Christian Education
CEWeb
Welcome
to the Christian Education page of the American Baptist Churches of
Wisconsin Website!
This online
resource will serve as a forum to share ideas, get information and
the like.
Please share the Web address for
this site with Christian Education workers in your church. I would
also invite you to offer
suggestions of things which would make the site useful to
you.
Do We Still Need Christian Education?
January 2007
Since I have spent a great deal of my ministry working
with Christian Education in one way or another, this may seem to be
a question that I would not ask. Yet at this time in the Sunday School
year many teachers and leaders are probably asking themselves that
question. Keeping classes interesting and valuable is hard work and
we may wonder if it is worth the time. Let me try to speak an encouraging
word. Keep up the good work!
The People of God always need to be a teaching people.
The task of "passing along the faith" to the next generation
is set out as a necessity by both Old and New Testaments. (See e.g.,
Deuteronomy 6:1-12 and 2 Timothy 2:1-2.) Methods may change with culture,
but the basic teaching task does not. Knowing the difference between
the methods and the basic task is not always easy.
What is the task and what is required to be faithful
to it?
First, the task is about discovering meaning. Few
people, it seems, memorize scripture anymore. Part of the reason for
this is that there is no necessary correlation between knowing the
words of the Bible and applying them to life. The missing piece is
meaning. Facts and form alone are never sufficient. Applying words
and ideas to life requires that we understand what the words mean
and how we apply them to new situations. Making this transition between
learning content and applying it does not happen automatically. There
must be discussion, demonstration and practice in many contexts.
Second, critical thinking is essential. We know it
is important in other areas of life, but we must also be aware that
critical thinking about our faith is also crucial. Without the discipline
of critical thinking it is impossible to know which ideas are worthwhile
and which should be discarded as inferior. This is certainly true
about the books that our children read, the television they watch
and internet they use. There is valuable and worthwhile material in
all of these areas, but we must all, at every age, use our own thinking
abilities to decide on the worth. If we do not learn to think about
our faith, it will surely not be strong enough to carry us through
the difficult times in life. A growing faith encourages us to ask
questions all along the journey so that we are not so likely to be
caught off guard when the tough times come, as they certainly will.
(For helpful books on critical thinking, email me: maxine.ashley@abcofwi.org.)
Third, the task is to equip Christians to live in
the world. The purpose of the teaching we do inside the church is
to help us grow, so that we can be effective representatives of God
in the world in which we live. Learning and community- building in
the church teach us to live out our faith in the world. The church
has a ministry in these two spheres: a ministry to ourselves and a
ministry to the world. If we fail to move outside the church in our
application, we have not fulfilled the mission we have been given
by God. But equally, if we fail to nurture growth inside the church,
we will have an ineffective witness in the world. Both spheres are
required and teaching is necessary if we are to work in these two
spheres.
What needs to be passed along?
What is the content of our teaching? Christian faith
is about a relationship with God, but that faith also has a content.
Without that content we are left at the mercy of the dominant culture
rather than being salt and light to transform that culture. We might
say that what we need to pass along to the next generation is our
tradition. Let me explain what I mean. If we believe that God has
acted really and truly in the history of Israel and in the Christ
event and its aftermath in a way that is normative for our faith,
then, those of us who were not there as first-hand witnesses (everyone
after the first Christian generation) has to depend upon tradition
for what we know of God's acts in the past. We find part of that story
in the Bible. But we also depend upon tradition to know what God has
been up to in the story of the Church. If we believe that God has
acted in the past and that how God has acted in the past has shaped
the present, we need to know the story of these acts to know who we
are. This is tradition. Without the knowledge of the Christian tradition
we are rootless. Tradition forms the content of that faith that is
found in the Bible, in Church history, in our local church histories
and in our understanding of our own world. These things tell us who
we are and how we are to act as God's children.
Again, this is not just transmitting "facts."
Rather, it is imparting meaning to what we do together and how we
live in the world. The meanings we teach must be integrated into our
lives so that our beliefs inform our actions. We may also measure
our own experiences by the content of the tradition. Allow me a personal
example. Part of my current ministry is serving as chaplain in a senior
care facility. Reading scripture to residents is often a comfort to
them. How often I note that there are some familiar passages that
seem to being special comfort, and I cannot finish without having
them join in. I can begin to read from Isaiah 40, "Have you not
known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator
of the ends of the earth." By the time I get to "but those
who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount
up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall
walk and not faint" I find we are saying the words together.
It is not just that these folk have memorized the verses. It is likely
that the verses at one point informed their faith, and now their life
experience has confirmed these words. The words are stuffed down inside
where they are useful for faithful living and faithful dying.
How do we do this teaching?
This is the question of methods and needs to be approached
within individual churches. The how and when are not tied to a particular
hour on Sunday morning. Methods need to be educationally sound, but
the setting is not carved in stone. It is not dependent on whether
we have one person in a class or fifty. The goal is to nurture persons
to live a life of integrity and faith in the real world in which we
find ourselves. This is not an easy task, but it is an exciting challenge
that continues to deepen for me as the years go by. I hope you find
it so as well.
