Alban Weekly for Monday, 1 June 2015 "Every Congregation Can Have an Online School - A Faith & Leadership Interview with the Rev. Chris Yaw
"Every Congregation Can Have an Online School - A Faith & Leadership Interview with the Rev. Chris Yaw
As he watched his own congregation's worship attendance flatten despite record giving, the Rev. Chris Yaw began to wonder: How do you reach people when they're not in church yet are in front of smartphones or computer screens?
"I had this idea that the church ought to reclaim its place in the community as a teacher, a place where the religiously curious can come and ask questions," Yaw said.
So two years ago, Yaw launched ChurchNext.tv, a Christian learning website that now offers subscribers, both individuals and congregations, more than 100 courses.
Such programs enable churches of all sizes to offer vibrant adult formation programs, which are essential for church renewal, Yaw said.
"In an age when people are walking around with computers in our pockets, why not listen to a course on an introduction to a Gospel or something like that versus some of the other stuff that's out there?"
Yaw serves as the rector of St. David's Episcopal Church in Southfield, Michigan, and served previously as associate rector at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Battle Creek, Michigan. He was ordained in the diocese of Los Angeles, where he worked for 15 years as a television journalist. He has an M.Div. and a Th.M. from Fuller Theological Seminary.
He spoke recently with Faith & Leadership about ChurchNext.tv and adult formation.
Q: Tell us about ChurchNext.tv. What is it?
It's a website that provides online Christian learning. It started as a video blog featuring long interviews with people who are making a difference in the mainline. You can still see a number of those on our YouTube site.
Out of that, this idea struck me. I'm a priest and a rector at St. David's Episcopal Church (link is external) in Southfield, Michigan, and I know that people come to church less frequently. At my church, for the second year in a row, we had our best pledge drive ever, we have more money coming in, we get 20 to 40 people joining the church every year, but Sunday attendance is flat and even declining.
People are coming, but they come less frequently. So how do we reach them when they are not here, but they are likely in front of a screen? I had this idea that the church ought to reclaim its place in the community as a teacher, a place where the religiously curious can come and ask questions.
So we launched ChurchNext in August 2013 with 28 courses. These are 45-minute courses that you can take at any time.
We design online learning experiences. It is not passive; the pedagogy behind it is very interactive, with quizzes and discussions.
Chris Yaw: "Every congregation can have an online school"
Bigstock/ jr4jesus
The Internet gives even small congregations the ability to offer vibrant adult education and formation programs, an Episcopal priest and founder of the online learning website ChurchNext.tv says in this interview.
As he watched his own congregation’s worship attendance flatten despite record giving, the Rev. Chris Yaw began to wonder: How do you reach people when they’re not in church yet are in front of smartphones or computer screens?
“I had this idea that the church ought to reclaim its place in the community as a teacher, a place where the religiously curious can come and ask questions,” Yaw said.
So two years ago, Yaw launched ChurchNext.tv, a Christian learning website that now offers subscribers, both individuals and congregations, more than 100 courses.
Such programs enable churches of all sizes to offer vibrant adult formation programs, which are essential for church renewal, Yaw said.
“In an age when people are walking around with computers in our pockets, why not listen to a course on an introduction to a Gospel or something like that versus some of the other stuff that’s out there?”
As he watched his own congregation's worship attendance flatten despite record giving, the Rev. Chris Yaw began to wonder: How do you reach people when they're not in church yet are in front of smartphones or computer screens?
"I had this idea that the church ought to reclaim its place in the community as a teacher, a place where the religiously curious can come and ask questions," Yaw said.
So two years ago, Yaw launched ChurchNext.tv, a Christian learning website that now offers subscribers, both individuals and congregations, more than 100 courses.
Such programs enable churches of all sizes to offer vibrant adult formation programs, which are essential for church renewal, Yaw said.
"In an age when people are walking around with computers in our pockets, why not listen to a course on an introduction to a Gospel or something like that versus some of the other stuff that's out there?"
Yaw serves as the rector of St. David's Episcopal Church in Southfield, Michigan, and served previously as associate rector at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Battle Creek, Michigan. He was ordained in the diocese of Los Angeles, where he worked for 15 years as a television journalist. He has an M.Div. and a Th.M. from Fuller Theological Seminary.
He spoke recently with Faith & Leadership about ChurchNext.tv and adult formation.
Q: Tell us about ChurchNext.tv. What is it?
It's a website that provides online Christian learning. It started as a video blog featuring long interviews with people who are making a difference in the mainline. You can still see a number of those on our YouTube site.
Out of that, this idea struck me. I'm a priest and a rector at St. David's Episcopal Church (link is external) in Southfield, Michigan, and I know that people come to church less frequently. At my church, for the second year in a row, we had our best pledge drive ever, we have more money coming in, we get 20 to 40 people joining the church every year, but Sunday attendance is flat and even declining.
People are coming, but they come less frequently. So how do we reach them when they are not here, but they are likely in front of a screen? I had this idea that the church ought to reclaim its place in the community as a teacher, a place where the religiously curious can come and ask questions.
So we launched ChurchNext in August 2013 with 28 courses. These are 45-minute courses that you can take at any time.
We design online learning experiences. It is not passive; the pedagogy behind it is very interactive, with quizzes and discussions.
Chris Yaw: "Every congregation can have an online school"
Bigstock/ jr4jesus
The Internet gives even small congregations the ability to offer vibrant adult education and formation programs, an Episcopal priest and founder of the online learning website ChurchNext.tv says in this interview.
As he watched his own congregation’s worship attendance flatten despite record giving, the Rev. Chris Yaw began to wonder: How do you reach people when they’re not in church yet are in front of smartphones or computer screens?
“I had this idea that the church ought to reclaim its place in the community as a teacher, a place where the religiously curious can come and ask questions,” Yaw said.
So two years ago, Yaw launched ChurchNext.tv, a Christian learning website that now offers subscribers, both individuals and congregations, more than 100 courses.
Such programs enable churches of all sizes to offer vibrant adult formation programs, which are essential for church renewal, Yaw said.
“In an age when people are walking around with computers in our pockets, why not listen to a course on an introduction to a Gospel or something like that versus some of the other stuff that’s out there?”
Yaw serves as the rector of St. David’s Episcopal Church in Southfield, Michigan, and served previously as associate rector at St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Battle Creek, Michigan. He was ordained in the diocese of Los Angeles, where he worked for 15 years as a television journalist. He has an M.Div. and a Th.M. from Fuller Theological Seminary.
He spoke recently with Faith & Leadership about ChurchNext.tv and adult formation. The following is an edited transcript.
Q: Tell us about ChurchNext.tv. What is it?
It’s a website that provides online Christian learning. It started as a video blog featuring long interviews with people who are making a difference in the mainline. You can still see a number of those on our YouTube site(link is external).
Out of that, this idea struck me. I’m a priest and a rector at St. David’s Episcopal Church(link is external) in Southfield, Michigan, and I know that people come to church less frequently. At my church, for the second year in a row, we had our best pledge drive ever, we have more money coming in, we get 20 to 40 people joining the church every year, but Sunday attendance is flat and even declining.
People are coming, but they come less frequently. So how do we reach them when they are not here, but they are likely in front of a screen? I had this idea that the church ought to reclaim its place in the community as a teacher, a place where the religiously curious can come and ask questions.
So we launched ChurchNext(link is external) in August 2013 with 28 courses. These are 45-minute courses that you can take at any time.
They are taught by experts in various fields, what we mainliners would describe as middle-of-the-road. We are very clear that we are going after the mainline. We do have Catholic teachers and subscribers, and evangelical teachers and subscribers, but our sweet spot is Episcopalian, Methodist, American Baptist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Disciples of Christ, etc.
We launch a new course every week and are now up to a hundred courses, and we’re launching all of them in a “for groups” format. We originally designed our courses for individuals to take on their own but found that many people were taking the courses together, with a group.
