All signs point to Christian education having lost its theological location and prominence in the life of the Western Protestant church. The Emerging Church movement, as an intentionally postmodern approach to ministry in the contemporary context, may, however, offer insights to reinterpret Christian education. This significant movement in today’s church gives Christian education a new interpretive framework that is theologically located at an intersection of doxology and doctrine. In her examination of postmodern faith formation, Wendi Sargeant explores the importance of the Christian worshipping community as the most appropriate setting for Christian education. Practitioners and students will benefit from the ready-to-use teaching and learning matrix, and all those with interest in the formation of faith in themselves and others will draw much from the way Sargeant situates worship as the basis for enhancing Christian formation and ethos.
Haunted by her young student’s honest question, ‘What is a church?, ’ Australian educator Wendi Sargeant seeks answers from the field of Christian education and the emerging Christianity movement. Not content to distract her student with paper pinwheels, Sargeant articulates paradosis, doxa, dogma, and catechesis with a postmodern twang. Balancing an appreciation for the church as both a learning community and a worshipping community, this book provides detailed curriculum frameworks for use by Christian educators.
–Aaron J. Ghiloni, author of John Dewey Among the Theologians Wendi Sargeant is a Minister with the Uniting Church in Australia, and Lecturer in Apologetics and Evangelism at Trinity College Queensland, Australian Catholic University at Brisbane, Australia.