How can the Episcopal Church claim to be the thinking people’s church when so few parishes devote sufficient time to adult education on Sunday mornings?
It is a question worthy of much pondering. I think we should where at all possible give one hour to adult spiritual formation on the Lord’s day ”” but if you study how parishes actually function, the number who use this standard is precious few.
In some parishes there is little or no adult education to speak of on Sunday mornings, whereas there are such offerings for children. But following Christ is a life long call, and this approach won’t do.
Thankfully in the last two to three decades more and more parishes are offering adult education on the Sabbath day. But how much time do they give them?
I have here a parish newsletter from one of the largest parishes in the country, and on their Sunday morning schedule they offer several classes for 35 minutes.
You know how this works in practice. People come out of worship, people have struggles finding a parking spot, people need to use the rest room, and before you know it, 35 minutes becomes 25 or less in practice. But this is much less time than a typical college class, or an average session in a business seminar. Does this communicate a priority on adult education?
Other parishes do better and actually give 45 minutes. But again, one has to go beneath the surface in the parish to see how this actually functions in a number of instances. One quite vibrant parish comes to mind that has 45 minute classes, but in this parish the choir members leave after 30 minutes for Sunday morning choir practice. What does this communicate about priorities, never mind the distraction to other class members?
I believe one hour needs to be devoted to adult education, because even then with all the distractions on most Sunday mornings the time actually spent on the material is less, but it at least allows substantive engagement. Yes, parishes should use every considerable resource. By all means we should use different formats that taken into account the fact that adults learn in different ways than children do.
I realize, too, that some parishes have physical space constraints that make this amount of time impossible without unduly damaging the chance to worship.
But if we do not give it sufficient time, we communicate in our actions that it really isn’t a priority.
It is time for the church that claims to be the thinking person’s church to live into its own claims and devote a whole hour on the Sunday morning schedule to adult education of real quality and variety.
Imagine that””a church that claims to be for thinking people giving people real time to think on Sunday morning about what it means to Love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. If it is really important to us can we do any less?
— The Rev. Canon Dr. Kendall S. Harmon is convenor of this blog
It’s even worse in the Catholic Church…
But Kendall is right. In our Church we come with all sort of good reasons. The services the programs etc., but at the end of the day it’s no more than 30 minutes if you are lucky.
But it is also the sad fact of life that a lot of people won’t take advantage of what is offered.
Dr. Harmon,
You seem like a kind enough fellow, but I continue to be struck by the fact that you have precious little in the way of positive opinion for the Church of which you are an ordained member. I understand your opposition to her actions as of late, but to read your works one would think you can find nothing kind to say about her nor agree with anything she does. Too often this is the case by those you term “reasserters.” Is it any wonder that people find them so off-putting? At their worst their words are down right viceral and even on mundane things they can find nothing nice to say.
3. r-storm:
“..you have precious little in the way of positive opinion for the Church of which you are an ordained member. ”
This is like telling a doctor that “all you do is poke at and tell me about my cancer. Can’t you just once tell me how healthy I am?”
Don
RE: “Too often this is the case by those you term “reasserters.†Is it any wonder that people find them so off-putting? At their worst their words are down right viceral and even on mundane things they can find nothing nice to say.”
Heh.
Let’s edit for clarity.
Too often this is the case by those you term “reasserters.†Is it any wonder that [revisionists] find them so off-putting? At their worst their words [to revisionists] are down right viceral and even on mundane things they can find nothing nice to say.
Moving on to advice.
Kendall — if you could just say some positive words about the Church of which you are an ordained member, that would be great.
Don’t say what you think, for heaven’s sake — get in line with the TEC revisionist propagandists, and try to convince all us laypeople that things are going swimmingly.
After all . . . if you are a member of an organization you [i]absolutely must[/i] say nice things about it — especially its current leadership. None of this dissenting behavior — none of this principled opposition.
