wfn.org | NCCCUSA Church Educators Event

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National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA
Contact: NCC News, 212-870-2227
Email: news@ncccusa.org  Web: www.ncccusa.org

21NCC2/26/99

NCC CHURCH EDUCATORS EVENT MIRRORS TENSIONS, CHOICES IN CULTURE
2,000 Gather to Discuss How Old Stories and New Technologies Can
Intersect

By Wendy S. McDowell

"Faith Odyssey," an ecumenical church educators conference
held in Chicago Feb. 2-6, drew 2,000 participants and offered a
dizzying choice of experiences.  As such, the event ended up
mirroring the culture that it sought both to critique and to
accommodate.

 "Our technological context influences our theology," said
the Rev. Joe Leonard, Director of Ministries in Christian
Education for the National Council of Churches, a conference co-
sponsor along with five church educators' organizations and 12
Protestant denominations.

"We now live in a world where we can be in touch with
millions of people all over the planet personally through the
Internet," Rev. Leonard said.  "As church educators, we are
uniquely positioned to question the meaning of such a
technological explosion but we also need to understand and adapt
to it in order to keep communicating our faith traditions.  We
planned this conference to address these tensions and needs."

 Said the Rev. Paul Moore, a Presbyterian minister from
Plainview, Minnesota,  "I think it is wonderful that as all of
our denominations face a hostile culture, we can join together to
learn from each others' experience as church educators.  The best
part of the conference is hearing what is working throughout the
country, be it New York City, Chicago or rural Minnesota.  Doing
this ecumenically widens that pool of experience."

 The diversity and emphases of the conference were
illustrated by the wide range of "learning options" going on at
any one time during the three days.  One morning, in the
"Internet Caf‚," 17-year-old Chris Sears from Missouri was not
taking but teaching a seminar on "Beginning Web Design for
Churches" to a group of mostly age 50 and over church educators.
While this group furiously scribbled notes and furrowed their
brows in front of computer screens, down the hall Martha Bess
DeWitt quieted an overflow crowd by reading from "Children's
Books for the Liturgical Year."

 Meanwhile, other groups were discussing Black Christian
Education, or practicing sacred dance, or learning about "music
and body prayer."  Yet others participants were participating in
"immersion" experiences which took advantage of Chicago's Art
Institute; churches, mosques and temples, and such local
development and assistance projects as Chicago Night Ministry,
Hispanic Connections and Bethel New Life.

 Throughout, two themes kept surfacing: the profound
influence of new technologies on the task of church education and
the profound importance of stories.  Many speakers and workshop
leaders explored the tensions and possible intersections between
the two.

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21NCC2/26/99
CHURCH EDUCATORS EVENT/Page 2

"The challenge in this `post-modern world' is both the
recovery of  our memory and to create our memory," said Dr.
Elizabeth Caldwell, a Professor at McCormick Theological
Seminary, a plenary leader.  "Our task as educators is to keep
telling tales, to keep weaving our stories into the fabric of
`The Great Story'."

Said Ms. June Wilson, Associate Council Director for the
South Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church, "When
we share our stories and connect them with the biblical story, we
have the opportunity to touch people."  "Stories are the oldest
form of teaching," said Dr. Carol Lakey Hess, a Presbyterian
minister and faculty at Princeton Theological Seminary, who in
the process shared what she called "my own story, between the
rock of assimilation and the hard place of otherness and
resistance."

The need to tell personal, collective and Bible stories in
creative, "multisensory" ways was echoed again and again.
"Mainline churches do not touch the sensual capacity" of people
the way popular music and other media do," explained the Rev. Tex
Sample, a United Methodist minister who teaches at the Saint Paul
School of Theology in Kansas City.  He encouraged church
educators to learn from the electronic culture and to employ a
wider range of ways to reach young people.

As Rev. Sample pointed out, however, there is a generational
gap around technology and learning styles.  He mapped the
differences between himself, who tends to find meaning in words
and his son, who tends to find it in experience.  He explained
that the sometimes impossible challenge for churches is to appeal
to members across all generations and personality types.

Participants who said that their churches were using
electronic media acknowledged they had lost some members.  "A
church these days has to choose a focus and to find what it is
known for in the community," said Ms. Nancy Folsom, a deacon in
charge of education at her Methodist church in Lawrenceville, Ga.
"You can't be all things to all people."

"Our services now include all of this (technological)
stuff," said Ms. Wilson, "but I still think it is important that
all generations sit together."  That priority often is lost as
churches schedule multiple services to appeal to different
generations, she said.

There are other drawbacks to targeting worship and church
education programs for different groups.  "We are starting to see
children who don't know the traditional doxology or statements of
faith" because they have not attended a traditional worship
service, observed Ms. Folsom.  "That is scary."

More than one participant commented that the conference
itself drew more young people than they were used to seeing at
these kind of events.  "It is heartwarming to me to see younger
people here and to have diversity in that way, too," said the
Rev. Clara Moore-Woodson, a Reformed Church in America minister
from Brooklyn, N.Y.

Participants and speakers alike commented that when they
need help on computer-related problems, they call their children
or grandchildren.  "We are seeing right now an exchange of
knowledge that is sometimes going from the young to the old,"
Rev. Leonard said.

If there is one thing the conference made clear, however,
it's that technology cannot replace the power and value of
stories.  "If the story isn't powerful, it doesn't matter what
method you use to tell it," Rev. Leonard said.  "Fortunately, our
faith traditions have the stories.  We just need to pour some of
our old wine into new vessels."
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