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As a resource center director I work nearly every day of my life with educational resources.\u00c2\u00a0 I scan almost all, read parts of many, but actually give a thorough reading to precious few.\u00c2\u00a0 These are the ones that I want to write about here, but first I want to own my personal agenda.\u00c2\u00a0 It may not be yours.\u00c2\u00a0 For one thing, the sociologist I was trained to be has made me an observer of our craft, asking questions like, what is this \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Christian education\u00e2\u20ac\u009d thing we have (we say) been called to do?\u00c2\u00a0 What is it we \u00e2\u20ac\u0153teach\u00e2\u20ac\u009d about?\u00c2\u00a0 Why do we do it?\u00c2\u00a0 What happens as a result?<\/p>\n
As Christian educators we say we teach for transformation; we seek to move others ever deeper into relationship with Jesus and his God, nudging them ever closer to that slippery slope.\u00c2\u00a0 Of course, as Israel Galindo points out in The Craft of Christian Teaching<\/em>, we aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t teaching at all, unless learning takes place, learning = change.\u00c2\u00a0 No learning = no change.\u00c2\u00a0 So far, so good.\u00c2\u00a0 But what of the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153what\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of our teaching, its content?\u00c2\u00a0 Again, with Galindo, I agree that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all about relationship, the one with Jesus the Christ.\u00c2\u00a0 This, of necessity, requires that we share in that same relationship.\u00c2\u00a0 We can no more teach that with which we have little experience than we can preach about it.\u00c2\u00a0 We may be great performers, but sooner or later we are found out. It seems to this observer of Christian education that, blessedly, most of us are teaching precisely because of our desire to communicate what our relationship with Christ has meant in our own lives.\u00c2\u00a0 I wonder how often we realize that we have considerable power to shape the lives of learners.\u00c2\u00a0 If our vision has been shaped by Jesus\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 vision of the reign of God – – his understanding of how God intended things to be in this world insofar as we are given to understand it – – then that will shape our teaching.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Suddenly the personal becomes political. <\/p>\n Does it not follow, for instance, that this vision will affect how we select curriculum resources?\u00c2\u00a0 In my own case it explains why I chose to review with enthusiasm Hope for Children in Poverty<\/em> two weeks ago.\u00c2\u00a0 My understanding of what discipleship demands of us is to work toward the realization of Jesus\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 vision of the reign of God.\u00c2\u00a0 That is what I learned from those early teachers.\u00c2\u00a0 I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think Jesus (or God) is pleased when children\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lives are crippled by poverty.\u00c2\u00a0 Or when persons of color are discriminated against, or church doors are slammed in the faces of gays and lesbians, or walls built to keep immigrants, or Mother Earth is assaulted one more time.\u00c2\u00a0 It figures that I would bless a book advocating hope for children in poverty.<\/p>\n Does this mean that all our teaching becomes teaching about social justice?\u00c2\u00a0 No, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think so.\u00c2\u00a0 To \u00e2\u20ac\u0153teach\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Bible stories, to explore prayer practices, to sing our faith – – all of this opens up ways for the Holy Spirit to form us.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all good.\u00c2\u00a0 What I do believe, however, is what I have already said: as educators we have considerable power to shape lives.\u00c2\u00a0 Do we exercise that power?\u00c2\u00a0 How?\u00c2\u00a0 Do we provide those learning opportunities that lead others to be Christians whose personal transformation may one day contribute to social transformation?\u00c2\u00a0 Admittedly, my professional experience has been pastoral, not educational, and it has been in small to medium-sized churches.\u00c2\u00a0 I have been able to use my pastoral office, however, as a platform for a great deal of teaching in worship and in small groups.\u00c2\u00a0 I have been spared the kind of political hardball many of you face in large multi-staff churches where energy is consumed in conflict management rather than education.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n My cards are out on the table now.\u00c2\u00a0 I have an agenda: for me the personal is inescapably political, and readers will understand, as we say in the vernacular, where I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m coming from!\u00c2\u00a0 So why now am I about to sing the praises of a book that would make an excellent small group resource on contemplative prayer?\u00c2\u00a0 Because as J. David Muyskens writes in Forty Days to a Closer Walk with God: The Practice of Centering Prayer<\/em> (Upper Room Books, Nashville, 2006), \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The practice of Centering Prayer leads us into active ministry.\u00c2\u00a0 Contemplation gives us deep peace and, at the same time, deep disturbance.\u00c2\u00a0 It opens us in love to the suffering of the world as well as to its joy and beauty.\u00c2\u00a0 Contemplative prayer will take us to places of solitude and company . . . we move from the center to the periphery where the redemptive love of Christ embraces those on the margins.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n Muyskens is a minister in the Reformed Church in America, hardly a hotbed of religious activism.\u00c2\u00a0 He also is a graduate of the Spiritual Guidance Program of Shalem Institute and works with Contemplative Outreach, Inc.\u00c2\u00a0 Given that many sixties activists learned the hard way about what happens to the soul when it is not nurtured, Muyskens is on target when he writes, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Our world desperately needs to know its true Center.\u00c2\u00a0 People need to experience the love of the Source of life in whom we live each day.\u00c2\u00a0 Our fractured world is in grave danger of destroying itself.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n While admitting that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153to a superficial observer the practice of Centering Prayer may seem to be private, centered only in self,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d actually \u00e2\u20ac\u0153quite the opposite is true.\u00c2\u00a0 It draws us into community, never bringing us to solitary stillness and leaving us there.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 Rather, it brings us to God, Creator of all, and connects us with all creation.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 Muyskens takes seriously the radical nature of the Gospel.\u00c2\u00a0 He packages it in a forty-day experience which includes six weekly meetings – – and beyond, if participants so choose.\u00c2\u00a0 Forty daily readings are followed by suggestions for group study and additional resources for leaders.\u00c2\u00a0 Thomas Keating calls it \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a thorough and friendly introduction to Centering Prayer.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n As I sat down at the computer to finish writing this piece, I checked e-mail and printed out the lead article in this week\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s newsletter from The Alban Institute, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Changing the Conversation: Nurturing a Third Way for Congregations.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 Its author suggests that, if churches want to find the way forward, they will need to change the conversations in which so many churches are currently mired.\u00c2\u00a0 How about a small group entering honestly into centering prayer together?\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 What could be more subversive?\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n As one who confessed that, after having met some remarkable role models, all I ever wanted to be was a great Sunday School teacher, how do I explain all the time and money invested in those later credentials in Sociology … Continue reading ![\"judybanner1.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/07\/judybanner1.jpg\")
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