BUT back on point, the post is right on in my assessment. I have worshiped in seven Episcopal/Anglican parishes, from Kansas to Germany, and Adult Christian education has been routinely given short shrift in just the ways cited. Two additional grievances leap to mind (at the risk of further offending r-storm!): sandwiching adult ed between two morning services guarantees that the very people who make up the backbone of your lay teachers and participants (the lectors, LEMs, choir members, altar guild, oh, and parents of small children generally) will not be attending or will arrive late and/or leave early. Gripe #2: both sides of the continuum of opinion with Anglicanism are hopelessly skewed toward a particular form of education/indoctrination. Our progressives focus obsessively on social ills (leading to rambling expositions by the parish Democratic party commissar about platform issues in lieu of biblical/theological topics), while the reasserter camp can come up with nothing more creative than another Bible study (not that Bible study is bad, but it can be an excuse to avoid real preparation/instruction/catechesis, thereby emptying the evangelical pews of any knowledge of Anglican heritage, practice, learning). There: rant over.
Dr. Harmon,
I agree with you completely. Having come to TEC from another tradition (Lutheranism), I can say that my experience in the area of adult education / formation in the life of the congregations I have serves has not changed much. It seems, regardless of the size of the parish, there is always a devoted few, a “remnant”, whose experience of Sunday morning necessarily includes “Sunday School”, while for the vast majority it does not. For the former, Sunday morning is not the same without adult education. No matter what study or class is offered (I currently serve a small parish so we usually only have one adult class on any given Sunday morning.) this dynamic changes little.
I’m interested to know how others have dealt with this, particularly approaches that have seemed to shift the paradigm and increase participation.
TEC does not need an Adult Education Hour. Its members should simply follow its leaders and read the New York Times (or other leading journal of record) daily and open themselves to the “Spirit” to guide them. This approach has served the leadership of TEC well for decades, the lay members of the church simply need to get with the program. Churches which have become captive to their culture rarely need Adult Education Hours because the “church” simply reaffirms the culture. This is why such
“churches” continue to decline in membership, most people figure out why bother to wake up early on Sunday?, but that’s another issue. On a more serious note, can you imagine what Christian “Adult Education” would look like organized by TEC’s current leadership? Are you serious Dr. Harmon?
Thank goodness the Anglican church I attendhas an active adult education program. It is between the 8:45 and 11:00 services and is often attended by between 1/3 nd 1/4 of our parishioners. There have been exhaustively detailed studies of Hebrews, John, Revelation, Genisis, etc., and we are now in the middle of a series on spiritual warfare. Alas, we are guilty of the charge leveled by #7 of having no depth of teaching about Anglicanism. Probably due to the tension between Anglo-Catholic and Evangelical strains within our parish.
St. Peter’s devotes the entire night on Wednesdays to Adult Christian Ed. But it also has a ‘Sunday School Time” Sunday mornings between the 9 and 11 services. Truly not enough time there, but add Sunday nights for college and High Schoolers to the Wednesday night line-up and we have a dynamic program!
Peace
Jim Elliott <><
My church has a Sunday morning Adult Education program sandwiched between our 9:00 and 11:15 am. services. Because the 9:00 am service gets out around 10:30 am (give or take 10 minutes), you only have about a half hour to 45 minutes for the class.
For my part, I work the church’s sound system, particularly at 11:15, so even if I’m in a class, typically I have to leave early to get the system ready for the next service. I’ve given up on Sunday school, frankly, because of the time-constraints.
Fortunately, we have a great Wednesday night program with classes from 6:30 – 8:00 p.m. and I definitely avail myself of that. We also occasionally have classes on other days of the week. For example, I attended a class on [i]The Screwtape Letters[/i] on Monday nights during the summer.
So, even if Sunday School doesn’t work for me, I’m very grateful my church schedules as many opportunities as possible for Adult Education during the week.
TEC is really missing a golden opportunity here for indoctrination. They need to follow the example of the United Methodists which has Cokesbury producing any number of socially relevant and environmental propaganda. I fondly remember the official Sunday School materials on the evils of nuclear power and chemical plants, for example. Then there was the pastor’s class on the Social Principles of the United Methodist Church – all the good stuff like private ownership of handguns should be banned and collective bargaining should be mandated for all workers. We also were able to get updates on who we should be boycotting and whether our local office supply store had moved to chlorine free paper that we should use.
Adult education really is an imperative, but you have to be careful about what is being taught. I usually judge a new church by calculating the ratio of adult Bible study and theology classes to adult social concerns classes. Higher ratio is better, IMHO.
