wfn.org | New PC(USA) curriculum gets go-ahead

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Note #7042 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

02-February-2002
02053

New PC(USA) curriculum gets go-ahead 

GAC budgets $750,000 for We Believe, to be ready in Fall '03

by Jerry L. Van Marter

LOUISVILLE -By a nearly unanimous vote on Feb. 1, the General Assembly Council (GAC) approved development of a new denominational curriculum, tentatively titled We Believe: God's Word for God's People.

In tacit acknowledgment that denominational curriculum cannot be financially self-supporting, the Council included $750,000 for We Believe in the 2003 General Assembly mission budget. The estimated total cost of the new curriculum, which is to be available for use in the fall of 2003, is $913,000.

"This is a decision about value," said Greg Neel, a council member who introduced the concept for the new curriculum on behalf of the Congregational Ministries Division (CMD) committee, "and we're very clear about the value inherent in what we're proposing to you today."

The Rev. Lynn Shurley, the CMD chair, said: "It's been said that the church is only one generation away from extinction. Our insurance against extinction has always been the instruction and education of our children, and good curriculum is a fundamental element of that education."

The objectives of We Believe are "to strengthen Presbyterian formation and identity and to respond to express needs of teachers and congregations." Neel said the new curriculum will "allow Presbyterians to learn about their Christian faith and their Reformed heritage, and to be able to respond with their lives."

We Believe has been created in the five months since further development of Covenant People was halted because it had lost millions of dollars in two years and failed to find an audience. Congregational Ministries Publishing (CMP) officials said they have learned from the failure of Covenant People and incorporated those lessons into the design of We Believe.

CMP has published a brochure listing nine ways Covenant People materials can be used for the 2002-2003 school year while We Believe is in development.

Neel and CMP Publisher Sandra Sorem said the new curriculum is quite a departure from its predecessors. Neel called We Believe "a whole new way of doing curriculum."

Neel told the GAC that church educators have demanded "something easier to order and easier to use." Sorem said We Believe will be produced in quarterly increments and will be available through traditional standing-order arrangements, unlike the far more complicated Covenant People.

And production timelines are being shortened so that revisions can be made in response to user feedback "within two quarters," Sorem said.

Curriculum developers Mark Hines and Tammy Wiens said We Believe materials will be developed first for children and high-school-age youth. Covenant People materials for younger youth (in grades 5-7) were popular and will be continued, as will the Present Word curriculum for adults.

A new wrinkle in We Believe will be summer-quarter units that are broadly-graded and intergenerational. "These materials will be self-contained week-by-week, taking advantage of summer attendance patterns and the fact that in many churches there's a different teacher each week during the summer," Hines said. 

We Believe for children will follow a three-year cycle built on the stories of the Bible. Year one will focus on the people of the Bible, year two on stories of sin and redemption, and year three on stories of law, grace and wisdom. The summer series will focus on Presbyterian mission.

We Believe for older youth will also follow a three-year cycle, with year one addressing the theme "The Road of Faith," year two "The Poet as Storyteller," and year three "The Prophet and the Prophetic Word."

Freda Gardner, a former General Assembly moderator from Princeton, NJ, a lifelong Christian educator, told her fellow GAC members: "The work that has been done on We Believe is extraordinarily good ... and they have done this in an incredibly short amount of time. These folk know what they're doing and where they're going. I'm convinced that everyone will be able to use this, and will want to."

Member Cliff Sherrod, of Midland, TX, who had been critical of Covenant People, said, "I want to commend these folk for their responsiveness to questions raised about what went wrong with Covenant People, especially the capability to respond rapidly to feedback."

The only objectons raised about We Believe had to do with its cost of $11 per quarter per student. "If we don't produce We Believe," responded the CMD director, the Rev. Don Campbell, 
"Presbyterians are going to have to go out to their local religious bookstore and buy something else, and they're going to paying the same if not more." 
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