Ministries Christian Education Beyond Traditional Christian Education
As many of you know, the Education and Vocation Committee at Redeemer has been working on developing a framework for our education goals as a congregation. The framework aims to lay out what opportunities and expectations we as a community have for our Christian education from birth through the rest of our lives. Too often, we think of Christian Education as being limited to Sunday School or Confirmation Classes, but it is really a continuous process that never ends. We expect this framework to always be evolving and changing, but hopefully it will provide us with guidance as we move forward.
Currently, the framework consists of three major areas in which our congregation members are to have opportunities for education and growth: Biblical knowledge, church knowledge, and service opportunities. Some sub-categories under Biblical knowledge include keystone Bible stories and verses, in depth analysis of certain key verses, and a knowledge of how the Bible was compiled. Church knowledge includes things like knowledge about key concepts like the sacraments such as contained in Luther’s catechism, the reformation, and learning how our church works and its expectations of members. Finally, the service category is meant to encompass all the ways we can serve our church community, our general community and fostering relationships between generations.
Right now, there are a few age distinctions. The youngest children in our congregation (pre-Sunday school) are part of “cradle care.” We are looking for ways to incorporate these children and their families better into our community. Then we are looking at Sunday School age children and what we hope they will get out of Sunday School. We next are looking at confirmation age students and what is essential for them to know in order to be confirmed. There are also our youth kids who are kind of in a limbo between confirmation and full adulthood. What are ways to reach out to them? Finally we are looking at adult education. What are some ways to provide adult education opportunities including and beyond the traditional classroom sense?
This project began out of a desire on behalf of the Sunday School teachers to have some guidelines as to what they are expected to teach year to year. As you know, with all the transitions we have gone through as a congregation the last few years, ideas of what our curriculum should be are a little different. For example, we recently switched to the Witness Curriculum by Augsburg Fortress (we were previously using their Season of the Spirit Curriculum). This switch was because of a desire to focus the leaning at the Sunday School ages on traditional Bible stories instead of the liturgical readings.
Some other goals have been present among the Sunday School teachers that the Education and Vocation committee is looking to incorporate church-wide because they feel they reflect goals of the congregation as a whole. For example, we are looking for was to incorporate opportunities for service to the church and community into our curriculum. We are looking for ways to build relationships between different generations of church members. And through this all we are looking for ways and examples of how to live as Christians in the real world.
As the fall begins and the All Committee meetings start up again, please feel welcome to come to the Education and Vocation Committee with all your ideas.
As many of you know, the Education and Vocation Committee at Redeemer has been working on developing a framework for our education goals as a congregation. The framework aims to lay out what opportunities and expectations we as a community have for our Christian education from birth through the rest of our lives. Too often, we think of Christian Education as being limited to Sunday School or Confirmation Classes, but it is really a continuous process that never ends. We expect this framework to always be evolving and changing, but hopefully it will provide us with guidance as we move forward.
Currently, the framework consists of three major areas in which our congregation members are to have opportunities for education and growth: Biblical knowledge, church knowledge, and service opportunities. Some sub-categories under Biblical knowledge include keystone Bible stories and verses, in depth analysis of certain key verses, and a knowledge of how the Bible was compiled. Church knowledge includes things like knowledge about key concepts like the sacraments such as contained in Luther’s catechism, the reformation, and learning how our church works and its expectations of members. Finally, the service category is meant to encompass all the ways we can serve our church community, our general community and fostering relationships between generations.
Right now, there are a few age distinctions. The youngest children in our congregation (pre-Sunday school) are part of “cradle care.” We are looking for ways to incorporate these children and their families better into our community. Then we are looking at Sunday School age children and what we hope they will get out of Sunday School. We next are looking at confirmation age students and what is essential for them to know in order to be confirmed. There are also our youth kids who are kind of in a limbo between confirmation and full adulthood. What are ways to reach out to them? Finally we are looking at adult education. What are some ways to provide adult education opportunities including and beyond the traditional classroom sense?
This project began out of a desire on behalf of the Sunday School teachers to have some guidelines as to what they are expected to teach year to year. As you know, with all the transitions we have gone through as a congregation the last few years, ideas of what our curriculum should be are a little different. For example, we recently switched to the Witness Curriculum by Augsburg Fortress (we were previously using their Season of the Spirit Curriculum). This switch was because of a desire to focus the leaning at the Sunday School ages on traditional Bible stories instead of the liturgical readings.
Some other goals have been present among the Sunday School teachers that the Education and Vocation committee is looking to incorporate church-wide because they feel they reflect goals of the congregation as a whole. For example, we are looking for was to incorporate opportunities for service to the church and community into our curriculum. We are looking for ways to build relationships between different generations of church members. And through this all we are looking for ways and examples of how to live as Christians in the real world.
As the fall begins and the All Committee meetings start up again, please feel welcome to come to the Education and Vocation Committee with all your ideas.
