[BJTE 14.

1 (2003) 7-12]
ISSN 1352-741X

Milestones in Adult Theological Education

Chris Peck
(Diocese of Peterborough, Bouverie Court,
6 The Lakes, Bedford Road, Northampton NN4 7YD;
Chris.Peck@peterborough-diocese.org.uk)

ABSTRACT
A personal reflection on changes and developments experienced during
twenty-five years in adult Christian education, highlighting some of the
dominant trends and debates through different decades.
Many of us are used to inviting participants in adult learning to reflect
on ‘milestones’ in their journey. When I was invited to lead a morning on
adult education for new Theological College staff, I decided to start with a
reflection on milestones in my journey through adult education since the
1970s. Several of those present encouraged me to write up the reflection
which highlights the changes and developments I have experienced in the
hope that it will stimulate you to reflect on your own journey in adult edu-
cation. They very much reflect my own context and experience as someone
who is white, male, English and coming from an evangelical background.

1.1. The 1970s: The Adult Educator as Experimenter

Keyword: Laboratory
During the 1970s I left Bible College and started work with a Christian
training organisation called Lindley Lodge. We ran development train-
ing courses for young people from industry and commerce, a sort of
indoor version of Outward Bound. Our clients ranged from mining
apprentices to Marks and Spencers supervisors, and they came for one-
or two-week residential courses. Those were exciting, heady times in
adult education, with the emphasis on experimentation. We were
drawing particularly on the human growth movement from America, so
as a staff we were studying Carl Rogers and doing workshops on tran-
sactional analysis, Gestalt and T groups. We were constantly learning
from our own experience, finding different ways of pushing the boat out
and coming up with creative exercises to help the young people explore
issues of teamwork, leadership, relationships and values. Sometimes we

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8 British Journal of Theological Education 14.1 (2003)

got it wrong, as on the memorable occasion when we started a course by

inviting 50 disaffected and well-oiled dockyard apprentices to mill
around the room, looking first at the floor, then glancing at each other,
and finally making close eye contact with those they passed. Not sur-
prisingly we had a night of riots, with beds being thrown out of win-
dows. Because we depended on the goodwill of major companies we
needed to temper our experimentation with commercial realism, but our
aim all the time was to find legitimate ways of pushing the boundaries.
Learning, in our eyes, was ‘real’ in as far as people’s emotions were
engaged. Defensiveness and anger were read as signs of the learning
experience being a genuine one, and were attributed to participants’
defence mechanisms rather than to any manipulation on our part.
The learning environment was a laboratory with the educator as
experimenter.

1.2. The 1980s: The Adult Educator as Enabler

Keyword: Process
For much of the 1980s I worked as a member of the lay training team in
Southwark Anglican Diocese. Adult Education at that time seemed to be
polarized between those who started from people’s experience and those
who started with the content of what needed to be taught. Lay trainers
were seen as being ‘experiential’ in their approach and those who taught
in colleges as being ‘didactic’. Both sides of the debate tended to parody
and despise the other, and occasions where practictioners from both sides
came together could be extremely heated. As lay trainers we often decried
the ‘academic’ approach and approached everything experientially. We
were ‘enablers’ in contrast to the despised ‘teachers’. This was the period
of the ‘experiential Bible study network’ where we experimented with
creative ways of engaging with biblical texts. We were reading liberation
theology from the Third World, and feminist theology and attempting to
adapt some of their method to our own context. If learning was to have
any value in our eyes it was learning for transformation, in opposition to
those who held that ideas and traditions had value in their own right. As
lay trainers we analysed everything in terms of its process. This was the
key to understanding institutions and groups and our role within them.
The learning cycle was our bible.
The adult educator had become an enabler of process.
Later in the ‘80s I experienced a shift beginning to take place from the
polarized debate between didactic and experiential towards a recogni-
tion of different learning styles. Personality indicators like the Myers-
Briggs were becoming popular, and Peter Honey and Alan Mumford

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 Peck Milestones in Adult Theological Education 9

were arguing that people had different learning preferences. What was
important was not the dogma of adult educational theory and practice,
but the extent to which you met the varying needs of learners. This
paved the way for the focus of the next decade.

