So very pleased to have Dan Sheffield presenting to us today.
When I knew the topic of Dr.
Lennox presentation this morning, I
thought it would be Dan would be another person to have at this event.
We don't, strictly speaking, have a theme.
It's sort of like a seminar where we
gather papers on various topics, but these two do sort of go together.
Dan's a Free Methodist pastor known to us here.
He's presented to this group before, and
he's also an instructor here at Tyndale Seminary and other places.
He teaches on courses, on mission, on intercultural ministry and competency.
And he's published quite a bit in those
areas as well in Christian education and in mission and intercultural studies.
So let's please welcome Dan as he comes to speak to us.
It's good to be here and to contribute to this conversation.
I was just saying amen to a lot of the stuff that Steve was contributing there.
And you may note some Charles Taylor and
Brian Stone thoughts here in the background of what I'm talking about.
So in describing the methodology of
Methodists, wesley used the language of Oikonomia,
referring to a plan or system of interconnected elements which fosters this
developmental growth toward Christian maturity or full Orb reconciliation.
Here we go.
Hence my title, a Wesleyan Ecology of Christian Formation.
So what I want to do here this morning is
to connect Wesley's ecology with education best practices.
Okay?
So in the field of education, there's a focus on educating toward outcomes.
Essentially, what kind of a person would we like to see emerge at the conclusion of
a given course of studies or a three year educational program?
What knowledge, what skills, what values, what attitudes?
And on the basis of that profile or desired outcome, an educational curriculum
is developed incorporating elements that facilitate that intended outcome.
You got that?
So this is where we'd like to a person with full Orb reconciliation.
And how do you work towards that
in designing so this model, outcomes based education is increasingly
something that's talked about in seminary based pastoral education.
So just to bring us up to date, if we
consider the Mosaic directive to teach so that these commands are observed or
practiced to impress these commands on your children and talk about them, we note
a concern that the commands are more than simple rubrics or measurements of
acceptable behaviors, but there's actually an intended content for a learning
curriculum and a learning methodology in sort of the deuteronomy passage.
If we just take a look at what Jesus had to suggest here with make disciples and
teach them to observe or obey practice, whichever translation
you've got everything that I commanded you, again, that command notion and then
the obey observe practice, we understand the proactive formation role that's called
for, as well as a particular learning methodology.
The apprentice learner model that Jesus employed for several years with his own
life group is understood to be the approach that
Jesus assumed his disciples would continue to employ.
So when he said, make disciples, you're kind of understanding sort of like the way
that I've done with you the last three or four years.
Okay, so that's kind of a thought there.
If we consider Paul's representation of
the work that he had done in Asia Minor, there's a lot of hearing,
learning, teaching, and practicing or habit formation
that leads to transformation and these new attitudes of mind.
This sounds like a lot of intentionality
regarding the process of growing up in Christ.
And if we consider the tradition of the Christian Church regarding Christian
formation, we have a consistent metaphor of a developmental journey of various
stages, steps, or mile posts that express certain outcomes.
Wesley, of course, spoke of the Via
Salutus, the way of salvation, in which conversion was merely an entry level stage
of the ongoing journey toward a particular outcome.
So this brief paper explores elements of Wesleyan ecology of Christian formation
through the lens of educational learning outcomes and learning taxonomies.
Wesley's method will be viewed via these
learning assumptions, educational practices, and intended outcomes.
And I'll take an approach to forming a
local church ecology and then raise a few questions about our present practices.
I say brief because I'm really focused on a few things here that I'm not going to
talk about the 50 other things that I could have put in the paper.
So whether or not the presentation is
brief, it's really brief in terms of everything that I could have said.
So we might wonder, how does education
theory apply to making disciples within a Wesleyan framework?
Let's start with reference to how John Wesley thought about this from this letter
to Anglican priest and Methodist Sympathizer.
Vincent Perinet.
Wesley wrote Some time, since you desired
an account of the whole economy of the people commonly called Methodists, I sent
you this account that you may not only know their practice on every head,
but likewise the reasons whereon it is grounded, the occasion of every step they
have taken, and the advantages reap thereby.
