Vision and Goals

I believe God sees this course as a fellowship. We are a team brought together for a season of growth through mutual training, challenge, equipping, and discipline. All these serve the ends that every participant attain new and lasting appreciation for recent thinking in the Christian tradition, and every participating follower of Jesus gain new and lasting skill in the Church's practices of theological reflection. More specifically, the course intends its participants:

• To gain an understanding of the historical teachings and practices of recent Christian traditions.
• To learn the social and ideological contexts of those teachings and practices.
• To appreciate the variety, stability, and core consistency of Christian traditions.
• To weigh the visions of various Christian communities of what constitutes the one true Church of Jesus Christ.
• To strengthen our academic discipline, particularly regarding good writing, listening, and critical reading.
• To become actively and personally engaged with the discipline of faithful Christian theological enquiry.

I describe the general goals of all my courses in my rules of the game.