LIFELONG GROWTH IN FIVE DIMENSIONS: A GOAL FOR CHRISTIAN EDUCATION

David Housholder

Frank J. Kline Memorial Lecture

Union Biblical Seminary, Pune, February 26, 2010

As I come before you tonight to present this 2010 Frank J. Kline Memorial Lecture I am greatly thankful to those, including our Principal, Dr. P. S. Jacob, and our Chairman, Dr. David Samuel, who presented me with the invitation to present this lecture. I am grateful because it is an honor to be invited to share with the UBS community in any capacity as I hold this seminary and all the people associated with it in high regard. And I am grateful because it offers me the opportunity to share with you a subject about which I become quite passionate – the discussion of how we can assist all the people in our Christian fellowships to grow into that maturity in Christ which Paul stated as his goal of teaching: “that we may present everyone perfect in Christ” (Col. 1:28). That perfection, that maturity, that completeness of all that God wants to see in His people, is the awesome goal of Christian Education.

The founders of UBS, joining in a vision dear to the heart of Dr. Kline, stated their goal in the establishment of the seminary as training future ministers who would be

. . .men and women with an evangelical faith, a profound confidence in the Bible as the Word of God, a real knowledge of the content of the Bible, an ability to apply it . . . a deep and growing personal spiritual life, an understanding of the needs of their parishioners, . . . and a passion for winning the lost.¹

That is a great long-range goal pre-visioning the sort of graduates (and, of course, faculty and staff) we want to see here at UBS. But wait a moment. Try this experiment. Add the word “fellow” after “needs of their” so it becomes “an understanding of the needs of their fellow parishioners”, and do we not have the long-range goal we would have for all the people who claim the name of Christ? How can we work to see such a transformation and formation of all the people in our churches? That is the task of Christian Education.

But I am getting a bit ahead of myself here. I need to select out another layer of delight for me in being invited to present this lecture. We have here a union seminary, formed through the cooperative efforts of multiple organizations. Dr. Kline, a Free Methodist missionary, however, is especially significant for me because I am an ordained minister of the Free Methodist Church. Please allow me, even as we celebrate the honored cooperation leading to the creation of this institution, to be especially pleased to be part of this series honoring the leadership of a fellow Free Methodist.

And I must also present to you greetings from some dear people who have made my participation here possible. Darrell and Marlene Rader are long-time friends who have stood with us in understanding and supporting our love for India. It is their generosity that made this trip possible for me. Thank you, Lord, for those who see themselves as stewards of your resources.

And, finally, I bring you greetings from my wife, Linda. She would have loved to be here with all of you, and you would have all been blessed by her godly ministry and friendship. So why is she not here? We have a very heavy travel and ministry schedule beginning the day after I return to the USA, and she needed time to prepare for that. But be assured that now at 9:30 AM in Marietta, Georgia, she is in prayer for all of us.

What is “Christian Education”?

As I move now into the heart of this lecture I must begin by defining what “Christian Education” is the focus here. I once said that creating a definition of “education” is like trying to capture a unicorn. The existence of such a definition may indeed be a myth. And that is certainly also true when we add the descriptor “Christian”.

The scope of “Christian Education” can include education constructed and offered by a Christian institution (as in our Christian schools or colleges), it can include content related to Christian history or faith even if taught by a person not committed to that faith (as in the Religious Education courses offered in otherwise secular institutions), and it can include the attitude to students and truth by a Christian teacher in a secular setting.

Here, however, I am referring to the education program in the church. It can cover everything that is done to present the believers mature before the Master. Oh, wait. There is a problem there. If sermons, Bible studies, even the process of conduct of board meetings all contribute to the formation of Christian character in our people, then is “Christian Education” Synonymous with “Church”? If so then whole seminary and Bible college departments come crashing to the ground as there would no longer be such a discipline as Christian Education.

So let us see if we can identify that about which I am trying to speak.

It is important to see what Christian Education is not, or at least that to which it is not limited. Some years ago here I started my first Christian Education class lecture with a question: “How many of you have already had some involvement in Christian Education?” Out of the class of 40 or so students there were half a dozen hands raised. When I asked them to describe that involvement it all was about teaching lessons to children or helping in a camp or retreat for children. I then asked how many had ever preached a sermon, led an adult Bible study, or engaged in a one-on-one discipleship process. As you might expect everyone in that class had been in one way or another part of teaching, sharing, challenging, encouraging, and aiding in the formation of others. They just had never included it in their understanding of Christian Education. For them Christian Education was Sunday School and VBS and Christian camps.

