Nurture That Is Christian: Developmental Perspectives on Christian Education

A super book that adds to my fledgling library of seminary and future profesional volumes. Many great insights and ideas.

Christian teaching is much more than getting students to acquire knowledge. Christian education is successfully affecting behavioral changes in students (249). This book is a culmination of research writings from several people. Each person's contribution to the book gives a clearer picture of the importance that developmental theories provide to Christian education. People and the environment play an important part in "developmental teaching" (20). To properly frame the premise for the book, the editors share eleven developmental assumptions. All are logical in their suppositions; however none speak of sin as a possible inhibitor to growth. In fact, the editors substantiate the fact that "secular developmentalists" do not acknowledge the effects of sin on human development (38). For instance, assumption five states, "Patterns of development are in the nature of the person" (34). This is a true statement, but some people do not develop into the person God designed them to be because they are trapped by sin. Assumption ten alludes to the effects of sin-"development and learning can be thwarted or stalemated-even a primitive person in a jungle chooses the stimuli to which he or she will attend" (36). The exclusion of the sin aspect in classic human development theories limits one's growth to genetic, environment, or other factors rather than on God who is the Creator and Maker of all life. Human development under these terms will enable persons to achieve a certain stage, but individuals will not fully become the people God intended. Theories offer a different view of people that should give Christian leaders a whole picture of the person.

This was a text that I used in my "Spiritual Formation and Discipleship" class at Lee University. The book does an excellent job at merging developmental psychology and the Scriptures, to present a unique Christian prespective on the world of developmental psychology, and how the Church can make use of it.