Holistic Training in Ministry

I am planning to teach a course on "Foundations of Holistic Ministry" this coming semester at Philippine Baptist Theological Seminary. This got me to think about a presentation that my wife and I did years ago on integrative learning. It is based (loosely) on Bloom's Taxonomy, and looks at three learning domains: -Cognitive domain -Affective …

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Contemporary Issues in Missions— Part Two

Continuation of Part One. I am speaking of issues to deal with in a class I will be teaching in a couple of weeks. So what are very relevant issues that are contemporary and worth focusing on? This is only an eight-week course, and the final two weeks are for students to share a contemporary …

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Contemporary Issues in Missions– Part One

I will be teaching a class called “Contemporary Issues in Missions” at Asia Graduate Theological Seminary (ABGTS). Although I teach a lot of missions, and have been involved in a few types of missions, that doesn’t mean that I am on the cutting edge of the missions movement. For a number of years I had …

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Ivory Tower With Muddy Footprints

I teach at two seminaries, and soon I will probably be teaching with another school soon. This puts me firmly in the world of the "Ivory Tower"--- institutions that are seen within the broader church culture as out of touch with the 'real world' and church life. On the other hand, I teach in the …

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Wicked Missions

I first heard the terms "Wicked Learning Environment" versus "Kind Learning Environment" in an interesting little Youtube video a few days ago on a channel called "Curious Tangents." Then only a yesterday it came up again when talking to a cousin of mine in the context of the work of Daniel Kahneman (in his book, …

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Training in Missions

On occasion I have thought about what topics should be covered in Missions Training. I looked at some stuff I put together in 2010. Looking it over, I liked a lot of it. The main lacking I think was not recognizing the importance of theology in missions. So I would like to divide missions training …

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Better Questions and Al Yagoda

The Dunning-Kruger Effect has become popularized in recent days. Unfortunately it sometimes gets reimagined as "Stupid people often think they are smarter than they really are." Of course, that is not the issue. It is that people tend not to be self-aware of their own incompetence in a subject. People who are very ignorant in …

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Should Missionaries be Evangelists?

So I was talking to a friend of mine named Tom (his name is NOT Tom) who is a minister in an Asian Country where Christians are a tiny minority. He was talking about mission work in his country. He noted that missionaries had brought a lot of good things to his country... such as …

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Men of NO Ideas

One of my favorite essays is "Men of One Idea." It was written by Josiah Gilbert Holland (1819-1881). Some sources say it was written by Timothy Titcomb. However, that was his pseudonym. I have a copy of the essay in the Union Sixth Reader, a book published in 1862. Long have I sought an electronic …

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Video for “Dialogue With Asian Faiths”

https://player.vimeo.com/video/498619663 Course at Philippine Baptist Theological Seminary--- Online Jan-May 2021