Nor is Christian Education defined as the simple imparting of facts. You can readily find Sunday School curricula published here in India that is aimed at that goal. The lesson retells a Bible event then gives a list of questions like “How old was Abraham when Isaac was born?” or “How many stones did David select for his battle with Goliath?” And then the lesson is over.

Students in a course I was teaching in a seminary told the class of the agony of the annual Sunday School examination. I am certain some of you went through that process and may be in a church that continues that approach to education. Through the year the students were taught a massive collection of Bible facts which they were expected to remember for an examination. The day came for the exam. Sunday morning. The external examiner has come. He will proctor the exam and then preach in the morning service. The room is tense as each student know his or her parents expect him or her to attain nothing less than first place in the competition. But wait. The students, in advance of the examination, have devised a way they could assist each other. They would become a secret team, all pulling for one another.

As you might have expected the vigilant eye of the examiner caught the efforts of mutual aid, stopped the examination, and went to the pastor, saying he could not continue to be in a church that would have students cheating on a Sunday School examination, and he would leave immediately (great loss of honor for the church) unless the students apologized publicly for their behavior. So at the start of the service the students had to come forward, confess, and apologize (and who knows what happened to them when they got home, especially the one whose father was the pastor).

So what had happened? The church and examiner (supported by the pastor) re-enforced the values of competition, outdoing the other, individuality, holding truth as personal secret, and being in first place as the values the church held dear.

The students, on the other hand, tried to create community, mutual support, truth as in shared stewardship, and mutual love.

Need I go on to say which set of attitudes were the ones that should have been at the heart of Christian Education?

In many of the books you will find today on Christian Education that term (“Christian Education”) has been helpfully replaced by “Christian Formation.” I love the title of a recent book edited by Ronald T. Habermas: Introduction to Christian Education and Formation: A Lifelong Plan for Christ-Centered Restoration.² There we see the purpose and the duration of the process. Important to our understanding of Christian Education is the realization that it is a lifelong process of Christian Formation. It is the process that will continue, not cease, for our UBS students when they graduate; it is a process that continues as you keep a journal of the sermons you hear and review them to integrate their contents with what you learn in a small group Bible study or in family devotions or personal Bible reading; it is a process that continue in some as they prepare to teach a Sunday School lesson or as they prepare for their TAFTEE tutorial.

People come to faith in Christ through the faithful teaching of God’s Word and the convicting power of the Holy Spirit. After conversion, the learner moves into the discipleship stage and is to develop and grow as a believer. This is Christian education in action. It is not a one-time learning experience, but a lifetime dedicated to learning more about God and his Word. It includes the application of this truth in the life of the learner so that it can be passed on to others in service and ministry. Christian education is designed to bring people to faith, to develop people in their faith, and to lead people to minister to others through the ministry of the church.³

Amid the large number of proposed definitions of Christian Education I suggest you take home and work through the one I use with my classes. It’s not mine. It’s by Robert Pamiño and is based on a definition by Lawrence Cremin.

Christian education is the deliberate, systematic, and sustained divine and human effort to share or appropriate the knowledge, values, attitudes, skills, sensitivities, and behaviors that compromise or are consistent with the Christian faith. It fosters the change, renewal, and reformation of persons, groups, and structures by the power of the Holy Spirit to conform to the revealed will of God as expressed in the Scriptures and preeminently in the person of Jesus Christ, as well as any outcomes of that effort.⁴

If we wanted to unpack everything from that definition – well, I suggest if you want to do that it may require you to enroll in a class on Christian Education! If you join her classes the Rev. Mrs. Rachel Bagh will help you extract the full implications from that and other definitions. I suggest you sit down with whomever is involved in leadership in Christian Education in your church and compare the expectations of that definition with what is happening in your church; then make adjustments to your program as you may feel are appropriate. Let us just take for this lecture that Christian Education is an intentional, planned out, integrated process of transforming Christians into all God would have us to be. It is “teaching them to obey everything I [our Lord] commanded you” (Mat 28:20). And that’s not just telling people what they should do (though I hear plenty of that in sermons as in “You should read your Bible more”) but teaching and showing how to put all that Christ commanded into our lives.

