A metaphor of John Steinbeck’s captures for me the formative power of communities of faith and public life. Why, he asks, should we be surprised when formed in Christian community we have the shape of a cross? Given my history, why should anyone also be surprised I became a religious educator? My religious formation began
Early in my decade long career in secondary education when I taught both English and Religion, some of my students who I had for both subjects told me I was teaching the same thing in both classes. At first I thought their comments typical of adolescent bantering. After all, I prepared carefully for my classes,
As a very young theology student in an old Irish seminary, I was reading the then recently published documents of the Second Vatican Council (circa 1966). I hit upon the statement in Gaudium et Spes that the greatest error of our age is “the gap that Christians maintain between the lives they live and the
Join over 200 passionate, faithful leaders at FTE’s 2016 Christian Leadership Forum June 1-4, 2016 at the Georgia Tech Conference Center. Come exchange ideas, address challenges within your ministry, and explore how you might ignite young leaders in your midst to boldly lead differently through the church. If you are a pastor, chaplain, campus minister, leader of
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As a young child I spent Sundays in Sunday School and worship in a dignified tall steeple Protestant church. The theological emphasis at the time was finding God in nature, and I learned to experience the Divine in the rocks and trees around me. At the age of ten my family and I moved and
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I felt a call to the Christian ministry by the end of my Senior year in high school, and I was influenced at Wesleyan University by John Darr and Bill Spurrier, who were chaplains, led services, taught courses, and provided leadership in the Christian Association and the pre-ministerial club. Since I was intending to go
I came to religious education from teaching religion in a Catholic high school. As a member of the teaching order of Christian Brothers, one taught a daily religion class. I was given the opportunity to go to any university of my choice to study for a doctorate in religious education. I chose to go to
MY FORMATION AS A RELIGIOUS EDUCATOR, OR HOW I ENTERED THE HOUSEHOLD OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION (a la Browning and Foster) Preamble re identity and context: I write as a member of that part of the Christian community known as Reformed/Protestant that employs a terminology of “Christian Education” and that asserts the centrality of the [Christian]
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I began in Christian Education before I was 6 months old when my mother took me in a basket to teach her Sunday school class and I continued there until I became the minister of a congregation where I had to stay in church to preach the sermon each Sunday in 1996. As my sermons
As a child, when asked what I “wanted to be when I grew up,” I would usually answer, “a teacher.” I practiced by playing school with my siblings, and in real school, by developing a passion for learning every sort of subject. Spending my entire pre-college educational years in public schools in rural Pennsylvania, my
