"Reimagining Pastoral Education and Training" is a professional doctoral project born out of a burden of pastor-parish challenges that lead to pastoral dropout. A basic prelude question assesses the perceived problem: "Is there really a declining corps of young pastors leaving the ministry, disrupting their families, and…

The purpose of this study is to present the fundamental principles, methods, and effective communication methods of oral discipleship training for the believers in the oral cultures. To achieve the purpose, the researcher analyzed the data obtained from the individual interviews with 25 manaschys and 30 Kyrgyz Christian ministers. In this…

This article aims to recover the foundational importance of training in ascesis for Christian education. For early Christian pedagogues such as Basil of Caesarea and John Chrysostom, education was seen not so much as the transmission of information as it was an invitation to a life of virtue and faith; to this end they especially encouraged…

This forum revisits Paulo Freire's "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" on the 50th anniversary of its publication in 1968. William R. Myers's opening essay reflects on his discovery of the book and the impact it has had on his life as a Christian minister and theological educator. He provides a Freirean critique of his own schooling and of…

Since the publication of Pope Francis' landmark encyclical (2015), "Laudato Si," there has been a robust discussion among religious educators concerning the notion of ecological conversion. Drawing on this rich scholarship, this paper strives to move from the "what" of ecological conversion to the "how"; that is, how…

In "To Young Men," Basil of Caesarea asserted that pagan literature could be read discerningly for the pursuit of virtue. As a professor of English, I recognize Basil as an exemplar pedagogue in my own insistence that Christian students read secular texts. Not a scholar of Greek, I rely on patristic scholarship to understand Basil's…

The history of religion as a school subject, as with the history of the school curriculum in general and the history of individual school subjects in particular, tend to be neglected. As a contribution to that corpus of work, a study of religion as a school subject in Western Australian Catholic schools offers some interesting insights. In…

Dr. Calvin Otis Butts, III is a towering figure in both the Black Church and in higher education. Dr. Butts is the only Black faith-based social activist to have led a famed house of worship and a respected public university concurrently for over two decades. Dr. Butts is the Pastor of Abyssinian Baptist Church and was the longest-serving…

New models for prison ministry are crucial during the current era of mass incarceration in America--a time when the potential reach of prison ministries can grow as the population of incarcerated individuals grows. In this article, I lift up one prison ministry in New Jersey as an example of how Christian evangelicals who are engaged in…

Current trends in disaffiliation and declining enrollment in Catholic schools raise difficult questions about the perceived value of Catholic education and the Catholic Intellectual Tradition (CIT). Following the work of theologian David Tracy, the author makes a case for engagement with Christian "classics" as a promising means not only…

Drawing on research in deliberative pedagogy, this paper will develop in depth one piece of a larger project that envisions peace education as an essential component of youth ministry. The paper proposes a sacred pedagogy that engages theological concepts through deliberative, democratic discussion, teaching young people skills in engaging across…

This study was conducted in order to fill an existing gap within the field of religious education, specifically regarding standardisation within evangelical education aimed at teaching the youth within the church. There is currently no standardisation of education between sects nor within individual sects of evangelical Christianity, and this…

Using a descriptive phenomenological method, this study examined the influence of emotional intelligence on the tenure of senior pastors in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). The aim of the study was to seek evidence from the lived experiences of senior pastors with five or more consecutive years of service to determine if high emotional…

The way faith is formed depends upon the zeitgeist, the spirit of the age. Faith formation cannot happen in a vacuum. It is shaped and informed by all that is happening. In our time, the COVID-19 pandemic is happening. In this essay I reflect on faith formation amid the zeitgeist of the Coronavirus, considering ways that the pandemic requires…

This paper shows how a significant, but short-lived, episode in Scotland's educational history--the rise and decline of Socialist Sunday Schools (SSSs) in the first half of the twentieth century--provoked controversial debates about issues that continue to have relevance today. The first half of the paper explains the origins of SSSs, their links…