The Church as a Learning Community - Assignment Example

Paul C. Sims PT536 – Christian Education Dr. Nathaniel D. West Reading Assignment The Church as a Learning Community The assigned reading identified several concepts that I found to be very informative and beneficial when rethinking the ministry at our church. One of our goals for this year is to increase church school and bible study attendance not to mention the overall interest in studying the Word of GOD at our church. The first concept that I gravitated to in the reading was “Asking How People Learn.” One thing that I have felt that has hindered our ministry is that we have people teaching in the church in a very traditional manner. However, the Christian Education Ministry has not invested enough time to define how people learn. As the pastor, I made a mistake when I first started Seminary by trying something that had worked at my “home” church. I started teaching from the book Experiencing GOD. Immediately I witnessed a decline in church attendance and I couldn’t understand why. One of the mothers of the church called me and stated “pastor, you know us old people don’t read so well and you just put a book in our hands.” I realized immediately during the reading assignment that I had failed to ascertain what types of learners were in the congregation. Another concept that caught my attention was Communal Competence. One of the things that I have struggled with during my first pastorate is finding new teachers to educate our congregation. The main problem is that many people feel as if they are not qualified to teach. However, Everist makes the point that “a religious community does well to realize that everyone is learning in all sorts of daily formal and informal situations.” This implies if we are always learning then someone is always teaching. A better question may be “what are we teaching and what are we learning?” I agree with the author that we are always teaching and learning. If so, the challenge then for us as Christian educators in the church is to look at what we teach from the pulpit to the pew in terms of the messages that are we sending. As I reflected during this reading, my mind couldn’t help but to ponder our Diaconate Ministry and the non-intentional teaching they are doing due to their lack of attendance in learning environments. Confirmation! During my initial meetings with our 2013 leaders at church, I began this year off by challenging these new leaders to be more accountable. This applies not just in attendance but in all they do, and especially the part about being accountable to one another! While GOD allows us to attend church of our own free will and accord, scripture is specific that the ekklesia is a community of believers who are accountable to one another. The author suggests that “The more directions in which people are pulled, the more their need for a central core of beliefs to make sense of it all.” This speaks to the power of “The Accountability of Attendance.” The reading suggested that people want to know desperately that someone cares about them for the long term. As I analyzed our ministry, I realized we had missed it; we were holding people accountable for a few weeks after they joined. But while they attended “New Members” classes, we failed them because we did not make them accountable to themselves or to hold them accountable to the church. I almost jumped out of my seat while reading the section “Setting the Environment.” I had been talking to our Christian education department about how conducive our learning environment was at church. I talked of structure, controlling the class, establishing boundaries, starting on time, and spending enough time on lesson plans to ensure that they were relevant in their teachings. The reading confirmed all that I had been preaching and teaching; however, it seemed to be falling on deaf ears. This led me to the final chapter of this reading assignment, which identified the biggest problem for me as a pastor: I have failed to equip the people for the teaching task. Paul C. Sims PT536 – Christian Education Dr. Nathaniel D. West Reading Assignment 2 - The Church as a Learning Community As I left off from reading chapters 1, 2 and 6, I couldn’t help but wonder what lay ahead in the reading assignment that would confirm that the Holy Spirit had our church on the right track. There in Chapter 7 it was! Having been a pastor now for a brief four short years, I have had to readjust and rethink some things that we had embarked on. Our ministry focus for this year revolved around four areas of concern: Worship, Stewardship, Leadership, and Mission! In the beginning of chapter seven was confirmation of this. “Learning leads to mission and mission leads to learning.” What the writer goes on to state is what I would like to analyze further: “The connection between learning and mission exists whether a faith community is aware of it or not.” I asked our leadership team two questions: (1) what does scripture say is the mission of our church? and (2) what is the mission of our church? Both questions imply that you must know something about scripture and our church. While some people could quote scripture and tell me what it said about the mission of the church, no one could tell me with certainty what the mission of our church was! As I analyzed the reading in this particular chapter, I came to the conclusion that I had to get our leadership team more involved in the learning process if we as a church was ever going to truly embrace the mission of our church. As I carefully read and analyzed this particular section I realized that there was a direct connection between our lack of learning and embracing the mission that we as a church had been called to in our community. The author put it this way: “the congregation which is not engaged in outreach also will be merely a stone. Fed on the bread of life, stuffed full, but not exercising its energy in ministry, this learning community will no longer hunger for the Word.” For me, that was it. We had failed to be a Word-driven church. Everist described our church further: “but such a congregation will use its energy in some way. More likely than not it will become bored and bickering. Unchallenged, people will take on the task of critic, a role which can become habit-forming.” That described our church perfectly. Now that the problem has been revealed, what was I going to do as the pastor! I found my answer on page 264: “Congregation Learning to Refocus Their Mission.” The author confirmed for me that it was necessary that congregations “continually” change their mission and direction. More importantly, they need to sharpen their educational goals. This made perfect sense to me; a change in either our commitment to learning or our commitment to doing ministry would foster a change within the congregation as a whole. As I am writing this, my thoughts are running uncontrollably through my mind. I cannot help but think that if we change our commitment to learning not just within our church, but if we address the literacy needs of our community, then that could possibly give our ministry a new direction that would foster continuous learning! We should never stop learning, and the more we learn about GOD is the more that we should share with others, which is our mission. I understand that learning is a life-long process. However, more importantly for the church it is mandatory if we are going to be effective in performing our mission of impacting the world with the Word of GOD. Learning is not an isolated phenomenon that happens once and is no more. If communities are going to be changed then it is going to be through the learning process. If ministries are to be successful then it will take place through the learning process also. Read More