{"id":185,"date":"2013-05-29T13:56:24","date_gmt":"2013-05-29T18:56:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.mlc-wels.edu\/wels-educator\/?p=185"},"modified":"2015-11-10T08:29:50","modified_gmt":"2015-11-10T14:29:50","slug":"christian-education-whose-responsibility-is-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.mlc-wels.edu\/wels-educator\/2013\/05\/29\/christian-education-whose-responsibility-is-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Christian Education: Whose Responsibility Is It?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Written by Kenneth Kremer<\/em><\/p>\n

The cameras were primed for capturing the thoughts of ten Christian parents\u2014all WELS members.[i] The professional interviewer got right to the point: \u201cWho do you think is responsible for your child\u2019s spiritual education?\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

One father shared this view: \u201cI see myself as being in charge of the logistics\u2014getting my kids to school or Sunday school. I believe in letting the experts teach and the parents be the facilitators.\u201d Most of the others nodded in agreement.<\/p>\n

The interviewer pressed on. \u201cSo what prevents you from being the expert?\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

The mother of a five-year-old seemed up for the challenge. \u201cIt\u2019s not that I don\u2019t have the knowledge. This is the [church\u2019s] organized thing\u2014the formal process. Our church leaders talk about wanting to try things outside the box. Well this is the box we\u2019re in: you take your children to Sunday school, enroll them in a Christian day school; later you send them to the pastor\u2019s confirmation class. They learn that this is where you go to get the [spiritual] knowledge you will need for the rest of your life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Empirical data supports the anecdotal evidence for making this compelling case: Many, if not most, Christian parents no longer function as the primary faith-nurturers of their own children.<\/i> Barna (2010), for example, reports that fewer than one out of every five [Christian] parents believe they are doing a good job of training their children morally and spiritually; and<\/i> not even half (46%) of them state that their faith is important in their lives.[ii]<\/b> <\/i>The trend is worrisome. One question that clearly needs to be pursued is whether the church culture we\u2019ve created continues to align with God\u2019s model for engaging parents in the faith life of their own children.[iii] This raises the question: To what degree has the church itself contributed to the paradigm shift? Is it possible that we have inadvertently suggested that formal religious training by the church\u2019s so-called experts<\/i> can somehow replace the influence of parents?[iv] And, finally, has the organized church recognized the threat? If so, what efforts are being made to equip parents for their challenging role?<\/p>\n

Cause and Effect<\/strong><\/p>\n

This didn\u2019t happen overnight. More than a century ago the pragmatic humanist John Dewey (1859-1952) saw education as the anvil on which an emerging industrial American society would be forged. Under the structured tutelage of well-trained teachers (experts<\/i>), Dewey envisioned the classroom as the place where students could more fully realize their potential.[v] Christian education<\/i> resisted Dewey\u2019s humanistic views regarding morality and religious faith, but it was not altogether impervious to his pedagogy. Several Christian denominations similarly began to regard parochial classrooms as the most effective (or efficient) way to shape their church culture. In many ways it was effective for the nation as well as the church. A largely illiterate population was transformed into a technological juggernaut through high-quality schools and a strong curriculum, especially later in the disciplines of science and math. Many people who made use of Christian schools also shared in the many blessings that resulted both for the children and for the church in general. But, with this view as a given, it is easy to understand how, over time, the influence of the home was quietly being replaced by the influence of the classroom and trained professionals. This unintended outcome still resonates among the attitudes of the current generation of Christian parents.[vi]<\/p>\n

As industrial America grew, the workplace also began to change. In an agrarian economy, every family member contributed to the household income as a general laborer. But by the early 1900s the steady introduction of complex new technologies created a growing demand for workers with more sophisticated and specialized skills. The idea spread quickly from one sector of the economy to another. Six generations later, nearly everyone with a job filled a niche that required some degree of specialization. Today nearly everyone in the jobs sector has cultivated a laundry list of specialized skills for specific tasks. From a parental perspective, the take-home message has been that if you want things done right, give the task to people (teachers, coaches, mentors, pastors, surrogates, etc.) who have the right skills for the job. Regardless of what the Bible has to say about the matter, theology has been viewed as just another area in which parents feel they are poorly equipped for the task at hand. As this second shoe dropped, an ever-increasing number of Christian parents quietly abdicated their faith-nurturing role\u2014a role that necessarily engages them in both theology and pedagogy\u2014to trained professionals, whom they now viewed as the primary faith nurturer of their own children.[vii] Though, admittedly, the circumstances were quite different, the apostle Paul would have no truck with those who tried to excuse themselves from sharing the gospel in their personal contacts. Paul wrote: \u201cI myself am convinced, my brothers and sisters, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with knowledge and competent to instruct one another\u201d (Romans 15:14). The confidence of Christian parents will need to be reconstructed if there is to be any hope for restoring their faith-nurturing role to them.<\/p>\n

A Roadmap to the Future<\/strong><\/p>\n

History helps us understand how<\/i> and why<\/i> the cultural landscape has changed so dramatically in such a short time. What it cannot do is provide a roadmap for reshaping the church and home culture so that negative aspects of the current paradigm can be addressed. The following three imagined snapshots of a future church culture are meant to serve as the springboard for a discussion aimed at creating a badly needed new map for Christian parents.<\/p>\n

