Teach to fish

The word education comes from the Latin educo, which means to change from within. Training provides an external skill.  Education changes the inner person. Training deals only with the doing level. Education teaches people how to think. Education deals with the feeling level. The ways you and I act are based on our responses to stimuli. First we think  about it, then we begin to feel it, then we act based on that feeling. One of my favorite proverbs conveys the wisdom that when you give people fish, they’ll be hungry tomorrow;  if you teach them to fish, they’ll never go hungry. Training gives your congregational members a fish — a specific skill  applicable to a specific task. Education teaches them to fish. Education without the vision for a better future is  only training. I train in how to invite, but it is God who prompts in educating the inner person.