So Wesley clearly identifies an ecosystem that makes explicit the interconnected,
interdependent, interacting set of relationships, structures, and practices
that were implicit in the Methodist method.
We got to keep coming back to the
Methodists were called Methodists because they had a method.
There were established practices or methods of formation.
There were theological and theoretical reasons for those practices.
There was a developmental record regarding
how those methods emerged and evaluative measures that identified outcomes.
So it was Sandra Matai's work from almost two decades ago that brought my attention
to the agenda items of the First Methodist Conference in 1744.
This was the agenda what to teach, how to teach, and who shall teach.
So as the ministers gathered together the
itinerant preachers, that was the agenda for that First Conference.
And so I'm indebted to Sandra Matai's
framework for making sense of this developmental methodology of Wesley So.
Matai suggests that the aim of a Wesleyan ecology of faith formation is to make
disciples to shape Christian identity and Christian
vocation so that persons respond to God's prevenient grace and find new meaning for
their lives in faithful relationship to God and neighbor.
And following on that,
this ecology was to help develop the church's role in nurturing and supporting
human response to the prompting of the Holy Spirit, including holding persons
accountable for the practice of a holy life.
Further, Matai adds the context for a
Wesleyan ecology of faith formation is the community of the church that is called to
pattern its life after the community of the Trinity.
And Matai suggests Wesley's primary metaphor for the Christian community was
the Christian family signifying, a small group of people who
knew each other well, who could bear one another's burdens, and who would hold each
other accountable for practicing the Christian life.
And there has to be something about the family environment that Wesley grew up
in that was a nurturing community for faith and understanding and character and
practices under the tutelage of his mother, of course, perhaps more than his
father, that notion of how family comes around to form and shape.
And that Mata is suggesting that's a
primary metaphor in Wesley's thinking about this.
So, in summary, a framework for Wesley and Christian formation has goals that is, our
intended outcomes, has a process for moving people along developmentally, and a
context that shapes how this formation work takes place.
So let's now think about how education
best practices contribute to our understanding of this Wesleyan framework.
This is where I'm not going to take the time today to make all the connections
about how the education theory helps us make sense.
I'm going to try and make some connections, and I'll follow this
education piece by bringing back our Wesley discussion.
So this would be the place where
if you're an education nerd, you may enjoy this more than others.
Okay, just saying.
So educator Juliet Henriksen suggests that
it's necessary to have the intended learner's transformation
as a focus of design and not merely as a statement of output.
Such a learning orientation needs to be
made explicit in the curriculum design process.
At the earliest stage, you'll find lots of overlaps with what Steve just said here.
Okay, we didn't plan that.
So, in other words, if we're expecting a learner's present orientation
as they come to us and their meaning frame to be transformed,
we have to design our content and our context and our method towards that end,
rather than just hoping that what we offer will lead to transformation.
And this is a lot of perhaps what we do on Sundays, I'm hoping
that what I have to say this week will lead to transformation.
You find this there was a bit of subtle reference to teachers who kind of just
teach content and aren't necessarily connected to the process of how education
practice can actually facilitate transformation.
We'll get to a little bit more theory in a moment.
In the discipline of education, bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives.
We're going deeper into the education nerd stuff, okay?
Is a common educational device for crafting learning objectives.
Bloom believed that teachers should design
their lessons and their tasks to help students meet certain objectives.
And in my various places of education over
the years, you had professors who taught for transformation.
And I remember an Old Testament professor,
Dan Block, teaching all that dry Old Testament stuff,
and me going away from class, wanting to find a room and bow down and pray and
weep, because he taught for transformation, not just JEDP.
So Bloom's Taxonomy and the updated
version, which is the one I've got on the screen, draw our attention to what are
called lower and higher order thinking skills.
This cognitive approach pays attention to content and the students ability to engage
with that content in an increasingly complex manner.
So Bloom was concerned that teachers
should understand that learning is a process and that teaching methods should
seek to help students move up into the higher stages of synthesis and evaluation.
But this was still a cognitive learning model, and Bloom has profoundly influenced
educational practices for the last 30, 40, 50 years of education.
Most people don't read.
The book that he wrote in the 60s was about how to influence affect of learning.
We still just have the cognitive piece.
