Where we've been. Where we are.
Karen M. Meridith | executive director, retired
In the early 1970s, Professor Charles Winters of the School of Theology at Sewanee became interested in the possibility of providing theological education to seminarians through distance learning. Distance learning was a hot topic at the time.
Somewhere in the midst of exploring the idea he began to wonder why theological education should be confined to preparation for ordination. What would the church look like if the laity had access to that level of theological training? The idea of Baptism as the fundamental entry point for ministry was a hot topic at the time. (an idea that eventually undergirded the development of the 1979 BCP, of course)
Distance learning and the ministry of the Baptized—hmmm.
Charlie changed his mind about his original idea and pitched a new idea about theological education for lay persons to Dean Urban T. Holmes, who came up with grant funding that allowed Charlie to take a sabbatical in Mexico to write. I once asked Charlie why he went to write in Mexico, wondering if he had in mind a bilingual curriculum. No, he answered with a twinkle, he chose Mexico because he could sit on the beach and drink beer while he wrote.
Charlie initially called his curriculum TEE, Theological Education by Extension. Lectures from various Sewanee professors were transcribed, pages were mimeographed in house, and seminarians put to work collating the books. He piloted it in several southern dioceses that were connected to Sewanee. Liz Workman told me stories about opening boxes of barely dry yellow covered books in Mississippi as the fumes of mimeograph fluid wafted forth. Those of us of a certain age remember that distinctive smell.
Charlie’s dream was to have 2,000 lay persons complete his curriculum. His dream was of a theologically literate laity prepared to listen for and respond to God’s call.
This is our origin story. Every tribe has one. No origin story is the whole story.
What follows is history. What follows is transition, change. Another transition, more change. A vibrant program evolves.
TEE eventually became EfM. Over time the transcribed lectures were modified, edited for a desired focus, eventually replaced by chapters and essays, the RRG and standard texts for the readings. The curricular arc developed and was re-developed. (In fact, the current curriculum is the fifth in EfM’s history.) Along the way, new components were created and refined: Focus questions, common lessons, interlude readings, to name just some.
And most central to the whole enterprise, Theological Reflection.
Because knowing about theological subjects is not really the point if ministry is the point. How does that knowledge contribute to listening to and responding to God’s call to all of us?
TR, as we practice it in EfM, teaches us to view our experience through the lens of faith, using metaphorical language that gets us as close as we can get to describing the indescribable. We learn to draw upon the great patterns and themes of theological language to identify insights and implications for living in the world in a way that is congruent with what we say we believe.
The Gospel from this past Sunday (Matthew 9:35—10:8) offers one such theological pattern to consider. You may recall it:
Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”
Then Jesus summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness. These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon, also known as Peter, and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee and his brother John; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus and Thaddaeus; Simon the Cananaean and Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed him.
These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Do not take a road leading to gentiles, and do not enter a Samaritan town, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Cure the sick; raise the dead; cleanse those with a skin disease; cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment.
The pattern I have in mind is in that shift in about the middle of the passage. At first Jesus’ followers are called disciples. Disciples, of course are students, learners. They are people under discipline, engaged in practice under the direction of their teacher.
With compassion for the people, Jesus heals. At the same time he instructs his disciples to ask for additional laborers needed for the harvest. Then he complies with the very request he has asked them to make—because, after all, he is the Lord of the harvest—and gives his followers gifts for the ministry he wants them to share with him, in this case healing.
Immediately his followers are no longer referred to as disciples. They are now called apostles, ones who are sent out.
Notice the pattern: disciples (learners) to apostles (sent out). What happens in between is that gifts needed for ministry are given, discovered, claimed. The needs of the world are recognized.
Isn’t this what we are pointed toward in Theological Reflection? As disciples we practice learning, building community, and prayer. Through reflection we practice discernment to recognize the gifts we have been given and the needs we are called to address. With that insight we go out as apostles to do the work we have been given to do.
This movement from disciples to apostles is not movement in a single direction, but part of a spiral. The apostles themselves didn’t stop learning and practicing. And as we remind ourselves every time we make our Baptismal promises, the early churches “continued in the apostles’ teaching” even as they attended to the needs of their communities.
The movement from disciple to apostle is the pattern of faithful living EfM prepares us to take on. Not learning for the sake of knowing, not reflection that focuses us solely within ourselves. Reflection is intended to lead us to action. TR is meant to move us out.
In some ways we’ve come far from Charlie Winters’ original idea for offering theological education to the laity by transcribing seminary lectures, but his idea that a theologically literate laity can change the face of the church is still very much a part of the EfM we know today.
A few years back at the General Convention I walked into the House of Deputies and saw EfM tote bags on nearly every table. The President of the House had noticed them, too, and called for every deputy who actually had been in EfM to stand. It was a great crowd of witnesses to the power of reflection that leads to action.
EfM’s particular form of Theological Reflection offers a way to put what our faith teaches us into conversation with what the world teaches us. How do those two things line up? How does what we know of the Christian testament inform how we understand our world. How does our life in the world inform how we understand the Christian testament?
That call and response between faith and experience is where we discover our gifts for ministry, where we find encouragement to use those gifts in service to the needs of the world. It’s where we find the Way.