The Difference Between Classical and Original Thinkers

The difference between being book smart and practically smart is that the first is classical intelligence, where you learn stuff from school. The second is a person's unique ability to take classical intelligence and process and communicate it to someone.

Rick talks about the urgent need for original thinkers in discipleship situations. The necessity for original thinkers is the difference between pasting verses over problems and skillfully applying the Bible to the uniqueness of the person you're are helping.

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Everyone is both a classical and original thinker, but our abilities in both are different. Some students excel in an academic environment. Other students struggle to make Cs. But a person's ability to be book smart does not mean he also excels in practical wisdom. Some highly intelligent people are weak on common sense.

But then you may have a not-so-book-smart-person who oozes with wisdom, which is an original thinker. He has the unique ability to think innovatively. In discipleship, that person is not a parrot who only repeats what he learned in school. He can adapt his library of knowledge (classical intelligence) to the unique person who is sitting in front of him. These folks become excellent disciplers and counselors.

You can tell the difference between a person who parrots excellent information and the discipler who can take the same data into their muse chamber, are transformed by it, and then adapt it to the person they are helping. They are not parrots flying inside an echo-chamber, and they do not fly outside biblical norms and expectations.

The question is, how do you become an original thinker? Part of the answer is that it's a gift from the Lord. God has given these folks the ability to learn and communicate uniquely. It's their voice. The other part of the answer is praying, asking the Lord to provide you with the courage to be you, the person that He is shaping.

This concept is a vital part of our training in our Mastermind Program because we don't want to train up a bunch of parrots who are merely passing their classroom information along to the person in front of them.

The process of our training works like this:

1. We want our students to learn sound, classical, biblical information.
2. We want the Lord to transform them by what they learn.
3. We want them to communicate it according to who they are.

If a Christian does not have the "gift of original thinking," it would be best that they were not high-end, formalized counselors because they won't be able to think comprehensively about what a person with complicated and intricate problems need.