Proposal abstract :
Support for a study leave project that concerns the intersections between congregational studies and teaching-learning in theological education. The purpose of the project is to explore the use of congregational studies as an important and valuable tool for teaching and learning across the disciplines in theological education, contributing to a broader conversation about teaching-learning issues among seminary faculties, and offering new possibilities for contextual education in theology.

Learning Abstract :
This study leave project examined the intersections between congregational studies and teaching-learning issues in theological education. Congregational studies offers opportunities to contextualize such teaching and learning by locating it in the interstices between particular contexts of ministry (congregations and other settings), the processes by which learners analyze these contexts, and the larger questions of theology, biblical studies, history, ethics, leadership, etc. that go beyond any one particular setting or context. Instead of studying the issues and questions that make up the explicit curriculum of theological education in the abstract, a congregational studies-based pedagogy allows particular ministry settings to operate as "case studies" for teaching and learning. Because a congregational studies approach apprentices learners in the practices of "reading" congregational contexts, it invites them into the "community of practice" made up of public theologians/church leaders able to understand such contexts and think theologically without reducing the scope of their concern to a single case. Such practices are portable across contexts for ministry.