"Curriculum" is a word that makes most people yawn. It might conjure up associations of dated clip art, irrelevant material, canned presentations, and more. But what if all of those things are BAD examples of curriculum? And what if curriculum - properly understood and excellently applied - is valuable and essential? I've appreciated how James Riley Estep, Jr. draws attention to the valuable role curriculum plays, in Mapping Out Curriculum in Your Church: Cartography for Christian Pilgrims. He's speaking here specifically of the role curriculum plays in the life of a local church: Anyone who has traveled knows what it is like to rely on a map to guide the way....Maps are also needed to guide us through the journey of faith. We are all pilgrims on a journey. For some, the pilgrimage is new and unknown. For others, the path is familiar. Identifying desirable destinations, pathways that have proven beneficial, and providing a means of navigation along the way are all part of the church's cartography, its mapmaking. Curriculum is a congregation's map though the process of discipleship, providing disciples, new and old, with the means to continue on their way toward Christlikeness, and the Christian educator is the cartographer" (pp. 1-2, bold emphasis added). A little further along Estep continues: When one fully appreciates the broad concept of curriculum, its critical importance to the congregation's ministry becomes self-evident. The curriculum provides the pathway for believers to grow toward Christian maturity. What do believers have to know, experience, and be able to do so as to mature? What do they need along the way to guarantee their continued spiritual growth? With whom should they travel the journey of faith? The curriculum answers these questions, and gives the believer some direction, some proven paths to travel, so they are not lost along the journey of faith, wandering without direction. Curriculum is a tool of the education ministry to provide for the spiritual formation of believers (p. 2, bold emphasis added). All of this is why I'm passionate about catechesis, and about the Brookside Institute providing a relatively systematic and comprehensive grounding in core truths of the Christian faith. But these quotes also apply more broadly across ministries of the church - curriculum is simply an intentional way to guide others towards biblical objectives of being a disciple. Good stuff!
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I recently ran across a 2009 article where Christian apologist, speaker and author Ravi Zacharias talks about "Defending Christianity in a Secular Culture." The whole thing is good, and I encourage you to read it.
In a few places throughout the article, Zacharias draws attention to the value of equipping the church, in the face of a secular culture that is increasingly hostile or indifferent towards Christianity. Below are some short quotes from the article where we see this: (This is an updated version of a post I initially composed on July 22, 2014.)
I've recently gotten a few questions from people asking very specifically how they can get emails with updated posts from the Brookside Institute blog, without having to remember to check in periodically on their own. They want to stay in the loop, but they won't always remember to go looking for new content. And when they do remember, they may not be near a computer or it may not be a convenient time. I love this question. I love it that people want to stay in the loop, and that we're providing valuable enough content that people want to stay engaged. Here's how I respond to this question: There's no way that I know of to get emails specifically from the Brookside Institute, providing updated content as new posts are published. (If I'm missing something on this, someone please let me know!) However that doesn't mean there's no way to conveniently stay in the loop. The solution is to subscribe to something called a "feed reader" that will collect the content (the "RSS Feed") you want from sites you subscribe to. Then, you simply monitor your feed reader and can conveniently stay up to date on the content you've chosen to subscribe to. Below I've included some detailed steps on how to subscribe to an RSS Feed and have it collected into a feed reader. Before I get into that, though, let me briefly share WHAT an RSS Feed is and WHY subscribing to the RSS Feed can be helpful. A few good goals in reading books are (1) how can this book expand my horizons in certain areas? (2) how can I understand the author, such that I can articulate what he or she thinks about this subject? and (3) how can this book be a resource for me? Or, more succinctly stated, good goals for reading books are expanded horizons, understanding others, and accumulating (re)usable resources.
If these are some of my primary goals for reading, that shapes HOW I read books. For example, with some books, I can identify how this book can be a continuing resource for me without reading every word on every page. Or I can mine a particular chapter in a book to have my horizons expanded in that specific area, without having to read every other chapter. And then there are those books I spend LOTS of time in - reading and re-reading them, underlining and making notes in margins, and discussing with others. I've created the acronym R.E.A.D. as a helpful way for me to consider HOW I want to work through a book, such that it meets one or more of these goals stated above. In case this is helpful for you as well, here's what R.E.A.D. stands for and how I try to use it. (As you read, keep in mind this acronym is a device used to aid reading well - don't look for overly technical precision or force some of the analogies too far!) On Thursday and Friday of last week, I attended the Global Leadership Summit, a leadership conference I've attended for probably the last 10-12 years or so. The Summit features a diverse faculty of presenters - some I've heard of before, some I've not - and every year I walk away having learned worthwhile lessons that can shape my leadership and ministry. (Check out some of the ways I benefited from previous years' Summits by clicking here and here.)
