Needed: Total Parish Education

For too long we Orthodox have adopted the Protestant Sunday school tradition along with its assumption that Christian education can (1) be reduced to classroom education and intellectual experiences, and (2) that it can be accomplished within a given period of time. We have come to act as if the entire tradition and life of the Orthodox Church must be "fed" to the student somewhere between the ages of 6 and 16. We have even accepted the experience as normal that the program should come to fall apart towards the upper-end as adolescent students become increasingly preoccupied with themselves and their relationship to each other and everyday life.  We have definitely accepted as normal that we don't have to teach adults and this acceptance is demonstrated by the fact that, with few and feeble exceptions, we have almost no adult education materials and programs coming from any central Orthodox agency. Those priests who intuitively feel the need for adult education, must go-it-alone and devise their own materials. On the contrary, Christian growth and spiritual and intellectual maturity must be continuously cultivated and nurtured.

Adult and Family Education

The Orthodox Churches in America must begin to turn their attention to adult and family education. Mature Christian adults need to continue the growth in faith, both in understanding and spirituality. In this sense there will always be a need for on-going education and we will be fooling ourselves if we believe we have done the job of Christian education by age sixteen; from all indication that I have seen, the process has hardly begun by the time our children are completing church school. Every parish needs, therefore, some form of adult education or family education program. But here and now a parish, its priest, and its board of trustees and parishioners must commit themselves in principle to a total parish Christian education program. There is no one-time Christian education, and a vital adult community of faith is fundamental to any serious effort to educate the young.

Getting the commitment will be the most difficult stage. But once reached, who will handle these various programs? In a small parish certainlythere is not too much difficulty; the responsibility for all education can fall directly on the parish priest. In larger parishes, we are talking about a tremendous burden, almost certainly too great for the priest to handle by himself. Who other than the priest will handle these other sessions for family, adults, teens,schoolagers, and pre-schoolers? This will have to be decided by the priest himself and the parish will have to consider the necessity of employing a religious education director either part-or full-time. The Department of Christian Education of the Antiochian Archdiocese is currently preparing a proposal for submission to His Eminence Philip for a Christian education scholarship fund for laypeople who desire to serve the church precisely as education directors. The initial results of a survey conducted by the Department indicates, however, that in very few cases are parishes financially equipped to support such a professional person; it is also evident that many of them have no need for even a part-time person due to their size.

What is available to us is the option that several parishes, an entire deanery, or a local Orthodox clergy council possess the necessary financial resources to employ such a person. The need must be recognized and a workable budget established. On the national level, it will be the responsibility of the Archdiocese and particularly the Christian Education Department to attempt to encourage such employment opportunities for professional and dedicated laypeople. Treating education as a life-long process, there is ample work for such laypeople within the Orthodox Church in North America; the real test of our devotion to our Church and its people will be whether or not we are willing to commit the financial resources necessary to make these programs a reality. There are many options available; we only need to get together and talk about them. For those wishing more details about religious education coordinators, the book Coordinators, by T. Nieman (Winona, Minnesota: St. Mary's College Press) will give you more ideas to work with.

A Total Parish Program

We must try to rid ourselves of the identification which is so prevalent in the United States and Canada of schooling with education; that is, that education must take place in a formal classroom setting. Hence, I offer here some possibilities for the scheduling of a total parish education program. A total catechetical program for the parish can have separate sessions for adults, teens, elementary, and pre-school children as part of the weekly parish program. In all cases, however, the parish must be committed to community worship; that is no session should, in principle,be scheduled during the celebraton of any liturgical service. The following are some suggested times for various members of the parish:

An interesting approach requiring a good deal of organization on the part of your religious education coordinator is to sponsor simultaneous sessions for different age groups in the family during a family evening. This might be done on any weekday evening from 7 to 8:30. The teens and elementary groups could meet in separate classes while parents meet with the priest or other leader to discuss a given topic, or the same material being handled in the church school classes. The program can then end with a short evening prayer and perhaps begin with a pot-luck dinner.

In some cases where a parish might have too few students for a regular church school program, they might use intensive programs once ortwice a month for the entire family during a Saturday instead of some thirty weekly sessions of one hour each. It has been demonstrated by religious education researchers that one intensive weekend program can be more effective than a long drawn out program of one hour per week, especially for teaching subjects like doctrine. This can be particularly valuable for teenagers who could perhaps benefit from a weekend of concentrated study and peer interaction during a retreat.

Even if your parish couldn't handle such a total program immediately, elements of it can be incorporated into your present education program. With the employment of either a part-time or full-time religious education person, your parish could make great strides towards a total and ongoing Christian education program.