So we went back and reformatted the content to use on a big screen, on a TV, for group learning. You can actually stream it now and download the facilitator’s guide and the participant’s guide at a fraction of what a DVD would cost.
We design online learning experiences. It is not passive; the pedagogy behind it is very interactive, with quizzes and discussions.
Q: What’s your assessment of the current state of adult education and formation in churches today? How well are people formed?
A friend of mine who runs a company called Forward Movement, an Episcopal publishing imprint, estimates that 80 percent of Episcopal parishes do not have ongoing vibrant adult formation at all.
For the priests who look after those parishes -- myself included -- that’s not something we are proud of. We are not called to make converts; we are called to make disciples, and that’s a process and a journey.
What ChurchNext does is to make it possible for any church, for $300 a year, to subscribe and have access to hundreds of classes and be able to suggest to us classes that they want.
We are trying to make it really easy. The vast majority of churches in America have under a hundred people on a Sunday. Getting a preacher is hard enough, but getting a vibrant formation program is another thing. So this falls right into the category of, “Oh my gosh, for $15 you can buy a class and have everybody in the church watching.”
Q: Your biography on your website says that you are “passionate about renewing congregations.” What role does formation play in congregational renewal?
I think that’s the key to the renewal of congregations. The more deeply formed and committed people are in their personal faith, the stronger the church.
For example, the case for stewardship is not, “Guys, we need money.” The case is, “Look what God has done for you.” We give out of mature faith.
In my own experience, I find that those who are most charitable are those who are most deeply formed. Tom Bergler has written a couple of books, “The Juvenilization of American Christianity” and his follow-up book, “From Here to Maturity: Overcoming the Juvenilization of American Christianity.” We have worked with him to create a course called “How to Bring Maturity into Your Congregation.”
Our courses generally go along three lines.
Stephen Prothero says that 1 in 10 Americans believe that Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife. And that’s probably not far from true. We have an incredible amount of religious illiteracy.
And as clergy, we are constantly overestimating the theological and biblical literacy of our people.
ChurchNext is at that place between the seminary and the pew. I know as a pastor of 550 people that maybe three would take an online course from a seminary. I can double or triple that number with my online school.
Not everyone is going to sign up, but many would. We’ve used it to prepare people for the sacraments. We did a sermon series in the fall about the Book of Common Prayer, and then as a follow-up, we had an eight-part course called “Opening the Prayer Book.” We showed it on a big screen, and people came up afterward and said, “I’m 70 and have been going to church since I was a kid, and I never knew about the prayer book.”
Q: The ChurchNext website lists the company’s guiding principles, one of which is “Go deep.” What’s that about?
I am convinced that people do want to go deep.
Some studies indicate that American Christians prefer an emotionally comforting, self-focused, actually shallow faith. But we don’t go there. We are not here to win a popularity contest but to change lives. And that only happens when you push and promote what’s challenging and genuine. I really think that’s what people deeply want.
We are not our best selves when we are self-focused, when we are comforted. The reason Christianity is the biggest religion is because, to do it right, it is challenging, it hurts, it is uncomfortable. When we look back in our lives, the things that were most difficult are the things that we are most proud of -- raising children, making sacrifices, serving our country in the military.
So, as much as we are tempted, we don’t dumb down our courses. We try to take advantage of the best teachers we can and present that in a way that’s accessible to people.
Q: What have been the most popular categories and courses so far?
I think that people have enjoyed those with names that they recognize. David Lose’s courses have done well. A number of Episcopalians have enjoyed Frank Wade’s course on the Episcopal tradition. We occasionally do a free course that we offer to the world, and recently launched one by Becca Stevens called “A Simple Path to a Deeper Spiritual Life.” Last December we had a wonderful course by Cornel West that must have drawn 2,000 comments.
Learning is one thing, but engaging people is another. ChurchNext is not just a technology platform; it is an ecosystem. It is where people are making comments and learning and being transformed. We do questionnaires after our classes, and it is surprising how many people will say the class had a major impact on their spiritual life.
So there is transformation that happens. We are convinced this is the work of the Spirit. We pray regularly for the folks taking classes, and we ask them to pray as they take classes and open their hearts up to what the Spirit is going to do.
Some people say you can’t have any relationship online, but look at Facebook. We can actually have relationships online, just very different from face to face. And we are not all about staying online, either. All of our classes have downloadable discussion questions, and we urge people to take classes and then come together.
Q: Do you know who the participants are -- what percentage are taking the classes within a group setting, what percentage are doing it at home on their own?
We can tell the number of subscribers that we have in churches versus individuals. But even when a congregation has a subscription, they allow their members to take the classes by themselves. When the congregation subscribes, we don’t really have access to who is in their school, what they are learning, what their email addresses are.
So no, we really don’t know. Probably in our third year, we are going to pay somebody to do that kind of research and find out who these people are and what they need and want.
They say there are four stages to a startup. The first is, will it work? The second is getting traction. The third is, how do you scale? And fourth is, how big can you get? So a year and a half into this, we are pretty sure it is working, and we are pretty sure we are getting some traction.
Once we move into the third stage, which is scaling -- which we have already had to do to a degree, because we have had some modest growth -- we will be able to answer those.
Q: How many congregations have subscribed?
Probably 250 or so. They are across the mainline, but mostly Episcopalian.
Q: And they can customize their own online learning programs. Tell me about that.
It is actually pretty exciting. A congregation can subscribe, and we set up an account that allows the pastor and church to have their own school that they brand, an online academy, and the pastor goes to our catalog and chooses the courses that he or she thinks would be germane to the congregation and then launches the school and invites people to take the courses within the context of their own congregation.
There are three basic aspects of online learning that make it attractive: cost, expert teaching and convenience. The vast majority of Americans have never taken an online class, but once people take a class, more than 90 percent tell us in our surveys that they are going to take another. So it really is an effective way to learn.
We really want every congregation to have an online school. In an age when people are walking around with computers in our pockets, why not listen to a course on an introduction to a Gospel or something like that versus some of the other stuff that’s out there?
He spoke recently with Faith & Leadership about ChurchNext.tv and adult formation. The following is an edited transcript.
Q: Tell us about ChurchNext.tv. What is it?
It’s a website that provides online Christian learning. It started as a video blog featuring long interviews with people who are making a difference in the mainline. You can still see a number of those on our YouTube site(link is external).
Out of that, this idea struck me. I’m a priest and a rector at St. David’s Episcopal Church(link is external) in Southfield, Michigan, and I know that people come to church less frequently. At my church, for the second year in a row, we had our best pledge drive ever, we have more money coming in, we get 20 to 40 people joining the church every year, but Sunday attendance is flat and even declining.
People are coming, but they come less frequently. So how do we reach them when they are not here, but they are likely in front of a screen? I had this idea that the church ought to reclaim its place in the community as a teacher, a place where the religiously curious can come and ask questions.
So we launched ChurchNext(link is external) in August 2013 with 28 courses. These are 45-minute courses that you can take at any time.
They are taught by experts in various fields, what we mainliners would describe as middle-of-the-road. We are very clear that we are going after the mainline. We do have Catholic teachers and subscribers, and evangelical teachers and subscribers, but our sweet spot is Episcopalian, Methodist, American Baptist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Disciples of Christ, etc.
We launch a new course every week and are now up to a hundred courses, and we’re launching all of them in a “for groups” format. We originally designed our courses for individuals to take on their own but found that many people were taking the courses together, with a group.
So we went back and reformatted the content to use on a big screen, on a TV, for group learning. You can actually stream it now and download the facilitator’s guide and the participant’s guide at a fraction of what a DVD would cost.
We design online learning experiences. It is not passive; the pedagogy behind it is very interactive, with quizzes and discussions.
Q: What’s your assessment of the current state of adult education and formation in churches today? How well are people formed?
A friend of mine who runs a company called Forward Movement, an Episcopal publishing imprint, estimates that 80 percent of Episcopal parishes do not have ongoing vibrant adult formation at all.
