? Only by unlearning can we climb higher!

Until next time......I'm climbing higher!