Here’s what my parish started doing a couple of years ago (St. John the Divine in Houston, ASA around 1200):
• The former 9 a.m. service now starts at 8:45 a.m.
• At 10:00 a.m., there’s a 30-minute large-group lecture series in the nave. My usher-captain’s eye estimates there are typically a couple of hundred attenders. The lecture series started with several weeks of Rick Warren’s Purpose-Driven Church, then The Bible in 90 Days (we took six months), then Luke, then Acts, and currently the minor prophets.
• At roughly 10:25 a.m., people separate into small groups scattered around the campus for discussion. The groups’ core memberships seem to stay fairly constant, but there’s some reshuffling every now and then.
• The former 11:00 a.m. services (one Rite I, one Rite III contemporary) now start at 11:05 a.m.
My (very-orthodox) wife and I were small-group leaders for awhile but eventually backed off. One reason was that it gets tiresome sitting through what amounts to two successive 20-minute sermons. (We’ve mentioned this to the adult-ed leadership.)
There’s no doubt the formula has been pretty successful.
Well, hate to spoil the TEC-bashing party, but at my Episcopal Church (TEC and proud of it), we have a book study after the 11:00 service from 12:30 through 2:00, at which we have discussed Borg, N.T. Wright, and, most recently, W.R. Inge’s 1899 classic “Christian Mysticism” (I got to lead that one; it’s an old favorite). In September, after a one month break, we resume with Christopher Bryant. During the week we have several Bible study sessions both before and after work, and have recurring classes on the Prayer Book, Centering Prayer–all in addition to our membership and formation classes.
Not all “reappraisers” are speaking out of ignorance (or lack of orthodox faith, with the creeds as the definition as orthodoxy), and not all TEC parishes neglect adult formation. Perhaps if we all, on both sides, were less interested in caricature and more interested in facts on the ground, our engagement with each other would be less guarded and more–dare I say it–Christian.
Kendall, I’ve been thinking about how good a content delivery system is already in place with T1:9/SF/ATV to deliver weekly studies in live lecture format with blogging Q & A to follow. You could start us off with a series on Titus and small parish groups could meet to pray and apply the teaching. Let’s do it! RFM
JW,
No offense, but I would have to bow out of participating in most of the classes you mentioned. Although that would depend on HOW it was being taught, I suppose:
i.e., Borg — greatest thing since sliced bread
vs
Wright — let’s look at where he is wrong.
Not conjecture: this is how one church I left was doing things.
I’m not familar with the work on Christian Mysticism you mention, but many I’ve encountered focus heavily on “we can ignore the Bible since the mystical encounter takes precedence” i.e., experience trumps revelation? I hope yours wasn’t from that perspective. I love, for example, books on Celtic Christianity, but there are some that I am very wary of, particularly the works of John O’Donoghue, who incorporates ‘neo-druidism’ and “new-age-y-ness” into his ‘reading’ of what Celtic Christians believed (The facts: they were closer to the Orthodox Church than to the Catholic Church, but they were not nature-worshipping heathens in clerical robes, but solidly Trinitarian Christian).
🙂
Peace
Jim Elliott <><
“The only graduation rite from Sunday School is the burial rite.”
I ran across that quotation today (one which I have in my notes attributed to Fr. Patrick Henry Reardon). And I heartily agree. Canon Harmon, thank you for the posting. It is, indeed, time to start doing what we should never stop doing.
Greg+
P.S. I cover two parishes in a rural setting. So I can’t teach on the Lord’s day. Presently we do three midweek Bible studies between the two parishes. It keeps me in the text and the people seem to enjoy it (and are bringing their Bibles!)
Libraryjim,
No offense taken, but just a brief rejoinder. We used Wright to critique Borg, and vice-versa. The facilitator was more pro-Borg, I was more pro-Wright. I chose Inge precisely because he is an exemplar of how rooted mysticism is in the Anglican tradition–his late-Nineteenth Century work begins with mysticism in St. Paul and St. John, and moves from there. Inge was certainly not a believer in sola scriptura, but he was the Dean of St. Pauls’ Cathedral, and a pillar of the C of E through the 1930s, until his retirement, after which he continued writing. It would take a very narrow definition of orthodoxy to exclude him. In leading the group, I pointed out how Inge strove to avoid any linkage of true mysticism with either the neo-pagan, occultist movements that were prominent at the time he wrote, or with a supernaturalism stripped of theological underpinnings. (He might actually be just your cup of tea, Jim–I have the text side-barred at http://anglocatontheprowl.blogspot.com/ )
Bryant is more recent, but eschews doctrinal controvery; he was first and foremost a spiritual director. Again, well within any definition of orthodoxy of which I am aware.
