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Home > Resources > Interdisciplinary Learning > Teaching > Syllabi > RuthCan the Path Forward Start Backwards? How Having to Reinvent Pastoral Liturgy Courses Reinvigorated My Teaching
by Lester Ruth
Asbury Theological Seminary
Summary: Two undesired, unforeseen "setbacks" lead to greater levels of teaching satisfaction and proficiency. Transitioning a pastoral liturgy course to an online format and then developing multiple versions of a pastoral liturgy course spark improvements for one professor in teaching overall. Serendipitous discoveries along the way allow doing more than merely surviving as a frustrated teacher. They create a revolution in one professor's whole approach to teaching.
Two of the best things that ultimately advanced my teaching were initially setbacks of a sort. One was being required to think through the issues in converting my original on-campus pastoral liturgy course to an online environment. The second was in developing multiple versions of the pastoral liturgy course, each sufficient to fulfill my seminary's degree requirement. Both came with some degree of hesitation, trepidation, and trouble. Both came about because of the circumstances of my employment. Neither was something I grasped with initial eagerness although, in retrospect, both turn of events resulted in all my courses becoming better.
I teach at Asbury Theological Seminary, a large, independent seminary whose constituencies are mainly Methodist or Wesleyan of some type. Its main degree program is a Master of Divinity for which I offer pastoral liturgy courses in Asbury's Kentucky and online "campuses." The degree's requirements lead most students to take a pastoral liturgy course at the 500 level (the lowest level of courses as Asbury). When I arrived at Asbury, there was only one course approved and listed in the catalog within that range of numbers. It had not been offered in an online version.
Arriving in 2000, I set about teaching my original version of the course, initially named Servant as Liturgist but subsequently renamed Worship Leadership in the Church. It retained its original course prefix and number (WO510). I designed the course with a general aim of giving students familiarity with my "greatest hits" about pastoral liturgy with respect to readings and lectures. I used much videotape to introduce them to a wide variety of worship. Being somewhat intimidated by the size of classes my first year at Asbury (two of the first three sections I taught that initial year were over sixty students), I relied mainly upon lectures and objective exams as the basis for the course. Discussion in the course was unscheduled and often developed into tense moments. (Baptism seems to always be a contentious issue.) This initial version of the course fizzled with the students and with me. After only two semesters, frustration had become my middle name. (I hate to think of what the students might have named me.) Change was called for but I did not know what to do.
Stepping Backwards to Go Forwards: Insights from Teaching Online
Providence then smiled on me. Over the next one and a half years, two unsolicited "setbacks" combined to break open new teaching possibilities, ultimately leading to an enrichment of my courses for students. I initially sought out neither but eventually eagerly grasped the opportunities they provided. Together these "setbacks" helped to begin a revolution in my teaching.
The first came at the end of my initial year at Asbury. At the time I was scheduled to undergo training to begin teaching the pastoral liturgy course in the seminary's online program. The offering of courses entirely via electronic, online means to non-residential students had become an important part of the institution's academic program. But, to be quite frank, I had not given much thought to what this might mean although the requirement to teach online was part of my contract. I had been absorbed with the challenges of trying to teach on-campus. I arrived for the training at the end of my first Spring semester disinterested, tired, and frustrated. I certainly had no high ambitions or expectations. I was not sure I wanted to be there. But this training was one of the best things that had ever happened to me as a teacher because it forced me into a major revisioning of my pastoral liturgy course, not merely a little tweaking.
The severe disjuncture between an on-campus teaching environment and an online one were immediately apparent to me. There was no geo-physical classroom in which I could give lectures while students dutifully took notes to regurgitate data on objective exams. Discussions could not be avoided but had to be at the center of the class. In the disjuncture I found room for creativity and re-thinking some basic pedagogical approaches I had assumed as normative. My prior premises about my role as teacher, discussions, and means of assessment had to be discarded all. The difference in teaching environments called for wholesale change, not a minor adaptation. I could not have done what I had previously done even if I had wanted to. (And I did not want to.)
