"Your steadfast love endures forever." This is a refrain that rings out again and again in Psalm 136. In fact, it is the ending of every verse in the Psalm.
I remember going through my confirmation years. One thing that marks many confirmation classes in the church body I belong to is memorization of the Bible basics in the Small Catechism. You say things like the commandments and their meanings over and over to yourself, repeating them to your classmates and the teacher. You finally stand in front of the assembly of God's people and repeat them. The intent is not to prove how proficient you are at memorizing things, but to start the process of "inwardly digesting" them, as one of our prayers says. You learn by repeating.
While I am fully on board with changing things up so that people don't get bored with excessive repetition, I also see the value in saying the same things again and again. We say the Apostles Creed and the Lord's Prayer frequently in congregations I have been a part of, and in the end, we take to heart the things that we speak of God or to God in them. Sure, repetition has the potential of becoming rote, of just doing it because it's "the thing we do", but to offset that, it means that we take the time to occasionally review why we do the things we do, teaching the importance of them again and again.
If you think about it, this is actually how life works. How did you learn to eat with a fork and spoon? By practicing with it. Watch any child start working with these utensils and you will see that you only improve by doing it again and again. The first time, food ends up all over the floor, the clothes, the table, and even the hair! But then, over time, they get much better at it. They learn it to such a point that they hardly even think about it anymore. In fact, reflect on how you use your utensils. Do you even have to think about how you use them anymore? Repetition is the mother of learning.
That's why I have become a huge fan of singing the same thing over and over, of saying the same thing over and over. Now, I say that with a huge caveat. You have to teach the meaning of what you are doing, why you are doing it, and be very explicit with what you are doing. Just saying, "That's the way we've always done it" will not suffice as an explanation. In the end, you will even find that teaching about why you are doing what you are doing is also something that calls for repetition, thus proving the point again and again, that we need to continually hear it to truly learn it.
I remember going through my confirmation years. One thing that marks many confirmation classes in the church body I belong to is memorization of the Bible basics in the Small Catechism. You say things like the commandments and their meanings over and over to yourself, repeating them to your classmates and the teacher. You finally stand in front of the assembly of God's people and repeat them. The intent is not to prove how proficient you are at memorizing things, but to start the process of "inwardly digesting" them, as one of our prayers says. You learn by repeating.
While I am fully on board with changing things up so that people don't get bored with excessive repetition, I also see the value in saying the same things again and again. We say the Apostles Creed and the Lord's Prayer frequently in congregations I have been a part of, and in the end, we take to heart the things that we speak of God or to God in them. Sure, repetition has the potential of becoming rote, of just doing it because it's "the thing we do", but to offset that, it means that we take the time to occasionally review why we do the things we do, teaching the importance of them again and again.
If you think about it, this is actually how life works. How did you learn to eat with a fork and spoon? By practicing with it. Watch any child start working with these utensils and you will see that you only improve by doing it again and again. The first time, food ends up all over the floor, the clothes, the table, and even the hair! But then, over time, they get much better at it. They learn it to such a point that they hardly even think about it anymore. In fact, reflect on how you use your utensils. Do you even have to think about how you use them anymore? Repetition is the mother of learning.
That's why I have become a huge fan of singing the same thing over and over, of saying the same thing over and over. Now, I say that with a huge caveat. You have to teach the meaning of what you are doing, why you are doing it, and be very explicit with what you are doing. Just saying, "That's the way we've always done it" will not suffice as an explanation. In the end, you will even find that teaching about why you are doing what you are doing is also something that calls for repetition, thus proving the point again and again, that we need to continually hear it to truly learn it.
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