Teaching the Next Generations: The Challenge (and Opportunity!) of Teaching in the Local Church

I'm excited about Terry Linhart's (ed) recently released Teaching the Next Generations: A Comprehensive Guide for Teaching Christian Formation. As the title and subtitle make clear, this book's focus is on teaching for Christian formation. Among others things, chapters throughout the book highlight the contribution of teaching for discipleship (ch. 1), developing a theology of education (ch. 2), a scriptural basis for teaching (ch. 3), the essence of the life of a teacher (ch. 4), along with sections on learning theories (section 2), curricular considerations for various ages (section 3), methodologies and evaluation (sections 4 and 5).

I'm excited about how this book will be an ongoing resource for me in a number of roles - as a teacher and communicator, as someone who thinks about scope and strategy in a church context, and simply as an advocate for the teaching ministry of local churches. I'm looking forward to digging into the book further. 

I was reading through the Introduction last night, and ran across this quote that further whets my appetite for the book; the quote draws attention to the challenge (but also the opportunity) of teaching for Christian formation today. Check it out: 

We stand here in a new century with a significant challenge before us. Recent research suggests that the church is losing young adults, even those who 'grew up' in the church. David Kinnaman says young adults leave in part because the church as field to help them think about and answer difficult questions. Similarly, the largest study on the religiosity of youth in America showed that church teens were surprisingly inarticulate about their faith. When researchers posed questions about what they believed, young people said it was the first time that an adult had asked them about their beliefs, and they seemed unable to answer basic questions about the central doctrines of the Christian faith. Though there is a lot of teaching in the church, could it be there is not as much learning?

​"We need to revitalize the task of teaching the next generations, but not with default, 'they way we've always done it' approaches or with an 'anything goes' pragmatic recklessness that misses the mark in helping students grow in maturity. The next generation needs teachers - engaging teachers, wise teachers, joyful teachers, and well-studied teachers. Young people need to be engaged deeply in relevant ways beyond elementary teachings. They need a 'thought-full' faith rooted in Scripture, empowered by the Spirit, and connected to everyday realities to face contemporary challenges, historical tensions, and difficult questions" (Teaching the Next Generations, p. xi-xii).