Christian Education in the future - Final Paper Part 3

Kudos to you if you have made it this far into my paper.  This final question was the ultimate goal of this whole project.  If churches are changing, the job that my degree is designed to prepare me for will not be readily available in the future.  So how can I earn a living doing what I feel called to do?  It was a hard question to answer, hard to find resources that address it.  This will definitely be a question that I will continue to ponder and work through in the years to come.

Learning objective #3: What could the role of Christian educators look like in future churches?

Those of us within the church who are invested in the specific ministry of Christian Education and faith formation are facing these same challenges.  Christian Education leaders have an important role to play in reforming and adapting their work in addition to participating in the new methods of ministry being considered by the broader church.  The general consensus among many Christian Educators is that what we have been doing is not working.  As one author reflected on a recent study about the faith of American teens she wrote, “After years of hearing Bible stories, memorizing Bible verses, and singing songs about Jesus’s love for them, their understanding of faith, of God, and of God’s plans and purposes was simplistic, individualistic, and almost secular,”.  This is another factor that contributes to our understanding of why people have left the church: the faith they were taught did not have enough meaning for them to continue to make it a priority in their adult lives.  This presents a huge opportunity for Christian educators.  We believe in the truth and power of God’s story, so our message does not need to change.  Instead, we should consider how to do what we do better.  

One place to start is to understand who we are teaching and how they learn.  There are currently five generations worshipping and learning in the church: silent/builders, baby boomers, Generation X, Millennials, and the iGeneration.  As educators, we need to be aware of and honor the older members, who are comfortable with how things have been done their whole lives.  We also need to give serious consideration to the younger members, whose methods of thinking and learning do not fit as well with older ways of doing church.  Ivy Beckwith, for example, points out that many curriculum lesson plans come with a defined learning objective, which encourages linear thinking.  However, millennials and iGeneration, the generations currently engaged the most in Christian education, are not primarily linear thinkers.  “Therefore, lessons that are heavily dependent on linear thinking are not going to capture them the same way as lessons that include kinesthetic, intuitive, affective, and ‘loopy’ ways of processing information,”.  Beckwith proposes that we focus instead on creating lessons for these ages that are more experienced based.  She encourages educators to let the stories in the Bible speak for themselves (let the Holy Spirit work and allow students to draw their own conclusions), to be attentive to how children learn through informal education (learn from what is around you, “values are caught, not taught”) and non-formal education (mission trips and projects).  This process of rethinking our teaching methods and then rewriting our lessons and programs will be time consuming and challenging, but has the potential to lead to more impactful faith formation for our students.

A similar shift in the teaching process can be applied to adults through a method that one pastor calls, “theology without a net,”.  This is an approach to Christian education that moves away from the pastor being the theological authority figure who imparts knowledge toward a “theologian in residence” who brings people together to have theological conversations.  These conversations are intentionally designed to occur, “without the net of extensive knowledge and information, without the net of a regular audience assumed to be already steeped in the faith, and without the net of neatly fixed and discrete theological categories,”.  This approach to theology taps into the social nature of the younger generations and their inclination to interact and question theology.  The pastor who champions this idea admits that doing theology this way requires a great deal of trust, both in the people engaging in conversation and in the Holy Spirit.  The advantage to this approach is that it honors the thoughts and contributions of all and builds faith through relationships with others, learning approaches that resonate with younger generations.    

Another different way forward for Christian education is to redesign church programs and worship to incorporate intergenerational learning.  From the beginning of the church in Jesus’ time until approximately the 20th century, people of all ages worshiped and learned together.  There was also an expectation that parents and families were the parties primarily responsible for transmitting faith.  When churches changed to provide programming that was age specific (children in one place in the church, adults in another), it deprived both parties of valuable time to learn and grow in faith together.  It also isolated parents from their children’s faith formation.  Christian educators have a vital role to play in advocating for the importance of intergenerational programs within the church and to walk alongside the parents and adults for whom this concept may be new and intimidating.

Finally, Christian Educators have a role to play in the ways the church as a whole is trying new things.  Christian educators form close, sometimes even intimate, relationships with families.  They can nurture these relationships and potentially build new relationships by utilizing social networks.  Educators need be conscious of the increasing diversity in society and make sure that church programs are welcoming and accessible to a wide variety of people and families.  The influence that Christian educators have over curriculum also poses a great opportunity to help move the church forward.  We can plan events outside the church that might previously have been held inside the church in an effort to better know and be known by our neighborhoods.  We can influence the theology that is taught to children, not to water down the stories of God but to help the children better understand them within their contemporary context.  We can change confirmation curriculum to encourage the process of belonging-behaving-believing.  Finally, we can use the knowledge and experiences that we have to reach out to the “Nones” or Spiritual but Not Religious people in our communities.  This outreach should be done not with the goal of attracting them to church, but to walk with them in the spiritual walks they are pursuing with their families (see Appendix A).

“Exponential change creates exponential fear along with exponential hope,”.  This time of change has fostered a great amount of lament within the church, laments over the loss of members, the loss of respect for the church, even a loss of respect for God.  But the Bible also teaches the church to be hopeful in times of lament because God’s work is not done yet.  Jesus’ resurrection shows that out of darkness and death comes new life.  Many creative ministers and church leaders are already bringing this new life into being and much more work remains to be done (see Appendix B).

Resources cited in this part of the paper:
Ivy Beckwith, Formational Children's Ministry: Shaping Children Using Story, Ritual, and Relationship
Keith Anderson, The Digital Cathedral: Networked Ministry in a Wireless World
Diana Butler Bass, Christianity After Religion: the End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening