Teaching The Bible in Congregations: A Congregational Studies Pedagogy for Contextual Education¹

This article proposes a pedagogy based upon congregational studies to further the contextualization of education in both seminary and congregational settings. Christian congregations and theological seminaries comprise two overlapping yet distinctive “communities of practice” in which teaching and learning the Bible constitutes a primary, even defining, activity. The article describes a seminary course that used congregational studies as its pedagogical framework. It then outlines eight features of a pedagogy based upon congregational studies, concluding with a brief assessment of the dangers and opportunities for a more contextual approach to education in seminary and congregational educational settings. 1A Fall 2004 faculty study leave grant from the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion supported the research and writing of this article, for which I am grateful. An earlier version was presented in a section of the November 2004 meeting of the Religious Education Association/Association of Professors and Researchers in Religious Education concerning congregational studies and pedagogy. I am particularly grateful to my colleagues as the Graduate Theological Union (Boyoung Lee, Mai Ahn Tran, Tony Vrame, Tito Cruz, and Carol Jacobson) whose comments in preparation for this session and co-presentations during it helped me to clarify my perspectives. This article also benefited from the many insightful comments and questions by REA/APRRE session participants, and from the experiences with students participating in the “Teaching the Bible in Congregations” course who (although remaining anonymous) gave permission for me to quote them in this article. Notes 1A Fall 2004 faculty study leave grant from the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion supported the research and writing of this article, for which I am grateful. An earlier version was presented in a section of the November 2004 meeting of the Religious Education Association/Association of Professors and Researchers in Religious Education concerning congregational studies and pedagogy. I am particularly grateful to my colleagues as the Graduate Theological Union (Boyoung Lee, Mai Ahn Tran, Tony Vrame, Tito Cruz, and Carol Jacobson) whose comments in preparation for this session and co-presentations during it helped me to clarify my perspectives. This article also benefited from the many insightful comments and questions by REA/APRRE session participants, and from the experiences with students participating in the “Teaching the Bible in Congregations” course who (although remaining anonymous) gave permission for me to quote them in this article. 2A full description of our activities is impossible within the limits of space for this article. In brief however, within the congregations and outside of our classroom context, we met with persons from the congregations for oral histories and “space tours,” an activity in congregational studies in which members of the community walk through the facilities and describe its uses and meanings in the life of that congregation. We shared meals in neighborhood restaurants and walked through the communities in which these churches minister, to supplement our census-based demographic studies of these contexts with hands-on, experiential knowledge of the neighborhoods. Other times, pastors from the two churches came into our classroom to offer their perspectives on the congregation and to be interviewed by students about their ministries. Course participants attended a variety of events at the two churches, becoming participant observers in worship, adult education, and fellowship events in both of the congregations. In relation to these ethnographic experiences of congregational studies, our classroom setting operated as a location for focused learning and inquiry about such elements as how demographic features of these particular neighborhoods, or the age, socioeconomic class, and racial-ethnic composition of a congregation in relation to its immediate neighborhood context matter in the shaping of its local theology and mission. 3Features six and seven as worded here were contributions by Mary Elizabeth Moore.