In addition to discipleship having to be intentional, it also must be fun. The only thing that attracts attention is what is interesting. If the training is just a routine without any passion, it is impossible to persist it for a long term.
Human willpower is limited, just like physical strength, after a certain amount of labour, it is consumed and needs to be replenished. This theory is confirmed by many experiments. Florida State University psychologist Roy Baumeister has done some experiments to observe the limitations of human willpower and the most typical is the carrot experiment. Roy found some hungry students, divided them into two groups, put two trays of food in front of them, a tray of chocolate cookies, and another tray of carrot. He told the first group to eat whichever they wanted, and the second group that if they were hungry, they could only eat carrots, not biscuits. By this way, the second group who could only eat the carrots would need to resist the temptation of the chocolate cookies. After some time had passed, he then took the students to another room and asked them to answer math’s geometry questions to see how long they could hold out. The result was that the students who could eat chocolate cookies lasted an average of 20 minutes, while the students who could only eat carrots only lasted 8 minutes before giving up.
What was the reason for this? The reason was that the students who could only eat carrots used up a lot of their willpower to resist the temptation of the chocolate cookies, resulting in them having no more willpower to solve the geometry problems. This experiment proves that human willpower is limited, just like physical strength, after a certain amount of labour, it will be consumed and needs to be replenished.
This experiment proves that if we just rely on our willpower to do something, it may be effective in the short term, but it is hard to persist for a long term. This is also why many people who have lost weight after trying some weight loss methods usually get results in the short term, but after a period of time, they regain their original weight or even get fatter.
Therefore, some people advocate the necessary of games/fun in training, that is, adding games/fun to training. The reason why the recently popular “slow running on the spot” exercise is so popular is that it is easy to do and you can finish the boring exercise while watching TV. How can we turn “boring” (It is not boring but usually being perceived as boring by church members) discipleship into a game? How can we turn discipleship training into a fun game so that participants can have fun and not be stressed out and continue to grow in their lives for a long term?
If you have any ideas on how to make discipleship fun, please let me know. Feel free to share.