RESPECTIVE ROLES: A church culture that acknowledges parents as the primary spiritual nurturers of their own children, and Christian education programs serving in supportive, encouraging, and equipping roles that will also prepare parents for the critical role that God himself ordained.<\/p>\n

CHARACTER FORMATION: A church culture that understands that Christian character has its origins in the community of the home, where, as infants, children first learn about love from the actions and behaviors of parents and siblings.[viii] [ix]<\/p>\n

HOME CONVERSATION: A church culture that lovingly holds parents accountable for leading an ongoing, honest, open, and meaningful spiritual conversation about Jesus, the Bible, and other faith-related topics in their own homes.[x]<\/p>\n

\n

Kenn Kremer is an adjunct professor at Martin Luther College\u2019s Graduate Studies Program, a retired editor from Northwestern Publishing House, and a member of Immanuel Evangelical Lutheran Church in Greenville WI.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
\n

[i] Recorded group interviews conducted for Bethany Lutheran Church (WELS), Appleton, Wisconsin. Report: \u201cChristian Education: Market Research and Recommendations,\u201d Brenda Haines, Blue Door Consulting, Oshkosh, Wisconsin, April 29, 2011<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[ii] \u201cRevolutionary Parenting: Raising Your Kids to Be Spiritual Champions,\u201d George Barna, Tyndale House, 2010<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[iii] One of the clearest expressions of God\u2019s principle for nurturing the faith of children occurs twice in the Book of Deuteronomy. It clearly places the onus of responsibility on parents: \u201cHear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates (Deuteronomy 6:4-9).<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[iv] Martin Luther wrote, \u201c . . . They [parents] should consider that they are under obligations of obedience to God; and that, first of all, they should earnestly and faithfully discharge their office, not only to support and provide for the bodily necessities of their children, but, most of all, to train them to the honor and praise of God. Therefore, do not think that this is left to your pleasure and arbitrary will, but that it is a strict commandment and injunction of God, to whom also you must give account for it . . . For this purpose He has given us children, and issued this command that we should train and govern them according to His will, else He would have no need of father and mother. Let everyone know, therefore, that it is his duty, . . .\u201d (Concordia Triglotta: The Large Catechism,<\/i> Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Mo, 1921, p. 629)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[v] \u201cThe School and Society,\u201d 1900. \u201cThe Child and the Curriculum,\u201d 1902. \u201cMoral Principles in Education,\u201d 1909. [Texts of the second and third citation available on Wikipedia. See \u201cJohn Dewey.\u201d]<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[vi] To this specific point, Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary professor emeritus Joel Gerlach echoed Luther when he wrote, \u00a0\u201c . . . The critical location for Bible teaching is not the classroom but rather the household; it is the walk, the sitting together on the porch, the snuggling into the warmth of bed, the joy of rising to a new day. It is in life itself where Bible truths have meaning for us as whole persons. And this kind of learning is rooted, not in education<\/i>, but in the socialization process.\u201d (\u201cTeaching for Cognitive and Affective Outcomes,\u201d <\/i>unpublished essay)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[vii] Dr. Joel Biermann shed light on this particular issue in an unpublished dissertation: \u201cTheology is more than relevant for Christian living; it is integrally and intimately bound with it . . . Luther operated with the assumption of the absolute relevance of theology for the life of the believer. Not surprisingly, this attitude is displayed especially in Luther\u2019s Catechisms.\u201d (\u201cVirtue Ethics and the Place of Character Formation within Lutheran Theology,\u201d Joel D. Biermann, A dissertation, Concordia Seminary, St Louis, 2002, p.248)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[viii] \u201cAll the processes of change, imagination, and learning ultimately depend on love . . . Parental love isn\u2019t just a primitive and primordial instinct . . . Our extended life as parents also plays a deep role in the emergence of the most sophisticated and characteristically human capacities . . . It isn\u2019t just that without mothering [and fathering] humans would lack nurturance, warmth, and emotional security. They would also lack culture, history, morality, science, and literature.\u201d (\u201cThe Philosophical Baby: What Children\u2019s Minds Tell Us about Truth, Love, and the Meaning of Life,\u201d Alison Gobnik, 2009, p.5)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[ix] \u201cIf we do not teach the catechism, if our people do not learn to participate in the liturgy, if our children do not know the Bible stories and cannot sing along in worship, if we do not begin to recover practices of [character] formation, ways of prayer and meditation and fasting and celebration, that bind daily life with the worshipping assembly in a priestly mode of the common life, then our churches will simply fade into spiritual inconsequence over the coming decades, however many new members we have and whatever the outcome of our ecclesiastical politics.\u201d (\u201cSacramental Lutheranism at the End of the Modern Age,\u201d David S. Yeago, Lutheran Forum 34, Christmas\/Winter, 2000,<\/i> p. 15)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

[x] One of the most remarkable culture changes of our generation came about as the result of a simple five-word theme: \u201cThe marketplace is a conversation.\u201d [\u201cThe Cluetrain Manifesto,\u201d Thesis Four, 1999]<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Share this:<\/h3>