The video is here.
We usually put releasing Kings in the context of business and wealth creation because of my own personal bias. However, releasing hearts is a Kingdom principle that works in every mountain. Education is a great example.
Since we were all full time students for 10-15 years, it’s not hard to recall the issues. The challenge every teacher has to face is maintaining the interest and attention of students to memorize math algorithms, reading strategies, and pass a test. Good teachers make the material interesting for students who are interested, and the rest (students and teachers) muddle through, trying to get the best grades they can with the least amount of work. Education is often modeled after a factory for kids… put them in “here” and they come out with a degree “there.” Lots of kids get left behind. Many teachers find the issue of demotivated students so demoralizing that they switch jobs to avoid being wounded by problem students and a frustrating work environment.
Common Core is the most recent example of a government-sponsored, standards- based approach that assumes every student is the same and the classroom is an assembly line. It makes students feel obligated to endless practice and memorization, and it takes creativity and learning out of the classroom. Music, arts, and relationships are typical casualties due to lack of time and money, all at the expense of passion and creativity. However, a good, dedicated teacher will take learning to the next level and embrace the lion approach—recognizing there is something already there within the hearts of each child, helping them find it, building it up, and releasing it into beautiful things. The ox approach is merely getting through the day, same instructional practice for students who are clearly not the same.
The current philosophy of education is entirely focused on intellect and has no place for heart. The reality of learning is that our heart has to have a reason to change a tenet in our minds. The goal of every mentor or teacher in any mountain is to first know something about where the student is going in order to understand how the material is relevant to that path. Our teachers need to know each student as individuals, what drives them, what motivates them, what is their passion; this will engage our future leaders in ways that they have never been engaged before. Teachers usually know the names of their students and something about their academic performance. They usually know very little about the motivations and desires of the heart because the culture of education is missing that fundamental tenet of how God wired us, resulting in assembly line of educated oxen.
Memorization is not learning – The current education culture doesn’t teach us how to think. I was always amazed at what good grades I could get on a test from memorizing the material and how quickly I could totally forget the details. Our mental computers can be trained to regurgitate intellectual facts for a test. But at the end of two decades in this mountain many graduates are unable to think for themselves. They are unwise in their approach to life. They know nothing about creativity or their own personal direction or meaning. And quite often their relational skills feel like they really did just come from a factory.
Oxen memorizing words, definitions and intellectual concepts of the mind is actually a hindrance to experiential wisdom of the heart. Oxen memorize and obey; Lions think, connect, create and have fun doing it.
Reading, for a Lion, is an exercise that engages our hearts in a feeling and experience. When we write something, it conveys an experience of the heart that resonates with the heart of others.
Learning and thinking should always be anchored in purpose and experience of the heart. It should naturally lead to relevant creativity and enthusiasm. Much of the academic mountain has become unhinged from purpose, morality and culture. At the very highest level, real education should connect us with the track that God put in our hearts. We should graduate with the skills of the Lion and the Ox. Lions are leaders who are connected, creative, purposeful and relational. They are connected with their own hearts and able to help others connect with their own hearts and become Lions too. Their Ox is simply the practical ability to carry out the dream in the lion.
The Job of teaching – Teaching is really a ministry whose first purpose is to connect a student with his or her own heart. How do we find out what’s in the heart of a student? We have to ask. It’s not rocket science. What do you want to do? Who would you like to emulate? What do you enjoy? We have to connect with each student as individuals, respect them as future leaders, encourage their dreams and passions, and embed these core values within the government-mandated Common Core that has crossed our paths.
Going down this path presumes that teachers themselves are heart-connected models for students to observe first hand, a real person who can share their own passion and life story of how they found their path and how they overcame personal heart boundaries to gain their mountain.
The second step is to realize that the enemy has one goal – keep us away from the desires God wrote in our hearts. Those desires are the key to the Kingdom and the wellspring of our motivation and purpose in life. They are worth “guarding.” Most of us carry “heart reasons” why our dream won’t come true, that have to be traded for a new reality of what is really possible in the Kingdom with the Father’s help. There really is a thief who steals dreams, and Jesus really is the author of living life to the full.
Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life. Prov 4:23 NIV
The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. John 10:10 NIV
PS: I thought Larry Napier did a great job of articulating these same concepts in Releasing the Lion: Rediscovering the Right Brain Heart. The best educator I’ve seen releasing Kings and using the Heart Plan in a school is David Nycz, who can be followed on this face book page. He will have an interview on our site and web site of his own in the near future. God has not abandoned the public school system. Every time a Spirit-filled teacher or student walks through the door, Lions are in danger of being released to change the world and build the Kingdom. It’s time we contended for this mountain.
