The United Methodist Church in the USA has published ‘standards’ for formation and discipleship. They raise an important question: what are you aiming for when you seek to form and educate people for Christian faith? How would you know if you were succeeding? The schema uses Tom Groome’s categories of inform, form and transform as the flow of formation and education. Each of theses is applied to three theological foundations:
- to know and experience God
- to claim and live God’s promises
- to grow and serve as Christian disciples
The first chart provides some guiding theological statements. The second chart gives some sample goals in each of nine areas, but is designed for you to be able to fill in the blanks. Overall they are clear, relatively simple tools that any church could use to evaluate and plan.
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