On Wednesday our Christian Education leaders will gather to dream, brainstorm, and begin laying plans for next year's ministry of teaching and learning at Resurrection Lutheran Church. Here is the draft meeting agenda … What do you think? Anything you'd add or remove from this agenda? Thanks …
Gathering
- Coffee and goodies
Opening Prayer and Scripture
- Responsive Prayer, Evangelical Lutheran Worship, pages 328-331
- Deuteronomy 6:1-8
- Romans 10:9-17
Sharing
- Tell us about a significant experience you’ve had of Christian learning, faith formation, or wrestling with God. This may or may not have taken place within a congregation’s traditional ministry of Sunday School or education.
“The Big Picture” **
- What do we teach, and why?
- What assumptions do we make about the people we serve through our education ministry?
- What do we expect to happen as a result of our Christian teaching and learning (in the lives of learners, in the life of this congregation, in the community at large)?
- (for background on these questions, see my March newsletter article, available as a pdf here. Go to page four.)
Looking Ahead to the 2009-2010 Program Year **
- With this “Big Picture” in mind, what do we hope for, dream about, and look forward to in the 2009-2010 program year?
Review of 2008-2009 Program Year
- What went well?
- What didn’t go as well as we would have hoped?
- What changes would we like to make for next year?
- What leadership/personnel structure do we need for next year?
Next Steps
- Based on our conversation today, what is next?
- Schedule 2009-2010 nuts-and-bolts planning meeting
Closing Prayer and Blessing
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** The heart of our meeting begins with the hopes and dreams for our future, not a review of our past. Not only do I think this line of thinking is deeply theological and biblical – ours is a faith that looks forward to the promised day of salvation and which today lives out of that future reality – I also want to avoid starting out the meeting getting bogged down in the joys and challenges we experienced in this past year. Surely we'll get to those issues, either later in the agenda (as listed above) or within the discussion of our hopes and dreams, but I don't want to start there. This order is counter-intuititive, but I think it will work quite effectively … (or, I hope so, anyway!).
The Lutheran Zephyr 
No thoughts, but I might steal this structure for use later in the summer. We are trying to completely rebuild faith formation at our congregation, which, except for Sunday school and the senior citizens Bible study, has been dormant for more than two years.