GELOOFVORMINGSPRAKTYKE

Stellenbosch University

10 Mei 2012

WAT IS DIE NUWE GELOOFVORMINGSMODELLE?

• Watter praktyke moet ons vestig?

• Waar behoort ons te wees?

Frank Donnell:

• Why is it difficult to talk about faith and to connect it with daily living?

• We need to help people face life.

• How does the church and it's educational ministry help people "translate" faith into life? God calls people to new meaning and new ways of living (Seymour 1996).

Frank Donnell:

• How do we educate for faith? How do we make it possible “to be theological” in our everyday relationships? How do we connect the experiences of life and the meanings of the faith tradition? How do we consider the wealth of information and values at our disposal? How do we discern how to live as Christians in a world of rapid change, increasing diversity, ethnic violence, enhanced networks of communication, limited resources, improved technologies of health, and mounting gaps of wealth and opportunity? How do we recognize God’s revelations and how do we transcend old patterns to respond to what God is doing new in our midst? (Seymour 1996).

Three futuribles for the mainline church, RR Osmer

• Shifting to a teaching ecclesiology:

1. Teaching ministry of the family

2. Teaching ministry of the congregation

• Large number of at-risk youth and their diminished participation in church life as they face these risks

• Recognition that maturity in faith is not natural process, but the result of participation in certain types of social contexts

• Teaching ministry is undervalued and neglected

• Overwhelming influence on faith maturity is neglected

• Pastoral ecclesiology - actovistic aspects of managerial and therapeutic

• Alternative ecclesiology views church as teacher and not as pastor

• Church as a school house of faith

• Not what do we have to do to survive, but what must we learn to find life?

The church as a cognitive minority

• Shifting to a teaching ecclesiology means mainline churches view themselves as cognitive minorities in relation to the surrounding culture

• Can no longer depend on other institutions to carry our educational tasks

• Look beyond the congregation and the family - will not be able to build and sustain an alternative Christian culture in face of media, public schools, and higher education

1. Build own centers of education

2. Weekday schooling, Hebrew school, special weekend classes

3. Building of new relationships between educational institutions typically not aligned to help our educational needs

4. Forging new kinds of relationships among seminaries, denominations and congregations, involving reconfiguration of faculty time

5. Seminary context NB

6. Experimentation time explore new patterns for carrying out ministry teaching

Recommitment to social critism

• Reclaim commitment to higher education

• Consistent involvement in congregational outreach projects linked to educational processes

• Reinstatement of awe inspiring rites of initiation and transition

Contemporary approaches

• Our convictions about education affect the way we structure congregational life. Example: with a focus on action and mission, we organize projects where people minister. By engaging life problems, people reflect on what they have learned about faith, others, themselves, and ministry. With a focus on faith community, educators attend to learning by participating. They are concerned with how church and community powerfully teach values and ways of living. With a focus on instruction, leaders are concerned about teachers and the content (curriculum) that they teach. They also attend to how this content is mastered and how persons connect it to living. With a focus on the person, people are helped to integrate the faith within their own life stories and continue to grow in faith.

1982, Donald Miller and Jack Seymour edited Contemporary Approaches to Christian

Education

• What was happening in Christian education: Congregation as a setting for education and the relationship of education to mission; possibilities and limitations of schooling; methods of teaching (cognitive and affective); theological methods to renew the tradition; psychological research and church education. Five primary themes emerged: religious instruction; faith community; development; liberation; interpretation.

1996, Jack Seymour, Mapping Faith Formation

Where are we today? We are in an era of fear and anxiety. Many believe that we have lost our way. Mainline churches are sidelined. Stephen Carter: Our culture is The Culture of Disbelief in which God is pushed from public discourse to the private parts of our lives. The widening gap between rich and poor, the explosion of ethnic conflict and terrorism, the resurgence of authoritarian religions, the struggle over public priorities, and the growing nihilism of many urban youth who see no future are distressing.

Role of the church?

• How can the church be engaged during this time of limits and possibilities? The church is called to be open to the world, open to diversity, and proclaim a faith that addresses personal needs and connects us with public life. In a world “in agony”, where fear aches at the edges, where the human project is threatened, and where ways of truth change, religion is a key source to confront the future with grace and hope.

Role of Faith Formation?

