By: rhbaker275 on May 15, 2015
Our reading for this week, Social Geographies: Space and Society, has provided some provocative insights on concepts of space and place in society. For someone unread on the subject of social geography, the author, Gill Valentine with her first words creates a sense of expectancy: “Social geography is an inherently ambiguous and eclectic field of…
By: John Woodward on May 15, 2015
As I began to read Social Geographies: Space and Society by Gill Valentine, my thoughts drifted toward how space has played an important role in my local church. I remember several long, heated meetings with our church’s founders about whether to remove one front pew to extend the stage in the sanctuary. The issue revolved…
By: Bill Dobrenen on May 15, 2015
One of the things that has always fascinated me is the diversity of vocations people find themselves in. Where a person has been is important information. Where I have lived, people I have met, and places I have experienced all have bearing on who I am and on who others think I am. With the…
By: Julie Dodge on May 14, 2015
Imagine, if you might, the earth with no people. Don’t imagine it as if we have disappeared, but rather that we were never here. There are no houses, no roads, no farms, no institutions, no cities, no nations; just the land and the oceans, the created vegetation, and animals of the water, sea and land.…
By: Telile Fikru Badecha on May 14, 2015
In July 2014, I participated in the dedication of the first ever translation of New Testament into the Arsi Oromo dialect. My ministry, in partnership with the Ethiopian Bible Society, did the translation work. Since the Bible is for all people we invited leaders from all churches including the Orthodox and Catholic denominations. We initially…
By: Mitch Arbelaez on May 14, 2015
Space… the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission, to explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no one has gone before.” Queue theme music. As a Trekkie, I could not resist. Valentine is not referring to this kind of…
By: Liz Linssen on May 14, 2015
Last Sunday towards the end of preaching my sermon, one man, Martin, raised his hand and declared that he wanted to give his life to God, right there and then. I hadn’t even reached the end of the message, but so desperate was this young man, that he couldn’t wait. Before the service had begun,…
By: Ashley Goad on May 14, 2015
I was born in South Carolina. Soon after, my parents moved our family back to their home state of North Carolina. Three years later, we moved to Savannah, Georgia. Five years after, we packed up and returned to North Carolina. My parents divorced almost immediately upon arrival, and for the next ten years, I ping-ponged…
By: Deve Persad on May 14, 2015
I grew up watching the sitcom, “Cheers!” – you may remember: the place “where everybody knows your name and they’re always glad you came.” A regular group of people who came in from different work places and went off to different homes, but while they were together they shared the ups, downs and nothingness of…
By: John Woodward on May 10, 2015
I was delighted that we were assigned a book on Asian theology in light of our up and coming trip to Hong Kong. Upon reading Grassroots Asian Theology, I had two immediate insights: First, I realized that I remembered very little of my “Indian Traditions” class of 40 years ago (though I remembered my professor,…
By: Mitch Arbelaez on May 9, 2015
The main focus of Simon Chan’s book Grassroots Asian Theology: Thinking the Faith From the Ground Up is how theology ought to be done, within the Asian culture as well as other cultures.[1] As I am reading more and more on the subject of contextualization I am learning that this ought to be the objective…
By: Richard Volzke on May 9, 2015
This week’s reading, Grassroots Asian Theology: Thinking the Faith from the Ground Up, by Simon Chan was packed with a lot of information. The book focuses on the Asian church and how it understands God within the cultural setting. But, what I enjoyed most was the theological insights on Christianity and church history that Chin…
By: rhbaker275 on May 9, 2015
In the preface to Grassroots Asian Theology: Thinking the faith from the ground up, Simon Chan heightens one’s reading expectations. Although the title implies a study on Asian theology, Chan holds out the spectra of developing an “authentic” and “vibrant” theology “that will yield a better theology for the Asian church and perhaps the global…
By: Telile Fikru Badecha on May 8, 2015
A couple of years ago two of my coworkers went to visit a new small church in a village. Upon arriving, they asked the villagers what they knew about the community that meets there. The villagers told them that they were Protestant Christians. They come on Sundays, they dance and they go home. The villagers…
By: Carol McLaughlin on May 7, 2015
I am influenced by my geography, the culture and context of the Pacific Northwest. Stephen Bevans identifies contextual theology as a way of doing theology that involves two realities, “The first of these is experience of the past, recorded in Scripture and preserved and defended in the church’s tradition. The second is the experience of…
By: Julie Dodge on May 7, 2015
Theology. David Ford suggests that “(t)heology at its broadest is thinking about questions raised by and about the religions.” [1] Grenz and Olson narrow that definition down to “any reflection on the ultimate questions of life that point toward God.” [2] I might narrow it further to be man’s attempt to understand God. That definition…
By: Ashley Goad on May 7, 2015
Under the Mango Tree… The Next Chapter I will freely admit, I know very little about Asia, Asians, or religion in Asia. In fact, I have never even been curious. That is one part of the world that has never captured my wanderlust. While I studied a bit on Zen Buddhism throughout seminary, I never…
By: Michael Badriaki on May 7, 2015
Simon Chan’s book In Grassroots Asian Theology is on point and timely indeed. There is more one could say about the issues concerning Ferguson, New York, the Officer Slager and Scott Walker case, the late Freddie Gray and Baltimore city , but one common theme in all these instances has been the presence of grassroots…
By: Bill Dobrenen on May 7, 2015
I have been in school for a long time, not only as a student, but also as a teacher. Knowledge and information runs through my academic veins. I like to know things. But the more I know, the less I realize I know. And this is particularly true with the study of theology. What do…
By: Liz Linssen on May 7, 2015
Asian and Western cultures are worlds apart. Many of the issues that faced Asian Christians are simply non-existent for the Western believer. For example, one of the issues that South Koreans face once they have chosen to follow Jesus Christ is the question of ancestral worship. Each year, families throughout the country visit the graves…
