Training Candidates for Ordained Local Ministry in Theological Reflection: a Critical Evaluation
Educational Philosophy within the Wakefield Ministry Scheme
The Wakefield Ministry Scheme is a Local Ministry Scheme offering parishes training in shared ministry together with an option for Ordained Local Ministry. This is an indigenous form of ordained ministry, set in a collaborative context and open to people of all educational backgrounds. As such it requires a form of theological education that is contextual, experiential, participative and reflective. This essay describes and critiques an attempt to model these principles in the design and execution of one strand of an OLM Training Programme. The essay is organized to follow the Learning Design Cycle with a recurring ‘Action-Reflection’ pattern within it.
The Submission to the House of Bishops prepared for the Revalidation of the Scheme in 2004 describes the ‘primary aim’ of the OLM Training as follows:
‘To provide a matrix within which candidates can grow in understanding, in faith, in vision, in competence, in holiness, in awareness of others, in collaborative working and in interdependence.’
Alongside this the document identifies three key aspects of the learning process:
§The desire to affirm all that has gone before in terms of experience and training.
§A wish at all times to integrate and hold together the world of study and the world of faith.
§The desire to bring together people of diverse churchmanships with a view to mutual enrichment.
This stated educational philosophy fits well with the six principles articulated by Stephen Brookfield (1994: 9-11) governing effective practice in facilitating adult learning:
§Participation in learning is voluntary.
§Practice is characterised by respect among participants for each other’s self-worth.
§Facilitation is collaborative.
§Praxis lies at the heart of effective facilitation (i.e. there is a constant action-reflection process).
§Facilitation aims to foster in adults the spirit of critical reflection.
§The aim of facilitation is to nurture self-directed, empowered adults.
The following extract from the Wakefield Diocesan OLM Handbook offers a summary of the rationale for the training programme, and hence also of the course described in this essay:
The main thrust is on being and becoming. This is often described as personal development or ‘formation’. The programme provides a variety of experiences which should enable candidates to learn and grow. This should not be thought of as an individual exercise. The context is a small group of ordinands. People will join in a shared journey of exploration and discovery and also deal with problems and difficulties together on the way. At the same time the individual will in no way be cut off from his/her parish context. New ideas will be tried out in a collaborative setting in the parish. New responsibilities will be undertaken. The individual’s standing within Core and congregation will become different. At the end of the process everybody should be able to look back and discern growth and development and change.
Structure and Content of the Learning Programme
The main focus of training for the cohort of OLM candidates, alongside their participation in their individual parish Core Groups, is the ‘mini-residential’ which takes place monthly, typically from 5 pm on one day to 5 pm on the next. Candidates usually stay in the Retreat House of the Community of the Resurrection at Mirfield and work in the premises of the College. Food and Eucharistic worship are shared with the College in term time and the Community out of it. The time together is punctuated by group prayers, led by the members in turn. A Eucharist is always included. A mini-residential might typically include 6 teaching sessions - two or three for practical ministerial training, one or two tutorials for reflection on parish experience and ongoing learning, and two covering academic syllabus content.
The learning programme centred upon these mini-residentials is structured in eight ‘strands’: Spirituality and Prayer, Worship and Worship Skills, Mission and Communication, Pastoral Concerns- theory and practice, Ordained Ministry in a Collaborative Context, The Church- past and present, The Bible and the Use of the Bible, and Christian Doctrine and Ethics. The last four of these are grouped under the general heading of ‘Inheriting the Tradition’. In terms of the inherited tradition the programme aims that candidates should:
§Engage with the roots of the Christian tradition
§Become aware of the ways in which that tradition has developed through the centuries
§Learn to apply this tradition and the thinking of others, past and present, to their own understanding and creativity.
In terms of the application of learning gained through engagement with the tradition, candidates are assessed for evidence of:
§Skills of critical analysis, thought and reflection
§Development of methods of study and reflection for the future
§Awareness of what is going on in the world
§Consideration of the implications of the Christian tradition for today
§Ability to explain things better to other people.
The course unit with which this essay is concerned forms the backbone of the ‘Christian Doctrine and Ethics’ strand of ‘Inheriting the Tradition’. For the cohort of ordinands starting training in autumn 2004, this strand has been redesigned, following a recommendation by the House of Bishops’ Inspectorate that ‘more programme time is identified within the mini-residentials in which candidates can acquire more theological knowledge and practise theological skills, especially theological reflection’. The skills of Christian ethical reflection are also brought here within the overall framework of theological reflection, although particular moral and ethical issues are also engaged with elsewhere in the learning programme.
