Help for Leaders in Christian Nurture

This department of faithhelp is offered to provide practical suggestions, insights and perspectives on the ministry of Christian nurture--education/formation--in the Church at all age levels.

Online Courses

The Sacred Rhythm: Foundations for Christian Formation

Articles

Nurturing Our Relationship with God

The Teacher as Spiritual Guide

We Invite Your Participation

Our hope is that this site can become a way for us to begin to share our concerns and ideas concerning the practice of Christian Nurture. Readers are invited to request articles on specific issues and also to submit commentaries on articles found here. We will gladly receive articles you wish to publish here, but we do reserve the right to refuse to publish material we consider inappropriate or unrelated to the goals of this effort.

You can submit material by sending it email to faithhelp at mail@faithhelp.com

Introductory Remarks

Christian Education in the Church is in a very definite time of transition as a recognized ministry. Certainly the function of Christian Education is continuing in various ways, but its focus is more fuzzy and its place within the other ministries has eroded over recent years. A change is necessary and welcome, but it is crucial that we take seriously a thorough reconstitution of what we are about in this essential ministry.

To that end the Christian Nurture section of faithhelp.com is designed to introduce and promote an approach to the task of Christian Nurture that draws its foundation from the view that God is the one who nurtures and forms us. It is then the task of the teacher/leader/guide to help the individual to become open to GodÕs work in the person and in themselves as well as to help to person to know what it means to be loving in the world and to themselves.

Such an approach is certainly not new and in many ways it is very old, but it is one from which we have in practice, if not in theory, strayed over the centuries, but to which we may still give lip service. It is my conviction that if we are to truly be effective in our nurture of persons in the Faith that we must take completely serious the role God plays in our lives and help people to enter a truly functional relationship with the God of Jesus Christ who always loves us. (See the related article above.) What such an approach means in practice will be the intended content of what we offer here.

We have come to use the more general term ÒnurtureÓ in place of the traditional ÒeducationÓ and the newer term ÒformationÓ. There will be articles about this issue of name, but just know that it is now an undecided issue. Behind the issue for many of us is the need to shed the ÒschoolingÓ perspective held in the term Christian Education. There is the imparting of information in Christian Nurture, but there is much more that must be present if we are to be truly nurturing people in a Faith in God.

We do hope that what we offer will not only help the Òteacher/leader/guideÓ in the local church, but also bring about a dialogue on these issues.

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©2002 R. Ben Marshall. All Rights Reserved.