In "Faith Formation 2020", John Roberto describes four possible scenarios for faith formation for the future. They come from considering two questions: Will people become more receptive or resistant to orgqanised religion? and Will people 's hunger for and openness to God and the spiritual life increase or decrease? Rather than give absolute yes/no answers, Roberto provides the alternatives as four quadrants.
The assumption is not that the future will only be one of the above four, but rather that in different place and times, the proportions of people in each quadrant may vary. What Roberto actually does here is outline four kinds of 'audiences' for faith formation, or whatever we call it.
The interesting thing for me is how it immediately makes us look beyond the traditional audiences for Christian education, namely those receptive to organised religion, and invites us to think about the "faith formation" dimensions of mission. The criticism of Christian education as catering to a diminishing 'captive' audience was justified. Whether engaging people in the lower two quadrants is education, formation, evangelism, discipleship or something else, is another (important) question (not considered by the author).
This initial chapter, then, sets up the framework for the rest of the book - in what ways might the church engage people in each of these quadrants in exploring Christian faith. What strategies, approaches, settings, resources, personnel, might be required? There's no discussion of educational theory, mission, spirituality or ecclesiology. He leaves it up to you to decide how to 'be church' in each setting. What the book does, though, is report on what others are doing in these sectors, drawing on both religious and wider wisdom, and then foocusing on transformational leadership as the critical factor.
I'm not full convinced about the scenario approach, including assumptions about 'hunger' that the church might meet. That aside, as you work through the book, there are plenty of connections with recent mission thinking and practice, even if these aren't explicit. More to come on that. I think that as a way of auditing and planning a church's educational or formational ministries, the diagram has merit.
Part of Roberto's genius with the Comprehensive Approach (back in the mid 90's) was the encouragement to see ministry as both 'gathered' and 'non-gathered', and taking places in different places and different times. In a sense, what he does here is add the factor of disposition into the mix. While it's not new for those with a mission bent, it is an overdue prompt to church-centric education.
Download chapter 1 of the book here. (500kb PDF. Provided by the publisher).
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