Thanks for the elaboration! It sounds intriguing.
From what I have seen and read of Borg, he, like the Borg in Star Trek, is someone to be given wide berth in any Christian arena! The same as Matthew Fox. Ay-yi-yi! The parish I left is using him quite extensively for ‘spiritual growth’ classes! No thank you!
I’ll look at your link a bit later, on my break.
Jim <><
Although this may sound cynical, it is the truth: in the 20+ years I’ve been an Episcopalian, there have been very few clergy that knew the Bible well enough to teach it.
My chief complaint is that the Sunday School time is at the same time as the adults are worshiping. We have effectively excommunicated our children from our worship, and when they are old enough to decide for themselves where they want to attend, they choose a place they “understand and appreciate”. How can we expect our kids to fall in love with the liturgy and hymns that have molded and sustained us, if they never hear it? Is it any wonder that our child acolytes don’t pick up a hymnal or prayerbook and participate or look engaged? No one has ever bothered to explain and teach it. Many of our clergy have come from other denominations, fallen in love with our liturgy, but never learned the “why” we do things, so are in no position to teach it either.
This Summer, we disbanded Sunday School and had all the children & youth in the 9 am Family Worship. It was a shock to all. Many parents didn’t know what to do with the children who had not sat through an entire service…even if the hymns & liturgy were geared to be child-friendly. We have a lot of work to do!
Daniel,
Good luck with that! I think you are on the right track.
Jim E. <><
21. Daniel Lozier
“We have effectively excommunicated our children from our worship”
Amen!
My wife and I have fought against that for most of our adult lives. In an age when “discrimination” is one of the worst sins of all, our culture (including Church) has the most vicious age discrimination that could ever be devised and practiced.
Don
At our Parish we do the following on Sundays:
9:30 AM-Worship (Holy Communion unless the Rector is away, and then we Layreaders do MP).
11:00 “Fellowship Time”
11:15 (or 11:20…): Sunday School for all ages.
Over 75 Percent of the adults and pretty much all the kids/youth stay for Sunday School.
We discovered that having Church first then Sunday School works because “Once the person is up for church, they were not going to leave, but they might not get up early for Sunday School.”
Everybody stays for Church except that the kids (up to 3rd grade) can leave from right before the sermon (during the “sermon hymn” )and then they come back just in time for communion (usually during the Prayer of Humble Access or Agnus Dei).
I wish my church did something real for adult christian education. I recieved more effective and engaging teaching in high school youth group than I’ve ever gotten as an adult in my parish.
#25, that was my experience too. I know the BCP almost by heart since I did attend services from birth in my home parish, and we constantly did things with the Prayer Book; even compline at summer camp. However, nobody ever pulled out the Bible and actually taught from it to us. So, I was never really given an opportunity to learn Scripture. Once I became an adult and got over my rebellious years, then I began to look at Scriptures very deeply. I’ve been tearing the book apart word by word, verse by verse. I started doing that because I wanted to. I realized I NEEDED to know what Scripture says. My own life brought me to that point. I thank God every day for bringing me back to it. However, it’s the CHURCH’s responsibility to teach Scripture to all congregants. They are sadly negligent in that duty, I’m afraid.
Kendall, we have corresponded on this point before, so you know well how sympathetic I am to this post. While one can cite positive examples here and there of churches doing a good job of the Great Commission’s charge to [i]teach[/i], the vast preponderance of congregations miss the opportunity to use their Adult Ed time for actual serious instruction.
