Tag: ministry in diversity

Reclaiming Jesus in Diversity

On By missionmusingsIn Commentary, ContextualizationLeave a comment

Mostly this post is to point you to read and consider an article of the same name on the Global Theology webpage.

I would like to add first, though, that the issue is quite relevant to Missions.

  • One of my students is writing a paper on expressing the message of the Gospel to Theravada Buddhists in Myanmar. The paper notes that differences between Christian and Buddhist doctrine are actually lesser problems. The bigger problems are that Buddhists there think of Christianity as foreign, Western, and colonialist. Christ is seen as a Western religious teacher, rather than Asian. Also Christian teachings as filtered through the Western Church has expressed itself theologically in the language and concerns of Europeans and Americans rather than Asians.
  • Some revolts against Christianity have sprung from misconceptions about what actually constitutes Christianity, and thus “Why is Christ”? An obvious one is the revolt by many African-Americans against Christianity in the 1960s and early 1970s based on the woefully misinformed view that Muslims were less gleefully involved in the African slave trade than Christians. Christian missionaries have also supported some social ills, such as in creating “caste churches” or encouraging ethnic churches (by drawing people away from of ethnically diverse churches) in an ‘end justifies the means’ attempt towards church growth through homogeneous grouping. This latter activity may have drawn some… but it has soured many more.

If Christ cannot be seen as representing all groups within humanity, He cannot be seen as representing humanity and providing hope for humanity. If Christ cannot be seen as providing hope for all humanity, than Christianity certainly is not for all peoples.

Anyway, before this becomes a full post, I will stop here and recommend you visit Reclaiming Jesus in Diversity.

I suppose this also leads back to my book for Bible School students— Ministry in Diversity: Applied Cultural Anthropology for a Multicultural World.

 

Ministry in Diversity. 2nd Edition

On By missionmusingsIn cultural anthropologyLeave a comment

Finally got my book updated. Previously, I was tryingMinistry BookCover 2a to finish the book “Ministry in Diversity” quickly so that it could be used in my Cultural Anthropology class. So I was a bit… sloppy. My son helped me fix a lot of it. We got most of the problems fixed now (HOPEFULLY all of them). Also added another chapter. Chapter 17 is on Interreligious Dialogue (IRD). Additionally, I expanded my chapter on Language a bit. However, because of changing the formatting, it is now about 60 pages shorter, despite having more content. That also reduced the cost a bit. Kindle version will be up soon,

And the Fun Begins Again

On By missionmusingsIn Chaplaincy/CPE, cultural anthropologyLeave a comment

Philippine Baptist Theological Seminary (www.pbts.net.ph) will start its 2017/18 academic year starting June 13th. Looking forward to it, as I will be teaching three courses I love.

  1.  I will be teaching Cultural Anthropology again. This will51TaxgU9G9L._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_ be for the M.Div. program. I will be using the book I wrote, “Ministry in Diversity,” as the main text book. Still trying to think about what project I want to do with that. Traditionally, I ask people to do either an ethnography or an RRA (Rapid Rural Assessment). However, we are doing some ministry work in a jail this year, and it would be an exciting exercise in sub-culture contextualization. Not sure yet.
  2. I will be teaching “Contemporary Issues in Missions.” This is a BTh course. I taught it years ago, but in more of a modular, rather than semestral, format. Additionally, the book I used back then is probably a bit long-in-the-tooth to be thought contemporary today. I may have to teach the course without a single textbook. I will probably make it more research-oriented.
  3. Celia and I, and maybe one or two more, will tag-team to teach “Clinical Pastoral Orientation.” It is a mini form of Clinical Pastoral Education, designed to fit a bit better into a semestral system. Might use our book “The Art of Pastoral Care” but not sure. It depends how many have already used the book for Intro to PC&C. This is a cross-over class in the sense that both Bachelor level and Master level students can take it.

My wife Celia will be teaching Intro to PC&C for the BTh Students. I will also be supervising theses and dissertations at Asia Baptist Graduation Theological Seminary, and thesis students at PBTS and Maranatha Graduate School.

My wife is working with Drug Surrenderers here in Baguio, and both she and I (and our team from Bukal Life Care) will be continuing to expand work in two jails here. Some people find it strange that I teach both Missions and Pastoral Care. However, I believe it is in places like jail ministry, and drug treatment, where Missions and Pastoral Care overlap quite nicely. It is also in such ministries where the argument that social ministry is not really missions is shown to be without merit.

It should be an exciting year. I am not sure whether I will be so busy that I can’t keep this blog updated, or whether the classes and ministries will inspire me to write more.

 

A Happy Tiny Surprise

On By missionmusingsIn cultural anthropology, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Got a package in the mail today. I had ordered a few copies of my book to be shipped over to the Philippines. It arrived today. I put in the order in almost exactly 1 month ago. They printed it off and it arrived today. 100_0850

That may or may not impress you, but it did me. The original arrival date was February 20 and it beat that by close to 2 weeks. And the February 20 delivery date would be unrealistically fast. More typically, that date would have the box in a customs storage sitting for a long wait. Then it would go up here to Baguio… arrive at the Post Office where it would sit for a maybe a week or two and then they would send me a little notice to stop by and pick it up.

But not this time. Since I am teaching cultural anthropology this term, it is nice to have a few paper copies in hand. I have given electronic copies to my students… but there is something nice about paper… sometimes.

Celebrating the New Year and New Book

On By missionmusingsIn Contextualization, Uncategorized4 Comments

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I decided celebrating the New Year by getting rid of a major headache. I finished and published my book on Applied Cultural Anthropology. It is primarily for Bible School students in the Philippines, but might be found interesting or useful to others. I tried to not get lost in the terminologies and minutiae.

For those interested, it is on Amazon.com.  Click Here