I got to dance around the fire with Peter a few weeks ago. On a pleasant spring evening with a group of young adults on a ministry trip around a fire in northern Alberta, we joined in an unusual and probably ungainly dance. Arms linked, we did some kind of herky-jerky stomp around the fire.
But it was with Peter—the same Peter who had started the school year with a sense of disdain for human contact, who was happy with a computer, an iPOD and a book. That night was a marker of change, evidence that Peter was learning the value of living as part of a community.
Christian education matters deeply to me. Thinking correctly, thinking clearly in a way that incorporates a Christian commitment in to all we do is the basis of living well. Whether through Sunday school classes, grade or post-secondary schools, it matters that people be taught to think about life in a way that reflects the priorities and values of Jesus.
It also matters that Christians be taught to actually live life in a way that reflects those values and priorities. Thinking well must be matched by living well.
As someone involved in an educational discipleship ministry for several years, I’ve identified three necessary components to helping students truly learn to live truth.
Content. In order to be lived, truth has to be known.
A focus on spiritual formation should not lower the academic expectation placed on the student. Students still need to know the big story of Scripture, have a basic understanding of Christian thinking, living and history, and be taught the skills that come with having to work in an academic environment.
The discipline of working to learn, along with the knowledge gained by that work, helps to form a foundation for a life of not only continuing to learn, but of letting that learning affect how life is actually lived.
Expression. Jesus invited His followers to not only know truth, but to live it.
Paul expressed the idea as “look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.” Education that fosters spiritual formation needs to give students significant opportunities to serve other people.
Learning about the good news must lead to students actually be good news to the people around them. Hands-on service to their world not only gives students the opportunity to discover their own gifts and abilities, but to see the range of human need in society, and to recognize that even small efforts can make a big difference.
I regularly remind myself that students learn far more about God, themselves and their world when they are interacting with real people with real needs than they learn sitting in a classroom. Whether they are teaching English to immigrants, hanging with skaters, leading a church youth group, or serving in numerous other ways, students learn the big lessons of life and faith when they express that faith through serving others.
Community. It’s easy to be a loving person on your own, but loving becomes a real challenge living in the midst of a small group of diverse people.
Living life as a part of a community of faith creates a lab where the learned theories get tried and tested. The value of love, for example, is only theoretical until I live among others whom I will have to choose to love. At that point, I very probably will find it is not as easy as I expected to be.
And the community will work to forgive me, strengthen me and help me try again. The community I am among becomes the place where I discover the difficulty of actually letting others win the arguments, or of letting others choose which movie we watch.
Spiritual formation of the individual happens in the midst of community. Belonging to a community of people who are committed to learning to live the way Jesus called His followers to live keeps me from letting His teachings be good ideas, spiritual truths with little relevance to life. Truth is meant to be lived, not just written about on a test.
My dance with Peter is memorable because he was a person whose background and personality could have made him content to live with a Christian faith that consisted of facts and ideas. But he had become a part of a group who accepted and loved him; he had learned that he needed other people, that he had qualities to offer other people.
Peter is in the process of becoming what God dreams of him being, and I got to celebrate the change, around a fire, as part of a group doing good in the world for Christ’s sake.
Wayne Tomalty is president of Mount Carmel Bible School in Edmonton, Alberta.