And so that's the orthodoxy rather than the orthopaxy piece.
So writing learning objectives using Bloom's taxonomy helps to clarify
expectations of assessment criteria and methods and to align the designing of
teaching methods so that people learn this content there's.
Another education theorist, D.
Fink, has more recently provided a model
for course design that includes cognitive and affective elements.
So Fink encourages instructors to create
learning goals based on his taxonomy rather than Blooms,
rather than relying on content driven method of course design.
And so a lot of educators are still, for
the most part, working with content driven learning methodologies.
And there's a growing movement in a number
of fields around adding affective into the learning experience.
Fink switches the emphasis away from content toward the goals and the skills
the instructor wants his or students to retain after the course is completed.
So you come up with different
methodologies if it's about transformation of affect, how we think,
how we feel, how we engage, how we practice.
So, in particular, Fink has these three dimensions at the top of his hierarchy.
As you progress through the human dimension, which is assessing if students
learn more about themselves and others, is what we're doing in this classroom
helping these students understand themselves better as well as those around
them in the context of this learning environment.
His taxon of caring, assessing if students taking this course
have developed energy and motivation in association with our course content.
Have they just read the books, written the
papers, done the exam and walked away and said, thank God we're finished that one.
Or has what we have done in that classroom
environment actually transformed their thinking about that and
there's higher motivation and energy for the content that they entered into?
And then he has here learning how to
learn, that is assessing how students have acquired these lifelong learning skills.
And again, that's one of the classic
things that you hear from pastors is my seminary training gave me all the content,
but now I got to figure out how to actually do this.
And often there's a disconnect between what was received in the classroom context
for three or four years and the practice in local church life.
And so Fink is saying like, have we actually given lifelong learning skills in
what we've done in this educational environment?
So yeah.
Adult learning theorist and practitioner Jack Mezro indicates that the goal of
education is to foster learners who are able to act on their own purposes, values
and beliefs, rather than uncritically acting on those of others.
So, as was suggested, every student comes with a certain set of
approaches to life into my classroom and what is it that we're going to do here
that may ask them to rethink some of those things?
Mezzaro defines transformative learning as
the process by which we transform our taken for granted frames of reference.
That is, the way we organize things, habits of mind, our mindsets, perspective,
how we transform those things to make them more inclusive, discriminating, open,
emotionally capable of change, and reflective so that they may generate
beliefs and opinions that will prove more true or justified to guide action.
And interestingly enough, Mezzaro is not even a Christian, but thinks that pursuit
of truth is something we should be concerned about.
So in terms of application for our purposes, mezaro adult learning
practitioner speaks of three broad phases of transformational development.
The first is what he calls a disorienting dilemma, where the learner is confronted
with a new experience or new content and an unsettled sensation that something
is important in this situation and needs to be dealt with.
The second phase in transformative
learning is typified by new learning and integration within the existing frameworks
that leads to changes in the learner's meaning perspective.
So the way that we process things is shifted and adjusted our ways of knowing.
And then the third phase involves acting
upon and experimenting with this new frame of knowing.
We've been disturbed,
we've had some new content that has helped us rethink what we thought was going on,
and then we begin to apply that in practice, in new settings.
Going forward.
Decision making or volition is a key factor in transformative learning.
The learner has to make a decision to negate an old perspective in favor of a
new one or to make a synthesis of old and new.
Now, to me this sounds a lot like the
process of conversion and making disciples.
And while this is
contemporary education, theory and practice, I believe that Wesley's theory,
theology, and methodology seems eerily congruent.
So for me, it begs the question, are we recognizing the continuing validity of
Wesley's ecology of Christian formation there?
That's the education nerd stuff.
So let's get back to the questions at that
First Methodist Conference what to teach, how to teach.
For today. I'm going to leave.
Who should teach?
Steven touched a bit on that.
That's another day's topic, just to say that I've just recently finished reading a
book by a prophet, Beason Divinity School on Bonhoeffer's Seminary vision.
Okay? Another little book for Bonhoeffer nerds
to find in which he talks specifically about we've
all read the cost of discipleship and life together.
And those books were birthed in a seminary, not in a faith community, so to
speak, in terms of what we think of as a church.
