A Framework of New Media in Faith Education
Biblical
As a “Cradle Lutheran” and a seminarian, the Bible is integral to the faith education of my past, present, and future. The Bible is filled with stories of the fulfillment of God’s promises upon creation.
In the Torah, we witness the foundations of God’s work in the world and the primary teachings that the Jewish people followed. The Nevi’im shares the prophets’ stories, who often spoke about injustice and called on the people and the leaders to return to God. And in the Ketuvim, we read the stories and writings of people like Job, Ruth, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, and Nehemiah; the joys and laments of the Psalms; and the teachings of Proverbs, Song of Songs, Chronicles, Ecclesiastes, and Lamentations.
As far away as the events of the Tanakh, or Hebrew Bible, seem, the lessons and stories they give us are as relatable today as they’ve ever been. They teach us to sing our praises and cry out in lament. They teach us about community and caring for one another. They teach us about the benefit of rules and structure in combination with the freedom of God’s love.
Similarly, the New Testament brings about the good news of the Word, God incarnate in Jesus Christ. From Christ and the disciples, we learn how to care for our neighbors, subvert unfair power structures, and love unconditionally. Through Jesus’s birth, life, death, and resurrection, the roots of the Christian faith begin to grow into a fledgling tree, one that will produce more branches and leaves than any human can count. Through Jesus’s life, we learn that God understands and feels our suffering because Jesus was fully human.
The texts from the scriptures can also help us identify tenets of faith formation going back thousands of years. These tenets include:
Faith formation is participatory, active, and embodied
Faith formation draws on an informed background (scripture)
We need to know to participate, but you cannot learn without doing → I see, and I forget. I hear, and I remember. I do, and I understand.
Faith formation is connected with a community
Love God, love your neighbor
Living out the gift of the Word
Theological
I’ve spent most of the last thirty years trying to develop a framework for my theological beliefs. There are a few things I am sure of, at least for myself. First, the divine is trinitarian, three in one. Second, Emmanuel, God with us. Third, “God knows all, and God doesn’t know the future because it doesn’t exist yet.” So, how do these points inform my relationship with new media? I’ll try to explain.
Going back to confirmation classes in middle school, I remember being fascinated by the idea of the Holy Trinity. I’d spent years learning about God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, but it wasn’t until this point that I remember seeing the “triquetra,” or trinity knot. This visualization of the trinity helped me to see how the three persons of God were all linked and all separate.
Which is how I landed on Immanuel being integral to my faith beliefs. The trinity knot helped me understand the embodiment of God within the person of Christ and that Christ is in every part of creation. There is no separating the divine from the human. In one of the essays for my application to Luther, I wrote about how my relationship with Jesus is like my relationship with part of my body. It’s just there and always has been.
And this brings me to my final theological pillar – God knows all, and God doesn’t know the future because it hasn’t happened yet. First, I think it’s important to say that this is a concept I am co-opting from Steve Thomason. He brought it up in class, and it perfectly fits the feelings I’ve struggled to name for years. Second, this idea that God doesn’t know the future is incredibly comforting to me.
These three pillars inform my engagement with new media in faith education. First, the Trinity and Immanuel idea helped me embrace inclusivity and expansiveness. From the spaces we gather to the language we use, I understand that God is present in, with, and through it all. Second, the understanding that the future is unknown to God connects with the idea that God is in it with us. God experiences life alongside creation.
Experience and accompaniment are tantamount to my engagement with new media. One concept we discussed in class was the idea that some churchgoers see the pastor or deacon or vicar as the “sage on the stage.” That Christian public leaders are somehow above those in their community and are omniscient. This could never be the case. There is nothing about being called to the cloth that magically endows you with the wisdom of God, though the role of clergy might be easier then. We don’t know how xyz will impact our community. Instead, I believe we are called to be the resident theologian. To reside with the members of our community, coming alongside them in their joy and heartache, just as God comes beside us.
Theoretical
In class, we addressed “lesson planning basics.” Teachers need to engage students in mind, body, and spirit – know, feel, and do. As Christian public leaders, I think we often forget to integrate all the parts of a person into our teachings. Whether for the sermon, Sunday school, confirmation, bible studies, or something else, I’ve seen a tendency for church to be wholly for the spirit. But people are more than their spirits! They have minds and bodies we need to tend to as well. Neglecting to involve the whole person in learning can lead to gaps between the message we share and the message they take home.
Episcopal priest Cynthia Bourgeault speaks about the rational, movement, and emotional intelligence of humans. Or, the mind, body, and spirt. “The mind processes abstract information and observes nature through dissection and analysis. The body experiences the physical reality of the universe and knows by doing. The spirit encounters the universe and empathically connects through intuition or emotion.” (p.16)
Just as Jesus is an example to people of how to live biblically and theologically, Jesus was also a wonderful teacher. Steve Thomason writes, “Jesus was the master of visual communication. He didn’t only tell his disciples…he gave them a visual image that was very familiar to them…” (p. 14) In this way, Jesus engaged the minds and spirits of his followers. And as Immanuel, Jesus was constantly engaging in the physical world. Feeling the pain of people, actively seeking out those that society otherwise pushed aside – children, women, the poor, anyone seen as lesser.
The sermons we give or the classes we teach are a single frame of the beliefs we strive to share. If we want God’s message to become engrained in the people of our community, it’s our job as leaders to learn the models that work for them. Jesus knew words alone would not convey his message, so he drew on extended metaphors and met people where they were until they were ready to come to him. It’s time for clergy to find the metaphors of our communities and to go out.
Contextual
I believe it was in Leading Christian Communities in Mission that Terri Elton drilled into us that “Context is key.” And if it wasn’t her, it was another Luther Sem professor.
While new media is everywhere you turn, different types of new media are more or less prevalent depending on the context. Location, access to resources, education, heritage, race, class, gender, and so much more inform the choices of media people choose to engage with. If our goal is to connect with people in spaces they feel comfortable, we need to find a way to transcend these differences. It’s also important to realize, we do not belong in every space; not every context is ours to engage with.
The fact of the matter is, I, and many of my fellow classmates, carry a great deal of privilege. And as much as we might see a need and think, “I bet I can fix that,” reality often tells us someone else, someone who is part of that community, that context is already doing the work and is lacking the resources. If we are willing to give or find the resources to do the work ourselves, why are we not willing to give or find the resources to lift up the people already doing the work?
This is where I believe context collapse can come into play. We want to believe that we are part of something, that we’ve been invited in, even if our role is observer instead of participant. Context collapse greys the lines of reality, which can lead to misunderstanding of what our role is in a space. We might hear the longings and losses of a community, but if we haven't experienced them, if we can’t empathize, our contexts aren’t matching. In these cases, I suggest that we continue to come alongside a community to support them. We don’t need to be in charge, it's okay to be on the sidelines.