Primer on the Missional Church

This has been floating around the blogosphere for a few days now and so you might have seen it already, but if you haven’t, you’ll dig this.  J.R. Woodward, who head up Kairos Los Angeles, a network of neighborhood churches in LA, has compiled a huge list of books, articles, and blogs on the theology, historiy and recent developments of the missional church movement.  If you are looking for anything related to missional church, this is the place to find it.  This is by far the most helpful primer available.  Check it out!

Politics and Evangelical Christians

There’s a podcast out there called Christ the Center, which is a panel of usually three or four guys of OPC and PCA persuasion who get together to discuss various topics relating to Reformed theology.  But regardless of your theological persuasion, I think you will find one of their latest podcasts very helpful.  The panel sat down to interview Russell Moore, who is senior vice president of academic administration at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (and so I’m sure our own Terry will know him personally).  They discussed his book, The Kingdom of Christ: The New Evangelical Perspective, in order to talk about the relationships of American evangelicals and politics.  Moore provides some profound insight into the often distorted relationship of the two, and gives a lot of food for thought especially during this election season.  The podcast is available streaming online or for download.

Peering Into the Urban Slums

This is incredible.  I saw this on the Culture Making blog today.  Here’s how they describe the site: “Norwegian photojournalist Jonas Bendiksen has spent a good deal of time in Indian, Kenyan, Indonesian, and Venezuelan slums, and his website, The Places We Live, features dazzling 360-degree photos of homes and shanties, navigable and altogether immersive, along with audio recordings made by the inhabitants. Prepare yourself to gape, gasp, laugh, cry, and experience every emotion in between.”

If you’re not able to travel to a developing country and witness the urban slums firsthand, you can’t do much better than this.  The tug on your heart is powerful, and it gives renewed meaning both to the call of Jesus to serve those who are sick, in need of food and clothing (Matt. 25:31-46), and to James’ definition of religion (James 1:27).  1,000,000,000 (yes, that’s billion) of your neighbors on this earth live in urban slums.  Be sure to check out the places they live.

The Diverse Fabric of the Kingdom

The other day my wife and I had some friends over for a meal after church, one of whom was an American of Hispanic background and also a seminary student. We came to discuss some of our experiences at seminary. One of the things we spent a bit of time reflecting on was the difficulty that some international students have integrating themselves into the community.

It is no secret that many of our evangelical seminaries are dominated by white, middle-class Americans. For this one fellow, he even felt that to a certain extent the seminary had become a sort of clique for this demographic. Although I largely fit the demographic, and look and sound American, I have noticed that there are even occasions when I find myself feeling slightly out of place. It is hard to put my finger on it, but a British friend of mine suggested that there is something different in the way I think in comparison to many of my American brothers and sisters in the seminary.

One of the things that I get excited about is the changing face of Christianity. As its center rapidly shifts from the West into the developing world where it is growing at astonishing rates, there are things that are going to change in the future. We are going to be increasingly confronted with different theological expressions borne out of different cultural and historical contexts. We are going to come into contact with new forms of worship. We are going to see what place prayer occupies in the lives of believers from different backgrounds. It is very exciting and will give us tremendous opportunities to rethink the way we do things, and provide new ways for thinking about our fidelity to Scripture.

By why wait for these changes to be more evident here? The opportunity presents itself already now. The body of Christ is spectacularly diverse, and we need to embrace this diversity. Even if your seminary is dominated by the typical demographic, there are likely some students who come from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds and we are to be one with them in Christ Jesus. There is also a lot we can learn from them. Consider these suggestions:

