Shifting Responsibility for Christian Nurture to the Entire Congregation
E.Stanley Ott, Ph.D, Pastor, Pleasant Hills Community Presbyterian Church. President, The Vital Churches Institute and Vital Faith Resources. Presbyterian Church,USA Pleasant Hills, Pennsylvania.

I think that one of the most fascinating and potentially productive shifts taking place in traditional ministries of spiritual formation is the shift away from Christian Education as solely a "department" or "program" to the practice of Christian nurture across the organization of the congregation.

In more traditional congregations, the major responsibility for "spiritual growth" has rested with the Christian Education "department"- shared to some degree with the preaching pastor in the worship service. In congregations moving to more decentralized formats of ministry, spiritual development becomes the responsibility of every ministry, organization, program, committee, and life of the church. The ministry of Christian Education continues to generate classes, seminars, retreats, and groups that foster Christian Nurture. It's just that they are no longer the only ones doing it.

For example, a traditional Sunday School Committee may spend the first few minutes reading a Bible passage or a short devotional, but the press of the agenda quickly moves the committee on to its primary task, the discussion of the issues facing the Sunday School, reports by various department coordinators and the assignment of new tasks and due dates. Although some attention may be paid to specific issues of the spiritual nurture of children, the traditional committee would very rarely spend any time discussing ways to develop the spiritual life and depth of those on the committee itself.

The same would be true in the traditional Stewardship Committee, Planning Committee, Evangelism and Missions Committee and so on - a brief devotional and then onto the business at hand. It would never (or rather rarely) occur to the committee chairperson in a traditional congregational approach to ministry that he or she could or should structure the life of the committee so as to develop the discipleship of those on the committee. They would all assume spiritual growth of adults was some one else's job, notably the Adult Ministries Committee and the Pastor.

When a Session or ruling board moves to decentralize responsibility for Christian nurture, it retains it's authority and oversight of the full life of the congregation. However, instead of parceling out the responsibility for spiritual growth to one or two program areas, the Session expresses a congregational "core value" or "core practice". That is to say that all groups, small groups, committees, and ministry teams are to engage in practices that will encourage the spiritual development of the group members while simultaneously accomplishing the ministry the group is responsible for (e.g. youth ministry, building and grounds, couples ministry, etc.).

The shift of direction toward decentralization requires a new level of trained leaders in the life of the congregation. No longer just a "runner of programs" or a "chairperson of a committee", the leader is also called on to function as a spiritual director as one called to encourage the spiritual formation of others. Therefore, in addition to standard leadership and organizational skills, this new kind of leader needs a protocol to help her pray daily for the spiritual nurture of those she or he leads. He or she needs the skills of developing prayer partnerships, ways to engage them in substantive dialog over biblical passages, and means to assist those experiencing difficulty in their personal lives to feel care and support.

This new type of leader needs to learn ways to build the experience of community within the group and to search for the means to equip and deploy each of the people she/he leads according to each person's spiritual gifts and interests. As a matter of fact, the change from what typically happens in a purely task oriented committee to what happens when a group experiences genuine community, actually grows disciples and still accomplishes a ministry that is so great that such groups are much more commonly called "ministry teams" today than "committees".

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