Status Updates From Everyday Christian Teaching...

Smith on Col. 1:15-20: "As many things as are created are reconciled. All things. It does not sound as if the point is to elevate a few religious activities by downplaying the importance of everything else. The challenge seems more like figuring out how reconciliation touches everything." 🔥

"How do I reach for deep hopes for students’ formation without creating fresh barriers?

I don’t think the solution is to lower my sights. I want to stretch students, to draw them into ways of engaging that they had not anticipated.

But I also want to keep probing for lightness and solidarity in the burdens, for the yoke that at least sometimes feels like grace."

"Whatever the specific disciplinary focus or age level, how we structure our interactions as we learn implies a vision of who we think we should become. This happens whether we focus our learning culture on competition, or mutual indifference, or passive listening, or the practices of intentional community.

Teaching is intimately connected to how we think the connections and interactions among us should function."

🔥 "The classroom is one of the public settings in which our calling to live in mutual service as a renewed humanity applies. The difficulty of the learning process and our various gifts and circumstances create a range of needs, anxieties, and struggles, inward and outward, that are opportunities for mutual care. Working to respond to those opportunities is part of our formation."