• We are engaged in a serious wrestling with a perplexing and ever-changing world asking how can we be faithful in the challenging vicissitudes variability/unexpected changes of life, how can we contribute to the healing and justice of God in the midst of life Education in faith is rooted in knowing a tradition, interacting with a community of meaning and memory, responding out of an individual personality, and moving into the world. Instruction in tradition, living in a community of faith, exploring one’s self, and facing the world are the key elements of learning a faith tradition, interpreting its meaning in life, and being empowered to engage the world.

• Faith formation is a conversation for living, a seeking to use the resources of the faith and cultural traditions to move into an open future of justice and hope. Helping people interpret the faith and be empowered for living inspires the search for approaches to Christian education.

Approaches to Faith Formation

• The mission of the church in the world

• The role of the faith community

• The understanding of the person

• The place of instruction

Transformation – Daniel Schipani

• Explores social transformation as a frame of reference. Both the goal and process of faith formation until God’s kingdom of justice and love is fully embodied. Congregations teach as they engage people and communities to promote faithful citizenship and social transformation.

Liberation• Liberation grew out of the

efforts of Latin American liberation theologies to empower people to live the reign of God in the midst of oppression.

• Emansipasie

Learning

• When participating in the compassionate church reaching into the world with ministries of care, justice, and transformation.

• As we see our world through social and theological analysis

• Judge our actions in the light of the faith tradition and social analysis

• As we engage in faithful action• Rooted in action as we plan for it, engage in it, and

reflect on it. • Questions of God’s mission direct our thinking about

faith formation.• We learn and are transformed as we participate in

transforming ministries

Faith Community – Robert O’Gorman

• Community is the content and process of faith formation. Learning the faith occurs when:

• We participate in a faith community that seeks to promote authentic human development – which enhances the relationship of persons to others, communities, and the cosmos.

• Faith communities and Small groups X isulating and fragmenting• Our identities are clearly and profoundly reinforced in faith

communities• Communities of faith need to push us through the intimate group

of care into the larger world connecting people, communities, and the cosmos; and into relationships and communion.

• Through the dynamics of service, reflection, and action, we come to know the story of the faith, to connect our individual stories, and to engage in appropriate ways of living.

• Community is in genesis. How we participate in this genesis is the central question of faith formation.

Faith Community

• The faith community captured the power of the life of the congregation to teach.

• Rentmeesterskapsgeloofvorming

• Wederkerige intergenerational geloofvorming

Spiritual Development – Maria Harris and Gabriel Moran

• The personal dimension of learning:• Faith is ultimately embodied in each person• Persons work together in communities• Starting point of Is the person, although the ultimate goal is calling

persons into relationship, friendship, care, and justice with others and the creation.

• Inwardness and outwardly related to others and the world• Person is formed through silence, listening, Sabbath, study, and

service• Person is guided to a fuller and richer connection with all of life,

carrying the resources of the faith tradition, practicing the presence of God, and engaging in partnership with others in the midst of the world.

• Persons touch their own deepest centers of meaning and value and are connected to other persons and the creation in meaning, care, and justice.

Development

• Development built upon psychological research abaout individual growth.

• Holistiese Geloofvorming

• Volwasse Geloofvorning

• Grassrootsgeloofvorming

Religious Instruction – Elizabeth Caldwell

• How do we learn to face the world as logical reflection, of teaching and learning, where we come to know, interpret, and incarnate the faith?.

• Teachers and learners together as partners dwell in a place of care, reflection, and meaning where we learn a story and a faith in order to live responsibly and faithfully in the face of the world.

• Faith formation involves formal instruction in faith/ homecoming• Tending to the tasks of creating a safe and intimate environment where

the meanings that are deepest to ourselves can be shared and where we come to know what it means to live in the family named Christian.

• Control and mastery of schooling are replaced by the tending, building, cleaning, nurturing, caring, and knowing of homemaking.

• We move from the world to the home and from the home to the world. • Homecomings are always gloriuos as we celebrate being together.

Homecomings send us out strengthened and directed into care and service.

Homecoming/Instruction

• Instruction emphasized the structures of formal education and ordered learning within the church. Onder die Godsdienstige Onderrigmodel kan die volgende ingedeel word:

• Verantwoordelikheidsvorming• Familiale Geloofvorming

Hermeneutics

• Interpretation focused on the ways education connected faith and everyday life.

• Shared praxis model