Speakers: Karen Hutt
Barbara Fast
Kathy Solu

Fulfilling the Promise - recovenanting, renewing, revitalizing, reconnecting - how will religious education take the leap into the 21st century and beyond and fulfill its promise to our denomination and to the world? Speakers Kathy Solu, DRE, and Meadville-Lombard ministerial students Barbara Fast and Karen Hutt shared three inspiring and motivating visions of religious education ministries.

Kathy Solu reminded us of the many ways our religious educators need to be respected and supported. We must ensure fair compensation, view our teachers as religious educators engaged in ministry, provide appropriate and generous continuing education for our DREs, and acknowledge the fears - as well as the vision and dreams - with which our families are grappling as their and congregational lives shift and change. "When children become excited, they enjoy their religious home, and invite their friends. Don't be afraid of change and growth," she said, "and celebrate your successes."

Barbara Fast began with a story of the rabbi who asks his students what is behind the Ark curtain. The first student, a pessimist, says it's empty behind the curtain. The second student, the American consumer, answers that a new car is behind the curtain. The third, the "good" student, proudly tells the rabbi that the Torah is behind the curtain. But the fourth student, a very creative thinker, smiled, and quietly said, "There's a great big mirror behind the curtain!" Barbara asked us to consider what face we are mirroring to our students, and what mirrors our members see reflected in our ministers' and our church leaders' faces? In a dance, we can flow with one another, the minister sharing steps with the DRE, but always letting the DRE take the lead. She urged us to view our religious education as ministry, and apply that model to our teaching model in our Sunday school classrooms, to our youth and children, and eventually to the greater world.

Karen Hutt, an incredibly inspirational and motivating speaker, shared her experience as co minister at the Church of the Open Door in Chicago. She began by speaking to us about promises, how we make and break them, apologize, and then move on. But the promises we make which are rooted in our faith require us to take a closer look. "Liberal religion," she said, "has made a lot of promises…and those promises may be failing us." We must clarify our collective core, she went on to say. Religious education can no longer be made up of cliches and fantasies, but needs to be covenantal, grounded and informed by our faith, and this faith is the capacity for religious education to penetrate the haze. We face this haze in ourselves, the community and in the world, and we must confront it - confront the evil, the despair and the death. By celebrating mercifulness, grace and joy, we are teaching how to survive in a world that seems devoid of these things.

The Church of the Open Door is completely intergenerational. Their services, and the ministries the members assume, are structured to completely support the families that attend. Children, as well as adults, work to support the church and all members tithe. The promises that are made are lived out each and every day, step by step, with intention and mindfulness. Karen ended her moving speech with an example of how religious education at Open Door reaches out in time of need. After one of their five year old members was shot and wounded in a driveby, Karen realized that her older brother was visiting friends, and was not yet aware of what had happened to his sister. She gathered up as many children from the neighborhood and from the church as she could, and they all went over to where Jeremy was visiting, and told him of the tragedy. That, she said, is how religious education at Open Door reaches out.

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