Small Progress is Better than No Progress

I don't know if anyone else remembers the movie What about Bob from 1991, but in it Bill Murray plays a character, Bob, who is learning to deal with life through therapy. At the beginning he's learning about baby steps (baby steps down the hall, baby steps to the elevator). Even though it made for a good joke 20 years ago, it's no less true as a statement of how we learn things. We can't grow and change everything all at once.

Babies learn one thing at a time. They don't learn how to walk. First they learn where their foot is and then they learn how to push. Eventually they stand and after that comes walking. Learning is a cumulative process and it can't be accomplished quickly.

The same is true for big people as it is for babies. You can't master a new skill in an instant. One of the biggest objections to using PowerPoint in preaching (in my experience at least) is that it will take too much effort to learn the necessary skills. So, don't learn how to use the new software and how to incorporate it into your preaching style and how to communicate with a tech team and how to click through a slideshow.

Learn one thing. Take one step. Take a baby step. Use one picture as a visual representation for your next sermon series. That's just one picture for a whole series. Just one step.

What's the next step you should take in learning?