1.3. The 1990s: The Educator as Technician

Keyword: Learning Objectives
During the 1990s I worked as the Director of Laity Development in
Liverpool Anglican Diocese. The shift now was from how best to ‘teach’
or ‘facilitate’ towards how best to help people to learn. A growing scar-
city of financial resources meant a greater recognition of the need to
work within the agenda of the employing organisation while remaining
true to one’s own priorities and beliefs. The key became not so much
what you did, but whether it was consistent with what you set out to do.
The Church of England was requiring its theological colleges and courses
to declare for themselves what sort of ordained ministry they thought
the Church needed, how they intended to train people for that, and how
they would evaluate the training. Everything needed learning objectives,
and you had to show that your method was designed to meet the objec-
tives. Accreditation became vital. New accrediting bodies sprang up.
There was the Open College and there were NVQs. There was Accredi-
tation of Prior Learning, and Credit Accumulation and Transfer Schemes.
Time that I would have formerly spent creatively brainstorming ideas
for course design and leading courses I spent sweating over ensuring
that my assessment criteria met my learning outcomes and my assess-
ment evidence met my assessment criteria, and making submissions for
accreditation.
Diversity was another drive. Different types of course began to multi-
ply. One could no longer teach ‘theology’; instead one was teaching
‘theologies’. New ‘ministries’ were springing up. In the Anglican Church
there were ordained local ministers alongside non-stipendary and
stipendary; there were pastoral assistants, and parish evangelists along-
side readers. There were local ministry teams and ministry leadership
teams. More adult education was happening ecumenically. Much of the
energy of Church adult educators was going into training for recognized
ministry, and ‘collaborative ministry’ became a buzz word. The analysis
of theological adult education became more sophisticated with the devel-
opment of different models such as, for example, those described by
Yvonne Craig (1994).
The adult educator had become a technician, designing events to meet
learning objectives.

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10 British Journal of Theological Education 14.1 (2003)

1.4. The 2000s: The Educator as Manager

Keyword: Lifelong Learning
Early in this decade I took up the post of Coordinator of Adult Educa-
tion and Training in Peterborough Diocese. It is only possible to begin to
discern the dominant trends that may determine the role of an adult
educator through this decade, but there are some straws in the wind.
Learners are increasingly questioning what they will get out of the in-
vestment of money and time in a course. Learning in the churches is
becoming more of a marketplace, with competition between institutions
as some are forced to close or to re-invent themselves. The marketplace
is forcing institutions to form partnerships in order to get more students,
and there is increasing interdisciplinary teaching. ‘How can we harness
resources by doing things together?’ is a question that is more frequently
asked. Accreditation, standards, value for money are driving forces. The
world of adult education is becoming more and more complex as a wide
range of partnerships is formed. The old polarizations of ‘either/or’ are
being replaced by a ‘both/and’ approach. Accessibility and flexibility are
seen as being key to fit in with diverse work and leisure patterns. The
concept of ‘lifelong learning’ is dominating government adult education
policy and is increasingly affecting the policy of training and adult edu-
cation in the churches. Learning through the web is beginning to find its
place and will increasingly play a part in any formal learning event.
Partnerships will become more and more global, as well as more diverse
locally. The context of adult learning will need to become increasingly
flexible, able to respond to changing needs as the world changes and
new issues arise. It seems that the effective adult educator now needs to
become a manager, able to manage a variety of types of course, types of
medium and an ever-increasing multiplicity of partnerships to enable
lifelong learning to take place.