For the priests who look after those parishes -- myself included -- that’s not something we are proud of. We are not called to make converts; we are called to make disciples, and that’s a process and a journey.
What ChurchNext does is to make it possible for any church, for $300 a year, to subscribe and have access to hundreds of classes and be able to suggest to us classes that they want.
We are trying to make it really easy. The vast majority of churches in America have under a hundred people on a Sunday. Getting a preacher is hard enough, but getting a vibrant formation program is another thing. So this falls right into the category of, “Oh my gosh, for $15 you can buy a class and have everybody in the church watching.”
Q: Your biography on your website says that you are “passionate about renewing congregations.” What role does formation play in congregational renewal?
I think that’s the key to the renewal of congregations. The more deeply formed and committed people are in their personal faith, the stronger the church.
For example, the case for stewardship is not, “Guys, we need money.” The case is, “Look what God has done for you.” We give out of mature faith.
In my own experience, I find that those who are most charitable are those who are most deeply formed. Tom Bergler has written a couple of books, “The Juvenilization of American Christianity” and his follow-up book, “From Here to Maturity: Overcoming the Juvenilization of American Christianity.” We have worked with him to create a course called “How to Bring Maturity into Your Congregation.”
Our courses generally go along three lines.
- The first is information for adults and young adults. That’s going to be Bible and theology and church history.
- The second is courses that will help in terms of crossing thresholds: baptismal preparation, confirmation, weddings, divorce, death.
- And the third line is leadership training. Those are courses in church marketing, this new course on how to bring maturity into the life of your church, how to run a Vacation Bible School, how to sit on the vestry, how to read a lesson on Sunday morning -- all these kinds of leadership courses.
Stephen Prothero says that 1 in 10 Americans believe that Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife. And that’s probably not far from true. We have an incredible amount of religious illiteracy.
And as clergy, we are constantly overestimating the theological and biblical literacy of our people.
ChurchNext is at that place between the seminary and the pew. I know as a pastor of 550 people that maybe three would take an online course from a seminary. I can double or triple that number with my online school.
Not everyone is going to sign up, but many would. We’ve used it to prepare people for the sacraments. We did a sermon series in the fall about the Book of Common Prayer, and then as a follow-up, we had an eight-part course called “Opening the Prayer Book.” We showed it on a big screen, and people came up afterward and said, “I’m 70 and have been going to church since I was a kid, and I never knew about the prayer book.”
Q: The ChurchNext website lists the company’s guiding principles, one of which is “Go deep.” What’s that about?
I am convinced that people do want to go deep.
Some studies indicate that American Christians prefer an emotionally comforting, self-focused, actually shallow faith. But we don’t go there. We are not here to win a popularity contest but to change lives. And that only happens when you push and promote what’s challenging and genuine. I really think that’s what people deeply want.
We are not our best selves when we are self-focused, when we are comforted. The reason Christianity is the biggest religion is because, to do it right, it is challenging, it hurts, it is uncomfortable. When we look back in our lives, the things that were most difficult are the things that we are most proud of -- raising children, making sacrifices, serving our country in the military.
So, as much as we are tempted, we don’t dumb down our courses. We try to take advantage of the best teachers we can and present that in a way that’s accessible to people.
Q: What have been the most popular categories and courses so far?
I think that people have enjoyed those with names that they recognize. David Lose’s courses have done well. A number of Episcopalians have enjoyed Frank Wade’s course on the Episcopal tradition. We occasionally do a free course that we offer to the world, and recently launched one by Becca Stevens called “A Simple Path to a Deeper Spiritual Life.” Last December we had a wonderful course by Cornel West that must have drawn 2,000 comments.
Learning is one thing, but engaging people is another. ChurchNext is not just a technology platform; it is an ecosystem. It is where people are making comments and learning and being transformed. We do questionnaires after our classes, and it is surprising how many people will say the class had a major impact on their spiritual life.
So there is transformation that happens. We are convinced this is the work of the Spirit. We pray regularly for the folks taking classes, and we ask them to pray as they take classes and open their hearts up to what the Spirit is going to do.
Some people say you can’t have any relationship online, but look at Facebook. We can actually have relationships online, just very different from face to face. And we are not all about staying online, either. All of our classes have downloadable discussion questions, and we urge people to take classes and then come together.
Q: Do you know who the participants are -- what percentage are taking the classes within a group setting, what percentage are doing it at home on their own?
We can tell the number of subscribers that we have in churches versus individuals. But even when a congregation has a subscription, they allow their members to take the classes by themselves. When the congregation subscribes, we don’t really have access to who is in their school, what they are learning, what their email addresses are.
So no, we really don’t know. Probably in our third year, we are going to pay somebody to do that kind of research and find out who these people are and what they need and want.
They say there are four stages to a startup. The first is, will it work? The second is getting traction. The third is, how do you scale? And fourth is, how big can you get? So a year and a half into this, we are pretty sure it is working, and we are pretty sure we are getting some traction.
Once we move into the third stage, which is scaling -- which we have already had to do to a degree, because we have had some modest growth -- we will be able to answer those.
Q: How many congregations have subscribed?
Probably 250 or so. They are across the mainline, but mostly Episcopalian.
Q: And they can customize their own online learning programs. Tell me about that.
It is actually pretty exciting. A congregation can subscribe, and we set up an account that allows the pastor and church to have their own school that they brand, an online academy, and the pastor goes to our catalog and chooses the courses that he or she thinks would be germane to the congregation and then launches the school and invites people to take the courses within the context of their own congregation.
There are three basic aspects of online learning that make it attractive: cost, expert teaching and convenience. The vast majority of Americans have never taken an online class, but once people take a class, more than 90 percent tell us in our surveys that they are going to take another. So it really is an effective way to learn.
We really want every congregation to have an online school. In an age when people are walking around with computers in our pockets, why not listen to a course on an introduction to a Gospel or something like that versus some of the other stuff that’s out there?
Read more »
Monday, 1 June 2015
Helping people to attend to God is the central work of the congregation. It all begins with learning to listen to God as a community and to notice what God is doing in our life together. John Ackerman offers two four-step models and several additional tools that help us attend to the mystery at the center of our lives and our congregations.
Buy the book
For over fifteen years, Abigail Johnson supervised and trained others to supervise candidates for ordination within the United Church of Canada. Recognizing that this skill is as important in the formation of lay leaders as in the life of candidates for ordination, she has developed this book to guide all who are responsible for the work of others in a congregation.
Buy the book
Continue Learning with The Pastoral Excellence Network
Finishing Strong, Ending Well: Crafting the Culminating Chapter of Your Ministry
A retreat with Dr. Larry Peers, Director of Learning, The Pastoral Excellence Network
Marriottsville, MD, USAJuly 27-29, 2015
Are you planning to retire from full-time ministry during the next two to ten years? This event will help you make these years a vital, intentional time for culminating your ministry and also a time of exciting preparation for what's next. This experience will include not only your own preparation for the next stage of your life and ministry, it will also help you work and plan effectively with your congregation in order for you to finish strong and end well.
Learn more and register »
Ideas that Impact: Congregational Learning
"Pastor as Teacher, Congregation as Learning Community" by Anthony B. Robinson
We are in the business, or so it seems to me, of teaching and embodying a way of life, a particular way of being human in relationship to God. In all that we do, both as religious leaders and as congregations, we teach.
Monday, 1 June 2015
Helping people to attend to God is the central work of the congregation. It all begins with learning to listen to God as a community and to notice what God is doing in our life together. John Ackerman offers two four-step models and several additional tools that help us attend to the mystery at the center of our lives and our congregations.
Buy the book
For over fifteen years, Abigail Johnson supervised and trained others to supervise candidates for ordination within the United Church of Canada. Recognizing that this skill is as important in the formation of lay leaders as in the life of candidates for ordination, she has developed this book to guide all who are responsible for the work of others in a congregation.
