Greetings:
As promised I am reporting a summary of the 78 on and off-line responses to my request for your thoughts on a proposed Lay Education Project project. I am greatly pleased with your generous and concerned communications. Some of you have spent decades working on the task - often with deep frustration - most want to try again with this generation. I will pass on your full comments to Don Munro.
If you have further feedback, get it to me in the next few days. I'm headed out now to x-country ski on the newly fallen snow.
Blessings,
Jack Haas
Response Summary
1.. Project worth doing by ASA - but a difficult challenge
2.. Good suggestions concerning the attitude of the writers
3.. Possible strategies with written materials - emphasize the validity of a variety of positions on scriptural interpretation,
4.. The importance of a 'one to one' approach - ".shared discussion must replace debate and confrontation"
5.. Recounting of personal experiences - ".from my own experience, to cross over the threshold from being a YECer to acceptance of an alternative world picture entails a crisis of faith"
6.. Listing of related projects and 'relevant books in the works'
7.. Detailed comments on potential writing projects
8.. Audience? ".The most fertile ground may be the growing, contemporary praise & worship churches with middle-upper-class/educated congregations, strong small group programs, and effective local and world ministry efforts (more well-placed Christian media 'endorsements for dialogue' would obviously help too). Even if many church leaders remain threatened by non-YEC views, eventually, as some realize the faith of their sometimes timid but open-minded congregations can be strengthened by inclusive views rather than weakened, the need for more respectful and healthy dialogues will become obvious, thus encouraging more
much-needed maturing and education". " [Do we] want to get to the laity/.then get to their preacher and to the faculty at the conservative evangelical colleges and seminaries." ".reach the teachers of younger students."
9.. Should the ASA sponsor a project which endorses specific positions? ". leaders of the American Scientific Affiliation, organized in 1941, waged a two-pronged campaign in the 1940s and 1950s to discredit "flood geology" as pseudo-science ...exposing YECism as pseudo-science is part of the ASA tradition
10.. Suggested approaches:
a. develop study booklets with data and questions geared to the fundamentalist
text-books and most popular Flood-geology books
b. sponsor one-time lectures in selected churches
c. develop Sunday School curricula for a 5-week or 10-week series. Develop one curriculum for adult Sunday School and another for, say, middle-school-aged children.
d. write textbooks and material for use in home-schooling and Christian day schools.
e. develop pamphlets on selected topics.
11. Some questions.
a. Should written materials be sold or free from the ASA web?
b. Where do we find writers for these projects? Suggestions?
c. Should we seek additional funding to make a more lasting effort?
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