Thinking the faith in Asian context
Thinking the faith in Asian contexts
May 10, 15
Many of the concepts that I read in the Grassroots Asian Theology were not too surprising. I have always believed that Asian Christianity was not that different from how we as Westerners perceive it. As the book said, “a genuine development in new contexts must be faithful to the historical trajectory set by scripture.”[1] In my opinion any Christian context has to be biblically based no matter what. Although the way Asians deal with things is different they still have the same doctrines of the bible that we do. Any person that travels to different cultures must realize that the gospel will be handled differently. Education is important too. The more a person has a world concept then they can affectively understand why people believe they way they do. Another thing about context is that, “the contextualizer of the gospel therefore must have a meta cultural framework that enables him or her to translate the biblical message into cognitive, affective, and evaluative dimensions of another culture.”[2] I thank God for understanding this. I have over the years had dinners and prayer with Asian Christians. And they do things a lot different but we seem to be on the same page when it comes to theological doctrines. From the way I pray and they pray it is really different. But even our different denominations have different types of worship styles and ways we go about ministering the gospel.
We worship at an Episcopal church and use one of their buildings. And another church worships there too an Armenian church. But they have the same liturgical style of worship as the Episcopal Church. Needless to say our church is way different culturally and liturgically. We don’t use the main sanctuary except for large gatherings. They pay close attention to relics in their worship and we don’t. But you have to understand their way of worship. I have a pretty good back ground from coming from a Catholic Church so their ritualistic way of worship is something I am familiar with. Its just context and I am very interested in what I am going to learn about the Asian context of worship.
I have not been to a whole Asian service so it is going to be interesting to see how it goes. At Azusa Pacific University I had a lot of Asian friends and it was fun going through worship classes with them. In one of our classes we had to do music practicum’s. We would put together at least three worship songs and use scripture in between the songs. I found it very interesting they way they did their worship. And then we had preaching seminars where we had to preach from texts that our instructor gave us. Even thou I am a Pentecostal preacher at times they got very emotional.
I really cant wait to see what the rest of the summer school is going to be like but I am sure going to Hong Kong will further my understanding of Asian theology and context!
[1] Chan, Simon. 2014. Grassroots Asian Theology: Thinking the Faith From the Ground up. Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Academic, 2014. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost), EBSCOhost (accessed May 10, 2015).
[2] Ibid., 11.
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