Overview of the design
Prior to the 2004 intake the Doctrine and Ethics strand included a short introductory unit on ‘Thinking Theologically’ (3 x 1¼ hours) and a parallel unit on ‘Thinking Ethically’ was introduced in 2003, both of these taught by myself. The rest of the strand was made up from a number of separate course units taught by others. My task was to create a more integrated unit with theological / ethical reflection as the foundation of the whole. Time was allocated within the mini-residential programme for eight double sessions over two years, together with six single ‘tutorial’ sessions, which are interspersed throughout the course in order to provide opportunity for the cohort and tutor to reflect together on how course work in the relevant strand is interacting with what they are involved in practically in their parishes.
The first session is designed to introduce the candidates to a model of theology as reflective practice, setting this alongside other models they might be bringing with them (the most common of these being that ‘theology’ is academic, difficult and remote from practical concerns). The second explores the reflection model by means of the Learning Cycle. The third gives the group an extended opportunity to try this out for themselves. The fourth then sets out to make the link between theological reflection and spiritual formation as a way of introducing some aspects of the Doctrine of God: how do we know God and grow in that knowledge? Sessions five and six repeat a similar process to sessions one to three, but this time in respect of ethical thinking. Sessions seven and eight are closer to a traditional seminar model, looking at selected extracts from current theological and ethical scholarship and encouraging the group to identify what we can learn from them. The three tutorial sessions seek to anchor all of this in the candidates’ ongoing practical experience in the parish (and beyond).
Design for learning: reflection as model and method
Jarvis (1995:50ff) notes that many adults ‘are inhibited from participating because of their insecurity, distrust, low aspirations, limited time, dependence, negative attitudes towards education and shame at the low level of their achievement’. It would be extraordinary to find all these factors present in a small group of ordinands, as they have already got through a rigorous testing process to come this far. Nevertheless, it is easy to underestimate the influence of such factors where people’s expectations about ‘theology’ are in view. In the present cohort, two have no previous formal theological education but lengthy Christian experience and practical involvement in their churches; one is a licensed Reader; and the other trained thirty-five years ago for ordination in another denomination but has not recently been exercising ministry in his ordained capacity. In a simple word-association exercise at the beginning of the first session, all began by offering terms such as ‘academic’, ‘scary’, ‘remote’, ‘abstract’, as connotations of the word ‘theology’.
For the second exercise of the session candidates were given a sheet containing four short extracts from different kinds of theological works and asked to discuss in pairs the impact of the passages upon them. The aim was not to interpret the texts but to respond to the differences of style and feel between them. Allowing people to share their immediate personal responses to the texts was a way of gently breaking up the ground, getting people into the world of academic theology by observing how, in very different ways, each writer was engaging in a piece of reflection rooted in their personal faith but drawing on different kinds of resources (historical, philosophical, cultural etc) to help them explore and articulate it.
The remainder of session one introduced three models of ‘theology’ for discussion: the ‘Queen of the Sciences’ derived from the medieval worldview, the ‘Specialist Discipline’ of the modern university, and the ‘Reflective Practice’ that was to become the guiding paradigm for the course. At the beginning of session two the candidates were sent away in pairs to tell one another the story of a time in their life when events led them to some fresh learning about God. They were asked in conversation to try to tease out what was learned and why- what factors contributed to the learning and how were they changed by it? The purpose of this was to build confidence by showing that they were already doing practical theological reflection, before presenting the theory of it. This model for theology was then explored in much more detail in the second session, using the Learning Cycle:
Theology from above
ACT / EXPERIENCE
What happened?
DECISION REFLECTION
What are the practical What theological issues
outcomes for next time were raised?
I / we do this?
CONCLUSIONS
What theological learning
is to be drawn from this?
Theology from below
In this model, theology from above refers to the resources learners might bring in from external sources such as books read, lectures heard, formal church teachings and bible passages, while theology from below denotes the resources from personal experience and the collective wisdom that resides in the lived Christian context. In this way the whole cycle is seen as a process of doing theology. The candidates were then asked to come to the next double session having selected an issue or situation from their current practical / pastoral experience as the material for an extended theological reflection, with the following instructions:
Working in groups of three, each person in turn presents their issue with one of the other two as ‘tutor’ to help them undertake the theological reflection, and the other as observer. The person presenting has five minutes to describe the experience which is the material for reflection. The ‘tutor’ then takes them through the process of teasing out the essential aspects of the experience and finding out what theological resources from personal experience and external sources might be relevant to understanding what is going on and learning from it. Together they should aim to establish what is being learnt, and how it will affect action in future. The observer then has the opportunity to make any comments about the process.