This year, one of the things that grabbed my attention most wasn't one of the speakers (though certain speakers did grab my attention as well), but one of the video segments they showed between speakers on Thursday. This segment featured fighter pilot instructor Lt Colonel Mark "Kaiser" Schmidt, and highlighted the influence he was having in his role. What stood out to me what that this instructor - this teacher - wasn't known primarily for technical expertise. To be fair, I'm sure he is very competent technically. He's good at what he does as a pilot, or he wouldn't have gotten to where he is as a fighter pilot instructor. But what what came again and again in the video is that Kaiser's influence comes through in how he pairs competence with care and character. Kaiser doesn't just see his role as passing along information; he wants to help his pilots become better people. One quote that I jotted down from the video captures this: "Our wingmen won’t remember what I taught them about basic fighter maneuvers. But they’ll remember how they felt around me. They’ll remember that I cared.” As someone who does a fair amount of teaching myself, I was grateful for both the encouragement and the challenge Kaiser's example offers. I'm not a fighter pilot instructor; I teach a lot of Bible and theology. But the lesson has obvious overlap: I don't want to be so focused on technical competence in my own field of study that I neglect the valuable role that care and character plays in the broader teaching relationship. Good stuff. Thanks for the reminder, #GLS16. Earlier this week I posted six definitions of theology from "the pros" - evangelical scholars who are worth listening to as we consider what theology is. As helpful as these definitions are, I've also crafted my own definition of theology that tries to not only articulate what theology is, but also works to clarify in one definition where Christian theology is (ultimately) sourced, how far it reaches, and what it's for. I'll simply include my working definition of theology below, and then expand briefly on each of these areas.
Again, I've tried to be intentional in this definition - clarifying where Christian theology is (ultimately) sourced, how far it reaches, and what it's for. Let's look at each of these:
In his thought-provoking (and very often insightful!) book You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit, author James K.A. Smith reminds us that Christian discipleship isn't only about what you know; it's also about what you love. (That right there is a statement we should marinate in and meditate on, by the way.) The book teases out what this can mean for the Christian and in the life of the local church. Is desire really that big of a deal? How are our loves shaped? What role does the local church play in this?
Smith then goes on towards the end of his book to apply the concepts he's developed to other specific contexts (family, education, vocation). I want to BRIEFLY highlight a small slice of what Smith says about Christian education, since it overlaps with so much of what we want to be about at the Brookside Institute. In his tremendously helpful book, Teaching to Change Lives: Seven Proven Ways to Make Your Teaching Come Alive, the late Howard Hendricks reminds us that the best teachers remain passionately committed to learning themselves. The best teachers always remain students themselves. Listen to how Hendricks puts it (Teaching to change lives, pp. 17-18): The effective teacher always teaches from the overflow of a full life. I'm confident that Hendricks would agree that "growth" and "improvement" here as a teacher isn't only a cognitive growth. It's not only getting more and more head knowledge of the subject you're teaching - though I'm sure that's included. I think he'd agree that "growth" and "improvement" also include learning what to VALUE and how to VALUE it. It includes growing in PASSION for our subject matter. And it includes the lifelong process of increasingly APPLYING those things we teach.
So teachers: Are you learning? As an integral part of their approach to Christian education, I'm hearing of a number of churches talk about something called "content strategy." (If you're in education, you're probably also very familiar with this word.)
Very simply (and straightforwardly), this emphasis on "content strategy" focuses on being strategic with their content. Oftentimes, this plays out in being intentional with WHAT content is created and/or recommended (keeping in mind who it's designed for, and the goals desired), and HOW the content is distributed/presented/made accessible. I happen to be a fan of being strategic with content myself, so I figured I'd chime in and provide three brief reasons WHY (in my opinion) content strategy should be on the radar screen of churches who think intentionally about Christian education. One of key emphases of the Brookside Institute is theological formation (along with biblical literacy, for the purpose of living on mission). A whole category of posts is devoted to this, and one of the Institute's core classes, "Fuel for Faith: An Important Class about Christian Theology" is devoted to building and reinforcing strong foundations in Christian theology. Theology is important! All of this is why I love Jaquelle Crowe's (she's a teenager herself, by the way - 18 years old) recent post at The Gospel Coalition, reminding all of us that teenagers need theology too. Here are five reasons WHY teenagers need theology. (I've just listed them below - check out the full post to see how she develops things.)
Listen to how she concludes her piece: So parents, pastors, youth leaders, church members, please teach us theology. More than anything else, we need to know God. He’s the answer to our questions, the solution to our problems, the only One worthy of our worship and trust. And all of this is why I am so grateful for the student ministries of Brookside Church, Tribe (Middle School) and Oasis (High School). These ministries (the leaders and volunteers!) faithfully labor and partner with parents to reinforce these same values. Thanks, Tribe and Oasis!
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