• Get to know them. Just sit down and talk with them. Find out who they are, where they are from, and what their story is. A lot of us have unique stories about how we found our way to seminary, and those who come from different parts of the world are no different. You will get a feel for how people from different areas of the world operate and think just by talking to them on this level.
• Discuss theology and faith with them. As I alluded to above, they are probably going to have different perspectives on different issues, and it is well worth your time to explore those differences. To some degree it might be difficult for you to understand where they are coming from because there is a cultural barrier between you, but do what you can to try and get inside that framework and understand their perspective. It will be a rewarding experience.
• Be open-minded. Allow them to criticize Western culture and the Western Church, or if they are from a different part of the West, American culture and the American Church. Hear what they have to say and give it an honest and fair analysis. Dialog with them about it and see what different understandings their criticisms are built on.
• Make them feel at home. While you may be away from home as you attend seminary, you’re probably still in a familiar context and environment. For some international students, however, everything may be entirely foreign to them. Invite them into your home, share a meal with them, get your families together, avoid dominating your conversations on Monday with football talk, go to worship with them, invite them to worship with you, eat their food, talk about their culture, just hang out together. There are a myriad of ways to make this happen.
• Pray together. Above all, because your bond is found in Christ, embrace that. There is no greater unity to be found than when His people kneel together before Him.

Perhaps you have some other suggestions from your own experiences that you could add to this list. Please do, that’s why comments are enabled on this site. Interact with us.

It is important to remember that the Kingdom of God is not one nationality or ethnicity. It is global and universal, and cultural distinctions are broken down by our unity in Christ (Gal. 3:28). The fabric with which the Kingdom is woven together is incredibly diverse.  Embrace that, learn from it, and rejoice in the diversity of God’s people!

Faithful Life, Thought, and Belief

While you are in seminary, it is likely that you will come into contact with the term “worldview.” If you have really smart professors or fellow students who want to impress you with their knowledge, you might hear them use the word Weltanschauung instead. That is the German word from which we derive the term worldview. What the idea of worldview basically denotes is the foundational beliefs and principles that govern your life. As it is, everybody has a worldview, whether they are conscious of it or not.

We live in an age of declared relativism, where people confess the right to believe whatever they want. You are undoubtedly familiar with those who put together their own religion—a veritable smörgåsbord (there, now you have learned both a German and a Swedish word) composed of a host of differing parts from various religions that they find attractive. Truth becomes a hazy standard that is entirely up to the individual to determine, and no one truth need apply to anyone else but that individual, let alone a community or society.

Those of us who are Christians all share the very same basic root of our worldview–the person and work of Jesus Christ–but from there we are confronted with a great deal of diversity in our interpretations of what it means to live with that as our foundation. There can be just as much diversity within the Christian faith in terms of worldviews. This post is not meant to try and convince you that one or another Christian worldview is the one you should follow, but instead to encourage you to work to ensure that your worldview is comprehensive and coherent.

I have a number of regular people who remind me of the need to determine the validity of my worldview on a regular basis. I hear it quite regularly from professors, see it in many of the books I read, and talk about it with friends. Some of today’s leaders in the Church decry things like systematic theology as outdated and irrelevant for Christians in the 21st century. However, I am of the firm conviction that systematic thought of any sort is certainly not without its place. The fact is that if you assume a set of beliefs and principles that guide your life and you do not apply those consistently to each area of your life and thought, glaring contradictions will emerge in short order. Look at the way we criticize politicians when they say one thing and do another. So it is when people look at us as Christians and see contradictions. If you believe something, you need to live like you believe it.

Certainly, it is challenge to work towards a comprehensive worldview. But as a Christian, it is essential. If you are going to claim Jesus Christ as your Lord, he needs to be Lord of your entire life. Someone I know—a bit of dilettante poet, I suppose—once said, “Jesus Christ is Lord of all, or He is not Lord at all.” You might interpret this in a different way than I do, but what it boils down to is that you cannot relegate his rule to only one part of your life. It has to impact all of it. I am constantly confronted with the fact that I do not live like this, but instead live sinfully before the face of God, giving my allegiance to other things in my life and in this world. I am grateful for those who help me see the idols I inadvertently worship and the misconstrued beliefs that I hold to. Though I often live like it and though our world proudly proclaims it, I am not the sole arbiter of truth, and need the community of believers to guide me in the wisdom of God.

