The project of "Building the Future in Leadership Formation" will be carried out through what we are calling Communities of Praxis. A description of the entire process and your invitation to join is found below. You can click on each item or just scroll down the page.

ON THIS PAGE:

An Invitation to Participate in this Project through the Communities of Praxis

The Description of the Process for the Communities of Praxis

The Description of the Themes for each of the Communities

How to Sign Up

AN INVITATION TO JOIN IN THIS IMPORTANT PROCESS

April 7, 2006

Dear UMASCE Friends,

On behalf of the UMASCE executive committee, I write to cordially invite you to become part of a “community of praxis” within our organization.
What is a Community of Praxis? Here is a brief description.

A Community of Praxis is a small group of scholars who spend time together focused around the following: a) Going beyond attendance at the biennial consultations, to BE a community engaged in ongoing processes of consultation that supports individual members in their areas of service and scholarship and, b) Creating what Randy Litchfield calls “a collective movement for prophetic change.”

The 2007 Consultation in Oregon will bring together the work that these communities of praxis have produced by that time, but the most important issue is what will happen between now and then and beyond the consultation. Please see the enclosed description of the communities, their background, a proposed process, and the desired outcomes and consider which Community’s focus attracts your interest.

Please consider this your personal invitation to join a Community of Praxis. The executive committee wants everyone to be involved, whether you are able to attend the 2007 meeting or not. Right now, before you go to the next thing on your “to do” list, look at the descripion of the project process and of the Community themes you will find below, and sign up for the group topic upon which you wish to focus. The facilitators of that group will be in touch with you soon to digitally convene the group. If everyone signs up for the same topic, that’s ok; your executive committee is ready to deal with that and other possibilities.

Let me take this opportunity to personally invite you to beautiful Alton L. Collins Retreat Center at the base of Mt. Hood in Oregon for the 2007 Consultation, July 28-August 1. Please see this website for a “snap shot” of the site: collinsretreatcenter.org. In addition to the great facilities and great work we will do, we will enjoy having a massage therapist and a yoga teacher with us, as well as many opportunities for hiking, and site-seeing. Historic Timberline Lodge, built by the CCC often has snow year round and is an easy drive away from the Collins Center. You will receive more information about the Consultation in the future.

This is an exciting time in UMASCE’s illustrious history as we work with the General Board of Discipleship and the United Methodist Publishing House to shape the future of Christian Education. It’s a great way for each of us to contribute to our discipline and the Church. Some scholarships will be available to help new and senior scholars get to the Oregon meeting. You will receive information about the 2007 Consultation in the near future. In the meantime, feel free to contact me with any questions.

Blessings,

Patty Meyers, D. Min., Ed. D.
President-elect

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A Description of
Communities of Praxis
United Methodist Association of Scholars in Christian Education

Background
The 2005 Consultation focused on the “Ecology of Leadership Formation” in The United Methodist Church and out of that consultation came the commitment to “Building the Future in Leadership Formation” in our church. To live into that transformative commitment, UMASCE is forming small “Communities of Praxis” centered around themes emerging from the 2005 consultation. These include

Change
Community
Vocation
Praxis
Vision
Theological education

Goals
The goals for the UMASCE Communities of Praxis include:

• creating a communal base to create a collective movement for prophetic change
  
• creating a communal base to support individual members in their formative and transformative local work
  
• resourcing the 2007 UMASCE consultation July 28 to August 1, 2007 as community of praxis members make their work public.
  
• assisting UMASCE to become an ongoing consulting process as well as an organization of scholars conducting a biennial consultation meeting.
  

• commit to mutual support and encouragement of group members
  
• engage their group's issue concretely in some aspect of their lives, i.e., embodied scholarship
  
• develop change strategies for realizing the group’s “preferred future” for their concern
  
• consult, research, and resource each other on various aspects of the issue
  
• make their work public in some form (papers, articles, blog, presentation at consultation meeting, multimedia, curriculum, program, etc.)
  

• share about their collaboration, powerful personal experiences or witness for their issue
  
• share a summary of their progress, research, resources, and accomplishments
  
• build strategic partnerships with others—many issues will overlap groups
  
• reflect on the group process in anticipation of the next two-year cycle
  

Communities of Praxis Themes

The following descriptive lists of issues for each community are suggestive and potential and not meant to restrict the community to these issues. If someone wishes to explore a community further before they decide they can request to receive more detailed information or talk with the community facilitators.

You may click on one of the theme names here to go straight to that theme or simply scroll down:

Change .....Praxis.....Vocation.....Theological Education....Vision....Community

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Change

With the focus on guiding communities/institutions/congregations into needed “adaptive change” potential issues for this community might include:

• Shifting/changing leadership roles
  
• The influence of our understanding of faith development and formation on ways leadership formation is conducted in a community or congregation.
  
• Identifying prevailing myths of leadership and relationship to Christian values and implications for Christian education.
  
