Continuing Education classes are open to all Lay School of Ministry participants who have completed their first two years of basic studies.

Each year the Lay School Board chooses a theme and invites instructors from around the country to cover our topics. We seek out instructors from our ELCA seminaries and colleges, as well as experts at public and private universities, colleges and other institutes.

The theme for our Continuing Education year for 2010-2011 is A Missional Church History: 2000 Years of Witness in the World. Faculty from across the ELCA will be invited to share their areas of expertise as the class journeys from the time of Paul and Peter to our own. The LSM Board is pleased to announce that Dr. Martin Marty, the premier living church historian, will be our September Cont. Ed faculty person. He knows of our lay school and was excited to be invited. He chose to be our lead-off professor. You get Dr. Martin Marty and 8 other excellent faculty persons! Registrations are now being accepted for the 2010-11 Cont. Education year.

2010-2011 Continuing Education - Christian History Overview

September 2010 – Martin Marty - University of Chicago - "A Short History of Christianity"
http://divinity.uchicago.edu/faculty/marty.shtml

Dr. Marty will divide his presentation into three parts.

I. A satellite view of the Christian presence in history. Just as a satellite views features of and on the earth from a great distance, one which reduces them and makes their outlines clear, this first session will involve us "getting the big picture in which some main features will stand out." This would in a sense be a timed "geography" of the faith, the who and what and when and where of Christian doings, without the detail. Such an approach helps participants do their own sorting out of significances. Beginnings, early growth, acquiring empire, crusading, building cathedrals, fashioning systems of theology will make their appearance.

II. When a hurricane comes, many can flee its path. However, medical officials, firefighters, mass communicators, chaplains, and the like have to stay on the scene despite the dangers. In this second presentation we will move in closer, observing the structures, institutions, professions, and agencies of the Christian church, to see how leaders and followers interact in their efforts to serve and enjoy God and God's creation. Here there will be occasion to look at the arts and hear the music of Christianity, to study the way it communicates its meanings.

III. When storms come and go, it is the people "in the huts" in the pathway that feel them most. This third presentation will follow the outlines of what many today call "the people's history of the faith." In it we will take an historical look at practices, folklore, culture, ways of life, rituals, ways of coping, and ways of living out adventures, not always with the aid of popes and poets, but living out many meanings of the faith which historians formerly overlooked.

In all three cases we will be mindful of "what are the uses of Christian history." Dr. Marty likes to quote a British scholar who explained why he was an historian: "Because I find everything so odd, and I wonder how it got that way." Others say, "we study history in order to interrupt and overcome history." Abraham Lincoln guides others: "If we could first know where we are and whither we are tending, we might know what to do and how to do it."

October 2010 - Kurt Hendel - LSTC - "Reforming the Church"
http://www.lstc.edu/people/faculty/index.php?action=viewFaculty&id=16

I plan to address the following themes:
1. Heresy and Orthodoxy-with special focus on the Christological debates of the fourth and fifth centuries
2. Monasticism-which will include a concise survey of major monastic movements and some discussion of monastic ideals
3. Theological reform-with particular concentration on Luther
4. Reform of Piety-an exploration of German Pietism, especially Spener and Francke
5. Social Reform-Reformation; Anglican Evangelicals; Social Gospel

November 2010 - Phil Krey - LSTP - "Church in Times of Crisis"
http://www.ltsp.edu/people/pkrey

What is the role of the Bible in three major controversies over heresy and schism in the Early Church: The Trinitarian Controversy, the Donatist Controversy in North Africa, and the Pelagian Controversy? The role of the Bible was always more complicated than one might assume from our modern perspective. It was the interpretation of the Bible and trajectory of that interpretation that usually was decisive in the church catholic. A biblicist perspective, no matter how well grounded in the scriptures or in tradition, often lost out to the church's conversations with culture, philosophy, and need for inclusivity in a changing historical context. What are the parallels to our current debates about the role of the Bible in the church and how can we learn from ancient heresies in modern dress?

December 2010 - Guy Erwin - California University - "Sex, Marriage, Men and Women"
http://www.callutheran.edu/schools/cas/faculty_profile.php?minor_id=18&profile_id=37

January 2011 - Kit Kleinhans - Wartburg College - "The Development of Doctrine"
http://faculty.wartburg.edu/kleinhans/

Friday evening: How the Creeds Came to Be

Saturday: How Our Understanding of the Sacraments of Baptism and Communion Developed

Suggested reading if folks are so inclined, but by no means necessary:

Alan Richardson, Creeds in the Making or Frances Young, The Making of the Creeds

Here is more detail under the two main topic areas.

Why do Christians believe what we do? Many of our treasured Christian beliefs and practices have developed over time as Christians faithfully applied the Scriptures to new issues in changing contexts. Our two focus points will be the development of the Apostles and the Nicene Creeds in the early church and the development of Lutheran understandings of the sacraments at the time of the Reformation.

February 2011 - Darrell Jodock - Gustavus Adolphus College - "Transforming Society"
http://gustavus.edu/academics/religion/profiles/djodock

March 2011 - Mark Tranvik - Augsburg College - "Peace and War"
http://www.augsburg.edu/cms-migrate_08/academics/religion/faculty_bios/tranvik.html

April 2011 – Mark Wilhelm - Vocation and Education - ELCA -"Unifying the Church"

An enduring hope for a unified Church, in the face of seemingly unending disputes and disunity, is a major theme in the history of Christianity. Christian leaders from St. Paul to the voting members of the ELCA's 2009 Churchwide Assembly have called upon Christians to remember that despite their disagreements they have "one Lord, one faith, one baptism;" that is, one Church. This session will explore the struggles and debates over unity and disunity in the Church. We will identify the events and ideas that are considered by most historians to be the primary markers of the struggles and debates around ecclesial unity, from Imperial Rome's hope to unify the Church through the Council of Nicaea to the contemporary ecumenical movement and the ELCA's commitments to "unity in diversity" through its bi-lateral full communion agreements. In doing so, we will explore the question, "What does it mean for the Church to be unified?"

May 2011 – Samuel Torvend - Pacific Lutheran University - "Missionary Outreach"
http://www.plu.edu/religion/Faculty%20Staff/home.php

Such terms as "God's mission" and "missional church" have recently emerged among North American Lutherans and other communities of the magisterial reformation. Indeed, church agencies and religious entrepreneurs offer "strategies" which will extend the church's "mission" in our increasingly pluralistic culture. In this class on missionary outreach we will first pause in order to ponder the question, "Why should Christians think of missionary outreach in the first place?" Why not "stay home" and tend to our own little corner of the world? We then will explore different models of what it might mean to be an "apostolic" community today: Paul among the Romans; Patrick with the wild Irish ;Benedict's mission among invaders; De Las Casas' struggle with "Christian" conquistadors; Matteo Ricci in the Chinese imperial court; and Lutherans in Cameroon. On June 12, 2011, Christians will celebrate the Pentecost festival of the Spirit's outpouring some two thousand years ago. How might our study of missionary outreach offer us different ways to participate in that continual outpouring today?