The Why of Christian Education

In the title of this lecture I promised you five dimensions. We need to wait a bit yet before getting to those so we can take a moment on the “why” question. Why do we teach? Is Christian Education needed? Is it biblically mandated?

After all, consider John in his first letter. He says, “You have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth” (2:20), and “As for you, the anointing you received from him remains in you, and” – my apologies to the faculty as this could hurt their careers – “you do not need anyone to teach you” (2:27).

Or what about 2 Timothy 3:15-16 where Paul states the Scriptures make you wise and are the source of all that is needed to equip the “man of God.”

If the Bible is sufficient and we do not need anyone to teach us, why would we need programs of Christian Education?

Yes, I know. We need to look at the contexts of those passages (though you will find people in the church who would understand them just as I have presented them here). Paul tells Timothy the Scriptures equip, but look what he is to do with that equipment: he is to preach, correct, rebuke, and encourage the people among whom he is ministering (2 Tim 4:1-2). He is, in other words, to engage in Christian Education using the tools provided by the Scriptures.

And John’s statement about not needing teachers? Just look at the context of that passage and you will see he is speaking of some particular teachers and teachings, the ones who said you cannot possibly be what God wants you to be unless you sign up for our course in hidden secrets. Besides, what is John doing in his letter? He is teaching!

There is yet another reason we need Christian Education. Look at Genesis 1:3; look at john 1:1; flip through page after page of the Bible. You will see that “God said”, and that “The Word” was in the beginning, and that God speaks and forces opposing his will are brought under control. In fact, look at what you were just flipping through. It is a book, written communication. We, as Christians, understand that the Bible can and does communicate ultimate truth. It is not like those who see sacred books as only approximations of the truth, who believe nothing true can ever be said about ultimate reality and that understanding of truth only comes from deep inner search, not as communication from beyond the self. Nor are we like those who, while claiming God’s truth is communicated in a book also believe that truth is communicated only when read in the original language of its composition. Any translation is merely interpretation. Instead we hold that a Bible in Hebrew and Greek or in English or Malayalam or Bengali or Swedish or Navaho or (well, you get the idea) is still the Word of God and sufficient to be the text for our corporate and individual inspiration and study and challenge.

And is it biblically mandated? Start with Deuteronomy 6:6 or Matthew 28:20 or multiple passages in Paul’s letters or Revelation 1:19 and from those passages follow the cross references. You will see over and over the command to challenge and teach and write and communicate so people will know God’s truth.

The Five Dimensions

Now, what about those five dimensions? We will be looking together at a model to which you will find reference in several books on Christian Education.⁵ The model assembles five crucial tasks of the church. We can then ask how each fit into our plans for providing Christian Education through the whole life-span for the formation of Christ-like believers.

We begin with the blank diagram on the next page. When I start adding labels I will go counter-clockwise. Why? The completely non-theological reason is that the person credited with first developing it, Edward V. Hill, was a fan of American baseball. So the diagram is a baseball diamond, and that’s the direction you run the bases in a game.

Note we have five boxes, each representing a task of the church. An note they are all linked to each other with one prominently in the middle as the hub without which all the rest would fall apart. I referred to these as five “dimensions” rather than tasks or aspects. When I wrote that I was thinking of Zachary, my now one-month old grandson (we proud grandparents are good at sneaking in references to our grandchildren in any context – my wife and I have six, by the way). Rather, I was thinking of his photo. I was trying to include it in a newsletter. The problem was that as I tried to resize it to fit I kept changing the proportions of the picture. So I would get a short fat grandson or a tall slender grandson but none in the correct proportion. I needed to expand both dimensions at the same time and in proper relation to each other if I were to show the world what he looks like.

In the same way the relationship of these five elements must be in proper proportion to one another for the church to be effective. You will note here I said “the church”. And this lecture is supposed to be about Christian Education. Well, someone once said, “The church does not have an educational program; the church is an educational program”.⁶ Yet since they are not co-equal (or the terms would be meaningless) we need to see these characteristics of the church as areas from and for which we can design systematic, sustained, deliberate educational activities. So these are five tasks that inform and shape our Christian Education programming.