• Learning whether leadership can be taught and alternative models for teaching Christian leadership for different age groups.
  
• Exploring models and resources for leading adaptive change or work in communities and congregations.
  
• The role of Christian education in leading healthy change.
  
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Praxis

This Community will explore the role of praxis and reflection on praxis in Christian education and formation. After determining how we will function as a Community of Praxis some initial points of focus for the Community’s work may include:

• Exploring available scholarship related to Christian praxis and its implications for local church Christian education.
  
• Exploring research and resources needed to equip educational leadership for facilitating Christian praxis and reflection on praxis.
  
• Ways of equipping individuals for theological reflection on Scripture, the Christian tradition, and their life experience.
  
• How theological reflection can engage respectfully multiple perspectives. (Creating “holding environments” in which it is safe to examine assumptions different from one’s own )
  
• Exploring how theological reflection contributes to meaning-making, to maturing faith, to one’s understanding of call, vocation, and discipleship.
  
• Discovering the practices that are normative for Christian communities of faith and how they are being taught.
  
• Discovering how Christian communities of faith are equipping their participants to talk about their experience of God. and to articulate the connections they are making between their faith and their daily lives.
  
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• What it means to live out our baptismal vocation for the reign of God.
  
• What it means to fulfill the promises we make in the baptismal ritual to nurturing one another in the Christian Faith and Life.
  
• Equipping ourselves to educate others toward a baptismal vocation for the reign of God.
  
• Engaging and equipping congregational leaders in the nurture of persons in accepting their baptismal vocation to participate with God and God’s people in bringing about God’s reign.
  

• The graduate programs such as MACE that are offered, their vision, stated outcomes, etc. and whether or not they need revisioning.
  
• The undergraduate programs offered, their vision, stated outcomes, requirements and participation.
  
• The nature of the shift of responsibility for educational leadership between schools of higher education and conferences/jurisdictions and its implications for the perceived need for formal theological education.
  
• Exploring for new models of formal theological education.
  
• The implications for seminaries and graduate schools of the non-degree programs being developed in response to leadership needs.
  
• Barriers for emerging educational leaders to participate in formal theological education.
  
• The role of technology in rethinking ways formal theological education can help develop educational leadership.
  
• The impact of such movements as the “emerging church”.
  
• Exploring insights from recent publications related to the education of clergy and educational leadership.
  
• Implications of the move from the BD to the MDiv degree.
  

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Vision

Our focus will be on visioning and dreaming about the future of Christian education and our own action together in exploring those visions. Issues and areas for research might include:

• The present and future images of Christian education and its goal and hoped for outcomes in the lives of people.
  
• The relationship between education, formation, nuture and other terms as they shape what we do and how we talk about Christian education.
  
• Exploring new paradigms for understanding growth in faith and Christian maturity.
  
• The ways our theology and sociological insights need to shape our processes and approaches.
  
• What will it take to help move the Church into the preferred future and be advocates for change.
  
• What images and directions are already present among us and what research to we need to engage to facilitate our advocacy for change.
  
• Connecting with other movements for hope in the world.
  

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Community

  This group will focus on an educational pedagogy of "communal" or "shared" praxis approach for community transformation based on a vision of the "Kingdom of God", "Reign of God" or  "The Beloved Community". The research agenda will focus on the components or aspects of such an approach which will include such topics (but not limited to): 

• The "Religious Values" and "Principles" of the Beloved Community.
  
• The social and practical and therefore "communal practices" implied by these values and principles.
  
• The uses of these religious values and principles as hermeneutical lens for a "shared" or "dialogical" social critical analysis of current events and social structures for Christian witness and mission.
  
• The role of experiential and cooperative educational strategies for presenting "Biblical" and "Theological "themes that both illustrate and demonstrate values and principles of the Beloved Community.
  
• The use of "Service Learning" in religious educational settings as expressions of communal praxis education to create the Beloved Community.
  

The Community focus group will explore such issues as the end of "Extreme Poverty" "Worldwide (but especially Africa) AIDS pandemic" and Western (Christian)/ Muslim religious conflicts ( i.e....Iraq).  The group will address these issues using a shared praxis approach to community transformation according the vision of the Beloved Community.
 

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HOW TO SIGN UP

You can sign up simply by sending an email to Ben Marshall at rben@airmail.net and including your name, mailing address, email address and a phone number where we can reach you, and of course your choice of themes from the list above. (Ben may have your contact information, but please include it in case it has changed)

If you have not become a member of UMASCE for 2006, please send your membership dues ($35 for regular and $17.50 for student and retiree) to Ben Marshall, 4224 Bluffview Blvd., Dallas, TX 75209. We need your membership to help cover the various expenses of this project. Thanks!

When we receive your request the facilitator for that Community will contact you as soon as possible and provide you with further information.

Please send us your request by April 28, 2006!.

If you have any questions, just direct them to Ben at the above email address or with a phone call to 214-350-5821.

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