On Monday, I walked into the bookstore and my eyes were immediately drawn to a new book on the shelf, Teaching the Faith, Forming the Faithful: A Biblical Vision for Education in the Church, by Gary A. Parrett and S. Steve Kang. I immediately grabbed it, scanned the back cover and the table of contents, and rather impulsively purchased it.

There is a lot to say about educational ministry in the local church. Most important, perhaps, is its declining influence. Quite a lot of churches have done away with extensive educational programs for any number of reasons, and these programs have been replaced by others aimed at things like "spiritual formation." Perhaps it is unconscious, but this fosters a sharp dichotomy between the two when, in fact, they go hand in hand. I do plan on returning to this topic more extensively here in the coming months, because it is one that I am especially passionate about. Also, as I'm considering seeking out a position in which I can be involved in that sort of ministry on a vocational level, I am frequently reflecting on it.

But for now, I just wanted to share this small portion from the first few pages of the book. Parrett and Kang begin their discussion by narrowing in on what they think should be the guiding motif or central part of a church's educational ministry. They use this brief story to illustrate:

Some years back, New Testament scholar Gordon Fee was sitting with other attendees at a workshop about the power of story. The speaker was Eugene Peterson, his faculty colleague. Peterson mentioned an episode in which his four-year-old grandson jumped onto his lap and demanded, "Grandpa, tell me a story, and put me in it." Upon hearing this account, Fee began to weep, overwhelmed by the fact that this is precisely what God has done for all of us. God is unfolding the great Story, and he has invited us to take our places in that story.

This great story into which God has invited us...is the grand drama of redemption and reconciliation. Growing in our understanding of the Story, and of our places in it, is critical for teaching and formation in the Church.

This echoes very closely something I quoted from Robert Webber a few months ago. The point of education in the context of the local church is not simply that members would download the necessary information they need to be saved, or to be able to explain various points of theology, or to answer the arguments of atheists (recall Jamie Smith's discussion on what education is all about). Instead, the goal of the church's education is one of formation, teaching those who belong to the church what it means to inhabit God's story and what it looks like to think and live rooted in that story. God has told us a story, and we are in it.