CHAPTER FOURTEEN: THE SHARED CHRISTIAN PRAXIS

SHARED CHRISTIAN PRAXIS

MAIN IDEA FOR SESSION

What is the main idea for this session? For example, The Holy Spirit, Sacraments, Jesus etc. Often your DRE or Confirmation Director will give you the session main idea or topic

LEARNING OBJECTIVES FOR SESSIONS

Groome suggests that Christian Faith has as a lived reality has three essential and constitutive dimensions: belief, trust, and action.

Select the learning objectives that are appropriate for the main ideas you have already selected (you don’t have to do all three, however you may).

At the end of the session what do you hope your students will understand about

Christian Faith?

Trusting

This dimension of Christian faith takes the form of a relationship of trust and confidence in a personal God who saves in Jesus. And the trust finds expression in loyalty, love, and attachment. Because God is faithful, we can commit ourselves with confidence and trust. We express this in prayer, both personal and communal.

This may be an opening prayer, guided meditation, prayer experience, or prayer of the faithful.

Believing

Christian faith is more than belief, for it finds embodiment in the lives of people. Religious Education communicates certain historical events, moral concepts and mysteries of the faith in way of making its meaning more a part of the student’s life.

Choose activities that make the abstract become real.

Doing

Christian faith is a response to the Kingdom of God in Christ and must include doing God’s will. More specifically, the doing is to find opportunities to live a life of agape (unconditional love)-loving God by loving one’s neighbor as oneself.

Help participants discover who their neighbor is and how to respond in kindness to their neighbors and their enemies.

SESSION PLAN

Select teaching activities that will help communicate the main ideas and achieve the learning objectives. Select at least one appropriate activity for each step in the Shared Christian Praxis design. For each step identify the resources that are necessary to conduct the activities that are planned.

Focusing Activity

1. What is the particular focus of your learning experience?
2. What is your focusing question/activity for this learning experience?
3. How will you engage the participants in identifying their present action?

Movement One: Experiencing Life

How will you engage the participants in expressing their own life activity (knowing, action, feeling) or that of their community, culture or society that underlines the theme, topic or concept of the learning experience?

Movement Two: Reflecting Together

1. How will you engage the participants in telling a story that explains their present action?
2. How will you engage them in critically reflecting on their present action in light of the broader picture?
3. How will you engage them in identifying the consequences of their action and the implications for future living?

Movement Three: Discovering the Faith Story

1. What story will you present? What vision will you offer? Does it reflect the most informed understanding of the community?
2. What resources will you use?
3. How will you creatively and imaginatively present the story and the vision?

Movement Four: Owning The Faith

How will you engage the participants in a dialogue between their story and the story and vision of the Christian community?

Movement Five: Responding In Faith

In light of the entire learning experience, how will you engage the participants in deciding on what action to take (personally, interpersonally, social/politically)?

Groome, Thomas. Christian Religious Education. San Francisco: Harper & Row. 1981