If you are taking a class, I am interested in what it is, if you are teaching, we want to hear that also.

I am teaching a six week class on C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters–KSH.

In Georges Bernanos’ Diary of a Country Priest, the elderly Curé de Torcy gives his young priest friend a bit of advice about proclaiming the Gospel: “The Word of God is a red-hot iron,” he says. “Truth is meant to save you first, and the comfort comes later.”

One could probably craft a meditation on the state of the Catholic soul today in terms of the tension between those two values — truth and comfort. We want the church to offer comfort, which among other things implies that Catholics shouldn’t brutalize one another in internal tribal warfare. Yet we also want the church to be bold in proclaiming the truth that saves, which inevitably means that sometimes lines have to be drawn and feelings may be bruised.

The $64,000 question is, can we do both? Can the Catholic church be both the “sacrament of the unity of the human race” and a fearless evangelical force?

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“Packer’s last crusade in this world,” the Rev. Dr. J.I. Packer affirms, is recovering catechesis ”” systematic instruction in the Christian fundamentals ”” to meet the challenges of an increasingly pagan age.

The evangelical theologian said at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Dallas on Jan. 9 that he yearns for the return of catechesis, “Bible-based, Christ-centered, declarative in style,” at a time when “the Christian value system is virtually disappearing from schools.”

“We are drifting back into paganism, that’s the truth,” said Dr. Packer, the second featured speaker in the James M. Stanton Lecture Series.

“Ongoing learning is part of the calling of the Church,” he said. “It has to be taught in all churches at all times.”

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Those of you in parish ministry considering continuing education opportunities for 2010, here is a grand possibility to consider.

Has there ever been a more pressing time to discuss the ethics of business and investment?

The Dean of Liverpool Cathedral, the Very Rev Justin Welby, thinks this is exactly the right time to debate the issue.

Liverpool Cathedral will be the UK northern host of an online worldwide conference on this topic from Wall Street, New York.

It will join with Canterbury Cathedral and St Paul’s Cathedral, London, for the live video webcast streamed from New York.

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Jesus promised that he would build his church (Matthew 16:18) and one of the surest ways we know to be obedient to God is to be faithful to the Holy Scripture. It was Jesus who prayed for the church, saying, “Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth” (John 17:17).

God seems to be using at least six factors in the continuing process of renewing and reforming United Methodism toward faithfulness to his Word.

1. Most evangelistically-minded churches grow, while others seldom do. Quite simply, too many of our United Methodist congregations don’t know how to reach out. Though most liberal United Methodists are compassionate, kind people, their churches seldom grow. One definite reason is theological. Most evangelical Christians feel a sense of urgency about lost people. They really believe that people who are outside a relationship with Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord are at risk of spending all eternity in a horrible place where God is totally absent. By way of contrast, many liberal United Methodists are universalists””believing that all persons are going to heaven regardless of what they believe or do. Such a belief makes evangelism irrelevant.

Recently I studied one particular annual conference in the Southeastern Jurisdiction. The ten local churches with the highest worship attendance figures for the previous year were quite diverse in terms of location (some are inner-city, others suburban) and in worship style (traditional, contemporary, and blended). But these ten churches have one thing in common””all of their senior ministers are evangelical/orthodox in theology. That same pattern probably prevails in most other annual conferences.
Jesus said that he came to earth “to seek and to save what was lost” (Luke 19:10). The Holy Spirit seems to bless those congregations that focus primary attention and resources on seeking, serving, and saving lost people.

2. United Methodist renewal and reform groups are making a positive contribution. The “granddaddy” of UM reform organizations is Good News, launched in 1966 by Charles Keysor’s article in the Christian Advocate. For 28 years, the Rev. James V. Heidinger II led Good News with prophetic courage and winsomeness. Now, the Rev. Rob Renfroe leads this vital agency of renewal and reform. Other organizations like The Confessing Movement, The Institute on Religion and Democracy, The Mission Society, Lifewatch, Transforming Congregations, and others have joined in the struggle.