This exercise took up the whole of session three. There was only a minimal ‘de-brief’ as the object was for people to take responsibility for the learning at this point and carry forward into their practical experience the action steps they decided through the process.
Session four employed the style of a ‘resourced conversation’ to help the group explore how what they had done so far is itself theologically significant, throwing light upon what it means to grow in the knowledge of God. For this a worksheet was used containing a range of varied materials:
§A brief account of an actual piece of theological reflection in which the learning that occurred was not what those designing the exercise had intended, illustrating the point that this model of doing theology loosens the hold of the teacher over the learner by opening up a creative space in which learners may well go off on a fruitful track of their own.
§A reflection on the meaning of ‘reflection’: i.e. that it is a metaphor, and that literal reflections can be clear and true, dim and obscure or distorted and disorienting; leading to a discussion of how we learn and grow by a continual process of projecting out from ourselves ideas, thoughts, experiences, onto other people, contexts, God, and discovering what ‘comes back’, i.e. what sort of a reflection is created and how we respond to it.
§A collection of three New Testament passages using the reflection metaphor (1 Corinthians 13:12, James 1:23, 2 Corinthians 3:18) as an invitation to Bible study.
§A suggestion that the idea of learning through reflection might challenge Descartes’ maxim of ‘I think, therefore I am’ with something like ‘We relate, therefore we become’, and that this might be theologically more in tune with our confession of God as Trinity, i.e. that personal identity derives from the relational nature of being (Zizioulas, 1993).
§A short extract from Parker Palmer’s To know as we are known (1983:97), in which he employs the archaic word ‘troth’ to describe the way ‘truth emerges through listening and responding to each other and the subject at hand’.
The remaining task was to set a piece of work for the forthcoming tutorial session. The intervening period being the Christmas season, candidates were asked to choose a service they attended, or a sermon they heard, over the Christmas period, and to reflect on ‘what understanding of the theological meaning of Christmas the service or sermon conveyed to them’, and come to the session prepared to share this with the group as a discussion starter. The intention was to draw upon the approach to theology learned in the first four sessions to produce material that would lead naturally into an exploration of Christology and the doctrine of the Incarnation.
Evaluation and Critique
Brookfield (1994:263-4) has drawn attention to the difference between evaluation and assessment. Evaluation in the present context cannot only be a matter of measuring the conformity of outcomes to a list of delimited learning objectives, since:
§What we are setting out to do is intentionally formative, about personal growth, which implies value judgments about what is desirable (e.g. in a Christian context).
§The experience of a learning event, and the collective dimension to that as well as the individual one, contribute to the value of it for the learner.
§Adult education methods always imply that some degree of control over outcomes is ceded by the facilitator; pre-set objectives are not always the only learning outcomes.
§For the educator in turn, learning from experience implies gathering some evidence to resource that learning, to influence how we plan the event next time round.
Judith Edwards (1991) stresses the importance of student involvement in evaluation that is more than a tool of management. The Wakefield Ministry Scheme itself supplies a feedback sheet for every session, to be completed by the students, comprising the questions:
§What do I know now that I didn’t before?
§Have I been helped, surprised or challenged by anything I have discovered?
§Are there any implications for my personal faith or developing ministry?
§Any other comments- including evaluation of the session.
§Issues I would like to take further.
These collected sheets provide an important source of normative rather than ‘summative’ evaluation. The information they yield can then be amplified with other analytical methods of evaluation, for example Kirkpatrick’s ‘hierarchy’ of reaction (what did the participants think of the session?), learning (what knowledge or skills have they acquired?), behaviour (what evidence is there that they are using the learning?) and results (does their ministry become ‘more effective’?- a contentious area of evaluation in this context).
As a summary, the evidential evaluation from the students themselves would comprise:
·Observational evidence that they are able to reflect theologically.
·Their feedback as to whether the design of the course worked.
·Evidence from their subsequent essay work as to their ability to handle theology.
·Evidence from the tutorial sessions as to the relevance of the material of this course to their ongoing practical ministry context.
·Longer term observational evidence that they are changing and growing in understanding.
At the present point in time the course has completed only its first term and so the evaluative procedures are at an early stage. However, some comments can be offered here about the first four sessions in relation to a number of criteria.
