Education For Ministry

by Eric Von Salzen

I had never heard of Education for Ministry.

My wife and I were sitting in the pew at St. Alban’s, Washington, DC, reading the announcements in the service leaflet while we waited for the 5:30 pm service to start. Helen said, "Oh, look, they’re starting up a new Education for Ministry group in the fall. You’d like that. It’s intellectual. You ought to sign up."

So, of course I did.

When I came home after the first meeting of the new EFM group, and Helen asked how I liked it, I said, "Well, the mentor’s very good; she clearly knows what she’s doing. And I like the people in the group. The study materials seem to be just what I was looking for to learn something about the Bible. But I’m not really sure this program’s for me. I think it’s kind of touchy-feely."

I should explain, that I was raised in New England. We don’t do touchy-feely.

What was really bothering me was that I had learned that within a few weeks I was going to have to present to the entire EFM group my "spiritual autobiography". I was supposed to talk for 15 whole minutes about who I am, about my hopes, my dreams, my disappointments, and what my spiritual life is like. That’s not a Yankee thing to do.

However, I persevered. I continued in EFM, and I shared my spiritual autobiography. I found that sharing something about my spiritual life with others who were sharing with me something about their spiritual lives gave me insights that made up for the embarrassment.

Four years later, I graduated from EFM, which was one of the highlights of my life. The EFM diploma is the only one that hangs in my home office (you can see my college and law school diplomas on the way to the guest bathroom if you care). By that time, I had already become a mentor and with another newly-minted mentor had recruited and was leading a new EFM group at St. Alban’s. Now that I’m retired, I lead two EFM groups at All Saints, Fort Lauderdale.

EFM is a wonderful program for religious education. In the first two years we read most of the Old Testament and all of the New Testament. In the next two years we study the history of the church over the last two thousand years, and dip into the works of the great philosophers and theologians of those two millennia.

My impression is that a lot of church-going Episcopalians would like to know more than they do about the scriptures and their church, and EFM is a good way to meet that need.

Some clergy think that parishioners can get all the scriptural knowledge they need by just listening to the readings and sermons in church; over the three year lectionary cycle they’ll hear most of the Bible. There are two problems with that, though. First, what you hear read in church are just snippets of the scriptures, without the context and the background. Second, some preachers aren’t interested in – or aren’t very good at – explaining the scriptures to lay listeners.

On the day my EFM class graduated at St. Alban’s I was given the privilege of preaching the sermon at the 11:00 am service (other EFM graduates preached at the 8:00 and 9:15 services). In the course of my sermon, I referred to the day’s Epistle reading (Gal. 2:11-21) in which Paul talked about how he had criticized something that "Cephas" had done, and in passing I mentioned that "Cephas" was another name for Peter.

Afterwards, some people were kind enough to tell me that they had liked the sermon, but the thing they really liked was learning who Cephas was. They had heard Cephas mentioned before in the readings in church, but they had never known that this was St. Peter, the rock on whom Jesus would build his church, the leader of the twelve disciples, etc. You really miss the impact of Paul dressing down Cephas if you don’t know that Cephas was Peter.

So Bible study, the "intellectual" part of EFM, is important, but so is the "touchy feely" part – spiritual autobiographies, theological reflection, worship, and table fellowship. The parts of EFM that I was most dubious about at the beginning are what ends up changing lives.

The name of the program is off-putting for some people. They think it’s only for those who want to become ordained clergy. Well, it does sometimes work out that way, but that’s not the "ministry" that EFM is about. God calls all of His people to ministry, to serve Him and their brothers and sisters. EFM is supposed to prepare us to perform that our ministry better.

It’s certainly a good way to recruit people into such service. For example, if it hadn’t been for EFM, I doubt it ever would have occurred to me to run for the vestry or to become a junior warden.

I’ve also found that EFM serves another role as well. In my two groups at All Saints, we have a lot of members who are already deeply involved in church leadership and in various kinds of outreach activities. EFM didn’t lead them into ministry; they were already there. For these people, I think that what they learn in EFM makes them better at the ministries they’ve chosen. And when those ministries have become difficult burdens for them to carry – and we all know that this can happen –the fellowship of their EFM brothers and sisters helps them through.

When I recruit new members for EFM, one of the hurdles is that it’s a four-year program. That’s a big commitment (although it’s a commitment made one year at a time). I’m about to see my first class graduate at the end of the four years, and they are already worrying about how much they will miss EFM, wondering how they are going to get by without it. That’s one of the nice things about being a mentor. EFM just keeps going on and on.

For more information, see http://www.sewanee.edu/EFM/index.htm