Adult Ministries  | |
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Adult Christian Education
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Training and resources focus on the spiritual growth of all adults by developing and recommending study helps that might be used in a variety of settings from small groups to Sunday church school. |
Why Do We Need It?
- To explore life's deepest questions
- To pass on the faith
- To become and to grow disciples
- To bridge with other viewpoints
- To become a caring community
- To grow and to reach out in compassionate caring
- To integrate new members
- To explore giftedness
What Do People Say About It?
 Wonderful things happen when we critically open our minds to the thoughts of others who are also seeking to understand and know God. While enjoying the friendships of noble thought, we find that we have matured in our faith.
"Religious education is a context which facilitates religious learning. It is a hospitable and just space in which authentic human beings, including those who have been called 'teachers' and 'learners,' may consider together their life experiences and meanings; in which remembered meanings may be laid alongside new experiences for interpretation or transformation; and in which we expect God's presence to abide. The goal is vocation, living in wholeness, in meaningful and just relationships."
Jack L. Seymour, Margaret Ann Crain, Joseph V. Crockett, Educating Christians: The Intersection of Meaning, Learning, and Vocation (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1993), 94. |
"Regular participation in Bible study groups is positively and significantly associated with maturity of faith levels in older adults."
Dennis D. Maxwell, "Group Bible Study and Faith Maturity in Older Adults" Religious Education, vol. 93, no. 4 (Fall, 1998): 4. |
"The goal of education is to help all of us become more fully human. Education at its best is a process of posing problems or situations for subjects to investigate, probe and examine for the purpose of mutual growth and understanding."
H. L. Hunt, "The Educational Ministry, " Pacific Theological Review XIX: 3 (Spring 1986): 68. . |
"Church education binds the generations into community. In the congregation's elders, those who are young in age and faith discover clues to the meaning and power of events central to the identity and mission of the church. Through the youth of the congregation, the elders envision the community's continuity and renewal. If church education is not intensely intergenerational, the 'continuity' of its 'vision, value, and perception' cannot be maintained over time or renewed for changing circumstances."
Charles R. Foster, Educating Congregations: The Future of Christian Education, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994), 62, referencing Walter Brueggemann, The Creative Word: Canon as a Model for Biblical Education (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982), pp. 1,14-15. |
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