Daniel #21 points out that very few clergy know Scripture well enough to teach it; we could add specificity to that claim by noting that there was a movement away from teaching biblical languages (partly, I conjecture, on the “pastoral” grounds that it’s arguably harder for older adults to learn a language). Even where students learn a smattering of one biblical language, many curricula make it hard for students to study the particular books of the Bible in any depth (and kudos to seminaries that do indeed emphasize Bible study). Much the same could be said of doctrinal and historical studies — the concern to emphasize the sort of [i]practical[/i] matters that once were taught to curates has crowded out instruction in classical disciplines (which instruction becomes all the more necessary as parish Christian education offers less and less catechesis). When we start with church leaders who know less about the Bible, dogmatic theology, and the church’s history, then blend in the atmosphere of partisanship to which some commenters testify, the result tends to emphasize boosterism rather than understanding.
Education should be a non-partisan issue for all Episcopalians (as indeed, for all Christians). A sounder grasp on the Bible’s teaching, the church’s practice, and the sound articulation of the faith may be marshaled to support corporal works of mercy, venturesome theological speculation, defense of doctrinal standards, or the refutation of error. Sadly, as Kendall observes, far too many Episcopal churches neglect the practice that might tremendously enhance their vigor, their outreach, their persuasiveness, and their spiritual and intellectual health.
In my church, during the school year (September through June, roughly) the kids are in Sunday School from slightly before when the service starts up through the Peace; then they rejoin their parents in the pews so that everyone is present for the Eucharist.
The theory behind this is that the first half of the service is primarily about teaching — you hear scripture, you hear preaching, you rehearse the Creed — and so the kids are getting their own teaching, separately from the adults. But the Great Thanksgiving is when everyone is to gather around the table, so we bring the children back in for that.
For most of the kids — kindergarten up through fifth grade — the Sunday School time is divided between classroom and the kids’ chapel. (We have enough kids that we have to split them in half and do classroom and chapel alternately; they wouldn’t all fit in the chapel at once. The older kids do chapel first, then classroom; the younger ones to classroom, then chapel. Or maybe it’s the other way around.) Chapel time includes songs, a story, and prayers of intercession and thanksgiving.
Kids sixth grade and older skip chapel and spend the whole time in the classroom, because the stuff they’re doing is more involved and needs more time. That’s the group I work with. They still go into the main service at the Peace, though.
It’s not a perfect system — during the school year, I almost never get to hear a sermon, for instance — but it works pretty well for us.
Adult education we mostly do on weekday evenings, often Wednesday; we usually have a selection of three or so different classes to choose from, which run for a couple of months each. Since I’m working on an M.Div. in my spare time from my day job, I mostly figure I’ve got the adult ed angle covered 🙂 and spend my Wednesdays doing schoolwork at home.
We’re growing enough that we’re looking at adding a third Sunday morning service, and there’s talk about making it a family service designed to include the kids. Not sure yet how we’ll pull that off; but it will certainly mean changing the Sunday School schedule around.
Ross,
Our church as a 5 pm service, called [url=http://www.saint-peters.net/veritas]Veritas[/url] designed to appeal to Jr High through college age and young familes. However, any and all are invited and a good smattering of age groups are represented. The music is more contemporary and the sermons are more geared towards the younger crowd. I love it.
My only compaint is that the music is not ‘themed’ for the liturgy, as it is in the earlier services, which can be easily done in a ‘contemporary service’. It just takes a bit more thought effort on the part of the music leader, and not just “this is a hip Praise song, I’m going to use it in the service!”.
Oh, forgot to say: The college group then goes out for Pizza and discussion afterwards.
Well, I don’t think Marcus of Borg (oh, I’ve been resisting that obvious one for a long time!) is out to assimilate us, I do find him a to be too minimalist in his view of the historicity of scipture–he “rules” against it on most occasions, often on scanty grounds. He can be useful as a corrective to overly naive approaches that look only at the NT, and disregard all other contemporary writings and conditions in the Holy Land at the time of Christ. That’s why when he and Wright exchange views, there’s real light shed–each catches the other in assumptions that don’t hold up, and while I’m more often with Wright, Borg draws from him his most charitable, scrupulous work.
Fox is a charming individual, and his sincerity is beyond reproach, I think. I just don’t find his mix-n’-match approach to mysticism compelling (though he often pulls out a plum, especially on Eckhart). Like Inge, I think that a religious framework is needed to prevent mysticism becoming unwittingly conflated with the “devices and desires” of the sinful human heart. I’m glad to have encountered Fox, but find more wisdom in Inge.
