preview

Norma Everist

Satisfactory Essays

Norma Everist in the book, The Church as Learning Community purports all of us are both teachers and learners. She further assets teaching and learning takes place in every facet of our lives. I have embraced from an individual perspective the premise that learning is a life-long vocation but had not considered the enormous possibility that all of us teach and learn from each other both formal and informal settings. I agree with her regarding the local congregation’s automatic separation of teachers and learners. In my context, that was entirely the case in the past. There were a group of persons who had been designated teachers and everyone else was considered learners. Recently, there has begun to be a shift whereas the church is intentionally becoming more intergenerational in its approach to developing relationships, thereby providing greater opportunity for teaching and learning. One challenge is to ensure that those who teach in the formal settings are gifted and adequately equipped to teach the curriculum. …show more content…

She further states that everything else is resource. This is an interesting and perplexing definition. Heretofore I have understood the definition of curriculum to be a course of study and refers to the entire Christian education program. However, after reading her explanation, I can clearly see and understand her definition because we are all teachers and learners. Contrarily, I could not grasp the concept regarding her assertion that each time the faith community gathers, also present are God’s people from every time and place. It is unclear to me how this takes place and in my opinion Everist does not sufficiently explain this concept. Norma Everist goes on to discuss how disagreements and challenges within the faith community impact our growth and

Get Access