The first thing that had to change was my role as teacher. Being something other than the lecturer had to emerge. There was no central spot in the class from which to do that. I imagine I could have required attendance in synchronous chat rooms in which the students could read my lectures as I typed (more probably cut and pasted) them in. But the training I received and the way the technology shaped Asbury's online classes made a discussion center for asynchronous, threaded email interactions the center of a typical class. Early in the training and subsequent teaching experience made it quite evident that my primary role as teacher would be to facilitate the best use of this center by the students as they interacted with each other, with the course content, and with me.
The first time I taught online in the following semester confirmed these inklings. A variety of new roles emerged as the interaction in the discussion center required me being more than a conveyor of unknown information to waiting minds. I initiated, clarified, stirred up, provoked, soothed, linked, and summarized, among other tasks, as I shepherded the weekly discussions.
Although I had no name for it at the time, teaching online had made me shift from a teacher-centered class to a subject- centered class, to use the terms of Parker Palmer (Palmer 1998, 116-118). Not being able to stand in front of the students to lecture made it difficult to be the center of the class. The dynamics of an online class made me put the students' useful interaction with the course's subject at the center of the class. I became less of a mediator between the student and the course content. I became more of one who arranged the most hospitable table possible for students together to encounter the "great things" of the course, to use Palmer's term.
This shift made me more efficient in the use of lectures and more selectively specific about their purposes. I did not give up lectures entirely in designing my online course. Instead, using Asbury's technological resources, I videotaped some essential lectures pieces. These became part of a collection of materials, along with other things I had often used in classes (pictures of worship spaces and worshipers, short video clips of services, musical pieces), that formed the basis for multi-media CDs internally produced. Distributed to the students at the beginning of the semester through the library, they are returned at the end of the semester. In essence I turned my lectures and this other material in a kind of visual or oral text that the students were to "read" before participating in the current class discussion. Because I sensed there was some time limit to watching talk in an electronic format, switching lectures to an electronic medium forced me to become more selective about what material I would address in lectures. I also became more efficient in my use of words. I tended to lecture on those topics on which I could not find good published material or in which I wanted to demonstrate a particular viewpoint useful to my students or in which I could evidence critical or alternative thinking. I did not know it at the time but these choices mirrored suggestions by others like Stephen Brookfield (Brookfield 1995).
This shift from lecturer to table host has received so much positive feedback from students that I now maintain the role for my on-campus classes. Since the CD sets were already produced and distributed through our library administration, I began to use them for my on-campus classes, eliminating virtually all lectures from my geo-physical classrooms. In essence I now use on-campus class time for the variety of purposes we use the threaded email discussion centers. My on-campus classes have become subject-centered, too. Like online students, on-campus students are given a schedule as to which multi-media material to watch in preparation for class. I count this as a form of "reading." I then have students engage in a variety of activities that having them using the course material in order to deepen their understanding at multiple levels. I interact with on-campus students during class in a variety of roles learned from online discussions. An additional benefit is having my technical anxiety decrease during class. No longer am I worried about my computer crashing since I often only have a few notes reminding me of how class time is to be used on that day.
The second thing that had to change was the nature of class discussions. Since the heart of an online class as Asbury trained me was the discussion center (notice the name), my use of discussion could no longer be an incidental matter. Rather than worry about what content I wanted to deliver in a certain time frame, I had to become more concerned about how students were interacting with each other and with me around course content. During the semester that actually became my main task as the teacher. It was an integral part of the shift to a subject-centered approach to teaching. Discussion was not incidental.
This shift meant that I had to anticipate discussions and try to envision the different ways students could assist each other in learning the material. The initial aspect of this task was developing the module starters. (Asbury encouraged us to organize our online classes around natural clusters of material bounded by starting and closing times. We call those modules.) Instead of thinking "what is the first thing I want to say to the students," I began to consider what question I could ask or issue I could pose or pastoral situation I could establish to allow the students to express what they understood about the material while driving to understand it more deeply. The focus became on the use of the course content, not merely its repetition to me. The former leads to exciting discussions; the latter is merely boring and largely ineffective.
