Christian Education...

Christian education must be centered around the person of Jesus Christ and the application of his teaching and life to the disciple. Christian education must have three people involved in the process: the Lord, the leader and the learner. The leader and the learner are a requirement of education and the Lord is a requirment for the Christian. We truly must learn more about our God. We can have a general knowledge of God through His creation (Romans 1), but in order to worship Him for who He truly is, we must learn of Him. This "education" must be centered around Christ.

In order for eduction to be productive, there must be a way of evaluating the learning process and the product that is being produced as a result of that education. We don't always like to do that in the church, but if our goal is to produce mature, worshipping believers in the Savior, we must be able to evaluate the process. The process is simply stated in our class notes: "Christian educaiton is...Christ-centered, Bible-based, life/expeience focused, family-oriented and others-related." This process also provides us with a way of evaluation.

Let's take a different look at Christian education (while we're here). The first thing that comes to the minds of most people when speaking of "Chrsitian Educaiton" is either a Christian school or Sunday School within the church. While these are both VERY valid forms of Christian education that can fully entail the "people, purposes, products and process" (class notes) that are required, the truest, most effective form of Christian education occurs in the home. This can impact the "who" that we focus on (especially for those of us that are in youth ministry).

Deut 6:6-9 states:
7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.
NIV

We must help the family as a unit realize what God is saying here. We must EDUCATE our people on how to do the above. This is the education of discipleship.

We have problems in the church with our processes. We have problems with our purposes. Yes, we have problems with the product we produce from time to time. However, Christian education loses its focus when we forget the people. We MUST realize that our lives are about Christ...not just parts. EVERYONE involved in this process must be convinced of that. When we focus on the program (purposes, products and processes) and forget the people, it is so easy to lose the people.