And so the notion of all those things
about what Christian life and community should be was based around what a seminary
pastoral preparation environment should look like.
And that's all I'm going to say.
So in examining what to teach,
the Methodist model was both a cognitive process of didactic learning.
There was content to learn and to adjust
our ways of thinking, and there was a formative process of spiritual nurturing.
Now, those are both under what to teach.
You would think you'd separate those two as what to teach and how to teach.
But Wesley is saying you need to teach people how to learn.
So he's speaking to his Itinerant
ministers at this conference, and there's content to be acquired and learned.
And then I want you, itinerant ministers to do that in a way that passes on to your
people how we're doing things as Methodists.
So Matai frames it this way acquiring Christian belief and practice,
so that our practice mirrors belief, and belief is shaped by practice.
Coming to a shared understanding of belief involves interpretation of Scripture,
knowledge of the historical tradition of the church, and reflection on God's work
in the world through our own lived experience.
And that's that instructional mode.
This is the stuff that needs to be passed on and acquired, both belief and practice.
To be acquired and then clarifying
Christian belief and practice, where dialogue shapes and confirms our sense of
Christian identity and reflects the character of those with whom we converse.
Conferring together in groups and one on one requires listening to the other
perspectives and contributing to collective discernment.
Now we get the straightforward, simple definitions of class meeting, and it's
people getting together to have prayer and exhort one another.
If we put it in this context of what Wesley wanted those class meetings to be,
it was a place of dialogue and reflection, and we'll get to it in a moment.
But the stuff that we were taught, let's have a conversation about what that really
means in everyday life and conferring together with people who are going to help
us think about this, but also model how to think.
So this dialogical mode is built into that class system.
Whoops the third piece here then?
Extending Christian belief and practice.
Wesley was convinced that the practice of
the means of grace, piety, acts of mercy, acts of piety, and living out the faith in
communion with God and neighbor had a powerful transformative impact.
This is the embodied mode,
this notion that acts of service were not just Christian do gooder activities,
but they were actually things that changed your character because you did them.
And so that's part of what to teach
is not just go out and do something that seems like practice, but we have to teach
people why that actually is transformative.
So then how to teach?
Participation in the life of the Methodist
community included both critical learning and practical divinity.
Every member of a Methodist society received instruction in the faith and
nurture for holy living in an economy whose purpose was behavioral change,
spiritual growth, personal interaction, and community transformation.
The learning was transformative because God's grace was at work as people
participated in the works of piety and mercy and then had opportunity to reflect
on their experiences through self examination in a small group process.
They were practicing holy living and
reflecting on that practice accompanied by the work of the Holy Spirit.
This approach to learning or transformation aided growth in communion
with God and neighbor on the journey towards wholeness.
The Via Salutus, one of my favorite quotes
that part of our economy method or system. I threw that in.
That brackets the private weekly meeting
for prayer, examination and particular exhortation has been the greatest means of
deepening and confirming every blessing that was received by the word preached and
of diffusing it to others who could not attend the public ministry.
Whereas without this religious connection and intercourse, the conversation, the
most ardent attempts by mere preaching have proved of no lasting value.
Now, if that doesn't put every preacher in
its proper place and Steven referred to this, this business
of what do we do with the public preaching piece in the Anglican system?
I'm going to come back to that in a moment
and what we did with it or didn't do with it as we moved to full blown methodism.
This is a very telling statement about how
Wesley understood the interplay of the different elements of his ecology
and what was it that took the priority for producing growth toward maturity.
Wesley understood the transformative power
of how process, context method, the how made sense of the what.
Which brings us back to the notion of economy.
All these interrelated, interdependent relationships, practices, context
structures that together contribute to growth and maturity.
In other writing, Wesley comments on what
happens when one or more of these elements is missing.
He actually says you get anemic churches Randy Maddox little highlight there.
We've all been formed by the social cultural and religious or a
religious context in which we have been raised.
James Smith, many of us have been reading
his stuff, has recently given an expanded explanation of how this happens.
He speaks of human beings as embodied actors rather than merely thinking things.
He says we need to prioritize practices
rather than ideas as the site of challenge and resistance.