3. High-quality biblical material has been introduced into the UM educational curriculum….

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”¢ Scriptural Authority. This is such a comprehensive dimension of our present crisis in the church that one hardly knows where to begin. But one can hardly do better than St. Ambrose’s statement that “the whole of Holy Scripture be a feast for the soul.” How seldom one hears upon us who are bishops in Tec such glowing statements about the Bible. In my experience all too many of our bishops and priests seem to mine the scriptures for minerals to use in vain idolatries. There is too little confidence expressed in its trustworthiness; the authority and uniqueness of revelation. Indeed, as J.V. Langmead-Casserly once put it, “We have developed a method of studying the Word of God from which a Word of God never comes.” Too often supposed conundrums or difficulties are brought up, seemingly in order to detract from traditional understandings, never considering the damage to the faithful’s trust in God and his Word. Ridiculous arguments such as shellfish and mixed fabrics are dragged out (long reconciled by the Fathers of the Church, as well as the Anglican Reformers) in order to confuse the ill-taught or the untutored in theology. And those who are intellectually sophisticated, schooled in many academic disciplines, but dreadfully untaught in the Bible and theology, are, through little fault of their own, except for naively trusting generations of slothful priests and bishops, are led astray. We must be willing to speak out against this.

—South Carolina Bishop Mark Lawrence in his special clergy day address earlier this year

Comedian Jay Leno has gotten lots of mileage out of exposing general ignorance, including biblical ignorance. He’ll ask passersby a question such as “On the first day of creation, God said, ‘Let there be _____'” and people will respond: “Um, peace!” Or he’ll ask, “Who were Cain and Abel?” and get the answer: “Friends of Jesus?”

The Bible is the all-time best-selling book””according to a 2002 Gallup poll, nearly every American (93 percent) owns at least one””yet it seems people know little about it. A Kelton Research survey in 2007 indicated that people know more about what goes into a Big Mac than they know about the Bible and can name members of the Brady Bunch far better than they can name the Ten Commandments. A 1997 Barna survey showed that 12 percent of adults think that Noah’s wife was Joan of Ark, and about half don’t know that the book of Isaiah is in the Old Testament. Yet another poll (by Gallup in 2004) revealed that nearly one in ten teens thinks that Moses was one of the 12 apostles.

Americans are not alone in their ignorance. Earlier this summer, St. John’s University in Durham, England, released its biblical literacy report for the U.K. While 76 percent of respondents said that they owned a Bible, 79 percent couldn’t identify a single accurate fact about Abraham, and 60 percent had no idea what the parable of the Good Samaritan is about.

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If by any chance you didn’t catch it, this is an excellent discussion.

The Rev. John Graham at Grace Church, an Episcopal parish in Georgetown, has held an adult forum every Sunday morning since the weekend after Labor Day to help people hurt by the recession.

“When people are dealing with unemployment, they don’t feel like they’re productive members in the society,” Graham said. “They doubt the sense of their meaning, and some even hide from their neighbors because they feel so much shame. They tend to think they’re not useful.”

He said the class has about 25 to 30 people, a significant number considering the size of the church, which has about 100 people at Sunday service.

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Tim Black, our seminarian, was the kind person who instinctively knew that I was unaware of what I was missing in Sunday School. So he asked me and invited and reminded me, here a Sunday, there a Sunday, and finally one morning wooed me back to the founders room to the sofa in the back. Before I knew it, I was completely engaged in the topic at hand. The class was interesting and funny and thought provoking, laughter and intensity. Everyone in the class had their hand up, and comments and questions bounced around the room like atoms under an atomic microscope.

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Jan Hilton starts most days sitting in a living room chair, facing an iconic image of Jesus created 1,400 years ago in a Middle Eastern monastery.

Before she prays and meditates there for 20 minutes, she looks into the eyes of the picture.

“It creates the right frame of mind,” she said. “It’s just remembering that in awareness of the quiet is the divine.”

A spiritual director at an Episcopal church in Corpus Christi, Hilton said that same feeling of connection to God is one that has been enriched by her interest in mysticism. She has enrolled in a class about modern mystics that will begin next month in San Antonio.

