Forming a Community of Faith: A Guide to Success in Adult Faith Formation Today

Abstract

Jane Regan of Boston College, USA, has for many years offered catechists a vision of Christian education that encompasses the whole parish: a vision that can transform the way they understand faith formation and enhance the way they do their jobs. In Forming a Community of Faith she offers a new guide to parish-based adult faith formation that Roman Catholics will value, and that Christian educators from other traditions may mine for insights and practical guidance. Targeted to lay and ordained parish leaders, the book is user-friendly and well designed for group reading and structured discussion. It includes helpful formatting (headings and diagrams); “Questions for Reflection and Conversation” at the end of each major section to help readers link content with their own experience; and summaries of key points to “Keep in Mind” at the end of each chapter. Almost every page contains at least one pithy phrase or sentence that can be unpacked to spur rich discussions on adult faith, parish education, and Christian practice in secular life. Footnotes point to key scholarship and to online resources of great practical use. The book spans five easily digestible chapters. Chapter one frames adult faith formation around two main themes. These are “the challenge to teach as Jesus did”, i.e., fostering gospel living and Christian mission for peace and justice; and “the reality of post-modernity”, i.e., taking seriously pluralism, individual stories, and the suspicion of largescale institutions that shapes many churchgoers’ sensibilities today. Chapter two is a close reading of Roman Catholic church documents. It fleshes out the links between “evangelization” and “catechesis”, between the call to live lives of Christian discipleship (at home, at work, and in the parish) and the training that church educators are called to provide. Here Regan urges parish educators to shift their “primary question” from “What are the children learning (and how can the grownups be helpful)?” to “What do adults need to be talking about in order to recognize and to be signs of God’s presence to their families and to the world?” (p. 36). Chapter three unpacks the form and content of mature, adult Christian faith. Adult faith is “living, explicit, and fruitful;” it is Jesus-centered; it flourishes in Christian community; it grows and adapts, so it needs to be nurtured; it learns from conversation, especially conversations that focus on Scripture, on church teaching, and on the lives and viewpoints of other people; it prepares believers to be priestly, prophetic, and political in their mission as disciples in the world. Chapter four is a tour de force on how to structure fruitful conversations and how to ask fruitful questions with adults. Are the conversations in our educational programs “sustained, engaged, and critical”? Do our questions, by their shape and their underlying assumptions, open up conversations or shut them down? Do we allot at least as much time for conversation as we do for presenting information or content? (On this unnerving point Regan is adamant.) As one of the volume’s endorsements aptly suggests, this chapter “is alone worth the price of the book”. journal of adult theological education, Vol. 13 No. 1, May, 2016, 77–84