By: Miriam Mendez on February 13, 2015
There have been two times in my life that I have had an overwhelming feeling of hopelessness. The first was the time after John’s death. It was a very dark, dark time in my life. I could barely breathe…I could barely live. The second time I had this feeling of hopelessness was when I worked…
By: Michael Badriaki on February 13, 2015
Macy and Johnstone’s book Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in without Going Crazy, is a relevant contribution to discussion of environmental sustainability and humanity’ on going quest peace and tranquility on earth. The search for meaning has led to interesting discoveries for some, but many people are also left with a sense…
By: Mitch Arbelaez on February 12, 2015
Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone describes “active hope” as a practice, something that we must do rather than have. Stating that this active hope is a process that can be applied to any new situation involving three steps: a clear view of reality, defining a clear direction that we would like things to move-in or…
By: Brian Yost on February 12, 2015
When I began looking over Zygmunt Buaman’s Collateral Damage: Social Inequalities in a Global Age, I opened the pages with great anticipation. By the time I had finished, I found myself disappointed. Bauman offered some insightful thoughts on some key issues, but I felt he missed the mark on some others. Bauman did a good…
By: Travis Biglow on February 12, 2015
The Disparity of Equality in a Socially Divided Age! February 10, 15 A very interesting book and I love some of the things Zygmunt Bauman brings out in Collateral Damage: Social Inequalities in a Global Age. I could have written a lot in this book because of having to experience it while growing…
By: Phillip Struckmeyer on February 12, 2015
Confession: I just contributed to the “collateral damage” of which I am a part. I bought my wife Valentine’s Day flowers from proflowers.com. I am a horrible man. I was listening to the radio and on came the commercial. It was a special like no other. If I ordered today, I would be able to…
By: Dave Young on February 12, 2015
Reading Collateral Damage by Zygmunt Bauman creates a tremendous argument for good biblically reflective public theology. In fact I would encourage a revision in the reading order for the next cohort, the trio of books on contextual theology would be a practical next step after reading Bauman; largely because this book cries out for God’s…
By: Liz Linssen on February 12, 2015
I have to admit, the past few weeks have been tough. Opening a community café has been a greater challenge than I could ever have imagined. On Monday this past week, I caught myself in the midst of negatively, “I can’t do this…I can’t, I can’t.” Staffing problems, teething troubles with menus, opening hours, finding…
By: Ashley Goad on February 12, 2015
It would have been really easy to write this week’s blog about mission teams going into Haiti. Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in Without Going Crazy is made for Haiti. In a land that has been deforested beyond measure, where people have suffered for centuries, where the environment has been all but…
By: Jon Spellman on February 12, 2015
As I was getting started into the intro and first chapter of this week’s reading, I thought to myself “Great, this will be easy! I’ll just connect the dots between the ‘agora’ and ‘ecclesia’ and make this week’s post a ‘part 2’ of last week’s. I should be able to really drive home my assertion…
By: Deve Persad on February 12, 2015
The stories being written in the world this week, can seem to be ones that tells of a declining mess. Perhaps nothing sharper than the disqualification of the U.S. Little League Champions from Chicago, for recruiting violations, speaks more to that fact than any other. A team of mostly, pre-pubescent children, put together through the…
By: Mary Pandiani on February 12, 2015
Like Bauman’s Collateral Damage, I’m going to take “a series of tributaries”[1] that express some places where his book exposed me Tributary One I’ll be honest; I did not want to read this book. Just looking at the title and subtitle, I knew I would be overwhelmed by the problems of society. There seems to…
By: Nick Martineau on February 12, 2015
The other day my wife pulled out some cookies from the oven and laid them on the counter. Just a few minutes later my daughter jumped up on the counter, smelled the cookies, and then quickly managed to lick each one. I was in shock. When I asked her what in the world she was…
By: Stefania Tarasut on February 10, 2015
As I read through Mark Noll’s, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, I was left with one thought… just one thought. The problem is not necessarily the lack of great Christian thinkers but the lack of everyday thinking Christians. I’m not sure when the church began to be divided between the clergy and the lay,…
By: Stefania Tarasut on February 10, 2015
This weeks reading left me with more questions than answers. It left me excited about the future and skeptical about our willingness to step into that future. The idea of contextualization gave me a sense of awe as I think about how great God is and how little we, the people of God, actually understand.…
By: Clint Baldwin on February 9, 2015
“There is no such thing as ‘theology’; there is only contextual theology,”[1] writes Stephen Bevans in his Models of Contextual Theology. There are a number of critics that take him to task for this statement and also for limitations they see in his six (used to be five; Bevans made it six in the current…
By: rhbaker275 on February 7, 2015
I recall a number of years ago, while preparing for a mission assignment, my wife and I attended a missionary training institute in Colorado. We attempted to prepare for the many situational experiences that awaited us in a country and culture that we knew very little about. I recall our discussions about “place, presence, participation”…
By: Telile Fikru Badecha on February 7, 2015
In Ethiopia, most non-believers associate Protestant Christianity with foreign aid, Americans or Israel, to segregate believers and disqualify the authenticity of Protestant Christianity. In my Arsi Oromo culture, becoming a believer is equal to denying the values and unity of the clan, because religion is more than just an individual affair. Religion is a shared…
By: Richard Volzke on February 7, 2015
Models of Contextual Theology, by Stephen Bevans, resonated with me because it explains theology within the context of one’s culture and experience. This book explores the differences between traditional and contextual theology. In the opening chapter of his book, Bevan states, “There is no such thing as “theology”; there is only contextual theology: feminist theology,…
By: Carol McLaughlin on February 7, 2015
First of all, I “felt” at home in our reading this week. I realize just how much I have been and am being shaped by Contextual Theology. It just resonates. This is no small matter for me, as I have not seen it quite in the same manner as I did this week. The surprise…