Surround yourself with a community of believers who strives earnestly to discover what it means to live as Christians in this world and how to do that faithfully. Seminary is such an incredibly opportunity to do this. If your current worldview has contradictions in it, work to resolve those. There is no divorce in the Christian faith, no part that is left untouched by the transforming power of the Gospel. How you live and what you believe is not an indifferent matter. A comprehensive, biblically-rooted worldview is essential to living as faithful servants of God in this world.

Note: this is a slightly altered version of a similar post I wrote for my blog in August of this year.

Proclaiming Our Faith in the Power of the Spirit

Let me say first that we want you all to know that those of us who write things for this site are real people, and our contributions are often reflections both on our experiences in seminary and on the path of faith. With that said, I want to lead off with a bit of a personal story to give a bit of context as to where I’m going with this post.

Apologetics has been something of a theme for me in the past few months. It began when we taught through Tim Keller’s excellent book, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism, in our adult Sunday School class at church. Now I have the privilege of taking John Frame’s apologetics course this semester here at RTS. As a result, I’ve been digesting a lot of information and gradually have felt more prepared to interact with those who have questions or objections to our faith.

Or so I thought.

Conversations

Last week, I was sitting in the café area of a local bookstore and I was doing some reading for the apologetics course. There were a couple of people at other tables within close proximity of me. Sometimes when I am on my own in a situation like that, I try to disguise what I am reading so as to avoid confrontation or any sort of conversation that might make me uncomfortable, and somewhat ashamedly I admit that this was one of those times. I felt concerned that, should someone want to talk with me, my witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ would be entirely inadequate. When the bookstore closed, I left and drove home feeling the weight on my conscience for my hypocritical actions.

That night, I had a dream. I was sitting in a coffee shop or bar of some sort with my brother. It was a pleasant environment, peaceful and relaxing, when suddenly out of the blue a young man in the corner started loudly criticizing Christianity in the way that many people in our culture often do. The attention of the crowd turned to him. My brother and I became increasingly bothered by his sentiments, and after a few minutes of listening to him, I mustered the courage to walk over to him and talk with him. I cannot recall exactly what I said in that dream, but I do remember finding out that the generalizations of his views of Christianity were not influenced by interaction or contact with Christians, but instead by the media and popular culture. I encouraged him to sit down and talk with Christians, to find out about their faith and why they follow Jesus and other important questions. He calmed down, thought about the idea, and then told me that he would do so and that he had unfairly judged a group of people he had little familiarity with. We exchanged phone numbers and he said he would call me so we could sit down and talk.

When I woke up in the morning, I felt greatly comforted. God used that dream to show to me that my cowardly actions that evening in the bookstore were unnecessary, and I felt more assured than ever that if such a situation presented itself in real life, His Spirit would be with me to grant me the words to say.

The Greatest Apologetic

I have found that seminary has a sort of double-effect: on the one hand, it gives us a lot of solid answers to a lot of questions. But on the other hand, it can raise a whole host of other questions we never previously considered. Again, it comes down to realizing that the more we grow in knowledge, the more we realize we do not know. This realization crosses my mind whenever I think about engaging with those who do not know Christ. I have been educated enough that I can give pat doctrinal answers to a lot of questions, but that may not be what people are looking for. Talking about the reality of faith and grace can be a lot more difficult than talking about theological concepts like justification. Everyone is different, and every approach will require a different nuance.

If you have read Keller’s book, you would be familiar with the great answers he provides to some of the major questions skeptics of Christianity have. Yet he admits that these answers may not always satisfy, and that sometimes you will need to, in essence, “play it by ear” and simply love them in the hopes that as they witness your testimony to the Gospel in how you live your life, they will be led towards faith. Our faith is not a disinterested confession of a number of doctrinal points, but it is a lived life. It transforms our entire being, and our radical difference from this world should be so blatantly obvious that people are drawn to us to find out what makes us different. While we certainly must know the basics of this faith, that knowledge has to inform how we live, or it is meaningless. We would also do well to remember the words of Francis Schaeffer, who said that the greatest and final apologetic, more effective than words, is the observable love of Christ between Christians. Actions always speak louder than words.