Buy the book
Continue Learning with The Pastoral Excellence Network
Finishing Strong, Ending Well: Crafting the Culminating Chapter of Your Ministry
A retreat with Dr. Larry Peers, Director of Learning, The Pastoral Excellence Network
Marriottsville, MD, USAJuly 27-29, 2015
Are you planning to retire from full-time ministry during the next two to ten years? This event will help you make these years a vital, intentional time for culminating your ministry and also a time of exciting preparation for what's next. This experience will include not only your own preparation for the next stage of your life and ministry, it will also help you work and plan effectively with your congregation in order for you to finish strong and end well.
Learn more and register »
Ideas that Impact: Congregational Learning
"Pastor as Teacher, Congregation as Learning Community" by Anthony B. Robinson
We are in the business, or so it seems to me, of teaching and embodying a way of life, a particular way of being human in relationship to God. In all that we do, both as religious leaders and as congregations, we teach.
Part of what drew me to the ordained ministry was a particular image of that calling: the minister as a field-based teacher and scholar. It is in many ways a rabbinic model. Rabbi means “teacher.” Rabbis were teachers who were based not primarily in the school, university, or academy but in the community—in congregations and in the public square. Their task was to teach and to interpret a way of life for the people and community in which they lived. How does the faith of our people and tradition relate to this concern or that question of the day? How do the stories of our faith speak to a challenge in someone’s life? How are the pastors and teachers of the church like the scribes of the kingdom of which Jesus spoke when he said, “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old” (Matt. 13:52)? Such scribes brought the old wisdom and ancient stories to new times and places. As a young man, I found such an understanding of ministry both compelling and challenging.
Does such an image of the office and calling of the ordained clergy have any meaning or relevance today? Or is it hopelessly romantic and outdated? Can the ordained function as field-based and community-based teachers and theologians, or have other more pressing or culturally appealing or relevant roles rendered this one either passé or simply way down the list of priorities? Ministers, pastors, priests, and rabbis can do so many things. There are so many possible understandings of our role and responsibility. How can one take pride in the calling?
Another way to ask these questions is to frame them in terms of congregations. Can congregations be teaching and learning communities? Or is that asking too much or too little? Are congregations to be something more or something different from this? Again, the possible and appropriate understandings of the purpose of congregations are many. Congregations may be centers of personal healing and spiritual growth, communities for activism and social change, centers of family life and nurture, institutions that offer an array of programs to meet varied human needs, or communities of worship.
While pastors and congregations must make choices among the array of possible priorities before them, my argument is not so much that the pastoral role of teacher and theologian and the congregational one of a teaching and learning community are to be preferred to others. Rather, my argument is that such an understanding gives order and coherence to the many functions and activities of clergy and congregations. We are in the business, or so it seems to me, of teaching and embodying a way of life, a particular way of being human in relationship to God. In all that we do, both as religious leaders and as congregations, we teach. Sometimes the lessons we teach are not consistent with the faith and values we profess, but right or wrong, faithful or derelict, we teach, we model, we form, and we inform.
The great truths of Christian faith, our core convictions, are saving truths. They make a difference. They make a difference by forming humans who are humane and truthful. They make a difference by pointing the way when we have lost our way and the way. They make a difference by shaping congregations and communities to become more vital. These saving truths create and sustain congregations. Those who seek and find such congregations discover a healthy community in which to grow, struggle, be changed, and be sustained. In the midst of the many forces that regularly distort and diminish life as God has created it to be, these saving truths create God’s intended community. Most of all, these truths save by bringing us into relationship with the true and living God.
I envision pastors and congregations teaching these saving truths not only in formal ways through classes and study, but also, and perhaps even more important, in the informal ways that communities always teach: through role models and mentors, by interpreting shared convictions in times of crisis and loss, and by giving shape to those convictions in our daily ways of living. To be sure, this is not an easy endeavor, nor is it even one that will be completed in a person’s lifetime. But those caveats make this calling, at least for me, more compelling. To be one among others who conveys and interprets the faith once received in fresh and lively ways and to be a community of learning and teaching (what organizational consultant Peter Senge has called a “learning organization” in his book The Fifth Discipline) seem to me to be tasks worthy of a lifetime.
That I draw inspiration for this understanding of both ministry and congregations from the Jewish faith is perhaps revealing. The Jews have long known what it is to struggle to sustain a particular faith and way of life amid societies that were not necessarily friendly to them. This, it seems to me, is increasingly the situation of Christians. We live in a society that is officially secular, is religiously pluralistic, and in values and lifestyles offers more a smorgasbord than a set menu. For the most part, I do not regret these realities. I am not among those who believe a Christian way of life can or ought to be legislated and mandated for all citizens. Faith is not a political ideology or agenda. While it should speak to political and social issues, faith that is captured in a political ideology or agenda has become something other than the faith and way of Jesus Christ, who came not to lord it over others, but to serve (Mark 10:42-43).
But the secularization and pluralism of North American society give a new priority to teaching and formation, to the minister as teacher and practical theologian, and to the congregation as a teaching and learning community. Neither ordained ministers nor congregations can assume, as we once did, that most people who come of age in North America have learned the basics of faith simply by growing up here. By basics, I mean the core convictions, biblical stories, hymns, and practices that constitute the way of life of believers. While counting on the culture to form Christians was probably never a very good idea, there may once have been a time when clergy and congregations could rely more on the culture at large to do so. That is no longer true. These changes in our culture and in the place of the church bring the pastoral role as teacher and theologian and the congregational role as teaching and learning community into higher relief.
Vital congregations in this new time will look more Jewish in the sense that they will be more intentional about teaching and embodying a way of life, about doing Christian formation. Not long ago, the pollster George Gallup Jr. set out to determine what those who seek a church today most want from that experience. He noted three things in particular: sermons that are instructive and believable, opportunities to deepen one’s own spiritual life, and a church that helps people to have a better understanding of the faith.
We might think of these things as the roots of faith. As any farmer or gardener knows, trees whose roots are not planted in healthy soil and nurtured with water and occasional fertilizer will not long bear fruit. In some measure, the problem of mainline congregations has been that we have gone to the trees decade after decade, asking a great harvest of fruit (programs of service and activism, ministries of outreach and care) without tending the roots. The result is predictable. This is not to say Christian or congregational life is an either-or: either roots and spiritual growth or fruits and ministries of service and care. Root-bound congregations are in as much a danger as fruitless ones. Roots or fruit is not an either-or; it is a both-and, as any healthy apple tree testifies.
Much of the clergy’s teaching will be in the midst of the life of the congregation and its people. This doesn’t mean always having the answers; indeed, it may mean having the question. It does mean putting the little dramas of life in community and of our lives individually into the context of the great story of God’s redeeming and relentless love and purpose. It means making the connections between God’s story and our stories, because in reality they are not two different stories but one story. Tell the story with love. Tell it with confidence. Tell it with joy. Amen!
__________________________________________________________
Adapted from What’s Theology Got to Do with It? Convictions, Vitality, and the Church by Anthony B. Robinson, copyright © 2006 by the Alban Institute. All rights reserved. Read more »
"God Beyond Borders: Interfaith Education and Congregations" by Sheryl Kujawa-HolbrookInterfaith education within congregations is an opportunity for people of faith to learn about and to experience faith traditions other than their own. Effective interfaith education allows us to deepen our understanding of our own traditions, discovering similarities with other traditions as well as acknowledging that which makes each faith distinct.
"Pastor as Teacher, Congregation as Learning Community"
Does such an image of the office and calling of the ordained clergy have any meaning or relevance today? Or is it hopelessly romantic and outdated? Can the ordained function as field-based and community-based teachers and theologians, or have other more pressing or culturally appealing or relevant roles rendered this one either passé or simply way down the list of priorities? Ministers, pastors, priests, and rabbis can do so many things. There are so many possible understandings of our role and responsibility. How can one take pride in the calling?
Another way to ask these questions is to frame them in terms of congregations. Can congregations be teaching and learning communities? Or is that asking too much or too little? Are congregations to be something more or something different from this? Again, the possible and appropriate understandings of the purpose of congregations are many. Congregations may be centers of personal healing and spiritual growth, communities for activism and social change, centers of family life and nurture, institutions that offer an array of programs to meet varied human needs, or communities of worship.
