From Chapter of Same Name in Theo-Storying: Reflections on God, Narrative and Culture I believe that Counter-cultural contextualization best describes making the Christian message relevant and resonant in a specific cultural setting. The goal is to contrast the Christian message to the surrounding culture, but without being “anti-culture.” Counterculture suggests a critical agency to use …
Category: stories
2003 Missions Reflections
This is a sermon I spoke at Philippine Baptist Theological Seminary chapel, on February 28, 2017. Actually, I suppose it is more of a testimony than a sermon. A number of you will be doing internship this Summer: It could be Short-term Missions (STM), it could be church internship, it could be Clinical Pastoral Education …
Preaching and Teaching and Storying
Nice chapter/article in the book Preach the Word, edited by Greg Haslam. The Chapter (28) is "Preaching from Narrative" by Chris Wright. The chapter is fairly short but has good info in it... especially on the nature of narrative. Under How Do Stories Actually Work?, Wright puts some good notes. I will just give the …
The Difficulties of Ministerial Satire
I am going to use the first two paragraphs of the Wikipedia article on Satire here: Satire is a genre of literature, and sometimes graphic and performing arts, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, corporations, government or society itself, into improvement. Although …
Story: Feigning Asleep Near the Raging Waters
My wife is a Disaster Response Crisis Intervention Counselor, and she went with a team from our group, Bukal Life Care & Counseling Center (www.bukallifecare.org) down to Cagayan de Oro and Iligan City in Northern Mindanao, Philippines to provide defusing/debriefing (and training for others) in the tragedy of the flooding from Typhoon Sendong a couple …
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Strudel Missions? A Story.
This is a true story, but I share it intentionally vague in terms of details. Years ago, the church convention my wife and I are members of had a partnership with the Austrian Baptists. Many people respond negatively to the term "partnership" in missions because the partnership is often in word only. In practice, it …