Many of you may already be aware of Dan Dick’s re-publication of Stupid Christian Education. However, if you have not seen or read this piece, you really should. The post summarizes the results of surveys relating to Christian education in UM congregations.
Dick’s post is not an easy read, nor is it good news. Generally speaking, we are doing far too poor of a job with educating and forming Christians. If the mission of the United Methodist Church is to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world, based on these results it would seem that we are frequently failing to make disciples.
A few further questions I had as I read this: How does this relate to the way we do theological (seminary) education as UMs? Is there any correlation between poor local church Christian education and the way that we approach seminary education? What do you think?
Kevin M. Watson 
Absolutely! There is a correlation between poor church Christian education and the way we approach seminary education. First, my own current institution does not even have a fulltime or tenured faculty member in Christian education. We have an adjunct professor and that to me is a very sad state of the affairs. Second, I was in a few classes that intentionally taught me how to translate the stuff I was learning in class for the local church and community. The rest of the classes just assumed and expected that I would be able to do so on my own, when truth of the matter is teaching is a skill that needs to be developed for a local congregation. Third, in the one education class I took in seminary, I did not learn about pedagogy. How we present and make the Bible come alive is just as important as what we are teaching. Fourth, our Boards of Ordained Ministry have done a very poor job of evaluating pastors in how effective they are in their preaching and teaching. That’s probably because they weren’t taught how to evaluate candidates, so evaluation ends up being based on personal and subjective criteria of who ever is on the board.
That’s just my two sense worth. 🙂 Grace and peace to you!
Shandi – thank you for your thoughtful contribution to this discussion. You have raised several important points of further exploration. It is certainly unfortunate that a school like BU does not have a tenured faculty member in Christian Education.
After I wrote the post I found myself thinking about whether formation might be a more helpful word for the distinction I am trying to get at than education. What do you think?
I’m a bit behind with responding and following up (with so many things) 🙂
Formation is definitely the better word. Some churches do a lot of education, and yet the disciples taught are not formed into faithful disciples. I think formation describes precisely what Wesley meant when he said “unite the pair so long disjoined…” Knowledge alone is not enough for faithful living.