Each of you comes from a specific context, with a unique personal history and with a distinctive vocation. In designing this learning environment I am seeking to provide as much flexibility as I can, while still creating a space in which we can learn together. Towards that end there is required reading that we will all do together, and there is a foundational textbook that you can choose from the following list. To help you make a choice, here are some brief notes on each book:
Fashion Me a People, Maria Harris
This is a classic book of religious education, written by one of the foremost Catholic educators of the last several decades. Harris organizes her discussion of "the curriculum of the church" in the classic categories of didache, kerygma, leiturgia, koinonia and diakonia. The book includes a series of useful questions at the end of each chapter, making it a great book to use as a sourcebook for an education committee in a congregational setting.
Finding God in the Graffiti, Frank Rogers
This is a wonderful new book which explores Christian education through various forms of storytelling, and provides a host of useful examples and pragmatic ways to go about supporting storytelling as a form of faith formation.
The Church as Learning Community, Norma Cook Everist
This is Everist's comprehensive textbook of Lutheran Christian education. Organized around specifically biblical engagement, the book also introduces a number of key learning theories.
Teaching the Faith: Forming the Faithful, Parrett, Kang and Packer
This recent and comprehensive book is written from a more conservative and evangelical perspective than the other choices. It, too, like Everist, is a textbook which is biblically oriented and which explores a number of key learning theories.
Teaching Cross Culturally: An Incarnational Model for Learning and Teaching, Lingenfelter and Lingenfelter
This book is a good choice for students who already have a background in religious education in the US context and want to stretch their imagination, or for students who are coming from a context outside of the US who wish to gain a sense of the contrasts that might exist between other cultural learning contexts and those of the US.
Teaching as a Sacramental Act, Mary Elizabeth Moore
This book is another advanced textbook, suitable for those who already have a lot of experience with religious education and are interested in challenging themselves a bit more and thinking about the personal elements of the process in more liturgical and sacramental terms.
Soul Stories, Anne Wimberly
This is a classic text in religious education, written from the perspective of an African American educator who works in largely African American contexts. That distinctive focus makes it a particularly interesting and brilliant book for the ways in which it illuminates the heart of Christian life.