Box One – Teaching and Proclaiming

So we begin with the first box – Teaching and Proclaiming

Teaching (which includes also guiding people to make their own discoveries in the Word) and proclaiming (which includes preaching but also includes your testimony to those sharing your compartment on the train) quite clearly has an educational purpose. We are informed, challenged, corrected, given patterns, and more through the preaching and teaching of the Bible. Christian Education also trains us to do such preaching, teaching, and testifying. We are educated by the task and for the task.

How can we evaluate whether our people are gaining what they need to gain from the teaching and proclamation activities in our church? Try asking these questions:

• Can our people explain the way of salvation to others?

• Do they understand other religions well enough to know how to tell adherents of those religions of the Lord Jesus Christ in a way they can understand?

• Can they explain the significance of the historic creeds of Christianity? Can they quote any of those creeds?

• Can they give an overview of the Bible message from Genesis to Revelation?

• Can they explain the concept of “The Kingdom of God”?

These questions are samples of the competencies that might be desired for our people. In your church you will want to sit with some others to develop such a list of goals for people in your fellowship. Then look at how you could provide the needed motivation and training. You may find that CEEFI or ISSU or another publisher has created materials you could adopt that would be the tool you could use. Or you may find you need to create your own materials or teaching tools.

Box Two -- Fellowship

The next task is centered on our nature as community. This can be in a Sunday School class, in a small group Bible study, in a house group, or in the full congregation. This is Fellowship, the koinonia of the Body of Christ. We learn from involvement in fellowship, learning how to understand one another, to pray for and with one another, and to challenge and encourage one another. Just go to your concordance and begin looking up the “one another” passages of the Bible to get a sense of how important fellowship is in the church. In our Christian Education programs there needs also to be training for fellowship. Praying for one another is not an automatic skill learned at conversion. Seeking the good of one another is also hard to learn. I was in another seminary where meals are served at long tables. The serving plates and bowls start at one end and are passed down to the other. One day we had fish. Fish was a rare treat there. Everyone was pleased they could have fish. The large fish had been cut like loaves of bread and the pieces cooked. Now with loaves of bread every slice will be approximately the same size. Not with fish. Fish taper. So the middle slices were big and the ones from front and back were smaller. So guess which pieces were left by the time the platter reached the end of the table? If we really were to follow the principle of looking to the needs of one another which pieces would have been left? Of course as one who was sitting at the far end of the table (the small piece end) I really could not complain – I needed to esteem those at the head of the table as more worthy than myself and been happy they got the big pieces.

My point, which I may have lost somewhere in all that fish business, is that examining our ways of working and living together can help us see what we need to do to bring our lives into alignment with God’s intentions for us. This is part of learning to love one another with a love that is sincere when we say, “pahile aap”. John says “we know we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers” (1 John 3:14). That’s harder than it sounds; we choose friends but our brothers are inescapable because they are part of family, whether they are easy to love or not.

Here are some questions for evaluation of our fellowship activities:

• Do our people look for and take opportunities to encourage their fellow believers?

• Are they teachable and do they seek to learn from others?

• Do they use fellowship times to practice care for others? (check out the size of the piece of fish on their plate)

Box Three -- Service

So now we have proclamation and teaching that is being worked out and reinforced in fellowship. Hearing the word and interacting with fellow believers leads us to the point of asking how we should be using the strength of our fellowship and the challenge we have received from the Word of God to minister to the needs of those outside our fellowship. Thus the next box: Service. What is included in service? It could be a school for children of prostitutes. It could be meals for a family devastated by a death. It could be bringing relief care after a devastating earthquake or flood, or it could be visits to sick children in a hospital. The important thing to note here is that we must be trained for the task and we will learn more (about teamwork, about the reality of the needs of hurting people, and about the love of Christ) from involvement in the project.

Questions related to the Service component:

• Do our people seek to work with others in the fellowship to meet the needs of our fellow believers?

• Do they work together to meet the needs of others outside our fellowship?

Box Four – Kingdom Advocacy

Service and caring in our larger setting will make us aware of situations that are not good, not right, not just. We will begin to see that a school for prostitutes’ children is good but that working toward the freedom of those in the sex trade is also needed. We can bring relief to the victims of the flood, but we also want to advocate for those who are struggling against that misuse of land and illegal construction that contributed to the devastating effect of the floods. That is the area of Advocacy, of Kingdom Consciousness.

