Lifelong Faith Formation CohortMichigan Conference of the United Methodist Church
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Activities & Resources
Presentation & Guide
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Tools
Capacity Building & Volunteers
| building_capacity_tools.docx |
| inviting_recruiting___building_team_of_volunteers_-_orange_leaders.pdf |
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Evaluation
| evaluating_faith_formation.docx |
Building Investment
| becoming_a_change_leader.pdf |
| switch_-_change_process.pdf |
Lifelong Faith Church Plans
| hilife_faith_formation_handbook_2011-12.pdf |
| westwood_u_-_april-aug_2018.pdf |
Design Activities
Activity #1. Developing a Profile for Faith Formation Today
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Activity 1 provides three activities to help you reflect on and analyze lifelong faith formation in your church. You can do these three activities alone. However, I would recommend that you gather a team of people (e.g., church staff, faith formation leaders) to complete the three activities and to analyze what they tell you about the current state of lifelong faith formation in your church. These activities will provide a snapshot of lifelong faith formation in your church and what you can build on and what needs development.
1. Characteristics of Lifelong Faith Formation Activity 1 uses the seven elements of lifelong faith formation to create a series of characteristics of lifelong faith formation. Use this tool to explore the importance of each characteristic in the life of your church and how well each characteristic is present in your church today. 2. Investment in Faith Formation Imagine a pie representing 100% of your church’s investment in faith formation: people, time, energy, resources, money, and programming. What would the percentages look like for children, adolescents, young adults, midlife adults, mature adults, older adults, the whole family, and all ages together? 3. Lifelong Faith Formation Profile Develop a profile of your church’s current faith formation programs, activities, experiences, and events – at church, at home, online, and in other settings (in your community, at a retreat center, on mission trips, etc.) – for each stage of life. Incorporate intergenerational experiences and events, family programs and activities, and age group programming. Download the article in Word and PDF and feel free to make copies for your team and other leaders.
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Activity #2. Creating Goals for Lifelong Faith Maturing
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Activity 2 explores goals for maturing in faith and engages you in creating a vision of faith maturing for your church.
I propose ten goals for maturing in faith that can guide the development of faith formation at each stage of life so that you can direct your attention to helping people grow in faith and discipleship. Guided by the ten goals we can ask what we need to do to help faith and discipleship flourish in the lives of people from childhood through older adulthood. Use the activity as your guide to help you identify and/or create goals for maturing in faith for a lifetime and how you can use these goals to develop faith formation with all ages and generations.
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Activity #3. Developing a Model of Lifelong Faith Formation
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A model of lifelong faith formation integrates intergenerational, family, and life stage faith formation into a whole, providing direction for promoting maturing in faith through all of the ages and stages of life. A clearly articulated model helps everyone understand the purpose and goals of lifelong faith forma tion and how your church is implementing them.
The Lifelong Faith book presents a process to assist your church in creating a model of lifelong and four models that can serve as a guide for naming your current model or creating your model. Each of the four models has a distinct focus to guide the development of lifelong faith formation:
See Chapter 10 in Lifelong Faith.
See "Models" on this website: https://www.lifelongfaith.com/models.html. | |||
Resource Links
Video-based training for designing faith formation
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Family & Intergenerational Learning Programs
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