Welcome to Theological Field Education!

by Matthew Floding

Publisher:

Rowman & Littlefield

, 2010

Overview

Field education is an opportunity for students to develop ministry skills, practice ministerial reflection, discern their call, experience professional collegiality, and undergo personal transformation. Field education offers them a place to practice ministry and a space to reflect on it, to integrate theory and practice, and grow towards competency. In Welcome to Theological Field Education! eleven directors of field education in seminaries and divinity schools across North America pass on their wisdom to both students and their supervisors. Edited by Matthew Floding, director of field education at Western Seminary in Holland, Michigan, this volume covers critical topics such as the art of supervision and formation, the use of case studies and peer reflection groups, self-care and ministerial ethics, and assessment.

Formation for ministry is especially challenging at this time in the church’s life. First, the explosion of knowledge, pluralism, and consumerism and a host of other complicating factors make huge demands on what a minister must know to be effective in ministry. Second, with the erosion of thick religious subcultures, the novice minister has fewer sources of practical wisdom to draw upon. The next generation of ministers, if they are to be more fully formed for ministry, depends on skilled mentoring alongside wise supervisors. This book is the tool to help them make the most of their field education experience.

Key Features

• Provides a variety of perspectives from directors of field education
• Discusses important topics in field education and their application
• Presents a guide for students of ministry in an easy to read aproach

Contents

• What Is Theological Field Education?
• The Art of Supervision and Formation
• Ministerial Reflection
• The Use of Case Studies in Field Education
• The Power of Reflecting with Peers
• The Forming Work of Congregations
• Self-Care and Community
• Ministerial Ethics
• Language and Leadership
• Considerations for Cross-Cultural Placement
• Assessment and Theological Field Education

Top Highlights

“Field education is an opportunity for you to develop ministry skills, practice ministerial reflection, discern your call, experience professional collegiality, and undergo personal transformation.” (Page 1)

“For example, when you first entered the seminary environment and met your seminary colleagues, perhaps at an orientation experience, you first needed to establish whether you could trust (versus mistrust) this environment. If you determined you could, you ventured further, disclosing more of your ideas and feelings and gauging your peers’ and professors’ responses (initiative versus guilt). According to Erikson, we then move on to the adolescent stage when we must negotiate ‘identity versus role confusion.’⁵ Finding your place by moving through these stages will hopefully take you from feeling displaced to thinking, ‘I love my seminary community!’” (Page 4)

“One tension we experience in self-care is that it takes commitment and we often feel we lack the time to concentrate on self-care. Another is that we need to do it ourselves, but we never have to do it alone. Asking, ‘Are you fit or unfit to be a pastor today?’ Lloyd Rediger writes that ‘clergy fitness is a shared as well as a personal problem and responsibility.’¹ A further tension intrinsic to self-care is that it is something you do, but it is also inherent in your being, who you are and who you are becoming.” (Page 102)

“Rather than following a prescribed linear progression, being and becoming a minister entails gliding, stumbling, circling, dipping—swirling in and out of hope and despair, struggling between belief and doubt, living in the borderlands of an unyielding faith and a desperation to rediscover truth.” (Page 17)

Contributors

• Matthew Floding
• Charlene Jin Lee
• Emily Click
• Tim Sensing
• Donna Duensing
• Lee Carroll
• Jaco Hamman
• Barbara J. Blodgett
• Lorraine Ste-Marie
• Joanne Lindstrom
• Lee Drummond

Product Details

• Title: Welcome to Theological Field Education!
• Author: Matthew Floding
• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
• Print Publication Date: 2010
• Logos Release Date: 2016
• Pages: 220
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
• Subject: Pastoral theology › Fieldwork
• ISBNs: 9781566994071, 9781566996891, 1566996899, 1566994071
• Resource ID: LLS:WLCMTHLGCLFDCTN
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-30T03:51:11Z

About Matthew Floding

Matt Floding brings twenty years of ministry experience to his position at Western Seminary. He has served as a youth pastor, pastor, and – in the ten years prior to coming to Western – as chaplain at Northwestern College in Orange City, Iowa. Dr. Floding has been active in the Reformed Church in America at the denominational, regional synod and classis level. Matt especially enjoys participating in the local church through teaching and preaching opportunities. Professionally, Dr. Floding serves as chair of the national board of the Association of Theological Field Educators. Each year Dr. Floding travels to Khartoum, the Sudan, to be a visiting teacher for the Khartoum Evangelical (Presbyterian) Church’s Center for Biblical Studies, a training center for Christian pastors and workers.