Whoops! Last comment was for Libraryjim–with compliments!
Pax,
Thanks, AKMA, for saying what I wanted to say.
At my parish there is 8:00 a.m. Mass on Sunday. Then 9:30 to 10:30 Sunday school for both kids and adults. The Sung Mass is at 11:00. There will also be a Wednesday evening class starting in September.
Rudy
My Episcopalian friend is trying to restart adult Sunday School at his parish. The contemplated class would concern the environmental and social equality advantages of mass transit in our city.
RE: “The contemplated class would concern the environmental and social equality advantages of mass transit in our city.”
Heh.
AND WHAT WOULD BE THE PROBLEM WITH THAT? Every word is utterly biblical. In fact, I would venture to say that the entire platform of the Green Party is directly tied to Holy Scripture.
All one would need to do is simply place the platform into Sunday School format, divide it out into weekly segments, find the experts to teach it, and voila — we have a Sunday School series.
; > )
I am delighted to see Kendall’s editorial from The Anglican Digest in electronic form. I agree wholeheartedly that at least an hour should be devoted to adult Christian education on Sundays, especially in Episcopal/Anglican churches.
I think it would be useful to clarify the definition, goals, and benefits of adult Christian education. So here are my proposals, which I developed while I was at The Falls Church in northern Virginia and before I moved to the Midwest.
Definition: “The process of enabling adults to become proficient in studying and applying Holy Scripture and the disciplines of Christian living in order to serve Christ in their family, the church, and society.”
Goals: “(1) To help equip adults to be at least as competent and well trained in their spiritual lives as they are in their jobs. (2) To help reduce the biblical illiteracy that pervades society and affects adults in the church. (3) To help adults develop a Christian mind and thus be prepared to practice and defend the Christian faith.”
Benefits: “(1) Grounding their [adults’] faith in Holy Scripture. (2) Understanding and articulating a Christian worldview. (3) Learning from the lives of Christian believers in the past. (4) Understanding and affirming the Creeds of the Christian church. (5) Learning how to serve Christ in the family, the church, and society. (6) Learning how to love others as themselves. (7) Learning how to love God with all their mind.”
I hope Kendall pursues this general subject (not necessarily my proposals) in future articles.
“The contemplated class would concern the environmental and social equality advantages of mass transit in our city.”
Now this is a topic that the clergy of the Diocese of Los Angeles would be better qualified to teach!
Sarah (#35), I trust your comment was “tongue in cheek”, but I have found many Sunday “Rector’s Forums” and “Sermons” to be of this ilk….what they call “authoritative preaching”. (My personal belief is that Global Warming is cyclical and a product of nature, not man. To think we could change it is the height of hubris and a denial of God the Father’s continuing creative and sustaining powers, popularized by Deists.
JW,
By the way, when I was researching an answer to ‘why Catholics are not allowed to read the Bible’ (answer: they are, in fact, encouraged to do so) I came across an interesting article on [url=http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/1997/9711fea1.asp]The Dangers of Centering Prayer[/url] that you might want to look over and perhaps incorporate into your classes on the subject.
Peace
Jim Elliott <><
PS to JWirenius,
I’ve bookmared the reference for the Inge work on Mysticism, and look forward to reading it. Thanks again for the citation!
JE <><
Thanks for the reference to the article on centering prayer (BTW, I’ve never attended that particular one, so I’ll read the article with a clean slate!)
Glad you find Inge of interest; do let me know what you think of him.
Warmest regards,
This is interesting as I’ve never had any experience with any Episcopal Church that doesn’t offer numerous, quality children’s and adult education opportunities. Admittedly, I’ve only been associated with larger – corporate sized parishes.
I would avoid blaming the clergy or launching into anti-TEC tirades. I assume that there might not be any laity stepping up to lead some of the classes.
Mark,
you make a perfectly valid point! I can relate that to trying to get my library staff to change their views of working Saturdays. Trying to get them to “step up” and volunteer is like pulling teeth without novacane!
Where a vibrant Christian Ed program works is when laity steps up to make it so. There is only so much the clergy staff can do, and they can’t do it all!
Peace
Jim E. <><