Are You a Spring or a Cistern?

Once you set out to teach—whether you’re a pastor or a lay leader—you need to decide whether you’re a spring or a cistern. There are very few springs in this world, as you know. People who are springs are thinkers; people who are cisterns are collectors of the information that comes from the springs.

Most people are collectors rather than thinkers. They are the folk who make A’s in school. They can take in and spit back without changing the data at all, like Jewish rabbis, who transmitted the Law for years without the slightest alteration. Collectors are extremely important, because they do not pollute the flow of knowledge. But the flow originates with a spring.

If you’re a spring, you face the danger of all who work on the creative edge—the danger of being wrong. You have to develop a certain discipline that says, Just because I have a thought doesn’t make it true. Otherwise you will become a dogmatic propagandist. You must apply your new creativity and prove whether it is true or whether it’s just new. New is not always better; change is not always an improvement. Therefore, springs have to give time and testing to their subjects.

Cisterns, on the other hand, have to constantly read and research, or their water level will get low. They must always be collecting. I have been with people who are very capable cisterns, but when I pump them very long, I start to get muddy water. Cisterns have to be connected to inflow. The gutter and the downspout have to be in place to keep filling them up.

If you determine that you are a spring, you need to know what size spring. After all, even a spring can run dry. So you must ask yourself, “How many new subjects can I handle? How many teaching assignments can I take?” The best lessons are those in which you use principles you have taught many times, simply updating the illustrations. The principles will always be old—they were old when you first discovered them. But the illustration and the language have to be updated.

One of the most damaging things we can do to another person’s thinking is to say, “Well, that’s oldfashioned.” Breathing is fairly old-fashioned, too, but that does not detract from its importance. When it comes to principles, their age is actually a value, a plus. Only their application must be fresh and new.

Are you a spring? If so, what size? Are you a cistern? If so, how large? Both springs and cisterns can be effective teachers, but they must know which they are.

And highly creative springs should not get arrogant. A spring is simply the outlet for an underground source of water—a huge cistern under pressure, if you will.

-Fred Smith