While pastors and congregations must make choices among the array of possible priorities before them, my argument is not so much that the pastoral role of teacher and theologian and the congregational one of a teaching and learning community are to be preferred to others. Rather, my argument is that such an understanding gives order and coherence to the many functions and activities of clergy and congregations. We are in the business, or so it seems to me, of teaching and embodying a way of life, a particular way of being human in relationship to God. In all that we do, both as religious leaders and as congregations, we teach. Sometimes the lessons we teach are not consistent with the faith and values we profess, but right or wrong, faithful or derelict, we teach, we model, we form, and we inform.
The great truths of Christian faith, our core convictions, are saving truths. They make a difference. They make a difference by forming humans who are humane and truthful. They make a difference by pointing the way when we have lost our way and the way. They make a difference by shaping congregations and communities to become more vital. These saving truths create and sustain congregations. Those who seek and find such congregations discover a healthy community in which to grow, struggle, be changed, and be sustained. In the midst of the many forces that regularly distort and diminish life as God has created it to be, these saving truths create God’s intended community. Most of all, these truths save by bringing us into relationship with the true and living God.
I envision pastors and congregations teaching these saving truths not only in formal ways through classes and study, but also, and perhaps even more important, in the informal ways that communities always teach: through role models and mentors, by interpreting shared convictions in times of crisis and loss, and by giving shape to those convictions in our daily ways of living. To be sure, this is not an easy endeavor, nor is it even one that will be completed in a person’s lifetime. But those caveats make this calling, at least for me, more compelling. To be one among others who conveys and interprets the faith once received in fresh and lively ways and to be a community of learning and teaching (what organizational consultant Peter Senge has called a “learning organization” in his book The Fifth Discipline) seem to me to be tasks worthy of a lifetime.
That I draw inspiration for this understanding of both ministry and congregations from the Jewish faith is perhaps revealing. The Jews have long known what it is to struggle to sustain a particular faith and way of life amid societies that were not necessarily friendly to them. This, it seems to me, is increasingly the situation of Christians. We live in a society that is officially secular, is religiously pluralistic, and in values and lifestyles offers more a smorgasbord than a set menu. For the most part, I do not regret these realities. I am not among those who believe a Christian way of life can or ought to be legislated and mandated for all citizens. Faith is not a political ideology or agenda. While it should speak to political and social issues, faith that is captured in a political ideology or agenda has become something other than the faith and way of Jesus Christ, who came not to lord it over others, but to serve (Mark 10:42-43).
But the secularization and pluralism of North American society give a new priority to teaching and formation, to the minister as teacher and practical theologian, and to the congregation as a teaching and learning community. Neither ordained ministers nor congregations can assume, as we once did, that most people who come of age in North America have learned the basics of faith simply by growing up here. By basics, I mean the core convictions, biblical stories, hymns, and practices that constitute the way of life of believers. While counting on the culture to form Christians was probably never a very good idea, there may once have been a time when clergy and congregations could rely more on the culture at large to do so. That is no longer true. These changes in our culture and in the place of the church bring the pastoral role as teacher and theologian and the congregational role as teaching and learning community into higher relief.
Vital congregations in this new time will look more Jewish in the sense that they will be more intentional about teaching and embodying a way of life, about doing Christian formation. Not long ago, the pollster George Gallup Jr. set out to determine what those who seek a church today most want from that experience. He noted three things in particular: sermons that are instructive and believable, opportunities to deepen one’s own spiritual life, and a church that helps people to have a better understanding of the faith.
We might think of these things as the roots of faith. As any farmer or gardener knows, trees whose roots are not planted in healthy soil and nurtured with water and occasional fertilizer will not long bear fruit. In some measure, the problem of mainline congregations has been that we have gone to the trees decade after decade, asking a great harvest of fruit (programs of service and activism, ministries of outreach and care) without tending the roots. The result is predictable. This is not to say Christian or congregational life is an either-or: either roots and spiritual growth or fruits and ministries of service and care. Root-bound congregations are in as much a danger as fruitless ones. Roots or fruit is not an either-or; it is a both-and, as any healthy apple tree testifies.
Much of the clergy’s teaching will be in the midst of the life of the congregation and its people. This doesn’t mean always having the answers; indeed, it may mean having the question. It does mean putting the little dramas of life in community and of our lives individually into the context of the great story of God’s redeeming and relentless love and purpose. It means making the connections between God’s story and our stories, because in reality they are not two different stories but one story. Tell the story with love. Tell it with confidence. Tell it with joy. Amen!
__________________________________________________________
Adapted from What’s Theology Got to Do with It? Convictions, Vitality, and the Church by Anthony B. Robinson, copyright © 2006 by the Alban Institute. All rights reserved. Read more »
"God Beyond Borders: Interfaith Education and Congregations" by Sheryl Kujawa-HolbrookInterfaith education within congregations is an opportunity for people of faith to learn about and to experience faith traditions other than their own. Effective interfaith education allows us to deepen our understanding of our own traditions, discovering similarities with other traditions as well as acknowledging that which makes each faith distinct.
"Pastor as Teacher, Congregation as Learning Community"
"God Beyond Borders: Interfaith Education and Congregations"
One Friday during Lent, Greg Foraker, director of adult formation ministries at St. Philip’s in the Hills Episcopal Church in Tucson, Arizona, entered the Islamic Center, the city’s largest mosque, to participate in worship with its 500 members. To the left of the entrance was a group of women in traditional attire and to the right was a room where the male members of the mosque wash their hands and feet in preparation for prayer. Feeling uncertain in this unfamiliar place, he turned to the room where he was to wash when he unexpectedly heard someone from the group of women call his name. To his surprise they turned out to be members of St. Philip’s, covered in traditional attire from head to toe, in keeping with the practice of their hosts! After a few nervous laughs of recognition, the group once again parted as the men and women gathered in separate areas for prayer and worship.
For Christians living in a predominantly Christian culture, it is relatively easy to go through life without learning about other faith traditions or seriously examining our own. But Foraker and the women who attended the Islamic Center’s worship service were consciously and committedly doing so. They were part of their church’s Varieties of Religious Experience program, which grew out of the congregation’s desire to offer a less traditional Lenten program. It is essentially an experiential series of encounters focused on joining in worship with various religious traditions, followed by a meal and conversation.
The group of 18 who shared in prayers with Tucson’s Muslim community later gathered with the temple’s imam, or prayer leader, and a dozen members of the mosque community for a Middle Eastern meal, lively conversation, and an opportunity to build relationships across religious traditions. Members of St. Philip’s were impressed with the depth of the hospitality they received from the Muslim community, the shared dialogue experienced over the meal, as well as the shared commitment to forging deeper relationships across faith traditions in Tucson. “What at first seemed unfamiliar revealed connections not at first evident,” says Foraker.
In addition to Friday prayers at the mosque, the group was invited to sit zazen at Zen Desert Sangha, celebrate the festival of Ayyam-i-ha with the Tucson Baha’I, dance and chant “Hare Krishna” and at the Chaitanya Mandira, and keep Shabbat with Temple Emanu-El. The series culminated with the Great Vigil of Easter at St. Philip’s.
Foraker notes that not only did most participants attend each encounter, despite varying schedules and multiple locations, but that “each person reported that the experience was in some way transformative. This program was not your normative Sunday morning at 10:00 a.m. adult education offering. The participants considered the encounters an adventure, and grew deeper in their own faith as a result of the process.” Some participants reported that the experience of religious differences challenged them to reflect deeper on their faith as a Christian. Others felt that the encounters opened up new channels of prayer and reflection. Still others experienced a desire to continue to forge interfaith relationships within the larger Tucson community.
