I just finished a post on the opposite--- "How Might Missiology Speak to Pastoral Counseling and Chaplaincy." So now I would like to suggest the value the opposite way. One challenge the the direction of Pastoral Theology informing Missions is that in a sense it has happened before. Back in the 1960s, a form of …
Continue reading How Might Pastoral Theology Speak to Missions
This is a continuation from Part One. If you haven't read it yet, please CLICK HERE. Obviously, when I am speaking of unintended audiences, I am also speaking of secondary audiences. That is, hopefully a speaker or writer is aware of potential audience members that may vary both over time and space. Taking these into …
Continue reading The Challenge and Value of Unintended Audiences (Part Two)
I have talked about it before... but maybe I can pull some of my disparate thoughts together here. I will give a few quick examples. Undermined Butch Hartman, the creator of the cartoon, "The Fairly Odd Parents" among others, decided to create his own brand and channel for children's media. As a Christian of a …
Continue reading The Challenge and Value of Unintended Audiences (Part One)
I must admit, as I have before, apologetics--- at least as it is commonly done--- is really not my thing. I went to college in a Christian school that seemed to really like apologetics, and I got interested in it briefly but lost interest. A lot of apologists I read seemed like people who acted …
Continue reading Presuppositional Apologetics— A Really Bad Idea?
Many years ago, before I went into Missions... I worked at a manufacturing firm as a mechanical engineer. I had a friend who was JW (a member of the Jehovah's Witness faith). He had tried to convert me--- he was a Pioneer, which meant that he was supposed to commit a certain number of hours …
Continue reading It is Never JUST CAKE. An Inter-religious Reflection
I have been reading a long paper (over 200 pages long when including endnotes)--- APOLOGETICS, MISSION & NEW RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS: A HOLISTIC APPROACH, by Philip Johnson. It is in Sacred Tribes Journal, Vol. 1, #1. I must admit that I would have preferred a "Reader's Digest" version of it, but it is excellent. I had …
Philip Johnson speaks of a couple of forms of Christian Apologetics. One of them he describes as the "Heresy-Rationalist" Model. I will just use "HRM" for it. This model focuses on the accepted dogma from a logical (rationalist) perspective. While Johnson sees value in this model, he also sees its limitations. Here are a couple. …
Continue reading “Heresy-Rationalist” Apologetics. Quote from Philip Johnson
So what might we say of revelation in other religions? In an era past, the Scottish missionary to India John Nicol Farquhar famously championed the idea that Christ fulfills the best in Hinduism,[46] an idea that could be applied to other religions and their sacred texts. At the other end of the spectrum there is …
I am going to be talking about sympathizing with people who are going through religious or moral crises that I cannot fully relate to. There are many other parallels that relate to gender, race, nationality, and more. These others are important... perhaps more important. But I am teaching a class in inter-religious dialogue right now …
Continue reading Sympathizing With Religious People To Whom You Can’t (Fully) Relate
One of my students, from Myanmar, was talking to a nurse (the mother of his friend) about Christianity. She also lived in Myanmar and was a devout Buddhist. My student asked her what she liked about Christianity and what she did not. As far as what she did not, the main thing was how many …
Continue reading Is There Value in Pastoral Theology for Inter-religious Dialogue?