By: Julie Dodge on February 20, 2017
I am not perhaps the typical candidate for a Doctor of Ministry program. While I completed my undergraduate degree in Christian Education, and started a career in ministry, God led me to the field of social work, where I completed my Master’s degree, have worked in the field for 25 years, and now am an…
By: Carol McLaughlin on June 19, 2015
Anticipation. No I am not referring to the commercial playing that song in the background whilst a cup of coffee is poured. Although, thankfully, as I write I do have a cup of coffee beside me! By anticipation I am simply referring to our upcoming Advance. The anticipation for our time together is building. Truthfully…
By: Richard Volzke on June 19, 2015
Hong Kong is a city where Eastern and Western cultures collide. Asian culture flourished for hundreds of years before the British took possession of Hong Kong in 1841. For 156 years, the city was under British colonial rule.[1] During that time period, two different cultures interacted with each other. On some level, a new subculture…
By: rhbaker275 on June 19, 2015
The reading Hong Kong Culture: Word and Image[1] edited by Kam Louie rounds out a trilogy of readings in preparation for a Hong Kong academic advance. The advance is an element in the DMin course of study with George Fox Evangelical Seminar that provides an encounter with local culture from a global perspective. The readings…
By: Bill Dobrenen on June 18, 2015
In Hong Kong Culture,[1] editor Kam Louie takes his readers on a ride through the social expressions of several different authors, poets, film directors, linguists, and essayists into the new Hong Kong – Xianggang. The social commentary here does not hold back on its emotion, criticism, and reaction to events that have transpired in this…
By: Telile Fikru Badecha on June 18, 2015
Reading Kam Louise’s editorial book, Hong Kong Culture: Word and Image, raised my expectations about the upcoming advance in Hong Kong. Admittedly, as unfamiliar as I am with the Hong Kong’s history before and after 1997, the essays offer very informative and fascinating analytical insights illustrating the social and cultural life of Hong Kong. As…
By: Mitch Arbelaez on June 18, 2015
There we stood. My bride and I of only seven years looking over the beautiful harbor into the picturesque landscape that is the romantic Hong Kong Harbor. We had just lead another large youth team into China where we ministered and delivered Bibles. It was a wonderful trip through four cities and our final stop was…
By: Liz Linssen on June 18, 2015
“Hong Kong has been a cultural fault-line for centuries — first, as a colonial space wrested from the Qing empire by the British and second, as a prize won back by the government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). In this shaky geopolitical terrain, Hong Kong found its firm cultural ground and became a…
By: Deve Persad on June 17, 2015
I have a lot of anticipation for our upcoming visit to Hong Kong. Despite the efforts of Kam Louie in his editorial work, Hong Kong Culture: Word and Image, which allow the reader a beneath the surface look at the micro evolution of this highly regarded global city; it is not the music or film…
By: Ashley Goad on June 17, 2015
I need to be completely honest. Despite the fact that I spend most my time traveling the world, I have never been to the South Pacific or Asia…unless you count Yekaterinburg, Russia, where I typically spend an afternoon taking friends to stand on the Europe-Asia border! When we first mentioned Hong Kong, I had to…
By: John Woodward on June 14, 2015
Before leaving for South Africa last fall, I sought out several novels by local authors. The first I landed on was by Nobel Prize winning novelist Nadine Gordimer. In her haunting novel, July’s People, set in the time of black uprisings across South Africa in the 1980s, we witness the unsettled reality of South Africa…
By: Michael Badriaki on June 11, 2015
Kam Louie’s book, “Hong Kong Culture: Word and Image” is timely since it will not be long before I will be boarding an air buses to Hong Kong. In many ways, Louie’s work seems like a reputation course since I have close friends who currently live in Hong Kong and have given me many crash…
By: Telile Fikru Badecha on June 6, 2015
“Courage is the ability to cultivate a relationship with the unknown; to create a form of friendship with what lies around the corner over the horizon–with those things that have not yet fully come into being.” –Davide Whyte Every church I had a chance to visit or work…
By: Mitch Arbelaez on June 6, 2015
This Friday I addressed church leaders and pastors at the Logos University International Graduation and conference. Leaders attended from nations around the world, Germany, South Africa, England, Kenya, Jamaica, Latin America, and the USA. Having read the readings for this week I so desired to transmit that information to these Christian world leaders, but alas,…
By: rhbaker275 on June 6, 2015
In a recent advertisement produced by a major drug company, the narrative depicts a rodeo scene with a bull-rider aboard what, at first, appears to be a typical furious, incensed bull determined to unseat the rider and cause considerable harm. A wider view of the situation reveals the energetic, arms waving rider is aboard a…
By: Bill Dobrenen on June 4, 2015
I often wonder why people are drawn into positions of leadership. I have experienced working with some good leaders, but I have had more experiences working with less-than-competent leaders. How did they get there? Who put them there? This week’s reading was rich, deep, and fulfilling. It gave me hope. It made me smile. So…
By: Liz Linssen on June 4, 2015
“The crisis is thus an opportunity to rediscover the vocation of the church as an authentic community, a living priesthood, a missional people in a foreign land. We have the opportunity to move from leadership cults, to leadership cultures; instead of lone rangers, we need meaning makers…” [1] As the pastor of a one-year-old church…
By: Carol McLaughlin on June 3, 2015
Sometimes I simply marvel at the convergence of concepts and ideas. One feeds the other, provides understanding and forges new connections. This has been true of our reading this week. As I write this I am in Tigard, Oregon, a short distance from the Seminary. I’ve been here since Monday for a face-to-face for Pastoral…
By: Ashley Goad on June 3, 2015
Currently, I am sitting in the Moscow airport. There are two children watching a movie with the sound turned to the highest decibel level possible, and a man has been systematically hammering at the tile floor for close to two hours. This all comes after a 12-hour transatlantic flight. I am tired. My words do…
By: Julie Dodge on June 3, 2015
“What churches need are not more entrepreneurial leaders with wonderful plans for their congregation’s life, but poets with the imagination and gifting to cultivate environments within which people might again understand how their traditional narratives apply to them today.”[1] I have written before about the beauty and challenges of my home church. Our church of…