Dr. S. Asif Razvi of the Islamic Center of Boston affirms the value of such encounters between Muslims and non-Muslims from his perspective. “Islam is a continuation of the other two Abrahamic faiths and it is every practicing Muslim’s obligation to inform others about our faith,” he says. “We find dialogue to be the best approach to inform non-Muslims and to correct the widespread misconceptions about Islam.”
The fact that the United States is the most religiously pluralistic country on earth is a truism, and encounters between people from different religions have reshaped American religion. The U.S. Religious Landscape Survey (2008) reports that over one-third of all married Americans are married to someone with a different religious affiliation.1 Porous world boundaries due to globalization, immigration, technology, and transportation have produced a climate where religious understanding—and misunderstanding—lies at the heart of local, national, and global issues.
Examples of religious pluralism abound in local communities everywhere. The Canadian television series “Little Mosque on the Prairie” features the town of Mercy, where a Muslim community forms a mosque inside a local Anglican parish hall. The series looks at community relationships and the balancing of Muslim beliefs and traditions in a prairie setting with humor and insight. Documentaries such as “Fremont USA” take a sharp look at the struggles of religiously pluralistic communities like Fremont, California, where Peace Terrace Muslims and Methodists built houses of worship side by side with a Sikh community, a women’s monastic retreat center, and Thai, Chinese, and Burmese Buddhist temples. Given these realities of American religion, what is the role of Christian congregations in relation to religious pluralism? How can we better form Christians for their role in a religiously pluralistic and increasingly interdependent world?
Interfaith education within congregations is an opportunity for people of faith to learn about and to experience faith traditions other than their own. Effective interfaith education allows us to deepen our understanding of our own traditions, discovering similarities with other traditions as well as acknowledging that which makes each faith distinct. Further, interfaith education offers both individuals and congregations opportunities for spiritual growth and for sharing in communal projects for the greater good. It also offers opportunities for members of congregations to build relationships with neighbors of other faiths that extend out into the community. Most importantly, interfaith education values relationships in community. Hence, congregations of all sizes and locations have the resources to develop transformative interfaith education.
On a smaller scale than the Varieties of Religious Experience program, St. Philip’s Episcopal Church in Tucson also sponsors a Tuesday evening dialogue group modeled after The Faith Club, a best-seller written shortly after September 11, 2001, that tells the story of three women—one Muslim, one Jewish, one Christian—who came together to write a children’s book only to have their project develop into a months-long dialogue about their faith traditions. According to Foraker, at least part of the appeal of dialogue groups is their ability to “embody” different faith traditions and their stress on “learning from the heart.” He is excited about the need to expand the program to include eight small groups, as well as to partner with Interfaith Community Services in Tucson to offer a similar dialogue including Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Reform Jews, and Muslims as participants.
Foraker credits the support of the clergy team at St. Philip’s, the church’s Adult Formation Council, as well as the local community, as being essential components of the success of interfaith education there. “It really is a community-wide movement now,” he says.
Other interfaith education efforts the congregation is planning include an interfaith pilgrimage to Israel, a meditation series, forums, and pulpit exchanges. Key to the success of the interfaith efforts at St. Philip’s, Foraker says, “is the need to create a space of welcome. Over time we have been able to develop a climate of trust and accountability. This work is not just about potlucks but about working through difficult things together.”
An annual Bible study is the focus of the interfaith education efforts of The Second Church (United Church of Christ) and Temple Shalom in Newton, Massachusetts. The two congregations share a 50-year friendship dating from the time when Temple Shalom was formed and held its religious school’s classes at The Second Church during the construction of its own facilities. The Bible study, which began in 2000, focuses on a different theme each year, including the Song of Songs, the Psalms, and “Jesus and the Talmud.” Richard E. Malmberg, pastor of The Second Church, notes that members of his congregation have been both “touched and intimidated” by the serious Bible scholarship evident among the laity of the Jewish congregation. Over time the Bible study became a vehicle “to build trust and explore issues and questions on both sides, as well as to go beyond stereotypes of each other,” he says.
Malmberg’s own interest in interfaith education stems, in part, from his own experience growing up in an interfaith family. He also maintains a good friendship with the rabbi at Temple Shalom, and attends the Saturday Minyan on a weekly basis. “These experiences give me a chance to negotiate the boundaries [of my own faith], to learn about my heritage, and to celebrate my vocation at the same time,” he says. Because of the religious diversity experienced in the congregation, Malmberg says The Second Church has become known as “a good place for interfaith families to find a home.” The congregation also shares facilities with Jewish Reconstructionist congregation Dorshei Tzedek in the hope that the relationship between the two congregations will grow beyond space-sharing and into a more programmatic one. For this next step to develop, notes Malmberg, “the two boards need to get together, see each other’s faces, and forge lines of communication.”
The arts, including documentary films, are often another resource for interfaith education in congregations. Joyce Herman of the National Coalition Building Institute is a member of Temple Sinai in Rochester, New York, a congregation with historic interfaith relationships with the local Islamic Center and Baber African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. Herman is involved in a number of interfaith education projects, including the development of a documentary on “Prayer in America.” The film follows senior religious leaders in the community as they discuss how public prayer should be done, the issues that arise in interfaith dialogue, and how prayer relates to the crises of violence in the community. Herman reports that the response to the film has brought some “profound interfaith challenges and healing.” Despite the history of conflict between religious communities, the film uncovers how prayer can promote greater understanding and forge relationships between people of faith.
The need for interfaith education for families was the concept behind the Families in Conversation program started by Jay L. Kanzler, Jr., an assistant clergyperson at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in St. Louis, Missouri, and a practicing attorney. The idea was to bring in families of other faith traditions to have dinner and conversations with families from St. Peter’s, a congregation that also includes a “rabbi-in-residence” as a member of its clergy staff. The focus of the encounters is twofold: to develop a better understanding of what others believe and to create an awareness of the similarities between faith traditions. “The initial sessions have been very positively received,” says Kanzler. One outcome from his own Families in Conversation dinner was the development of a friendship with the imam of the local Bosnian Islamic Community. When the Bosnian Islamic Community sought to gain approval for the building of a new community center and mosque, the county government blocked the request. Kanzler believed the denial was due to religious discrimination and agreed to represent the Islamic Community Center in litigation. With the support of many faith groups, the Center was able to reach a settlement and eventually build a new community center and a mosque. “This was a wonderful interfaith effort to bring together rather than to tear apart with ignorance and prejudices,” says Kanzler.
Building relationships through sharing a common meal is a theme that runs throughout interfaith education efforts in the college town of Bennington, Vermont. “We are also learning how a common meal instantly creates bonds of friendship and deep understanding,” says Anita Schell-Lambert, the rector of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Bennington. “For many in our interfaith circles, a common meal followed by a meditation group or reflection series is their faith community, thus we are expanding the way we ‘worship’ here at St. Peter’s.” Also sponsored by the congregation, a community education series called “Think Global, Eat Local” linked the theme of food with interfaith environmentalism. The five-week series served as a springboard to a variety of community-wide related activities, from communal gardens to a study of the impact of food choice on energy sustainability. “Caring for the planet and all its inhabitants is also integrally related to peace-building in best spiritual practices,” says Schell-Lambert. “In Bennington it is such environmental and economic justice initiatives that to date have found the most common ground for interfaith collaboration. They have profoundly changed the way we do business at St Peter’s.”
The communal vegetable garden sponsored by St. Peter’s Episcopal Church is open to all those in the community who may wish to work in it. The congregation provides space, training, and a team to manage it using organic gardening and composting methods. The food produced is shared among the gardeners, the congregation, and local agencies. “The garden is the latest example of how we, through interfaith relationships, are strengthening and deepening our ties to Bennington and to one another as members of the interfaith community,” says Schell-Lambert. The Bennington Interfaith Council, representing nine different faith traditions, also manages a local Food and Fuel Fund, with strong linkages to health and human services in the area. The local emphasis on developing food and other energy resources supports a commitment to interfaith environmentalism while acknowledging the diversity of religious traditions present. “Here a common creed is not found in prayer books,” says Schell-Lambert, “but rather in a passion for earth care so that we can continue to decrease our ecological footprint, living more simply so others live. Again, these programs always include a shared meal—with food grown locally, if possible.”
