Essentials of Christian Education - Lesson 3

How do you communicate the gospel within the setting of a church? Who are you teaching? What are you teaching? Why? These questions and more are answered in a way that will help you train up people in your local congregation, and especially train up the next generation.

These lectures are a summary of the full course, Educational Ministry of the Church. It is an introductory level course to the ministry of education within the church. These lectures were recorded by Biblical Training during the summer of 2003.

As we shift our gears, what I would like us to do for the rest of our time is to do brief consideration of seven critical questions for the teaching ministry of the church. And these are questions that I believe we must always be in the business of asking so that we can keep ourselves on track with the biblical vision of the teaching ministry of the church. And the first of these questions is going to help us clarify a proper biblical conception of Christian education. Walking through the seven quickly and then returning to the first to look a little bit more in-depth, The seven questions are simple one-word questions. The first one is why? Why do we teach? Why are we to be engaged in the Ministry of Christian Education in the first place? What's our concept of Christian education that is derived from the Bible? The second of the seven questions is what do we teach? Or rather, what must we teach? There are a lot of things we could teach, of course, but we want to look at the question of what must we teach? Or that is the issue of essential content in our teaching ministry. The third question is when, When do we teach what? And a little bit of a complex question. But what I mean by this is when in the course of their spiritual development are we encountering students and according to their spiritual growth in their natural development as well, when should we be teaching? What are there certain content to be delivered as some point in a person's life, in faith development? Other content to be delivered at another time? The wind question is really a question of paying attention to issues of readiness, and developmental readiness, not only on the natural plane, but on the spiritual plane as well. And related to the one question is the issue of continuity. How can we have continuity in our teaching ministry so that there is a building upon previous learning and preparation for succeeding learning experiences? The fourth question is whom? Who are we teaching and what difference does that make how the when question focused on certain aspects of the learner? That is where that developmental the natural development and spiritual development, the whom question is concerned with pretty much everything else that we could ask about the learner, for example, whom are we teaching in terms of cultural realities, and how does the culture of our learners, the cultural experiences of our learners, how should that address our teaching or how does how does that make us adjust our teaching to be more effective? And here I would like to introduce the term congruence, cultural congruence. How can we teach so that our teaching will be culturally congruent with the realities of our learners? Culturally sensitive teaching. A fifth question is the how question and the how question is a simple one. Of course, as it as it sounds, simply means how do we teach? But I'd like to look at it in this way How do we teach so that we can effectively engage the whole learner or the whole community of learners, not just teach the mind, not just teach the intellect, not just pass information, but really engage the whole person, the mind, the heart, the hands, the whole person. How do we teach for maximum effectiveness? And here we'll introduce the term confluence. Confluence in educational circles often means bringing together the head in the heart or the cognitive aspects of learning with the affective aspects of learning. But I want to look at confluence in terms of the whole person. How do we engage the mind, the heart, the hands, the whole person, and bring those streams of learning together immediately related to the how question is the sixth question, and that is where where do we teach once we teach? Once we discuss the question of how we're going to teaching, how we're going to teach, it will have direct implications for where we will teach. And we're asking this question Where can we teach for maximum effectiveness and or set otherwise? So what would be the best context in which learning can occur? What kind of settings shall we use for effective teaching? And finally, the seventh question is not final because it's least important but final, perhaps because it really is needing a key emphasis, and that is who teaches, who teaches. And under the who question There are really three issues that I want to address. First, whose job is it to do Christian education, to do the teaching ministry of the church? And we're going to find that there are many people who should be involved in that task. So a second question that flows from the WHO question is how do we organize these various teachers for maximum effectiveness? And then finally, who do I need to be if I'm called to teach, who do I need to be in terms of my character so that I can teach effectively with my life? And here, the issue that we're dealing with in the WHO question is the issue of personal contact. What's the role of contact between individuals in Christian education? So those are the seven questions that will guide our discussion. So let's look at the seven questions one by one. We're not going to treat them equally because there are three questions in particular that, I believe need special attention. And these three questions really correspond to those three commitments that I suggested the need to be reaffirmed, a commitment to a biblically based starting point, a commitment to teaching and obeying the faith, and a commitment to cooperative servant leadership. And those commitments correspond to the three questions of why we teach, what we teach and who teaches. So we'll be looking at those three questions The why, the what and the WHO question in a little bit more detail, but we'll also touch upon the other four.