Methods. Learners have been invited to take part in a ‘brainstorm’ of word-association around the word ‘theology’. They have worked in pairs on a literary reading of some theological texts. They have received input on three models of theology, and discussed them in plenary. They have carried out a ‘story-telling’ exercise towards each other in pairs. They have received input about the Learning Cycle and engaged in an extended exercise in using it, drawing on current experience. They have taken part in a ‘resourced conversation’, exploring some philosophical, theological, experiential and biblical ways in to the doctrine of God. They have been asked to attend to a practical context of worship and teaching over Christmas and to reflect on it. This represents quite a wide range of methods, mostly interactive, often with the group generating their own learning within a provided structured process, and interspersed with generally short segments of teaching input. Interactive methods have been to the fore, presentation methods have been interwoven with them, but few search methods have been employed. The verbal has been dominant over the visual, and thinking has predominated over doing. These latter imbalances will need to be addressed in later sessions if the course is not to become over-cerebral and repetitive.
Learning styles. In the nature of the case, this entire approach favours Reflectors. Theorists will have appreciated the diagrams and tables used in setting out the Learning Cycle and summarizing the different types of theology. Activists will probably have been kept on board by the fairly frequent changes of method and style, but may become impatient later on if the same basic approaches are repeated. More use of visual aids, or perhaps introducing more different voices, could be a check on this. There has not been much for Pragmatists to get hold of, and sooner or later (if there is a Pragmatist in the group) the criticism may well be heard ‘but what use will all this be to me in my ministry?’ This question will need to be imaginatively addressed in future sessions: for example, by incorporating more use of ‘search’ methods.
Types of learning. The course so far has modelled affective learning by inviting the candidates throughout to draw on their experience and consider how they felt about theology, about the texts they were given to read, and about the current issues in ministry they were using as the material for theological reflection. There has been an injection of material for cognitive learning in a rather indirect way, through for example the introduction of some aspects of the history of theology, the exposition of the Learning Cycle and the linking of the practice of reflection to a particular Trinitarian tradition of thought about God. Not surprisingly there has been far less opportunity for behavioural learning, although during the extended reflection cycle in session three outcomes in terms of action have been looked for; in general behavioural learning outcomes will only be measurable in conjunction with other criteria over a longer timescale.
Concluding reflection on practice
At the initial stage of identifying needs, people often articulate their need in terms of wanting to ‘know more about’ some area of Christian belief or practice. The cohort of students beginning this course came with a sense of ignorance about ‘theology’ and a hope that their teacher would inform them about it. Rather than reject the request expressed in this way, the facilitator will aim to design a process that will do more than just deliver information, making use of questions designed to help people tease out their real issues. On the other hand, people must not be ‘sold short’, engendering the suspicion on their part that they have asked for bread but the teacher has given them a stone. This is what happens if people are expecting informative input and the facilitator only seems to offer a blank piece of paper. Groups sometimes call this ‘pooled ignorance’ and it arises when experiential learning is done badly.
For example, if the topic is ‘understanding the person of Christ’ the educator must be well acquainted with recent as well as past traditions of thinking in Christology. He or she is not going to deliver a lecture but needs to have enough material to be able to do so, because all manner of things may come up in group discussion. For example, if people are asked to cite a favourite hymn or worship song that particularly speaks to them about what Jesus means to them, a rich array of Christological models may emerge, and the educator must be ready to indicate how these relate to sections of the theological tradition so that people can begin to locate their own faith experience and perceptions in a broader context and thus learn to ask more penetrating questions about it.
Reflection is much more likely to be encouraged where there is informality and interactivity, but also a place for silence and individual pondering. We learn together and from each other, whoever is in the role of teacher or learner on any given occasion. Personal growth is the ultimate goal of education, and learning ultimately is measured by change in oneself; and the theological case for this is based on how God leads us towards the flowering of full personal identity in relation with others whom God is similarly leading. Evaluation therefore is never complete in terms only of ‘what do you know?’ and ‘what can you do?’ as a result of participating in a learning event; there is always also the ‘how are you changing?’ or ‘what are you becoming?’ to be explored.
As Mezirow (1991:219-20) states: ‘If a goal of education is to foster transformative learning, dogmatic insistence that learning outcomes be specified in advance of the educational experience in terms of observable changes in behaviour or “competencies” that are used as benchmarks against which to measure learning gains will result in a reductive distortion and serve merely as a device of indoctrination’. The use of the word ‘indoctrination’ should alert us to the peculiar aptness of this point in relation to the field of theological education.
John Williams, December 2004
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