Nothing definitive . . .
I just got home from an interesting small conference at the Blackwell Hotel and Conference Center at Ohio State, “Life Long Learning - Challenges and Opportunities in the Digital Age,” sponsored by the Society for the Advancement of Continuing Education for Ministry” or SACEM. Keynote speaker for the conference was Dr. Mary Hess from Luther Seminary; a short clip of her speaking in another venue on technology and religious education can be seen here.
Although I had already encountered much of the information being presented, it nevertheless was instructive to watch the group try to “connect the dots” and make constellations out of the plethora of challenges … and opportunities … of educating people for their ministries in a post-modern age.
- “No one can be definitive in a time of change” as profound as the one we live.
- ‘Experts’ frame the world they see, rather than rendering it totally intelligible.
- If we’re not careful the most important part can be left outside the frame.
- When “everything is miscellaneous” before you Google it, the authority of ‘teaching’ becomes very different.
This was not a gathering of left-wing nihilists; we were a diverse group of Christians who worshiped together regularly over three days. And as a “Broad Church” Episcopalian (enamored equally of scripture, reason, and tradition), I found myself sometimes squirming because of the uniformly ‘evangelical’ style of the music and liturgy. This wasn’t a conference based on style, however, but a gathering of educators, and consultants, and church officials, trying to be faithful both to the God-focus of our world as Christians, and to the challenges … and opportunities … that face us in a digital age.
In the end, it was the group’s ability to wrestle faithfully with “nothing definitive” that really made me hopeful. The unquestioning certainties of our culture’s recent-past and current times — the blacklists of the cold war, intolerances based on race and gender, the division of the world into reds and blues — seemed far less important that our ability to recognize and bear ambiguity into the midst of our enduring commitments about faith.
We were able to begin to ask - sometimes for the first time, often for the nth — what happens to our role as learners, and as teachers, in a culture that holds “nothing definitive” in this way anymore? How do we prepare for ministry “without a net” to catch us when we tumble? And will we dare learn how to become that network of inquiry and commitment that can sustain the church not just today, but the day after, and the day maybe after that? Stay tuned. But adult educators beware; “the times, they STILL are a changin’.”
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