Elbow Learning

It is said that there are only 500 Stradivarius violins left in the world. These violins are said to be the most exquisite violins ever made as they offer the richest, fullest and most beautiful timbre a violin has ever hummed. They are brilliantly created and masterfully assembled. Today, one of these violins might be auctioned for hundreds of thousands of dollars. In fact, the 1697 “Molitor” Stradivarius (once rumored to have belonged to Napoleon) sold in 2010 for $3.6 million. Stradivarius’s work are the coveted jewels within the stringed world. Nothing comes close to these masterpieces.

And no one knows why.

No one knows the secrets behind these violins, and no one has been able to replicate them. Many labs have gotten their hands on these violins and have done extensive research to unlock the mysteries concealed in these instruments. So far, they’ve learned that Stradivari used spruce wood for the top, willow for the internal blocks and linings, maple for the back, ribs, and neck, and there are assumptions about the types of minerals he may have used to treat the wood. But beyond this and a few other details, we remain in the dark concerning how he made these.

Stradivari never recorded his method of design and construction. This could have been because of imitators looking to copy his design and make alternatives. Or, it could have been because of illiteracy. Perhaps Stradivari didn’t know how to record their weight and balance. And this lack of record made the learning and teaching process of his disciples an interesting route, but it did not hold him back. He passed on his knowledge to a number of his apprentices through a process called ‘elbow learning.’

There are two main settings for learning: the classroom and the field.

In the classroom, we listen to a teacher, take notes for a PowerPoint, compare ideas from the textbook we were issued, write papers on the proposed ideas, and are tested on the material. This is formal education.

In the field, we observe people, behavior, trends and patterns, watch for cause and effect, take note of experiments, employ problem-solving tactics, play with creativity, leverage failure for innovation and move forward. This is informal education.

Both of these environments are necessary for learning, but formal education has dominated our culture since the industrial revolution. This type of learning highly favorites rote memory and testing and, often, ignores hands-on experiences — experiences that might take information and put it in the heart and mind of the learner. Formal learning has commandeered our educational systems and Christianity tends to follow suite.

In our microchurches, and more specifically in our large group meetings, we might favor an adapted form of learning from the formal model. We offer space for people to come and read the text, ask questions, receive answers and, maybe, apply what they learned. This approach to the house church is in ways derivative of the formal approach — however we need a more informal learning approach as well. We need to offer some sort of option where someone can be released to watch, consider, reflect and (hopefully) try, experiment, maybe fail, and try again. Our leadership through learning needs to have some avenue for people to not only listen and learn from us, but watch and learn as well. They need an opportunity for elbow learning.

When Stradivari would make a violin, he would teach his apprentices by having them watch. Imagine a pupil sitting beside the instructor, at his elbow, watching and reflecting on every move the teacher makes. Hovering over the teacher and studying the movement of their hands. We might call this shadowing, but whatever we call it, there is a powerful learning to be had in the viewing and then trying.

There is a learning that happens at a desk. There is a learning that happens at the elbow. And we need a balance of the two.

There is a attitude needed for this style of learning, but on the part of the teacher and the student. The teacher needs to be open enough to allow someone younger, someone with potential, to come alongside them and watch. The teacher needs to be comfortable with nothing being hidden, being completely vulnerable to his/her student.

The student needs to be humble, curious and patient. The student needs to be faithful to the model, available for the example and teachable to the instruction. Most of all, the student needs to be willing to be low and submit to an expert. Michael Polanyi says it well when he says,

To learn by example is to submit to authority. You follow your master because you trust his manner of doing things even when you cannot analyze and account in detail for its effectiveness. By watching the master and emulating his efforts in the presence of his example, the apprentice unconsciously picks up the rules of the art, including those which are not explicitly known to the master himself. The hidden rules can be assimilated only by a person who surrenders himself to that extent uncritically to the imitation of the master.

This is one of the greater forms of teaching Jesus modeled for us. Of course Jesus taught in a formal setting, standing in the synagogue, sitting on the side of the mountain, walking from one city to the next, giving a sermon or lesson to a fixated audience — but he also healed the broken, retreated to prayer, walked on water, fed thousands, called the outcast, pastored the lost, and rebuked the authorities in a way that his followers might learn from him at his elbow. And, when you read Luke’s follow-up from his gospel, you see the apostle’s not only teaching similar lessons that they would have heard him teach, but also doing the very things they saw him do.

There are some lessons that can only happen at the side of another person.

I’ve heard people say there was a first century Jewish saying that one might bid to a young disciple. They’d say, “May you be covered in the dust of your rabbi.” The idea here was that a disciple would follow and watch the rabbi they were studying under and say they would trail behind the teacher, the dust kicked up from the rabbi would cover the disciples. It was a blessing, almost, to wish a disciple well as they learned him the rabbi’s elbow.

This is incarnational learning, and when paired with a formal learning approach, the results can be powerful, transformative and world-changing. The learning process in a microchurch can, and should be, simple. A rhythm of sitting together to talk and ask questions balanced with moments to go out and watch and observe, that the secrets of the trade, they mysteries of the craft would be passed on, even it unconsciously, to the disciple.

May we be faithful to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them and teaching them.