Among the adult educators who have taught me the importance of attending to ‘how adults learn’ is Marcia Conner, who has held such nifty titles as “information futurist” for PeopleSoft (since merged with Oracle), senior manager of worldwide training at Microsoft, and blogger writing the “Learn At All Levels” for FastCompany.

Her website AgelessLearner has a number of helpful links about adult learners, including her brief, interactive Learning Style Assessment as well as a detailed article that is the title of this post, “How Adults Learn,” and an interesting reflection, “Introduction to an eLearning Culture.”

I’m interested in knowing what resources you have found most helpful for understanding how adults learn in distinctive ways, with unique challenges.

Wayne Floyd, Education Program Manager at The Alban Institute, said the partnership unites Alban’s 35 years of experience in consulting, continuing education and research with the long tradition of clergy education at Lake Junaluska.

“We would hope that people would go away with a deeper and richer sense of the way of their own ministries contribute to the health and vitality of the congregations they serve and the ways in which congregational leaders among clergy and laity continue to have much to teach one another,” he said.

Roger Dowdy, Director of Ministry at Lake Junaluska, said the events will enrich the life of churches all over the Jurisdiction.

“Through this partnership, both clergy and laity in the Southeastern Jurisdiction will have access to three cutting-edge learning experiences in 2008 amidst the beautiful setting of Lake Junaluska,” Dowdy said.

Two seminars for congregations and a ministry summit are part of the first year of this partnership:

o April 13 – 16 Healthy Congregations seminar: “Leading your congregation to health, holiness, and hospitality.” Ed White, Alban Senior Consultant, facilitator.
o July 6 – 10 2008 Ministry Summit (formerly known as SEJ Ministers’ Conference): “Narrative Forms of Leadership and Congregation Formation.” A team of Alban consultants, facilitators.
o September 26 – 28 “Moving Churches from Maintenance to Mission - Building Disciple-making Communities.” Ed White, Alban Senior Consultant, facilitator.

For more information please contact:

Roger Dowdy,
Director of Ministry
rdowdy@sejumc.org
www.lakejunaluska.com
Pam Moser
pmoser@sejumc.org
Phone: 828-452-2881
www.lakejunaluska.com
Pam Naplen
pnaplen@sejumc.org
Phone: 828-452-2881
www.lakejunaluska.com

Troubling symptoms include increasing costs amidst anecdotal reports of decreasing support for staff and programs sponsored both by seminaries and by national as well as regional denominational structures. Among mainline Protestant denominations, for example, only the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America any longer has a full-time national staff member focusing on lifelong learning and vocational education.

This, however, is clearly not the whole story, for there are sure signs of an ever-widening array of continuing-education programs, on-site and online, designed to nourish the intellect, cultivate the gifts of the spirit, and sustain the traditions of faith communities of shared memory and practice.

Robust continuing-education opportunities can be found through a growing number of seminary- or judicatory-based programs. Presbyterian (PCUSA) contributions include the Center for Ministry and Leadership Development at Union Theological Seminary (Richmond) and the Center for Church Life at Auburn Theological Seminary. Episcopal Church offerings exist in judicatory programs such as the one in the Diocese of Western North Carolina or the Lifetime Theological Education program at Virginia Theological Seminary. Programs at traditionally United Methodist affiliated seminaries include the Lifelong Learning Center center at Duke Divinity School, the Iliff Institute for Lay and Clergy Continuing Education, or Wesley Seminary’s Lewis Center for Church Leadership.

Recently, a number of initiatives in continuing-education have focused on the first years of ordained parish ministry, such as the ELCA’s “First Call” program and the “Transition-into-Ministry” programs supported by Lilly Endowment, Inc. Other programs have focused on the difficulties over time of “Sustaining Pastoral Excellence,” another program of Lilly Endowment Inc., or holistic clergy-wellness programs such as the Episcopal Church’s CREDO Institute. Still others have addressed the needs of particular demographic groups, such as Emory University’s program through Candler School of Theology, “Covenant Colleagues A Continuing Education Program for Clergywomen” during their first ten years of ministry.

The number of online possibilities for continuing-education for congregational leaders also has grown exponentially in just the past three to five years, as can be seen on the Web site of the Association for Theological Schools; in the Bakers Guide to Christian Distance Education (Jason Baker, Regent University); and in the Wabash Center’s Internet Guide to Religion (Wabash College). These tend to augment, rather than replace, on-site learning, yet do not merely replicate what can be taught in a classroom but rather allow new forms of interactive learning with resources accessible only electronically.

Innovative examples include Fidelia’s Sisters, an online resource “by, for, and about young clergy women”; The Episcopal Church’s Center for Anglican Learning and Leadership at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific or the online offerings of the Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest; and ELCA sites such as Luther Seminary’s online learning options or the offerings of The Fisher’s Net. From an evangelical, multidenominational perspective there is Fuller Theological Seminary’s Distance Learning program. Presbyterians (PCUSA) should look at University of Dubuque Theological Seminary. Or from a progressive ecumenical perspective one can explore Hartford Theological Seminary’s Distance Education program.

Here at the Alban Institute, we are building on almost thirty-five years of experience with continuing-education. Each year Alban Learning provides twenty to thirty national seminars led by our senior consultants on topics ranging from conflict resolution to balancing life and ministry; from supervision of staff teams to becoming a praying congregation; from congregational governance to narrative leadership; from size transitions in parishes to budgets and financial planning. We also provide a wide range of custom-designed educational services: workshops for clergy arranged in cooperation with judicatories, keynote addresses, event facilitators for conferences, and co-sponsored events with partnering organizations such as the Lake Junaluska Conference Center.