The words are 1 Peter 3:15 are familiar to many of us-”always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” God has given us His Word and His Spirit so that we can confidently, graciously, and lovingly bear witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is our responsibility to immerse ourselves in that Word, and to draw from that deep well. In seminary we find ourselves with a wealth of resources from which to learn from, such as Kari mentioned recently with her post on the un-mined treasure that is the seminary faculty. We have the community of believers to strengthen and uphold us. We have teachers like Keller and Frame who are willing to share their wisdom and insight with us. We have a responsibility to take advantage of the opportunities given to us, and in doing so we can go forward with confidence in the power of the Spirit.

Jesus’ promise to His disciples is no less a promise to us: “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). What comfort and what joy.

Let us proclaim the love and grace of our most precious Savior.

Two Cent Tuesday - Staying Organized

We have a huge variety of technological aids at our dispense to help keep us organized.  From PDAs to Blackberrys to online calendars, our lives can be organized at the tip of our fingers.  I’ve never gotten into those methods.  In fact, I don’t even use those small agenda books can you throw in your backpack.  I try–I always buy one at the beginning of the year, but give up on it by mid-January.  I prefer keeping things organized in my head.  That method has only failed me once (if you would like to know that story you can take me out for breakfast sometime and I’ll tell you about it).

Still, I need to have things organized.  If there is clutter around the house, I get stressed out (just ask my wife).  Things need to be in place, and I operate by keeping a routine.  And especially as you get farther in your studies, the balancing act becomes more and more difficult and you need to have a way to keep your life organized.  I’m working on getting better with writing things down, but I want to know how you do it.  What are some of your methods of keeping everything organized?  Do you have an efficient system that you think would help us?

Finding That Productive Study Environment

Another semester is approching quickly, and that means it won’t be long before books will have to be read, papers written, and tests will have to be taken.  If you are like me, you cannot just study anytime, anywhere.  You need the atmosphere and the environment to be right.  To be sure, every environment will not work for everyone.  You need to find your own.  But it is important that you do, because that is key to being productive.  And if you’re one of those who can study anywhere, anytime, you are lucky and I am jealous of you.  Nonetheless, here is what I need.

First, I don’t work well in silence.  I need music.  But not just any music.  I can’t study with Van Halen crankin’ in the background.  Classical music is my choice for studying.  I have quite a bit of classical on my iPod, but it got to the point where I had heard the same stuff over and over again and I would begin to notice that.  So after some searching, I finally came across Radio Swiss Classic, which is a radio station broadcasting from Bern, Switzerland with an internet stream available for free.  The station is fantastic.  It plays a great variety of stuff, and only occasionally has a brief verbal interjection to mention the title and composer of a piece (in German and French).  I highly recommend it to you.  Set the volume low, and let it play all day.

Second, location is important to me.  When I still lived in Ontario, I had a very specific spot in the Mills Library at McMaster University that I loved to be at.  I also liked the library at Redeemer University College, where I got my degree from.  But I do not like the library at here at RTS at all.  I find it far too small and confining.  One of the best places I work here is at the local Panera Bread.  It’s relatively comfortable, plays classical music, and has free refills on their coffee.

Finally, I work much better on a cloudy, rainy, and cool day.  Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen much in Florida, and I can’t control the weather.

But the point of this post is not to tell you what I need.  It’s to encourage you to find an environment where you study well.  This is important because seminary comes with a lot of work, and you need to be able to put yourself in a situation where you can work, concentrate, and be productive.  Find the place that works for you, and find it soon.  If you have already got something that works well for you, let us know.   What are your ideal study environments?

Thinking About Postgraduate Studies

When I began seminary, I thought I was one of the more unique students.  I was Canadian, of Dutch heritage, and wanting to pursue and academic career instead of pastoral ministry.  It turns out that I am the only Canadian, one of two people of Dutch heritage, but only one of a significant number of people wanting to pursue an academic career or postgraduate studies.  Since I found out how many people are actually interested in doing doctoral work, I thought this would be the perfect venue to share some of the information I have received that will offer some pointers if you are interested in going that route.

