This week I’ve been at an annual gathering of Uniting Church state and national Lay and Leadership Educators, and a reguler (three times a year) meeting of the National Worship Working Group. The first is a network, not a formal committee, so the agenda is about talking about what we are doing, working on a few items of shared interest, and dreaming about the future. We’ve had an ongoing project to provide input to the Assembly on specified lay ministries. Recently that has included working on what national competency standards for Lay Preachers might look like.
Over three days we talked about
- how we seek to ‘network’
- training and assessing Pastors
- synod directions in lay education
- online and blended learning
- the Period of Discernment
- culturally-specific training for Lay Preachers
- developments in Mission-shaped Ministry training
- significant documents from the World Council of Churches
- Assembly level changes in Working Groups and staffing related to education and discipleship
- Resources for teaching and learning, worship, etc
We also brainstormed about some areas of interest and possible collaboration, stay tuned.
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