Where Does Christian Learning Happen?

What happens to people’s thoughts when they die?

Distinctively Christian Learning

23rd November 2012

Emmanuel College, Gateshead

A successful school

A distinctively Christian school

An ordered and purposeful school with a strong moral culture

A secular school?

An inoculating school?

Two Strategies to Communicating Christian

TruthDidactic

Transmission

Persuasion

Monolithic

Inquiry-based

Interpretation

Debate

Accepts diversity

A Fundamental Challenge

There has now emerged in our society a concept of education which makes the whole idea of Christian education a kind of nonsense

Professor Paul Hirst (1974)

Religious Faith as Clutter

Shared human values are entirely independent of religious beliefs

Richard Norman, On Humanism, 2004

The Reiss Affair

We gather that Professor Reiss is a clergyman, which is in itself worrisome. Who on earth thought that he would be an appropriate Director of Education who could be expected to answer questions about science and religion in a scientific reasoned way?

Professor Brian Hill

Reasonable Initial Bets

Contestable but not unreasonable

Three Issues for Christian Teachers

1. The Bible says…

2. Saving souls or building for the Kingdom?

3. Christian education as missionary work?

1. The Bible Says…..

The Bible Says… The authority of the first four acts would

not consist – could not consist – in an implicit command that the actors should repeat the earlier parts of the play over and over again.

It would require of the actors a free and responsible entering into the story as it stood, in order to understand first how the threads could be appropriately drawn together and then to put that understanding into effect by speaking and acting with both consistency and innovation.

Interpreting and Applying the Bible

We are looking for and at a vocation to be the people of God in the fifth act of the drama of creation.

Tom Wrightformerly Bishop of Durham

The Bible and the Task of Teaching

David I. Smith and John Shortt

(2002)

2. Saving Souls or Building for the Kingdom of God?

The Gospel Message

A decision which brings salvation?

A commitment to a way of life which brings transformation?

Scott McKnight, “The King Jesus Gospel”

Zondervan, 2011

Kingdom Work

When Christians, motivated by their faith, get involved in their community…to work for justice healing and human well-being, they may also be considered to be engaged in work for the Kingdom of God, enlarging the sphere in which God’s reign may be willingly and gladly acknowledged (p117)

3. Christian Education as Missionary Work

Contextualization: An Insight from Christian

Mission The gospel is like a seed and you

have to sow it. When you sow the seed of the gospel in Palestine, a plant called Palestinian Christianity grows. You sow the gospel in Britain and you get British Christianity. The seed of the gospel is later taken to America and a plant grows of American Christianity.

Contextualization : An Insight from Christian

Mission Now when missionaries came to our

land, they brought not only the seed of the gospel, but also their own plant of Christianity, flower pot included! So, what we have done is break the flower pot, take out the seed of the gospel, sow it in our own cultural soil, and let our version of Christianity grow. Dr. DT Niles Sri Lanka

Contextualization

What would Jesus do?

Contextualization

What would Jesus do NOW?

Contextualization: a leadership skill

Sowing the seed of the gospel so as to grow the plant of educational Christianity.

Where Does Christian Learning Happen?

What happens to people’s thoughts when they die?