At its core, the Brookside Institute is all about building and reinforcing foundations of the Christian faith. We do this because we believe that something called "catechesis" - even though we don't always call it that - is still important and worthwhile. We love offering classes that help people Dig Deep, Learn Good, and Launch Well.
Everything in this post so far paints an initial picture of WHAT the Institute is all about, and WHY I believe so strongly in this equipping ministry for the local church. But at least one more important question still needs to be answered: HOW do we go about doing this? I suppose there's a few angles by which this question could be approached. But perhaps THE SINGLE GREATEST ANSWER to the "how?" question is this: Institute teachers. If an excellent ministry (the "what") that clearly adds value (the "why") is offered, but the wrong people are at the helm, the "what" and the "why" don't matter (or they won't be realized). In other words, if you have the WHAT and the WHY but not the WHO, things are going to either collapse or never take shape. All of this means teachers - in the Institute, or any other Christian education environment, for that matter - play a really big role. And that means we need to know what we're looking for in teachers. This helps with the selection filter, it adds credibility and value to everything else, and these qualities are things that shape ongoing training and development. So, with that said, here are the 4 "C"s that make a strong Institute teacher:
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Last night, the Brookside Institute offered a seminar on "How We Got the Bible." About 50 people signed up for 90 minutes of overview on origins and preservation of the Bible - good stuff! The overarching goal of this seminar was to reinforce trust in the Bible (and its message!) by examining its origin and reliable preservation.
As the Institute seeks to build and reinforce foundations of the Christian faith in the areas of biblical literacy and theological formation, seminars like this play an important role. Below I've included some things that will give you a taste of the seminar. Here's the "Table of Contents" for what follows in this post if you keep scrolling:
As the Brookside Institute builds and reinforces foundations of the Christian faith, we CAN'T overlook the gospel. It's no overstatement to say you won't have the Christian faith without the gospel (check it out in 1 Corinthians 15:1-19 and Galatians 1:6-9). Keeping the gospel front-and-center is that big of a deal.
Since that's the case, I figured I'd post a sermon I gave last Sunday (9/18/2016) on the centrality of the gospel from Galatians 2:11-21. Here's a brief outline of the sermon:
I've also included the "gospel-shaped behavior" diagram I used when talking about Galatians 2:20 - you'll see that below under the video. (The time stamp of that segment is appx 29:15-33:38.) The Power of the Gospel from Brookside Church on Vimeo. Galatians 2:20 - "Gospel -Shaped Behavior" Diagram
Keep reading to see the "gospel-shaped behavior" pictures I drew out on Sunday.
"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!
(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. 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? Be forewarned that this post will be a little longer and somewhat more technical than many of my usual posts. I wanted to start to articulate my thinking on this subject, though (even though I'm late to the party), so here goes! :-) Happy reading! If you ever get overwhelmed by the length of this post or its content, click here for a light-hearted, humorous take on the Trinity! Depending on who you follow on social media and/or how attuned you are to theological news, you may be aware that in the last 6 weeks or so there's been a flurry of talk related to the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. (For a fuller review and summary - complete with who's involved and contributing, and a bunch of links so you can track the conversation - check out the summaries provided here and here over at The Cripplegate.) This "theological flurry" caught my attention as an evangelical Christian, because I worship God as triune and am therefore interested in discussion and theological refinement that may impact my worship (including renewed thinking, expression, and obedience). After all, thinking about and working to understand (what we can of) the Trinity is important! This "flurry" caught my attention as a pastor, because I'm confident there are some in Brookside's congregation that are aware of what's going on. Part of shepherding a flock includes theological care, and this discussion about the Trinity certainly falls within that category. And this "theological flurry" caught my attention as an adjunct professor at Grace University - where one of the classes I've taught is titled "Trinitarianism." (I've definitely got a lot more material for the next class when I include this recent debate!) The core of the back-'n-forth is around the issue of relationship between the persons of the Trinity. More specifically, the question seems to center around the intra-Trinitarian relationship between Father and Son. Most specifically, the debate rages over whether there is any sense in which the Son is functionally subordinate to the Father in His role. This subordination (or submission) applies not only to the incarnate Son while He's on earth, but is an eternal functional subordination (EFS), sometimes stated as a relationship of eternal relational authority-submission (ERAS). It must be noted that all sides agree that the persons of the Godhead share the same divine nature or essence. All are equally God. There is no subordination of nature, such that God the Father is "really God" and that the Son is "kinda God." (This is consistent with the 4th century articulation of Christian orthodoxy against the Arian heresy.) Again, this time with emphasis: Everyone has agreed that all persons of the Godhead are equally God. The Christian doctrine of the Trinity, however, maintains not only that all persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) equally share the divine nature; it also maintains that there is a distinction in persons. The Father is not the Son, nor is the Son equated with the Father. In the same way, neither the Father nor the Son are the Holy Spirit. Equal in divine essence, distinct in personhood. This is the mystery of the Trinity, often illustrated with the graphic below. How we are to understand this "distinction of persons" is where there has been substantial disagreement.
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