Christian Education Journal: Research on Educational Ministry

Contemporary attempts to renovate evangelical Christian discipleship in the 21st century include efforts to resolve the relationship between modern Christian education paradigms and the rediscovery of ancient Christian (spiritual formation) practices. One example resides in the current research on Practicing our Faith (Bass, 1997), and in age-level emphases on formational practices beginning to surface (Jones, 2003). Additional studies are needed for comprehensive approaches to Christian education in the 21st century. Evangelical Christian educators seeking new paradigms may find another example closer to home in John Wesley's means of grace. Wesleyan educators may have something distinct to offer contemporary evangelicalism if they can first embrace their own heritage and work to develop an approach that embraces the three emphases of formation, discernment, and transformation. A beginning point may be a new text currently emerging from Wesleyan educators within the Church of the Nazarene that seeks to synthesize the best of modern and postmodern education under this rubric.

Of increasing interest to New Testament scholars is the educational background of Paul and the early Christians. As evangelical educators, such studies also engage our understanding of the Biblical and historical basis of Christian education. This article endeavors to ascertain the early Christian community's, and particularly Paul's, assessment of education in first-century A.D. Greco-Roman culture as one dimension of the interactions between the early Christian community and its culture. It will (1) provide a brief review of passages in the New Testament that reflect or interact with the educational community of the first-century A.D., (2) Conjecture Paul's assessment of education in Greco-Roman culture, with which early Christians interacted, (3) Itemize implications of Paul's opinion on Greco-Roman education for our understanding on the formation and history of Christian education, and finally (4) Address the need for further study of the subject.

With the proclivity for using business theory to describe ministry leadership in evangelicalism, this paper suggests that we must still look to Scripture for a leader's characteristics. While seemingly anachronistic, Paul's leadership can be described in terms of being transactional-transformational as he served. As such, his relationship with Timothy shows that it is important for a leader to understand the necessity of relating well to Christ, doctrine, and others.

How can future ministers in the area of Christian education survive in a constantly changing world? How can the church survive if its future leaders do not know why they believe and act as they do? Christian educators of future ministers and future leaders can help resolve these issues through double-loop learning. This article will describe double-loop learning and will present some theories that serve as a background to it. Then it will present the environment that is necessary and some teaching methods that are useful to foster double-loop learning.

This study explored the motivational factors of elementary students participating in AWANA, an evangelical Christian religious club. A qualitative research design was employed to gather data from 52 participants in six states. Participants consisted of 24 male and 28 female sixth grade students in the final year of club participation who were eligible to complete the program in Spring 2004. Involvement with AWANA entails Scripture memory and other character-building activities. Data collection consisted of semi-structured interviews with open-ended questions regarding their overall club experience and motivation. Results were analyzed to assess motivational factors contributing to long-term club participation and completion of the program. By long-term, we indicate that the majority of students had participated in the program enough years to complete the required books for the Timothy Award. Overall, we found that award recipients began AWANA with an outside-in, or extrinsic, motivation. However, by the time they achieved their awards, they seemed to have converted to more of an inside-out, or intrinsic, motivation.

Ministry to newlyweds is a unique window of opportunity for churches small and large because newlywed couples are in transition, open to new relationships, open to letting go of religious conventions and considering more Biblical responses, and open to being groomed for church leadership. This article advocates the importance of a newlywed ministry for your church, suggests some of the needs couples are facing that churches can address, reviews results of a survey of how churches are ministering to newlyweds, and suggests some of the ways churches can minister to newlyweds. A list of resources is also included.

The Old Testament sages regularly taught in ways that involved ambiguity and created tension in the minds of their students. Such teaching methods were intended to stimulate thought and reflection on the part of their students as they sought to answer the questions raised by these dilemmas. These intellectual and applicational struggles played a significant role in moving students toward the goal of developing skill in living according to Yahweh's order. An understanding of this methodology may be useful in understanding a difficult book like Ecclesiastes. at the same time the use of such teaching strategies may have relevance for teaching in various educational contexts today.

In an effort to document spiritual growth as an aspect of the mission of our university, we sought to implement sound assessment procedures so that students' specific spiritual needs might be identified. First, we evaluated our university's spirituality focus and potential matching assessments. No existing instrument completely fit our needs, so we coordinated in our community to create a survey of Christ-centered living rooted in evangelical beliefs. The assessment of 110 freshmen and 65 seminarians yielded high internal consistency, good test-retest reliability, significant group differences, and concurrent validity. This work is a needed addition to the literature. More importantly, our methods, instrument, and recommendations could empower Christian educators to mentor students with a more precise knowledge of their spiritual needs.

The following paragraphs contain a synthesis of Dr. Willard's lectures at the 2004 NAPCE convention in Orlando, October 21–23.I have edited and rearranged his words a bit but have not added my own thinking except in the response sections. For those who attended the convention, this may serve as a summary; for those who did not, it can augment the fine review articles published in the last issue of CEJ.