Didache Volume 21 Number 1

INTRODUCTION

Dean G. Blevins, Editor

Welcome to the 21^st edition of Didache: Faithful Teaching. The following edition moves from spiritual and moral formation, to education for transformation and leadership, then closes with reflections on the task of clergy and higher education. Collectively the edition addresses the future task of ministry formation and leadership both by and for the church. 

The edition opens with Dr. Douglas Hardy’s working platform for spiritual formation with ministry students in mind. His journey model, anchored in the concept of persons-in-relation and dedicated to the love of God and neighbor, follows the writing of Lancelot Andrewes to provide guidelines for spiritual formation. Mike Leffel then offers a comprehensive guide to moral formation in love, particularly a love that cares for others. Leffel draws from his extensive background in moral psychology to develop a powerful dialog with Randy Maddox’s exploration of John Wesley’s moral affectional psychology. The dialog results in a new strategy for shaping the moral virtues of congregants and clergy alike in the future. Leffel’s work undergirds a new initiative by Point Loma Nazarene University’s Center for Pastoral Leadership, and Nazarene Theological Seminary, to offer a new curriculum that guides people into a caring love for others reminiscent of the parable of the Good Samaritan, a much-needed approach to our current divisive culture. 

The next two articles surface from new scholars in our Wesleyan tradition. Ernesto Lozano Fernández surveys the language of transformative education to provide a renewed vision of faith formation in a Wesleyan tradition to serve his current context of Peru and South America in general. Zach Ellis explores the new, yet old, vision of shared leadership both in the Wesleyan tradition and particularly in the Church of the Nazarene. Ellis’ survey reminds readers of the power of shared leadership versus more hierarchical models of oversight and control that often dominate during times of fear and uncertainty. 

The last two articles turn to education proper, particularly serving both clergy and laity through educational institutions in the Church of the Nazarene. My article provides an accounting of the challenges of both classically minded theological training and contemporary outcomes-based education for clergy education, particularly in the USA/Canada Region of the Church of the Nazarene. While regionally based, hopefully, the accounting provides insights into the myriad influences to clergy education and offers one response by moving to a virtues-related approach that might preserve the integrity, and intensity, of ministry disciplines. Finally, President Dan Boone reprises an earlier article on the importance of Nazarene Higher Education. That article opens with a reflection upon the USA crisis of 9/11, and it seems appropriate to return and update this writing considering the twenty-year anniversary of that event if only to remind the church of the pressing need for higher education to provide both critical investigation and civil discourse in the face of new and continuing crises. The writing reflects both the continuing insights of Dr. Boone but also the reflective heart of the late Ed Robinson. In a season of confrontation and control, higher education provides a careful, deliberative, response.     

Just a reminder that faculty members may also recommend student papers to Didache: Faithful Teaching and the faculty recommending a writing will be considered the primary reviewer of that submission, though we will provide some editorial support. We again thank the staff of the Asia Pacific Region, who works diligently in the formatting and maintenance of our website, and Dr. Tammy Condon who works tirelessly promoting Didache: Faithful Teaching, as she does in the development of the Wesleyan Holiness Digital Library (WHDL) https://www.whdl.org/.

Table of Contents

  pdf Introduction (84 KB) , Dean G. Blevins

  pdf A Journey of Christian Spiritual Formation (546 KB) , Douglas Hardy

  pdf Embodied Virtue: A Model of Virtuous Caring for Practical Theology and Christian Formation (1.11 MB) , G. Michael Leffel

  pdf Christian Faith Formation and the Process of Transformation in the Wesleyan Spirit (157 KB) , Ernesto Lozano Fernández

  pdf A Brief History of Shared Leadership in the Church of the Nazarene (196 KB) , Zachariah Ellis

  pdf Outcome or Ability (327 KB) , Dean G. Blevins

  pdf The Role of the Christian University in the Church of the Nazarene (92 KB) , Dan Boone