This week Alban has launched our latest online venture in support of continuing-education for congregational leaders, AlbanLearning.Org, which joins the well-established Congregational Resource Guide, also hosted by Alban, and our two most recent entries into the virtual world, podcasts and webinars. With AlbanLearning.Org we want to do three things:

• First, we want to communicate better with you, the people who attend our events, read our books, and take advantage of the wide range of resources available on our Web site, www.Alban.org. Through the use of the “comments” feature on the blog, we invite you to interact with us so that we can learn how better to serve your needs as congregational leaders.

• Second, we intend to develop a portal where you want to come to find not just what the Alban Institute is doing in continuing-education, but the best of what others are offering as well. There are some excellent sites already online, like Faith and Wisdom, with which you can locate many lifelong-learning opportunities available nationwide. Let AlbanLearning.Org become the place you go to find out about such resources and to let others find you and the work that you are doing.

• Third, we want to respond to a still-unfulfilled universal need for connection and networking among providers and participants in continuing-education for clergy and laity. There are organizations already in place that also are concerned with this, such as the Society for the Advancement for Continuing Education in Ministry (SACEM). Through Alban’s emerging collaboration with FaithStreams Network, we intend to let you know through AlbanLearning.Org how to make more creative use of existing resources and then how to connect with one another in peer-conversations about them.

We invite you to join us online or on-site for our educational events, to network with one another about the exciting and significant work many of you already have underway, and then to talk with us about it on AlbanLearning.Org. Happy blogging!

Wayne Whitson Floyd
Education Program Manager
The Alban Institute

One of my favorite stories from John’s gospel is the raising of Lazarus from the dead (chapter 11). Using this story as a metaphor for what we do as coaches, we see Jesus as a Life Coach modeling three things for us in our work.

WE CARE: “Jesus wept” at the tomb of Lazarus. As coaches we work from a place of concern and respect for the individual. “Caring” is in our being, and we find ways to make it visible.

WE CALL FORTH: Jesus first had the rock removed from the opening to the tomb. He wasn’t afraid of the “smell” that might be in there. So too for us, being willing to endure the accompanying “odor,” we get the obstacles removed from what entombs our client. Then Jesus, after praying, called for Lazarus to come out of the tomb. We also, empowered by God, “call forth” our clients from limiting beliefs, ineffective behavior – anything that keeps them from the fullness of life.

3. WE UNBIND: When Lazarus came out of his tomb, he was still bound by the burial clothes. Jesus ordered them unloosed. As coaches, we help people get “unbound” from their old “clothes” (limiting beliefs, self defeating behaviors) and put on new clothes (new perspectives, new ways of being, new actions to take).

Remember your own story – when you felt as dead and buried as Lazarus – AND how God via a coach brought you into new life. Having had this life-giving experience, GO now and share the ongoing work of “raising the dead” through your coaching.

There is at least one more Lazarus awaiting your voice to call them forth!

Dr. Jim Robey

Attentional Growth Inc.

Jim@AttentionalGrowth.org

The Alban Institute was founded in 1974 as a major resource for American congregations facing the challenges of a changing society.While today’s challenges are even more pressing than they were three decades ago, the opportunities have never been clearer for congregations to be vital communities of faith, health, and leadership.

Each year, Alban touches hundreds of thousands of lives around the world—through our publishing, education, consulting, research, membership, online activities, and projects, such as the Indianapolis Center for Congregations and the Congregational Resource Guide.

We invite you to explore the wide variety of AlbanLearning educational offerings.

We’re in the business of Transforming Congregational Leaders.

Join us to experience The Alban Difference.

Have you ever honestly asked yourself, what does my faith really have to do with the concrete challenges of everyday life? What do my talents from the professional and business world, or from my responsibilities as a parent, have to do with the leadership roles I am asked to play at church?

How do you connect what you believe with what you do — much less with who you know you are, as God sees you?

We can speak of ministry in daily life, faith and life, or faithfulness in daily living. Many Christians talk about lay ministry, the ministry of the baptized or baptismal ministry.

Yet in many ways the church remains a clergy-defined and led institution. Often, however, this isn’t because of what clergy want, but because of what laity don’t know how to be – the people of God in every moment of their daily life and work.

FAITH AND EVERYDAY LEADERSHIP™ is the Alban Institute’s initiative to help you discover a renewed connection between faith and your lives of community service, work, home and church.

We want to lift up and celebrate the best practices of everyday leaders, both at work and in congregational life, so that each person of faith can become a more effective agent of grace and reconciliation in the world we share.

Watch for more about this exciting new curriculum from the Alban Institute.

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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’.”

Welcome to the new AlbanLearning site, brought to you by the Education Department of the Alban Institute.

The Alban Institute was founded in 1974 as a major resource for American congregations facing the challenges of a changing society. While today’s challenges are even more pressing than they were three decades ago, the opportunities have never been clearer for congregations to be vital communities of faith, health, and leadership.

Each year, Alban touches hundreds of thousands of lives around the world

—

through our publishing, education, consulting, research, membership, online activities, and projects, such as the Indianapolis Center for Congregations and the Congregational Resource Guide. Our influence reaches deeply into the congregations of this country and the world.

The benefits of joining the Alban Institute include subscriptions to Congregations magazine and The Alban Weekly eNewsletter, as well as a $50 per course tuition discount for any of our AlbanLearning seminars.

Alban’s approach to learning melds the practical and theoretical, action and reflection. Alban continuing education events for clergy and laity provide vital connections between knowledge and skill acquisition, spiritual formation, and the processes that transform congregations and communities.

Welcome to the Alban Institute; explore our online resources, and then we hope you will join us in person for an AlbanLearning Seminar. If you need any assistance, please call, and our Education Associate, Tiffani Berry, will be more than happy to assist.

Wayne Whitson Floyd
Education Program Manager
The Alban Institute