From Passive to Active Learning: A Worked Example of Theological Education in Rural China

Abstract This article presents a brief case-study of theological training amongst mainland rural Chinese Christians in 1998 and follows their progress beyond completion of the training up to 2008. To counter the cultural norm of passive learning, the training programme's development and use borrows from adult education theory and methodology, and necessarily harnesses cultural norms to aid the teaching and learning process. It also makes use of experiential and problem-solving learning by having the training participants engage in ministry early in the training process, working with real-life problems and learning to solve them together. With the action-reflection that promotes thoughtful praxis, and the spiritual development to which praxis lends itself, what results is a process which has empowered local Christians to reproduce and leaven the wider community on their own, context-aware, terms. The article proposes to bring out some potentially transferable insights gained from involvement in the teaching process in which the teachers, as facilitators, have also been learners.