Christian Education Means

"Leading Out"

It seems to me that many people in churches throughout the world think Christian Education is the process of someone coming to Church School and sitting passively while a wise teacher imparts and implants knowledge into the listener. To me, education is more than the assimilation of facts. Christian Education is the process by which the relationships we have with teachers and fellow learners draw something new and exciting out of us.

The word "education" is initially derived from the Latin educare, meaning "to train" or "to educate". But the word educate can be dissected even more into two other Latin words, e and duco. Taken together, these words can mean, "I lead out of." It is my understanding that education means a "leading out" or the leading of something out of a person. So, the relationships and the knowledge developed through Christian Education draws out the inherent gifts that God has given to each individual.

Many churches today are solely in the business of indoctrinating rather than educating. Those churches want to feed the fears of individuals who say, "If I learn more maybe I can be what God wants me to be...maybe I can be a better person." Yet education is more than gaining knowledge; it is building relationships and drawing the divine gifts and talents out of people.

This is how I feel about welcoming visitors into the church. When visitors step through the doors at Northside Drive Baptist Church, they are special not only because they are seeking to find God from us in this place, but we, as a church, are blessed to gain and "draw out" the gifts, skills, and passions already indwelling within them. We need visitors just as much as they need us and we need to educate, not indoctrinate them.

So as we go about the business of doing Christian Education together and also welcoming visitors into this place, let us remember that in the process of educating we are drawing out the uniqueness that God has placed in every individual while drawing them into this community of faith.

By Zachary Bay

"Got a minute?"

Lately, I have been revisiting Abraham Joshua Heschel's book The Sabbath. This book is beautiful to me. It reminds me that there are two dimensions upon which religions can operate: space and time. People seem to get space. Heschel reminds me to look for time as well.

For me, space is the more flashy of the two. It is tangible. The chapel carries many of our folks back to the sounds of the Baptist Hymnal and the sights of the clean white of traditional church buildings. The sanctuary, like a magnificent opera singer clad in every color, sings sacred songs and draws our gaze upward. And, for some of us, the abbey at Iona-every stone of it-reaches into our very being and beckons us toward the holy. We religious folks seem to get space.

Time is different. It is elusively intangible. I can't visit time like I can the front pew in the chapel. And yet, I find that time holds just as much power over my being as space. It can either put me at peace or tie knots in my stomach. Heschel writes The Sabbath from this conviction. He asks: "Now what was the first holy object in the history of the world?" His answer: the seventh day of creation-"And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy." His book reminds me that Judaism [and Christianity] are as much about making time holy as they are about honoring holy spaces. That's beautiful to me. It reminds me that every minute, every phone call, every email-these things too-despite being beyond the stained glass, are not beyond the holy.

The NDBC Chapel

11:00 AM

June 26-September 4, 2011

"There shall be seasons refreshing...." This is a line from There Shall Be Showers of Blessing, a Gospel song based on Ezekiel 34:26 and found in the chapel's Baptist Hymnal. Worship this summer will be as the hymn alludes: a season which is refreshing. And the season's refreshment will come through the intimacy of the chapel's sacred space, through the vitality of sacred music and congregational singing, and through stories of how God is at work renewing our lives.

The summer's sermon series will be: "The Neg-Lectionary." Like most mainline churches, we use the Revised Common Lectionary as the engine that drives weekly worship. For each Sunday and holy season there is a Gospel, Epistle, Psalms, and OldTestament text appropriately selected. However, even with all those Bible verses, there are still many scriptures which are neglected. Thus, "The Neg-Lectionary." The summer's scripture sampler includes: a sermon-sleeper who fell out of a window and died, a man who was lectured by his talking donkey, and a preacher who lost his voice (to the delight of many, I'm sure). 'Twill be an angular and refreshing approach to some overlooked scriptures.