Starting the discussion was only part of my task. Since each discussion extends over some period of time and ends up with myriad shoots and branches, I had to become more conscious of the various ways in which I could facilitate the discussion. Questions I had rarely considered before became central to my consciousness as a teacher: When do I engage in the conversation? How best do I engage? When should I show restraint and let my voice be silent? How do I respond? What goal do I have in responding?
With the shift of lectures out of the on-campus classroom, all these considerations have become much more important in this environment, too. With no in-class lectures, we suddenly had time to do things in class. In my own mind I have brought over the term from the online courses ("discussion center") and now use it to label what the geo-physical classroom is. We have time to do so many things now: role play, practice the kinesthetic aspects of worship, think through case studies, evaluate worship services, assess assignments, create, and discuss. In a discipline like pastoral liturgy these activities are invaluable. Discussions are now much more than just an opportunity for me to catch my breadth, get a drink of water, and give the students a break from listening. They are integral to the means of learning.
Consequently, I have become much more concerned about my role in facilitating equitable and helpful participation of all students in all classes. Asbury's training to teach online had made me aware of this crucial dynamic. In my online course my syllabus had to specify what "good" participation by students looked like and how I would assess it as the professor. The syllabus also had to say how participation affected the student's grade for the course. I had never put materials like this in any syllabus before! They were not needed in a teacher-centered classroom. Over time these rubrics for participation has evolved, but I now essentially use the same for both online and on-campus environments. Just as careful preparation and participation is crucial for the success of the online class so it has become for the on-campus counterpart.
The increasing centrality of student discussion caused me to adjust the graded assignments for the online class. So much time had been spent in discussion and the type of discussion involved was usually of an integrative nature, I began to think about ways to allow students to express their integration and application in the graded assignments. Exams, particularly objective ones, would not allow me to see what students had learned. Rather than rely upon exams, I began to rely upon projects that allows students to show use of the course material to speak constructively about worship in particular congregational settings. The obvious advantages over exams in these new means of assessment were immediately apparent to me. I have adopted similar graded assignments for my on-campus sections.
Since I began teaching online, many of the practices I have developed in that environment has reshaped how I teach in on-campus classes, as one can see above. Why? One big reason was the more favorable response online students give on their end-of-semester evaluations as compared to on-campus students. That such a wide gap could exist between on-campus and online versions of the same course encouraged me to think that there was something I could learn about how to teach on-campus. Since I began to adjust the on-campus sections, the results have been encouraging. Without the need to rethink fundamental structures to teach online, however, I am not sure I would have made the changes to the on-campus sections. For that I am indebted to the "setback" of having to learn to teach online.
Stepping Backwards to Go Forwards: Insights from Developing Multiple Versions of a Pastoral Liturgy Course
The second "setback" that resulted in advancement came in the following year. I had begun to resist what the seminary required of me to actually teach. I had taken the job with aspirations of teaching a section or two of the required pastoral liturgy course a year and then enriching the curriculum with a variety of new electives. (I was the seminary's first full-time liturgy professor.) Instead what had unfolded in actual responsibilities was different. (The lesson I learned was to make sure to clarify this issue in the interview process.) With an expanding enrollment generally and an expanding online program, the seminary needed me to teach four to five sections of the basic pastoral liturgy course every year, out of six courses total. Dreams were dashed as I was soon frustrated, particularly with how poorly I saw my on-campus courses initially doing.
A suggestion from my dean provided the break in the logjam. Reviewing what the catalog actually required for the pastoral liturgy requirement, I saw that I had not read the catalog closely (imagine a faculty person not doing that!). What was not required was just the original pastoral liturgy course, WO510. What was required was a pastoral liturgy course in the range of WO510-549. The problem was that I only had one course in that range of numbers. That was the reason the seminary was asking me to teach so many sections of that one course.
I now knew what I could do: develop more courses that could serve as a pastoral liturgy course. I needed more courses in that range of numbers. The time since then has been spent in developing several distinct versions of pastoral liturgy courses that legitimately do what such a course needs to do.
