Most likely by looking to this blog you are enticed by the title. I can't help but think that I did that on purpose. There is something about the need for immediate action that has become a "buzz word" in our culture. Maybe it's the politics. Maybe it's the inner workings that we all sense. Either way, we are a culture of change and progression.

Recently, I've begun to question the mediums with which we use to convey Christian education. I've often asked myself why it is that we can go through the "motions" of weekly church services and still remain the same. That in our efforts to teach, disciple, lead and direct people of all ages to Life with Christ we inevitably come across the same bridges over and over and over and over again without much progress. I was tipped off to a form of education that has been remiss in our culture for some time and it has me intrigued. Classical education has been around for ages but has made it's way out of how we teach. As I was reading through the way that classical education is presented, it seemed to make a lot of sense. Instead of teaching out of obligation, the teaching system taps into what is applicable for the students at that point in their life. Instead of simply going about it as usual, you are able to make use of what is passionate.

I began to read an essay that has my church reform motor going (to take a look at the essay, click here). Here are some of the capstones of the essay by Dorothy Sayers entitled "The Lost Tools of Learning" :

"Has it ever struck you as odd, or unfortunate, that today, when the proportion of literacy...is higher than it has ever been, people should have become susceptible to the influence of advertisement and mass propaganda to an extent hitherto unheard of and unimagined?"

"Do you ever find that young people, when they have left school, not only forget most of what they have learnt (that is only to be expected), but forget also, or betray that they have never really known, how to tackle a new subject for themselves?"

"We fail lamentably on the whole in teaching them how to think: they learn everything, except the art of learning."

"For the sole true end of education is simply this: to teach men how to learn for themselves; and whatever instruction fails to do this is effort spent in vain."

Sounds like a woman who traveled with C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien no doubt! How much of this is just like an environment that we have created within the church? People who have grown up within the Church know all the information but have no way to relate, explain, dialogue, debate or reason with all the information they have. Sermons are mostly forgotten and we are left with the same as it has always been. I have sparred all of you with all the details of what goes into each level of education, but when it comes to Christian education within the church (especially within Children and Youth Ministry), it seems to me all the more necessary and beneficial to what we would like to accomplish. Check out the essay. It's 10 pages, but when you read it, your mind should be afresh with new ways of creating disciples. In Dorothy's own words, it is "progressive retrogression."
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