What Makes A Christian Knowledgeable?
Christian education can be an enigma.
Pastors often lament that only a small portion of their congregations’ adult membership participates in Christian education. Why is that? Dedicated Christians should be thirsty for knowledge!
Perhaps it has something to do with the top/down structure of the church. Maybe lay people are just tired of being talked at in the church setting. This may need to change if Christian education is to become a life-long learning process.
The entire church banks a great deal on the value of a seminary education. How much knowledge candidates bring to their seminary experience is variable. Some have very little church background. Those three or four years of religious training send pastors into parishes as authority figures. In many cases their authority is now over lay people who have faithfully attended Sunday School from the age of two, Vacation Bible School, First Communion Classes, Confirmation Classes, youth ministry, listened every week to more than a thousand sermons, faithfully read devotional books and in all probability tallied ten thousand hours of teaching religion to various age levels.
Yet the church often ranks a pastor’s knowledge as superior.
If a congregation’s leadership structure is all wrapped up in top/down leadership, it is no wonder that many adult lay people resist Christian education options. Many pastors resist further Christian education once they achieve ordination!
At church camp one year, the chaplain was telling the story of Christ’s appearance on the Road to Emmaus. He was talking about the two men who were joined by Jesus as they traveled and invited Jesus to spend the night with them. A camper spoke up. “The Bible doesn’t say ‘two men.'” The chaplain disagreed and turned to the Scripture for proof. Lo and behold, the camper was right. The Bible identifies the gender of only one traveler, Cleopas.
An amazing thing about Scripture is that there is always something to be learned by everyone.
Churches must foster learning by celebrating the discoveries of all its members and leaders when they delve into Scripture. The educational model of Adult Education might be better approached as communal learning.
As equals serving an omnipotent God, we have the greatest chance of understanding the deepest teachings of the scriptures—together.