When Mawethu asked me several weeks ago if I would be willing to write a piece about my Adult Formation, I initially balked. Until a decade or so ago, I had never even heard the term “adult formation,” much less felt very “formed” myself. Yet, when he clarified that I could focus on my Education for Ministry (EfM) experience some years back, I relaxed. Who wouldn’t want to share an experience as fulfilling as EfM?
To explain EfM fully would make this piece too long, so I’ll summarize here: it’s a four-year program offered by Sewanee for lay people wanting to follow Jesus’ ministry more closely but not quite sure how. In my case, I also wanted to understand this challenging yet enduring religion we know as Christianity. I felt if I could make sense of seemingly baffling contradictions—the OT’s pervasive violence, the NT’s ambiguities, Christianity’s checkered history, and dense theological interpretations– then perhaps I could better find my own spiritual way in today’s challenging world.
This journey actually began during a Lake Logan Women’s Retreat when we learned about “sophia” or “women wisdom” in the Bible. For women long accustomed to Christianity’s deep patriarchal roots, this was a novel, exciting concept. A little later that spring, I was inspired to reach out to one of the co-leaders for more discussion. She recommended EfM, describing it as a “life-changing” experience. That summer, unexpectedly, I heard again about this “life-changing” program following an NCSU-OLLI lecture about threatened birds. These three successive “God signs” beckoned me to follow, and so I did, for four program years, plus two more, diving into scripture, church history, and theology with a diverse group of other seeking individuals.
Was it life-changing? In many ways, it was. Having the Bible “demystified,” for lack of a better term, was enlightening and even liberating, all of us had some serious questions. Through weekly small group discussions, facilitated by two co-mentors, one-room schoolhouse style, all four cohorts—Years 1 through 4—shared their assignments, insights and personal experiences following a simple ABCD formula: what amazed, bothered, confused, or delighted? This simplicity fostered wonderful discussions of complicated material, even when they edged into controversial territory.
Even more inspirational were the required theological reflections, or TRs. The whole group would identify a focus drawn from Christian tradition, contemporary culture, personal experience, or personal belief, and then explore it from multiple perspectives, like a cube, asking what’s good, what’s broken, how it could be fixed, and why its restoration matters. Often, what we had read and discussed earlier dove-tailed with the insights generated through the TR, creating a very powerful experience for us all. Was that mere coincidence…or another God-sign? I believe EfM has helped me see God in a lot of unexpected places, a life-changing experience in itself!
