Education for Ministry: Nurturing Faith in Community

A few years back…okay, more than a few years, it was 2009 actually…I decided that I needed to return to a fairly regular church life after a significant personal crisis.  Funny how those mid-life shake-ups can bring us back to God, right? Anyway, I started going pretty regularly to services on Sunday. My goal was to put me into proper communion with God, but I definitely was not there for all that touchy-feely stuff like the Peace or hugging or coffee hours. I felt I was good…just me and God. I believed that I didn’t really need all the community stuff and, in fact, I actively avoided it.  Fast forward a couple of years, and my friend (and EfM program mentor) Christine asked me if I was interested in getting to know a bit more about my faith (i.e., Education for Ministry or EfM). I didn’t know anything about EfM, so she gave me her elevator pitch.  I figured if I was going to take this Christianity thing seriously, I should probably actually read through the Bible and get to know a bit more about what I was professing as a newly re-energized Christian, so I signed up. That was 2011.

Fifteen years later, the EfM experience has helped me grow and live into my faith while deepening my relationship with the Trinity…which is great, but it’s not all there is to tell. Perhaps more importantly, to actively living out that faith, EfM gently coaxed me into understanding how foundational community is to a full and mutually nurturing spirituality, because it’s not just developing a personal relationship with God/Jesus/Holy Spirit but doing so within the context of community. As a gay Navy Officer, I spent most of my adult life building up very high and strong walls to keep the various communities in my life separate because some of them didn’t get along very well together. Joining a very intimate small group where we honestly shared the stories of our lives (Spiritual Autobiographies), revealed our fears, and expressed our doubts while integrating study of Scripture, church history, and theology/ethics/spirituality was scary. Yet opening myself up to be part of the group and, equally if not more importantly, allowing the group into my life has been one of the most challenging and positive things that I’ve done…and I like to flatter myself that I’ve been able to contribute back a bit too.

So, if all Christians are called to live out their faith in daily life, we need a solid grounding in the basics of that faith in order to put that faith into action…and most of us probably stopped really studying and investigating those concepts when we stopped going to Sunday school around 5^th or 6^th grade.

EfM is a small group adult formation program developed 50 years ago by the Episcopal seminary at the University of the South (Sewanee). In each EfM seminar, you’ll experience community by praying, studying, worshiping, reflecting, and discovering our unique way of walking in the world through faith. Through these five core practices, we build community right from the start. EfMers gather together, read, and reflect on one of five years of academic focus: Hebrew Scripture, Christian Scripture, church history, Christian ethics and spirituality, or a “Wide Angle” seminar study. By having members in multiple years simultaneously, we are able to explore the common themes throughout the faith journey. We experience the multiple voices of the spirit through each other’s experiences.

In addition to the academic focus, EfM teaches a spiritual discipline called Theological Reflection. It is the heart of EfM — it is what makes EfM not just a Bible study. Using everyday experiences, we connect our heart and head with what we observe going on in the modern world. Theological Reflection is the bridge between the Bible and our lives. It is a technique that enables our faith to impact our lives. It is an intentional, disciplined conversation — we are putting things into conversation with God and others. As the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, notes in his book Being Disciples, “A disciple is, as we have seen, simply a learner; and this, ultimately, is what the disciple learns: how to be a place in the world where the act of God can come alive.” (emphasis added). Through the lens of faith in theological reflection, we see the movement of God in our lives, which leads us to grow and transform into more well-rounded disciples of Christ.

If you have questions, want more information, or just want to talk a bit about the EfM programs, feel free to contact me at efm.edsd@outlook.com.