These pointers will help you get a feel of what you might need to be thinking about if you want to do a doctorate, but I encourage you to talk with professors at your seminary to get their advice as well.  Different fields of study might require different steps to be taken.  With that, here are some things you need to think through.

Are you ready for this?

First, you need to be serious about this.  The academic environment is very challenging and demanding, and if you are not willing to work very hard, this is not the path you should follow.  At this point, you need to be working hard to make sure your grades are excellent.  You need to be sure that you are writing top-level research papers, and that you are beginning to work on getting your name out there and making contacts in the field you would like to work in.

Know what you want to know.

Second, you should have a field of study already.  That is not something you can wait to figure out.  You need to have that in place now, and you have to be reading and writing on that subject.  Find any opportunity you can to be reading about it, and if you are given the opportunity in any of your classes to do a paper based on that subject, take it.  Also, if your seminary has opportunities for doing independent or directed studies, take advantage of them as much as possible.  This will give you the opportunity to learn what it is like to do independent research and will also give you the chance to write papers that could be used later on to help you gain admission to a Ph.D. program or even help your research further on down the line.  You cannot do enough of this.  If you have free time, take advantage of it.  You will only be helping yourself.

Sprechen Sie Deutsch?

Third, learning your languages is key, and the earlier you can get started on this, the better.  If you are planning on studying Old Testament, know your Hebrew.  If you want to do New Testament, know Greek.  If you’re like me, and are thinking about historical theology, Latin is going to be the language you need to learn.  Also, most doctoral programs require a second reading language, and while there will be opportunities to learn French and German while you are working on your Ph.D., the sooner you can get started on it, the better.  The best scholars are the ones who can work with primary sources in their original languages.

Get Connected

Fourth, find people with similar interests and talk with them.  Discuss your ideas, discuss things you’ve read.  Find people who are in doctoral programs right now and what they did to get where they are.  Establish whatever links you can that might help you out.  Explore your options.  I also recently found a website which can help you connect with people who are of similar interests.  Graduate Junction was started some time ago by some students from the UK with, I would presume, similar ambitions to what Ryan had in mind when he started this site–to connect with other people going down the same road and offer advice and other resources to fellow students.  It is small at this point (if you search for students with an interest in the Reformation, you only get a couple of profiles), but is growing quickly.  Also, become a member of different societies, such as ETS, SBL, or the 16th-Century Society.  Their conferences are the places to make friends and establish roots.  They usually offer good student discounts for memberships.

Evaluate Your Current Studies

Fifth, determine whether or not your degree is sufficient for propelling you into doctoral work.  One of the harsh realities is that most schools do not give much credit to seminary degrees.  While they are Masters’ degrees, they are usually not very academic and almost never have a significant research portion to it.  This is where the independent/directed studies are so crucial.  If you do some outstanding work there, you might be able to transfer from seminary to a Ph.D. program.  If not, you will likely need to be looking at getting a “credible” Masters’ degree from a big-name school like Duke or Princeton, for example.  The good news here, though, is that a lot of the work you do can easily transfer over to your doctoral work.

Let The Hunt Begin

Sixth, start setting your sights on schools and/or supervisors you would like to work under.  What school you look at will depend on how serious you are about pursuing a doctorate.  If you want to be taken seriously, and have any opportunity at getting a position in such an oversaturated market as North America, you have a very select list of schools you must pick from.  We’re talking Cambridge, Oxford, Edinburgh, Notre Dame, Yale, Harvard, Toronto–the big names.  For what it’s worth, here is a link to the top 100 humanities departments around the world in 2007.  If you’re not as concerned about a position and want to do a doctorate more for interest’s sake, there are a lot more schools that you can comfortably include on your radar.  But another positive factor for going to a bigger school is the funding that will be available to you.

