Faith Works 3-7-20

Faith Works 3-7-20

Jeff Gill

 

Non-formal isn't the same as informal

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When Joyce and I first got married, we ended up fairly quickly becoming docents at the Indiana State Museum.

 

A docent is defined as a person who leads tours, or a "knowledgeable guide." A park ranger is often a docent of sorts, and later my wife would be a National Park Service interpretive ranger, a docent with a uniform.

 

Most of the docenting we've done over the years has been more along the lines of name tags and sturdy shoes, whether at Pricketts Fort State Park in West Virginia or up at the Flint Ridge Nature Preserve and ancient quarries there in southeastern Licking County. I've been a regular docent or tour guide for thirty years now at the Great Circle and Octagon sites of the Newark Earthworks.

 

And in fact, Joyce got her doctorate – at The Ohio State University, Go Bucks! – in non-formal education, or natural resource interpretation. That's the study and practice of gathering up and guiding around people who are voluntarily choosing to visit a site, a location, a natural or cultural resource, and are open to learning about it.

 

This is related to, but quite distinct from what we'd call formal education. That's mandatory and has outcome requirements, in the form of grades and such; most educational programs we're all familiar with are formal education. Attendance is state law, and participation has expectations associated with it.

 

Non-formal education, however, invites participation, and rarely if ever does a summative assessment. But park rangers and docents and tour guides are always interested in figuring out the answer to the question "is anyone learning anything from what we're doing?" And along with that, "how can we do it better?" The National Association for Interpretation has training programs, and of course the National Park Service does for their staff as well.

 

As a minister, I've always looked over Joyce's shoulder with interest at her work with non-formal education, because quite frankly, it has much more in common with modern congregational life than churches have with schools . . . but formal educational standards and methods are directly and indirectly the strongest influence on church life, especially around teaching and learning.

 

Yet no one has to come to church, and even if you attend, you don't have to take classes or participate in enrichment experiences, from special services to prayer groups and study circles. It's all voluntary, and no one is working for a grade. (There's that big final exam, but I'm not going to push that parallel here…)

 

Tod Bolsinger in his recent "Canoeing the Mountains," about churches and changes, said back in 2015: "As pastors, we were trained to teach those who come on their own, to care for those who call for help, to lead those who volunteer and to administer the resources of those who willingly give and participate." I won't reproduce his next sentence, because some might find it unduly harsh, but the upshot is: today, clergy and congregations can't just wait for people to come in because we have the right logo on the sign, wait for a direct request to find our way to healthy pastoral care, assume we have people lining up to help anytime we launch a project or plan, or even expect that people will give to support the things they do involve themselves in.

 

His point is that many things that used to happen in church life were, I'd suggest, like school. People had a sense of obligation about attendance and participation and contribution of time and money, and your job was to manage that externally created input. Today, very few people have a felt sense of "I need to be in church on Sunday" and even among those who do, you can't get them into classes or events just by saying "the pastor has started…"

 

You are much more like a ranger working the information desk at a visitor center, where many of your first time guests start with "where's the bathrooms, and where is the gift shop?" and if you want them to walk any distance away from the parking lot, you have to put some plan and intentionality into getting them to voluntarily choose to join you on your hike or campfire program.

 

And there's a case to be made that faith communities can only get stronger once we get past the "oughtness" of participation. What does it mean to invite in a compelling fashion, and to engage a visitor with the spiritual resources you know are just beyond the edge of the parking lot? I hope to discuss this more in coming weeks.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; he's a sucker for a good interpretive hike, but solo treks into the wilderness are pretty cool, too. Tell him where you see your engagement with the landscape of faith at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.