All the interfaith education programs at St. Peter’s in Bennington are marked by collaborative planning and implementation throughout the town. “The real staying power of them is rooted in many faith traditions and new ways of doing business,” says Schell-Lambert. Further, the keys to interfaith community, she believes, are “shared goals for learning. We have discovered that we grow and learn more deeply through our diversity.” For instance, a recent Lenten series on the themes of forgiveness, atonement, and reconciliation included Christian, Native American, and Buddhist teachings about the nature of suffering and developing compassion. “Without exception, people felt their own particular faith tradition was enhanced by learning about a tradition very different from their own,” says Schell-Lambert. Participants in the series were challenged to articulate their understanding of forgiveness, atonement, and reconciliation as Christians from a deeper spiritual place when presented with perspectives from other faith traditions.
Creative congregational interfaith education efforts also include youth and young adults, who bring with them a curiosity, openness, and energy to the relationships formed. One such program is the Interfaith Youth Initiative (IFYI) sponsored by the Cooperative Metropolitan Ministries and the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This eight-day immersion program, followed by mentoring and gatherings for a full academic year, is designed for youth 15 through 18 years age as well as college and graduate student staff.
Its leadership currently comes from Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Unitarian Universalist traditions. The curriculum focuses on spiritual formation, dialogue, service, peace and justice, and the arts. The five core values of the program are building bridges, engaging faith, training leaders, making peace, and serving others.
“All too often youth and young adults are both primary victims and chief perpetrators of religiously fueled violence,” says Cooperative Metropolitan Ministries executive director Alexander Levering Kern. “At the same time, the absence of faith—and the hope, community, and opportunity that faith can engineer—breeds cultures of nihilism that prove equally destructive. Like their parents, too many youth in the 21st century seem caught in the pincers of religious extremism and secular materialism.” For these reasons Kern believes that “what we need now are intentional interfaith communities where faith is real and peace is possible.” He sees interfaith education as one area where congregational leaders are trained in dialogue, the arts of peacemaking, and public witness. Further, youth who participate in interfaith education are equipped to bring positive change not only to their faith communities but to their schools and neighborhoods as well.
As the people of God we are called to respond to a world that experiences religious violence and broken relationships every day. But our differences and our interdependence can be a source of strength and a gift from God. People of faith everywhere know that lasting peace will not ultimately be built on separatism or political arguments but on the transformation of hearts—new life, not just reordered life. Interfaith education is a vehicle for faith communities to challenge ignorance and oppression as well as to explore forgiveness and reconciliation. Through commitment to interfaith education our communities are transformed, lives are saved, and faith is about the healing and wholeness that the world craves.
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NOTE1. U.S. Religious Landscape Survey (released February 25, 2008), Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 8.
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For Christians living in a predominantly Christian culture, it is relatively easy to go through life without learning about other faith traditions or seriously examining our own. But Foraker and the women who attended the Islamic Center’s worship service were consciously and committedly doing so. They were part of their church’s Varieties of Religious Experience program, which grew out of the congregation’s desire to offer a less traditional Lenten program. It is essentially an experiential series of encounters focused on joining in worship with various religious traditions, followed by a meal and conversation.
The group of 18 who shared in prayers with Tucson’s Muslim community later gathered with the temple’s imam, or prayer leader, and a dozen members of the mosque community for a Middle Eastern meal, lively conversation, and an opportunity to build relationships across religious traditions. Members of St. Philip’s were impressed with the depth of the hospitality they received from the Muslim community, the shared dialogue experienced over the meal, as well as the shared commitment to forging deeper relationships across faith traditions in Tucson. “What at first seemed unfamiliar revealed connections not at first evident,” says Foraker.
In addition to Friday prayers at the mosque, the group was invited to sit zazen at Zen Desert Sangha, celebrate the festival of Ayyam-i-ha with the Tucson Baha’I, dance and chant “Hare Krishna” and at the Chaitanya Mandira, and keep Shabbat with Temple Emanu-El. The series culminated with the Great Vigil of Easter at St. Philip’s.
Foraker notes that not only did most participants attend each encounter, despite varying schedules and multiple locations, but that “each person reported that the experience was in some way transformative. This program was not your normative Sunday morning at 10:00 a.m. adult education offering. The participants considered the encounters an adventure, and grew deeper in their own faith as a result of the process.” Some participants reported that the experience of religious differences challenged them to reflect deeper on their faith as a Christian. Others felt that the encounters opened up new channels of prayer and reflection. Still others experienced a desire to continue to forge interfaith relationships within the larger Tucson community.
Dr. S. Asif Razvi of the Islamic Center of Boston affirms the value of such encounters between Muslims and non-Muslims from his perspective. “Islam is a continuation of the other two Abrahamic faiths and it is every practicing Muslim’s obligation to inform others about our faith,” he says. “We find dialogue to be the best approach to inform non-Muslims and to correct the widespread misconceptions about Islam.”
The fact that the United States is the most religiously pluralistic country on earth is a truism, and encounters between people from different religions have reshaped American religion. The U.S. Religious Landscape Survey (2008) reports that over one-third of all married Americans are married to someone with a different religious affiliation.1 Porous world boundaries due to globalization, immigration, technology, and transportation have produced a climate where religious understanding—and misunderstanding—lies at the heart of local, national, and global issues.
Examples of religious pluralism abound in local communities everywhere. The Canadian television series “Little Mosque on the Prairie” features the town of Mercy, where a Muslim community forms a mosque inside a local Anglican parish hall. The series looks at community relationships and the balancing of Muslim beliefs and traditions in a prairie setting with humor and insight. Documentaries such as “Fremont USA” take a sharp look at the struggles of religiously pluralistic communities like Fremont, California, where Peace Terrace Muslims and Methodists built houses of worship side by side with a Sikh community, a women’s monastic retreat center, and Thai, Chinese, and Burmese Buddhist temples. Given these realities of American religion, what is the role of Christian congregations in relation to religious pluralism? How can we better form Christians for their role in a religiously pluralistic and increasingly interdependent world?
Interfaith education within congregations is an opportunity for people of faith to learn about and to experience faith traditions other than their own. Effective interfaith education allows us to deepen our understanding of our own traditions, discovering similarities with other traditions as well as acknowledging that which makes each faith distinct. Further, interfaith education offers both individuals and congregations opportunities for spiritual growth and for sharing in communal projects for the greater good. It also offers opportunities for members of congregations to build relationships with neighbors of other faiths that extend out into the community. Most importantly, interfaith education values relationships in community. Hence, congregations of all sizes and locations have the resources to develop transformative interfaith education.
On a smaller scale than the Varieties of Religious Experience program, St. Philip’s Episcopal Church in Tucson also sponsors a Tuesday evening dialogue group modeled after The Faith Club, a best-seller written shortly after September 11, 2001, that tells the story of three women—one Muslim, one Jewish, one Christian—who came together to write a children’s book only to have their project develop into a months-long dialogue about their faith traditions. According to Foraker, at least part of the appeal of dialogue groups is their ability to “embody” different faith traditions and their stress on “learning from the heart.” He is excited about the need to expand the program to include eight small groups, as well as to partner with Interfaith Community Services in Tucson to offer a similar dialogue including Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Reform Jews, and Muslims as participants.
Foraker credits the support of the clergy team at St. Philip’s, the church’s Adult Formation Council, as well as the local community, as being essential components of the success of interfaith education there. “It really is a community-wide movement now,” he says.
Other interfaith education efforts the congregation is planning include an interfaith pilgrimage to Israel, a meditation series, forums, and pulpit exchanges. Key to the success of the interfaith efforts at St. Philip’s, Foraker says, “is the need to create a space of welcome. Over time we have been able to develop a climate of trust and accountability. This work is not just about potlucks but about working through difficult things together.”
