Shared experiences are the contemporary, common occurrences, activities and needs of life, experienced by those in a designated age group within a particular culture, ethnic group or community.
Variations on the commonality of these experiences (such as the different compositions of our family structures) tend to reinforce the shared nature of the most basic life experiences.

Examples of Common Life Experiences
1. Living in a family
2. Going to school
3. Experiencing emotions
4. Interacting with peers
5. Facing each new day
6. Having certain needs, such as for shelter, food, and friendship
7. Maturing

Shared experiences can teach us spiritual principles. Our religious life “is not arrived at by successful mastering of factual material or by mere physical attendance at Christian or religious services even though that environment is educational and enculturation has a positive effect on values held. Religion (faith) is best seen in the give and take of people, situations, experiences, in moments of quiet reflection and noisy actiaction, in the stress of anxiety and depression, in confrontations with the needy (unloved and unlovable).”*

Successful teaching in a religious setting begins with an appeal to concrete, shared experiences, taking advantage of the educational principle of “meaningfulness.” This principle holds that effective religious instruction is that which is rich in personal meaning for the learner, and maintains that, if the learner’s presented future religious experience is to have meaningfulness, then religion must “’bristle with personal meaning and significance.”**

* V. Bailey Gillespie, The Experience of Faith (Birmingham, AL: Religious Education Press, 1988), 74
** James Michael Lee, The Flow Of Religious Instruction (Birmingham, AL: Religious Education Press, 1973), 79.


From: ABZ’s of Adventist Youth Ministry
Permission to copy for use in the local congregation or group.