Once again we need to be trained and prepared on how to speak out for righteousness and justice. And we need to know that the Christian way is not the same as the way of the world in such matters. How, for example, do we stand up for the rights of Christians and the honor of the name of God without taking on the tactics of those who oppose those rights and dishonor God? But in addition to learning for it we will learn from our involvement in this Kingdom Advocacy process.

Evaluating the Kingdom Consciousness component:

• Do they read the newspapers, watch TV news, or surf the Internet to find out where the needs are for righteousness and justice to be known in our world?

  • Do they just shake their heads sadly when they see an issue of injustice, or do they make it a matter of prayer and, if possible, action?

  • Do they write a letter or make a phone call or post a blog or somehow take a stand toward righteousness and justice?

• Do they show stewardship concern (the Genesis Mandate) toward all of God’s creation?

Box Five -- Worship

That leaves us with one more box to fill. You can probably see what is missing, right? That’s correct; it’s Worship.

In worship we take the wonder and glory of God we have heard about in the teaching and proclamation and lift our voices in praise to Him. In worship we praise Him for the delight of being in community with other believers as we celebrate before Him. In worship we come back from service with our resources exhausted, our energies drained, and receive a fresh infilling of his empowering Spirit. In worship we hear again His calls for rightness and justice in the world; we glimpse a vision of the majestic King; and we present our plea before Him “Your Kingdom come; your will be done.”

Shashi came to Woodstock School as a 7^th grader. It was clear over that and his next year that he was falling in love with the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, as an adult, he is a solidly committed follower of the Lord, maintaining a commitment to Christ he made in those years. I asked him once what had brought him to a point of decision. He said, “I’m sorry to say this, Doc, but it wasn’t your sermons. It was the music”. I said, “That’s okay. I spent as much time choosing the music as I did on the sermons”. Music communicates and goes deep into our being. That is part of worship.

Conor is a young teen who describes himself on his Facebook page as an “all out Christian” and says, “Everyday I find myself more indulged in Christ than any other time in my life”. I asked this young man when and how he came to Christ. He answered that it was two years ago “at beach camp for our church singing my lungs out as the band played”. Yes, people can be brought to the Lord through worship.

Some evaluation questions:

• Do our people seek time daily alone or with family to turn in worship to God? (this is more than just praying, more than just studying the Bible)

• In church do they just sing, or do they enter into a focus on the Majesty of God?

• Do they see intercessory prayer, the offering, and even the performance by the children’s choir as times of praising and honoring God?

• Do they avoid using the name of God in a vain manner?

  • Saying or texting “Oh, my God” (or “OMG”)

  • Shallowly punctuating their sentences with “Praise God”

  • Use “God bless you” to end conversations they do not want to continue

And a Final Note

I suggested to my wife that I if I could not figure out an appropriate way to end this lecture I would just say, “Well, that’s it. Let’s go home.” But as I reviewed what I had written here I realized I needed to add one assurance. Planning for sustained, deliberate, and systematic education including all the five dimensions is a hard task. So what do we need to know so that we do not fell discouraged before we begin?

Gary Parrett addressed for me (and for all the readers of his excellent recent book – I hope you will be one at some point). He concludes the discussion he and his co-author Steve Kang have presented about education in the church with a reminder that the transformation we seek in ourselves and others – even though there are mandated actions we are to take toward that transformation – is a product of God’s grace. He concludes his book with this affirmation, and affirmation that can stand as ours as well:

In our days, before our very eyes, God is doing glorious things in and through the church. We have been taught to pray, “Thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” The sovereign God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – is surely answering this prayer, in ways we sometimes recognize and sometimes do not. Jesus Christ has assured us that he is building his church and that none of hell’s forces can ever prevail against it. Christ is keeping these promises even now. That church – the poiema of God – is the very body of Christ into which we have been called. Through that body – full of love and good works – Jesus Christ continues the ministry of reconciliation today.

May we who have been charged with leadership roles in the teaching and formation of that body give ourselves anew to these grand purposes of God, delighting in and laboring for the glorious Gospel, diligently teaching the Faith and fully engaging in the unfolding of the great redemptive Story. As we endeavor to do so,

Soli Deo Gloria!⁷

So I am not going to say, “Well, that’s it; let’s go home.” I am instead saying, “Well, that’s it; let’s go to work!”

THE FIVE DIMENSIONS

A project to try: Create five columns, one for each of the five dimensions. Then see what other Bible passages you can find that give challenge or structure to each.