He concludes by suggesting that the life
of Christian community must provide an alternative cultural formation.
I believe that Wesley had this figured out as well before James Smith and understood
the need for an ecosystem to sustain this Christian alternative formation process.
So there was a time in our society, more
or less, that provided a Judeo Christian context for this kind of formation.
That was the setting that Wesley was in.
That's no longer the case, if it ever was true.
We are conducting ministry presently in a context where people enter our churches or
our spheres of relationships who are already formed by a certain set of
assumptions, knowledge, perceptions, habits, and practices.
We cannot assume and I think this is what
John was bringing up we cannot assume that even self professing Christians have ever
been formed by a process of alternative cultural formation.
As Christians formed as followers of Jesus.
Who? Have acquired a new set of assumptions
regarding how the world works, who've learned to look at the concrete world
through transformed and renewed perceptions.
Meta narratives whose habits and life practices have been disrupted by the grace
of God, displaced and reformed with the habits and practices of kingdom people.
That's all adult learning transformative education stuff.
So this is our crossover with the education theorists.
I'd suggest they're really just catching up with Wesley's genius.
In our Wesleyan tribe, we have some unique
methods that I wonder if we're fully appropriating.
Why go off after the latest idea or book
or seminar when Wesley's ecosystem for Christian
formation should actually be at the top of our list?
Wesley's Ecology just to flesh this out for a moment, I'm a couple of steps away
from concluding wesley's ecology included large group corporate worship.
Methodists were to participate regularly
in the Sunday gathering of their local parish.
Corporate worship is a mind, body, and
spirit experience with God and the family of God.
Scripture, song, reflection, prayer, eucharist, community all contribute to
reshaping one's understanding of both personal and global concerns.
That little quote I had the private weekly meeting for prayer examination and
particular exhortation, or the class meeting, or if we just want to lose that
for a moment, what we might call a life group okay?
Was limited in size to about twelve people.
It included both seekers and believers.
The only criteria was a desire to seek after God, to go deeper.
It was a setting for applying the Sunday
teaching and experience of corporate worship to personal lives and everyday
issues of challenging one another and praying for one another, learning to be an
authentic, caring community requires time spent together beyond Sunday in loving,
forgiving and seeing from the other's perspective.
This is the building block that Wesley viewed as essential to the method.
We actually can't call ourselves Methodists if that weekly private meeting
for formation and reflection is not part of our methodology.
If we're just providing a Sunday morning
service and hoping that people will join in our nurture groups or whatever we've
got as they like, we are actually not being Methodist.
The Society we also struggle with what to do with the Society.
The Society was the teaching and organizational mechanism that connected
the various pieces of the ecology together.
This is the setting where Methodist
doctrine and practice was taught in an instructional mode.
Leadership in the societies also
coordinated local efforts in caring for the poor among the Methodists, as well as
others in need as such, as we've had shared today, the Society had a role in
facilitating acts of mercy as a communal outcome.
We might refer to society using the language of a missional community.
So lots of us think of Christian formation this way.
Or let's think of us, I don't know. Lots of us do.
But let's think of Christian formation this way.
Making disciples is an intentional process
of laying foundations of practice and belief that shapes an alternative way of
life and provides a pathway to Christian maturity.
So we might understand discipleship
to be that comprehensive term for the whole of this ecology.
All of those elements are required to help us grow up in Christ.
Disciple making is about forming Christian worldview and practices.
Do we know how to shape Christian identity
and vocation in the context of small group community?
That's a question for what we're doing in our local settings right now.
Do we know how to shape small disciple
making groups into larger faith communities?
Wesley is always going to start with the
small disciple making context as the basis for whatever else we grow.
Do we know how to shape or integrate our acts of mercy or service
as formative practice, not just as random acts of kindness or social justice?
Do we have the resources, methods
to support this kind of comprehensive ecosystem?
And final thought from Wesley, lastly, so that his followers
may the more effectually provoke one another to love their holy tempers.
Good works, our blessed Lord has united
them together in one the Church dispersed all over the earth, a little emblem of
which of the Church universal we have in every particular Christian congregation.
So that notion of the ecology of a faith
community needs to include these components.
And therewith I desist.