An annual Bible study is the focus of the interfaith education efforts of The Second Church (United Church of Christ) and Temple Shalom in Newton, Massachusetts. The two congregations share a 50-year friendship dating from the time when Temple Shalom was formed and held its religious school’s classes at The Second Church during the construction of its own facilities. The Bible study, which began in 2000, focuses on a different theme each year, including the Song of Songs, the Psalms, and “Jesus and the Talmud.” Richard E. Malmberg, pastor of The Second Church, notes that members of his congregation have been both “touched and intimidated” by the serious Bible scholarship evident among the laity of the Jewish congregation. Over time the Bible study became a vehicle “to build trust and explore issues and questions on both sides, as well as to go beyond stereotypes of each other,” he says.
Malmberg’s own interest in interfaith education stems, in part, from his own experience growing up in an interfaith family. He also maintains a good friendship with the rabbi at Temple Shalom, and attends the Saturday Minyan on a weekly basis. “These experiences give me a chance to negotiate the boundaries [of my own faith], to learn about my heritage, and to celebrate my vocation at the same time,” he says. Because of the religious diversity experienced in the congregation, Malmberg says The Second Church has become known as “a good place for interfaith families to find a home.” The congregation also shares facilities with Jewish Reconstructionist congregation Dorshei Tzedek in the hope that the relationship between the two congregations will grow beyond space-sharing and into a more programmatic one. For this next step to develop, notes Malmberg, “the two boards need to get together, see each other’s faces, and forge lines of communication.”
The arts, including documentary films, are often another resource for interfaith education in congregations. Joyce Herman of the National Coalition Building Institute is a member of Temple Sinai in Rochester, New York, a congregation with historic interfaith relationships with the local Islamic Center and Baber African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. Herman is involved in a number of interfaith education projects, including the development of a documentary on “Prayer in America.” The film follows senior religious leaders in the community as they discuss how public prayer should be done, the issues that arise in interfaith dialogue, and how prayer relates to the crises of violence in the community. Herman reports that the response to the film has brought some “profound interfaith challenges and healing.” Despite the history of conflict between religious communities, the film uncovers how prayer can promote greater understanding and forge relationships between people of faith.
The need for interfaith education for families was the concept behind the Families in Conversation program started by Jay L. Kanzler, Jr., an assistant clergyperson at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in St. Louis, Missouri, and a practicing attorney. The idea was to bring in families of other faith traditions to have dinner and conversations with families from St. Peter’s, a congregation that also includes a “rabbi-in-residence” as a member of its clergy staff. The focus of the encounters is twofold: to develop a better understanding of what others believe and to create an awareness of the similarities between faith traditions. “The initial sessions have been very positively received,” says Kanzler. One outcome from his own Families in Conversation dinner was the development of a friendship with the imam of the local Bosnian Islamic Community. When the Bosnian Islamic Community sought to gain approval for the building of a new community center and mosque, the county government blocked the request. Kanzler believed the denial was due to religious discrimination and agreed to represent the Islamic Community Center in litigation. With the support of many faith groups, the Center was able to reach a settlement and eventually build a new community center and a mosque. “This was a wonderful interfaith effort to bring together rather than to tear apart with ignorance and prejudices,” says Kanzler.
Building relationships through sharing a common meal is a theme that runs throughout interfaith education efforts in the college town of Bennington, Vermont. “We are also learning how a common meal instantly creates bonds of friendship and deep understanding,” says Anita Schell-Lambert, the rector of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Bennington. “For many in our interfaith circles, a common meal followed by a meditation group or reflection series is their faith community, thus we are expanding the way we ‘worship’ here at St. Peter’s.” Also sponsored by the congregation, a community education series called “Think Global, Eat Local” linked the theme of food with interfaith environmentalism. The five-week series served as a springboard to a variety of community-wide related activities, from communal gardens to a study of the impact of food choice on energy sustainability. “Caring for the planet and all its inhabitants is also integrally related to peace-building in best spiritual practices,” says Schell-Lambert. “In Bennington it is such environmental and economic justice initiatives that to date have found the most common ground for interfaith collaboration. They have profoundly changed the way we do business at St Peter’s.”
The communal vegetable garden sponsored by St. Peter’s Episcopal Church is open to all those in the community who may wish to work in it. The congregation provides space, training, and a team to manage it using organic gardening and composting methods. The food produced is shared among the gardeners, the congregation, and local agencies. “The garden is the latest example of how we, through interfaith relationships, are strengthening and deepening our ties to Bennington and to one another as members of the interfaith community,” says Schell-Lambert. The Bennington Interfaith Council, representing nine different faith traditions, also manages a local Food and Fuel Fund, with strong linkages to health and human services in the area. The local emphasis on developing food and other energy resources supports a commitment to interfaith environmentalism while acknowledging the diversity of religious traditions present. “Here a common creed is not found in prayer books,” says Schell-Lambert, “but rather in a passion for earth care so that we can continue to decrease our ecological footprint, living more simply so others live. Again, these programs always include a shared meal—with food grown locally, if possible.”
All the interfaith education programs at St. Peter’s in Bennington are marked by collaborative planning and implementation throughout the town. “The real staying power of them is rooted in many faith traditions and new ways of doing business,” says Schell-Lambert. Further, the keys to interfaith community, she believes, are “shared goals for learning. We have discovered that we grow and learn more deeply through our diversity.” For instance, a recent Lenten series on the themes of forgiveness, atonement, and reconciliation included Christian, Native American, and Buddhist teachings about the nature of suffering and developing compassion. “Without exception, people felt their own particular faith tradition was enhanced by learning about a tradition very different from their own,” says Schell-Lambert. Participants in the series were challenged to articulate their understanding of forgiveness, atonement, and reconciliation as Christians from a deeper spiritual place when presented with perspectives from other faith traditions.
Creative congregational interfaith education efforts also include youth and young adults, who bring with them a curiosity, openness, and energy to the relationships formed. One such program is the Interfaith Youth Initiative (IFYI) sponsored by the Cooperative Metropolitan Ministries and the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This eight-day immersion program, followed by mentoring and gatherings for a full academic year, is designed for youth 15 through 18 years age as well as college and graduate student staff.
Its leadership currently comes from Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Unitarian Universalist traditions. The curriculum focuses on spiritual formation, dialogue, service, peace and justice, and the arts. The five core values of the program are building bridges, engaging faith, training leaders, making peace, and serving others.
“All too often youth and young adults are both primary victims and chief perpetrators of religiously fueled violence,” says Cooperative Metropolitan Ministries executive director Alexander Levering Kern. “At the same time, the absence of faith—and the hope, community, and opportunity that faith can engineer—breeds cultures of nihilism that prove equally destructive. Like their parents, too many youth in the 21st century seem caught in the pincers of religious extremism and secular materialism.” For these reasons Kern believes that “what we need now are intentional interfaith communities where faith is real and peace is possible.” He sees interfaith education as one area where congregational leaders are trained in dialogue, the arts of peacemaking, and public witness. Further, youth who participate in interfaith education are equipped to bring positive change not only to their faith communities but to their schools and neighborhoods as well.
As the people of God we are called to respond to a world that experiences religious violence and broken relationships every day. But our differences and our interdependence can be a source of strength and a gift from God. People of faith everywhere know that lasting peace will not ultimately be built on separatism or political arguments but on the transformation of hearts—new life, not just reordered life. Interfaith education is a vehicle for faith communities to challenge ignorance and oppression as well as to explore forgiveness and reconciliation. Through commitment to interfaith education our communities are transformed, lives are saved, and faith is about the healing and wholeness that the world craves.
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NOTE1. U.S. Religious Landscape Survey (released February 25, 2008), Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 8.
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Questions for Reflection:
- What is the religious diversity within your congregation? What interfaith relationships are already present (interfaith families, for instance) and how might they be supported?
- Research the religious diversity in your larger community. What relationships does your congregation already have with people of other faith traditions? What are some ways these relationships can be deepened?
- What are some opportunities for interfaith education that your congregation might explore?
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