I haven’t done a lot of research on distance learning, though I have heard some positive things about it.  Some of the big UK schools offer that option, and it might be something worth considering if it is far too impractical for you to relocate somewhere for a number of years.

…Then What?

Seventh, consider where you want to teach.  No matter what you do, obtaining a teaching position is not going to be a walk in the park, as I said, due to the oversaturation of the North American market.  In addition , it is difficult for a confessing Christian to get a position in a public or state-run school.  On the other hand, if you have a faith commitment and a degree from a top-level school, your opportunities for getting a position at a Christian college are much greater.  With that, I also encourage you to think about theological education in a more international setting.  Mission teams all over the world require theological educators as they seek to train lay leaders to lead churches.  An academic calling is not just a job, it is ministry as well.  Even if your gifts are not so desired in North America, know that they are coveted in many areas around the world.  Consider your options and how you can serve the Lord.

Take a Break if You Need it

Finally, do not be afraid to take a year off in between the end of your seminary studies and whatever your next step will be.  If could be a very productive year for you if you need to get your proposals in order, do some reading and writing, fine-tune your language skills, and what not.  Taking a breather is always helpful, as well.

Some More Help

This, of course, is not an exhaustive list of suggestions, and if you are looking for more information still, I encourage you to read a recent blog entry by John Stackhouse, professor at Regent College in Vancouver, BC.  His article also offers an extensive list of suggestions if you are considering the doctoral route.  Also, if you have any other tips of advice or suggestions that you’ve received, please share them here!  I may have left out some important things that should be considered.  In any case, I hope this is helpful for those of you who are thinking about postgraduate studies.

Make Yourself at Home

In an earlier post, Ryan discussed how seminary can sometimes come to be viewed more as a means to an end or as a stepping stone than a time of formation and growth. Asking questions such as what plans we have after we are done with seminary only fuel this kind of perspective.

One of the problems with having this mentality is that you will not properly establish yourself in whatever area you move to in order to attend seminary. Understanding seminary as a stepping stone to something else will only lead you to view your whole life at that particular time and place as a stepping stone. You will never fully unpack the boxes, so to speak. Your apartment will be more like a hotel room than a home.

As a result, a few things might happen. First, you will likely not develop many solid and authentic friendships. Perhaps you are thinking about returning to wherever you came from, and so you focus your energy on maintaining those friendships and those ties. While there is not anything inherently wrong with this, it will keep you from building bonds between the people around you for the next several years. Those friendships are essential for getting through seminary. Your close friends will challenge you, encourage you, strengthen you, rebuke you, and just be there for you like your friends back home cannot practically do. If you do not establish those sorts of friendships, your time in seminary will be very lonely. If you are married, this will likely be an even greater struggle for your spouse.

Second, if you do not make that place authentically “home” for the time you are living there, it is likely that you will not develop the type of relationship with the church you choose to attend that you need to. You will certainly be a part of a church, especially as you are required to serve a certain number of hours as an intern at a church in order to get your degree, but you will not really become part of that church. You will do your duties, but you will miss out on the type of communal fellowship that belongs to the local body of Christ. Again, to miss out on this will make for a very lonely experience–not to mention the fact that this will seriously impede your spiritual growth and development.

These are only a couple of things that may happen if you take this perspective, but they are significant things. And while maybe you have plans to return to where you came from or to move somewhere else once you are completed seminary and serve in ministry there–and these plans are good–do not let them be your sole focus while you are in seminary. Cherish this opportunity with all your heart, and seek to immerse yourself in the blessings that come with being in this situation. Make it home for you (and your family) for the next few years, with all the connotations which that word conveys.

For some people this will be easier than others. If you have moved around a lot, making a new place home is maybe not that difficult. If you have lived in the same place your whole life, this will be more of a struggle. If you are newly married and this new place is where you are starting your lives together, the transition will be a lot easier. If you have friendships going back to your childhood, it will be tougher. But this is where God has placed you and has called you to for this point in your life, and you will mine all the riches of this experience if you allow yourself to. It may only be three years. But a lot can happen in three years. Grab hold of it.

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