2. Reflections
In reflecting on this history, what is striking is the way in which my
experience of theological adult education practice seems to reflect the
dominant culture of the time. So, for example we can parallel it with the
radical thinking and practice of the 1970s, the confrontational politics of
the 1980s, the more realistic, consensual politics of the 1990s and the tech-
nologically dominated, complex world of the current decade. The experi-
ence I describe would therefore be echoed as much by those within
secular adult education as by those within the churches. This raises some

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 Peck Milestones in Adult Theological Education 11

fundamental questions about the relationship of adult theological edu-

cation to culture. To what extent is adult theological education able to
provide a critique of culture, or to what extent does it simply reflect its
cultural setting whatever that is?
Underlying that is the wider question of the relationship of theology
to culture. To what extent is it possible for theology to stand outside
culture? This huge discussion, on which there is an extensive literature,
is outside the scope of this reflection. It would appear, however, that
mainstream theological thinking all too often follows developments in
culture rather than providing a powerful critique of it. So, for example,
our culture begins to highlight environmental issues; in response Chris-
tian thinkers discover a vibrant theology of creation which speaks pow-
erfully to a situation of potential environmental disaster, but we can only
trace isolated prophetic voices raising such issues before they become
popularized.
It might appear from the above that we cannot discern a particular
role for adult theological education that sets it apart from secular adult
education. If we took the six theories of adult Christian education that
Yvonne Craig (1994: Ch. 2) sets out (liberal, progressive, humanistic,
technological, radical and dogmatic) and changed the language margin-
ally, we would have models that secular adult educators would recog-
nize and espouse. Does this lead us to conclude that the only difference
between secular and theological adult education is that theological edu-
cation takes place in a Church context and uses different language to
describe common experience?
I would argue that it does not, if we have an understanding of God’s
relationship to the world that sees God actively at work in every aspect
of creation and human activity. On this understanding we would expect
to find that there are common models and processes at work whether we
look at theological or secular adult education, because God is at work
through both. At the same time we can discern a fundamental difference
between theological and secular adult education. Alongside the models
and activities that theological adult education shares with secular adult
education, it has the unique role of helping learners discern and point to
God’s activity in the world. This role is not an ‘add-on’, like another item
in the curriculum, but needs to be found in the warp and woof of all
adult theological education. And because this always takes place within
a particular cultural context, our original question presents us with a false
dichotomy. Adult theological education is neither providing a critique of
culture as though it could stand outside it nor simply reflecting its cul-
tural context. What it is uniquely doing is asking questions within that
cultural context about where God’s activity is to be discerned.

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12 British Journal of Theological Education 14.1 (2003)

The process of helping people develop skills of discernment is com-

mon between theological and secular adult education, with different
emphases running across both, depending on the particular models
espoused. The unique contribution of theological adult education is in
the discerning of what God is up to. This is a very particular kind of exer-
cise that, among other things, involves a developing spirituality along-
side understandings of the Bible and Christian tradition. But it is one
that precisely because it takes place within a particular cultural context,
must always be undertaken with a humility and a provisionality. We are
human, and however faithful we seek to be, we may get it wrong. What
is important is not getting it right but refusing to give up the enterprise
and continuing to pursue it as vigorously as we can.
Observing how the trends in adult theological education appear to
have reflected dominant cultural trends could have led me to conclude
that adult theological education is the prisoner of its culture and to
evaluate this as a failure. This reflection has, however, led me to con-
clude that a more helpful way of evaluating any phase of adult theologi-
cal education is not to ask the question ‘Does it provide a critique of
culture?’ but to ask ‘Within its particular cultural context does it succeed
in equipping learners to discern what God is up to in God’s world?’
Beyond this, I would suggest that there is a further question to be asked:
‘Does it motivate learners to cooperate with what they believe God is up
to in God’s world, whatever the cost?’ But that takes us into a wider
debate about the role and purpose of education, which is another dis-
cussion altogether.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Craig Y.
1994 Learning for Life (London: Mowbray).

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2003.