Building Faith is a resource website dedicated to Christian Formation for children, youth, and adults. Fresh articles are offered every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday written by experienced educators and formation leaders. Their creative ideas, tips, and resource reviews, make Building Faith a site to be bookmarked and subscribed to so you don’t miss each golden nugget when it appears. Continue reading
The Lifelong Faith journal is one of several initiatives of the LifelongFaith Associates organization directed by John Roberto, a prominent scholar of faith formation whose work was profiled by Hope4CE in a recent post. The journal, published quarterly, focuses on the faith formation of all ages, with the hope that ministry leaders might be better equipped to nurture the faith of those in their care in each moment of their lives. Continue reading
GenOn Ministries’ (formerly known as The LOGOS Ministry) fifty year history has produced many excellent resources and training events to equip church leaders in developing young disciples. GenOn provides resources to lay a firm foundation for faith formation which includes an intentional evaluation and planning tool as well as curriculum for ordered, cumulative learning. GenOn’s primary training event, the LOGOS Encounter, emphasizes three key practices in effective ministry (The theology and practice of Christian Relationships, a Balanced Ministry approach to spiritually nurture the whole person, and a scriptural, prayerful Process of Call to identify volunteers to serve). Many free resources or samples of resources are available on GenOn Ministries’ website: Continue reading
It can be a challenge to keep up with the variety of resources out “there” in cyberspace – whether on “insert name of large online bookseller & purveyor of all sorts of things,” various social media outlets, websites, wikis and the like. I’m even having a time keeping up with all the GREAT information being shared on this new, dynamic, social-media integrated hope4ce platform!
Today I offer some resources for 21st Century learners – and leaders of learners. One is an approach to evaluating the resources that come your way. The other is a list of some of my current favorite resources. Perhaps you’ll have others to add to share – I hope so.
In the future, I’ll share some other collections of resources assembled around various topics that just may be of interest to this diverse, energetic group of folks who care passionately about nurturing faith among children of God of all ages.
21st Century Resources for Lifelong Learners
Rev. Sarah F. Erickson, D.Ed.Min.
Director
The Center for Lifelong Learning, Columbia Theological Seminary
At the 2015 Association of Presbyterian Church Educators annual event I conducted a hands-on workshop that explored internet collaboration through the use of low-cost video and audio teleconferencing tools. These could be used to enable virtual meetings, classes, and webinar presentations in your congregation. Participants explored the basics of Skype, Google Hangouts, and join.me. We also explored best practices for a virtual teaching presence. Continue reading
We struggle to find volunteers to teach Sunday school. Excuses are fired in rapid succession: “My children play soccer,” “I grocery shop on Sunday mornings,” “Sometimes we go away on weekends,” “Sunday’s are my day to sleep in,” “I don’t know enough about the Bible.” Yes, we are busy, but our excuses reflect the low priority of teaching Sunday school. After all, often we say, “We just need a volunteer.”
We need to reframe our teaching ministry. We need to move our volunteers to disciples, where volunteers see themselves as disciples of Jesus. When we make this shift, our goals change, we add clarity to our motivation, and we more accurately define our purpose. We revitalize our teaching ministry with movement and make a transformative impact on those we teach. Continue reading
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