The process has led me through a fruitful journey of revisiting all my assumptions about a pastoral liturgy course. The results have been courses which are much more intentional in their design and internally cohesive in the course subject matter. I was forced to become clearer in my own mind about what was essential in any pastoral liturgy course. Developing multiple versions of a pastoral liturgy course also offered me the opportunity to be creative in going back to a common starting point and having to think through a pastoral liturgy course with an entirely different set of readings, lectures, exercises, and assignments. The challenge was stimulating, even refreshing. The end result has saved my desire to remain at my institution. No longer merely teaching one course over and over again, I now have a rotation of courses that can be taken by students either as their degree requirement or as an elective. I no longer stagnate teaching a sole course repeatedly within a single year. Constantly wrapping my mind around new readings and thoughts and being able to anticipate grading different assignments has been refreshing. An additional benefit is having students multiple times.
The road down this journey was not necessarily an easy one. There was hesitation from some in my area (department) as I sought its approval for my new course proposals. (Area approval is the first step in having a new course approved.) I believe the unspoken assumption was that surely my best material was in the original course. Surely the spin-offs would be weak imitations. I saw it very differently. My education as a liturgical historian offered advantages here. I knew from church history that there could be different, albeit related, ways to approach congregational Christian worship, each with its own internal integrity. The area's initial hesitation proved to be a nice setback in the long run. It intensified my need to clarify what was essential in a pastoral liturgy course as well as finding some distinctive to organize each class that was itself coherent and critical.
Without being aware of it at the time, the area's hesitation was forcing me to name, to use Parker Palmer's term, various "great things" of Christian worship (Palmer 1998, 107). Reflection on possible "great things" has led me to various compelling theological premises that can provide internal coherence to a pastoral liturgy course. Currently I have four different courses that can fulfill my institution's M.Div. requirement for a pastoral liturgy course. Two have as their theological premises a Trinitarian approach to worship (WO510 and WO520). These two differ in that WO520 is also a liturgical history survey that asks Trinitarian questions by looking at historic congregations. (I had not previously clarified the theological premise in the original design of WO510.) Another course uses post-Vatican II Roman Catholic theology about the sacramentality of Christ and the church as the "great thing." Somewhat amazingly, my evangelical students especially resonate with this approach that tends to emphasize divine Presence in worship. The last course centers around the eschatological and narrative quality of the Gospel itself, often with a strong infusion of Eastern Orthodox reflection on worship. So far, the students tend to find this last course the most provocative as we consider whether our current liturgical practices give a full witness to the Gospel and the Reign of God. No approach is exhaustive but all are critical enough to provide a sound basis for approaching corporate Christian worship. An unexpected benefit has been to help the seminary move beyond dichotomous ways of thinking about worship, for example, in contrasting "traditional" and "contemporary" worship. Each theological premise is "great" enough that it can enrich and critique every style of worship.
The counterpart to finding the distinctive premise for each course was determining those things that should remain common between the four courses. At this point I reflected on my own experience as a pastor. What were those areas where I needed to use the pastoral liturgy course I had taken as a seminarian? What were those capacities and skills I needed as a pastoral liturgist? Reflecting on these two questions led me to develop a list of areas upon which the theological premise would be brought to bear along with a list of those capacities I saw as important in a pastoral liturgist. These lists provided the common links between the four courses. With respect to areas to be explored, each course spends time considering prayer, the use of Scripture, sacraments, music, space, calendar, orders of worship, pastoral rites and the character of the worshiping community. With respect to capacities, each course tries to provide opportunities for students to learn to develop worship services with theological integrity and contextual appropriateness, relate well to people in worship matters, embody graciousness in leading worship, and do self-assessment on one's own practices and tendencies. Again I did not realize at the time that I had moved toward what some scholars recommend: students who can know, feel, and do (Vella 2002, 149-160).
