When Christian Education Doesn't

Companions,

A colleague of mine has some research findings to add to our earlier thread about Christian Education. Among them, in the samples included in his research, are the following:

1) Four-out-of-five UM adults (80.4%) report “little” or “no” interest in Sunday school, Bible study, or small group formation experiences.

2)Two-out-of-five (39.1%) claim that believing that Jesus Christ is God’s true son is enough — since they have a guaranteed spot in heaven, they don’t have anything else of value to learn.

3)An additional 48% believe that attending weekly worship is adequate, and that there is no need for any other formational experience in their lives.

4) “Boring” is the number one word or phrase associated with Sunday school (among all adults).

5) “Fellowship with friends” is the number one reason adults attend Sunday school classes.

6) Those adults who attend Bible studies find them “interesting” and “informative,”

7) Only 1-in-6 (17%) report finding practical information that applies to their daily lives.

8) About one-third (31%) of regular Sunday school attendees can remember what their class was about within the first 24 hours. This drops to less than 10% after one week, 3% after two weeks, and essentially 0% after three weeks.

Source: GBOD Research News and Views

This, of course, represents the typical regimen of adult Christian education via the adult Sunday School in the United Methodist Church. It does not capture what may be happening in venues where Christian formation, community building, and missional deployment are intrinsically and intentionally linked.

Still, the question remains, where are you seeing different results in what you're doing with adult formation? How do you know you're getting different results? And what would you suggest to others considering the significant changes that are obviously necessary if United Methodists are going to move beyond the failure of the adult Sunday School to form disciples, much less missionaries, in Jesus' name?

Peace in Christ,

Taylor Burton-Edwards

When Marketing is NOT Good News

More than a little creepy, eh? Or too close to home?

Given the ways in which many of us have been enculturated as congregations in a number of the practices recorded here-- including but not limited to:
-- marketing on our cars
-- locked doors
-- unfriendly greeters
-- data gathering (versus actual relating to folks)
-- being ABOUT being the body of Christ, as opposed to just being his body
-- and others...

What forms of embodiment visible here do we need to shed? Where can we being different practices that actually offer we as church actually ARE-- rather than market what we think will simply appeal to get others to join us in that same, sad to say it, scam.

Peace in Christ,
Way, Truth and Life,

Taylor

An Emerging Understanding of Baptism in the United Methodist Church

Hello fellow conversation partners!

I'm working on a paper for a class at Drew Theological School about baptism and the emerging church; specifically how this gets played out in a United Methodist context. It seems to me that the emerging conversation (and postmodernism in general) has led to a different understanding of what constitutes "church" - for example: the boundaries of who is "in" and "out" are more permeable, and "church" is something that you are and not something that you just "go to" on Sunday mornings (just to name a few overarching concepts). My quest is to seek how this new understanding of church first of all affects our United Methodist understanding of church and how this affects (1) our baptismal identity; and (2) how we understand baptism; and (3) what about Confirmation.

So to break it down a bit further, what does baptism look like in a missional United Methodist context? Does the nature of what the "church" is effectively change how we think about and do baptism - both of infants and of adults? If the way we do and are church becomes more organic and messy, what does initiation into community (Christian specifically, but also in general) mean and look like? What would a more emerging baptismal service look like (from a purely liturgical or worship perspective)?

As part of my paper, I hope to include your voices as United Methodists who are also wrestling and thinking through these issues. If you could all share your thoughts and reflections on this (and perhaps pose a few of your own) to help in this process, I would be most appreciative. It would be great to incorporate your responses into my paper!

Thanks in advance for all your help!

Peace,

Melissa