Abstracts for Session 4B

“Intentional Christian Community,” Gregory Clark (North Park University)

Abstract
Each year I offer a course entitled “Intentional Christian Community.”  My goal for the course is to introduce students to a more radical form of Christian faith and practice than they may have grown up with.   Each week fifteen students from North Park University (associated with the Evangelical Covenant Church) travel to Reba Place Fellowship (a Mennonite community) in Evanston, IL.  There they participate in community potlucks, in small groups, and in a seminar.  We meet in a student apartment one other time during the week to debrief and to discuss additional reading.  Usually we use a secondary source to help us think through the Sermon on the Mount.   We talk about money and sex, anger and prayer, food and forgiveness.  We work on how reading the Bible in a community context changes our reading of the Bible.  For the last five weeks of the course, the North Park students lead the seminars and reflect back to the community what they have learned. 
I will tell stories about experiences in the course.  I will share my syllabus and, if appropriate, student evaluations of the course.   Specifically, I will talk about ways

• the course has changed  over the last five years
• it differs from and overlaps with other courses
• the student-student relationships and the student-teacher relationship differ from other courses.

I will leave time for discussion, since the value of this presentation might depend on our ability to analogically apply some of the lessons from this course.

“Seeds of Mercy and Seeds of Justice: Building the Universe with Focused Readings and Songs,” Jeffrey P. Bouman (Calvin College)

Abstract
During the 2008-09 academic year, a total of seventeen student leaders, under the guidance of a faculty mentor and a staff program director, met for weekly staff meetings. The purpose of the meetings included regular updates on progress toward communal goals for the Service-Learning Center, a college office that facilitates student and faculty service interaction in the local non-profit community. The meetings also included time for deep learning and discussion, and explicit efforts to deepen faith and knowledge together. Over the course of nine months, between August 2008 and May 2009, the group read and sang together in a focused, thoughtful, strategic attempt to tie strands of life together that are often left unconnected.

“Confession, Computers, and Community,” Joseph McDonald (Bethel University - TN)

Abstract
Life-in-community is a basic condition of human existence, established by the Creator, and also expressed in scripture and in the confessions and creeds of the Church. Because all of life is religiously rooted and finds its heart-meaning in God’s will for all creation, community practices are central to the human activity of learning. However, much information technology is detrimental to community practices in education. Using Wolterstorff’s model(s) for Christian learning, this paper develops the ways in which the computer impedes community, and sketches some communal activities in learning, which perhaps can co-exist with the computer.  

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Abstracts for Session 4C

For further information contact:
Seminars @ Calvin
Calvin College
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