If you had to explain America’s economic success with one word, that word would be “education.” … we need to wake up and realize that one of the keys to our nation’s historic success is now a wasting asset. Education made America great; neglect of education can reverse the process.1
Following the vision and practice of John Calvin, we have insisted that cultivating the life of the mind is our proper service to Christ and his church. Given the current state of education in today’s church, we Presbyterians might paraphrase Krugman’s conclusion: Education made the Presbyterian Church great; neglect of education is reversing the process.
Presbyterians have treasured education as a historic hallmark of our identity and witness, yet many of our church educators are being cast aside in this current economic downturn. Some have suggested that ordination of church educators is the answer, which would ensure that education’s value will be asserted and reaffirmed by the church. But I think it’s more basic: I believe that the church, for good or ill, is rejecting a form of educational ministry. This particular form has defined a generation of educators and countless education programs around the Church.
Ten years ago I observed the vocational disequilibrium of educators in the PC(USA) and ventured a hunch that it was the natural consequence of educators shaping their ministries around the “congregation as educator” paradigm.2 In that paradigm, the educator becomes a facilitator of the faith experiences of others, one whose ministry is defined by group process and program management.
One of the slogans of that paradigm asserted that, in empowering the congregation to nurture each new generation in the faith, the educator was working himself/herself out of a job. As more educators find themselves out of work, it appears that this slogan has become a self-fulfilling prophecy, but for a different reason: “congregation as educator” has not worked. Our congregants are increasingly Biblically illiterate and theologically naïve.
The church in this uncertain time is declaring through its personnel and budget decisions that it doesn’t value educators as facilitators, enablers, or program managers.
Ordination is not the key to the educator’s job security. Teaching is! Educators who continue to see their prime role as “facilitator” or “program manager” will indeed work themselves out of a job.
In delineating the offices of ministry, Calvin wrote:
Next come pastors and teachers, whom the church can never go without. There is, I believe, this difference between them: teachers are not put in charge of discipline, or administering the sacraments, or warnings and exhortations, but only of Scriptural interpretation — to keep doctrine whole and pure among believers.3
Educators in the church can see this time of vocational disequilibrium as an opportunity to re-cast their role as teachers of scriptural interpretation. In order to accomplish this, educators are well advised to deemphasize or delegate program and process in order to develop a mastery of content in a particular discipline.
Most importantly, the educator would do well to learn to lecture before groups of adults. The educator can assume the authority of teacher for the church — leading the session in monthly Bible studies or theological reflection on the office of elder; catechizing new members and youth. Teaching adults creates visibility, helps establish the educator as an authority figure, and raises the value of education in the scope of the church’s life.
The position advocated here is not primarily offered to insure the jobs of educators, but to preserve and innervate the church’s educational ministry through those who are potentially well positioned to do it.
MARK D. HINDS is general editor for curriculum development, Congregational Ministries Publishing, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Louisville, Ky.
1 nytimes.com/2009/10/09/opinion/09krugman.html?_r=1&emc=eta1]
2 Hinds, Mark D. 2000. “Congregation as Educator: Problem and Possibility for the Professional Church Educator,” Religious Education 95 (1):79-94.
3 Institutes, 4.III.4.