Reflecting upon the various capacities of being a pastoral liturgist also moved me to other common features adapted for each course. For each course I created a semi-fictitious congregation called a Touchstone Church. Based on a real church and utilizing worship video from that church, each church's identity was disguised. Although it is a common feature to each pastoral liturgy class, the churches are intentionally chosen to represent a range of contexts and congregations. Each course has a different Touchstone Church in which students have a "play area" for integration and modeling and for rehearsing pastoral perspective and capacities. Another common feature was the addition of a formative aspect to the class. I require students in each class to use a body of Wesleyan hymnody and a collection of liturgical texts, both different for each class, to delve into a deeper love for God.
In the process of developing the four courses I was determined to make sure each course was distinctive enough that it could legitimately be taken as a second course by a student who had already taken another of the 500-level WO courses. The result was a higher intentionality in selecting readings and developing lectures that I had previously shown. Remember that my original pastoral liturgy course was a kind of "greatest hits" course with no obvious theological premise providing coherent to the whole. That approach was no longer possible. By definition I could not have four different "greatest hits" courses. Instead what I now had to design were courses that were more efficient in their focus on the essential subject. I began to expose students to the most critical material related to the working out of the theological premise in worship. My "setback" in having to develop multiple courses had actually led me to Parker Palmer's provocative question: "Why do we keep trying to cover the field when we can honor the stuff of the discipline more profoundly by teaching less of it at a deeper level?" (Palmer 1998, 122). The new courses led me to have student repeatedly try to use the "stuff" of worship in order to habituate certain liturgical perspectives and capacities.
Moving away from a "greatest hits" approach that seeks to "cover the field" has created to my surprise a much richer classroom environment. My students have sympathy for the compelling theological premises behind each course. But the implications of this theology usually go far beyond their previous ways of thinking about worship. Thus there is a "bind" built into each course that provides possible continuity between the student's prior convictions and deepened understandings about worship. Making each course's theological premise overt by naming seems to have enabled student to struggle more with the use of the theological premise rather than with me. Driving the liturgical "great thing" from a communal theological affirmation seems to create a class where the students are less likely to believe I am merely insisting upon my own personal opinion about worship. The irony is that by having a compelling theological premise in each class I have been able to show more of my own passion in the intersection of theology and worship. My students read this passion as authenticity.
The need to differentiate in assignments between the four courses has also provided fertile ground for re-evaluating assignments generally. Insights from one course have influenced the other courses. Again the same dynamic seems to be at work: I gain greater clarity about the kinds of assignments appropriate for this type course while also being challenged to link the assignments to the specific course content. Perhaps my biggest strides have come about in terms of sequencing assignments as I consider how students enter deeper proficiencies in key capacities. At their best, assignments tend now to build on each other, increasing and expanding what was done before.
Conclusion
From my view at this end of the journey, the results of these changes have reinvigorated my teaching. A recent summer grant from the Wabash Center for teaching and learning, by which I acquired a pedagogical consultant to help me develop WO520, confirmed the changes that I had been making. But there were downsides along the way. Making these changes took time and energy as on-campus and online versions of each class were created. Sometimes I kept wondering if I was shortchanging my research and publication. I also still work out some of the kinks in the classes. Maintaining continuity with the compelling theological premise-and the distinctiveness of each class-has meant that some favorite articles or explanations do not always work with a course's premise, for example. I am haunted by my area's original concern at these times.
But, on the whole, the two "setbacks" have been immensely beneficial for my students and me. Positive student response is higher than for my original pastoral liturgy class. I am also much more pleased in seeing the courses achieve what I desire for the students.
Where would I be if not for these two "setbacks"? I am not sure. I do know I would not have nearly the level of satisfaction in the current position. I am doing more than surviving. I believe I am beginning to thrive as a teacher. Going backwards has meant going forwards.
References
Brookfield, Stephen D. 1995. Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Palmer, Parker J. 1998. The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life . San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Vella, Jane. 2002. Learning to Listen, Learning to Teach: The Power of Dialogue in Educating Adults . Revised edition. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Course Syllabi for Lester Ruth