by Dr. John Aukerman, professor of Christian Education, director of distance education, and director of outcomes assessment at the Anderson University School of Theology.

I was hired to teach in the Anderson University School of Theology in 1984, and have searched in vain for a good comprehensive textbook to use in my Christian education classes. Every new book that came along was either incomplete, or had a theological bent that was inconsistent with our Wesleyan holiness tradition.

So you can imagine my interest when I received a desk copy of a new Christian education book in the Fall of 2008. I thought to myself, “Maybe this is the book I’ve been looking for!” So I took it home one weekend and started reading.

I hadn’t gotten more than four chapters into it when I saw that there was no way I could use that book. First, it was too simplistic: for example, it attempted to explain the mystery of the Holy Trinity with various drawings of triangles. Second, it was too biased toward a particular theological perspective and would have required constant explanations in class about why we don’t believe this way.

Now you can imagine my disappointment. After so many years of looking for “the right textbook,” here was another one that failed to measure up. I noticed that it had been written by two Christian education professors, and I thought, while I certainly didn’t have the ability to write “the right textbook,” perhaps I could team up with my counterparts in our other Church of God institutions and together we could write this book!