Report of the
Board of Christian Education
As of the date of this report, our committee has met one time this year and will meet once more before the 127th Annual Conference. Our chairman was not able to meet with us due to extenuating circumstances but asked us to meet and elect new officers which we did. Our new treasurer has received all the funds from our former treasurer and transferred them to new bank accounts more local to him.
We also continued our discussion of the proper role of this committee in the 21st century when so many resources are available to each particular church via the internet. Rather than assuming that this committee has more expertise in finding the best resources than anyone else in our denomination, we asked ourselves “Would we be better stewards to post the resources in a manner that would allow outside opinions and recommendations; i.e. a social network or interactive website that goes both ways?” We want to avoid being a ‘bottleneck’ of resources.
As a result of these discussions, we have launched a new experimental web site and would welcome the Christian Ed. chairmen and committees, as well as Sunday School superintendents, all teachers and all interested persons in our congregations to try it out. The address of this new site is: http://2chron17.ning.com/ and the subtitle is: “Where Friends Help Friends Teach the Bible.” Anyone in our particular churches who has an interest in Christian Education is welcome to join and ‘test drive’ this interactive site, and make recommendations of either new resources or how to improve the site itself.
We look forward to meeting with the new BFC Executive Board to better understand our role as they see it. Until then we are suggesting at least half a dozen things: Our big vision is: 1) to get all ages excited about God and His word; 2) to theologically and practically equip each young man and woman in the BFC (and beyond) to prepare them to be knowledgeable and fruitful disciple-makers of the Lord Jesus Christ in the subcultures in which they find themselves today; 3) to encourage and facilitate the ‘cross-pollinating’ of our people in our churches, so that we can learn from one another and help serve one another; thereby 4) creating a unified and denomination-wide atmosphere, an ethos, of being intentional about our disciple making; and 5) seeking to ensure that we in the BFC have an overall plan for bringing our people along to maturity as disciple makers for Jesus Christ, rather than doing our Christian education haphazardly. Ultimately all of the above is 6) to help our entire denomination across the board to be more intentional about fulfilling our stated vision: “to become an expanding fellowship of churches united to make disciples of Jesus Christ.”
Please contact any of the members of this committee to offer your suggestions or help. Thank you!
Board of Christian Education: John C. Studenroth, Acting chairman; Nancy Mertus, Acting Secretary; Davis E. Duggins, Treasurer; David W. Eisenhower, Chairman on leave; Mark E. Barninger, Timothy J. Bertolet, Rachel Norris, Scott G. Ott,, Lou Prontnicki, Thomas J. Sorg, Dick Vroman, Jim Wickstead.