mountain masala

Christian education field interviews

I'm in the process of setting up interviews with local church leaders (ordained and the other type of Christian... just kidding. we're all lay people.) who are exercising the kind of leadership in Christian education/faith formation/spiritual growth that has a discipleship and mission edge that we can learn from. i'm going through a peer recommendation process. it's been exciting to receive more suggestions than I can include from some parts of the country and bewildering to have complete silence from others. but then, i look at the flood news and figure that some presbytery people are busy with other things... since i'm trying to do this as a PhD I can't tell you much else just yet, except to say that the Assembly Project is broader than my PhD, so I'm hoping to undertake a bunch of interviews that can be shared sooner and wider. I've done some trial interviews and I've loved it (not so sure about the subjects), so I can't wait to finally be doing this. The PhD process has involved learning more about qualitative research methods (I have done some in the past and my first degree had a quantitative research major) which I've really enjoyed and hope to continue and carry back into my work at the College in 2013.

reviewing lay preachers

I'm trying to finish a discussion paper that's part of a national review of the ministry of accredited lay preachers in the Uniting Church. last year we conducted national surveys of presbyteries (21 responded), lay leaders (979), ordained ministers (about 100) and church councils (about 2000. a massive amount of work and data and Lynne Taylor was been sensational to work with on this. so now there's a 20 page report with some questions about the future. it will hit cyberspace next week (available from the UCA Assembly website), but for now I'm trying to get the last few pages sorted. writing the 'options' part is the hard bit. what do you reckon should happen with lay preachers?