Called “Christian Mysticism: History, Wisdom and Insights,” the course will include scholars talking about mystics from various Christian faith traditions, organizers said. In addition to talks about mystics, time is set aside in class for participants to practice prayer and meditation.

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On Sunday, July 19th, I preached a sermon called: The Great Recall Virus. In light of events at the General Convention of the Episcopal Church, I made the diagnosis that our church all over the country is suff ering from this deadly disease. The recall virus defi ned is an IN-ABILITY TO RECALL WHO WE BELONG TO AND WHY”¦ A virus so severe that it leads to not only to what you read in the paragraph below, but one that has the potential to lead each one of us astray.

I will never forget the moment I knew The Great Recall Virus had hit the National Episcopal Church. It came as I sat in att endance at the convention of the Diocese of Washington in the National Cathedral. The convention preacher stood up and said these words:

“We live in a pluralistic world. A world of peoples with many belief systems and values. Our Christian, especially evangelical mission no longer can be as simple ”“ as if it ever was ”“ as telling people about Jesus, so that thy may be as we are and believe as we do. Perhaps our mission, by necessity, must continue to focus on more common human, not especially Christian concerns ”“ alleviating poverty, civil rights, the ill, economic exploitation, environmental devastation”¦”

As I sat in stunned silence, I was shocked to see the preacher receive a standing ovation!

Is there a remedy? Enter a new season of our Beta Course. As you know by now, we have divided our courses here at St. Michael’s into three:

Alpha: Cultural Christian to Believer
Beta: Believer to Disciple
Gamma: Disciple to Mission Apologist

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Do Episcopal parishes teach the basics?

When I finished seminary in 1987 I came out with youthful idealism, energy, and too much arrogance, among many other things. I also believed I needed to be unapologetic about teaching and preaching on the most basic questions.

For example, I taught for two years through the Book of Acts. What was the gospel they were proclaiming I wanted to know. What was their understanding of mission? Who did they think Jesus was? What did they believe about the church?

After three years in the parish where I served my curacy, I left the parish (and the country) to pursue a doctorate. This allowed me the luxury of reflecting on many things, including my three year curacy.

My deepest conclusion: I had failed to be basic enough. I had made too many assumptions. I had used too much Christian vocabulary without defining terms. The bottom line was my instinct was right but my implementation left a lot to be desired.

When I asked myself why, my sense was it was partly out of fear. It takes a lot of courage to ask someone to describe the exact nature of the God he or she believes in, to wrestle with the doctrine of Original Sin, to probe the mystery of the Atonement and the Cross, to delve into the depths of what heaven really is and is not like.

So consider this question: if we look at the parish of which we are a part, and its preaching and teaching, how are we doing in terms of asking and answering the most basic of questions? Are we daring to look at the roots of the roots?

Jesus talked about God and the nature of his kingdom. It is hard to get more basic than that. Can we do any less?

–The Rev. Dr. Kendall Harmon is Canon Theologian of the Diocese of South Carolina and convenor of this blog

Adult education finds people at various stages of faith development. Some adults are stuck in certitudes of an earlier age while being vaguely aware the certitudes don’t work anymore. Some are in full flight from religious conventionalities and find freedom in discarding old forms of faith. Some are perplexed, wounded, and looking for a meaning that brings their life into focus and gives them hope. Some are exploring Christian meanings alongside alternatives provided by other religions, feminism or a passionate cause such as environmentalism. Adults in most churches, including ours, are all over the landscape!

Different forms of adult education meet different needs. The primary teaching function of the church is the sermon, which we call the Teaching. Based in the Bible and following the Common Lectionary, the Teaching relates faith and personal/public life by taking the Bible seriously but not literally. While the Teaching is usually the work of one person, we also use “talkbacks” to stimulate discussion and even disagreement.

Most adult education is done in small groups that covenant together to meet for an extended time to study a course. “Living the Questions” is one we have used with multiple groups for several years. It is a thoughtful, no-holds-barred exploration of pressing questions about Christian faith and it stimulates vigorous discussion. Courses on “Voluntary Simplicity” and “Choices for Sustainable Living” have also challenged groups to develop a more intentional lifestyle. These covenant groups often meet on a week night.

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