Author: Greg McKinzie

Eugene Cho and Samira Izadi Page, eds. No Longer Strangers: Transforming Evangelism with Immigrant Communities. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2021. 224 pp. $18.67.

The world is experiencing an unprecedented crisis as over 80 million people are now refugees. UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, recently reported that 1 in every 97 people in the world have been forcibly displaced from their homes.1 We are living in the world’s worst humanitarian crisis since World War II. Immigration remains at the forefront of American political discourse and has rightly made its way into church pulpits. Despite the fearmongering and lack of nuance that always seem to infect headlines about immigration, many members of the body of Christ are unable to ignore those that God has brought to our cities; one does not have to travel to another land to encounter the other. No Longer Strangers: Transforming Evangelism with Immigrant Communities, edited by Eugene Cho and Samira Izadi Page, draws on the experiences and practices of eight contributors to offer a framework for evangelism that heals.

No Longer Strangers is primarily for Christians in the United States who are often unaware of the factors that can hinder, disrupt, or harm their Christian witness. American Christians are often well-intentioned in their discipleship and evangelistic efforts to immigrant communities but lack cross-cultural awareness, which can lead to harmful evangelistic practices. In the introduction, editors Cho and Page share their stories and credentials to speak to this subject from their life experiences and as practitioners currently serving refugees. Cho is an immigrant and CEO of Bread for the World, a Christian advocacy group committed to ending hunger. Page is a former refugee and founder of Gateway of Grace, an outreach ministry to refugees. This book seeks to correct misconceptions regarding immigrants, refugees, evangelism, and discipleship; it is honest and acknowledges the imperialist legacy of mission and the harm that it has caused. It is aware of and sensitive to the trauma, oppression, and grief that immigrants and refugees face. No Longer Strangers seeks to forge a better path moving forward, along which immigrants and refugees are honored as image-bearers and full partners in the mission of God.

From the first page of the book, the editors affirm the importance of evangelism, meaning the verbal proclamation of the gospel. They argue that this is a necessary part of discipleship as it fulfills the Great Commission. Although at times redundant, almost every contributor devotes a portion of their chapter to bridging the gap between evangelism and social justice, indicating that this remains a dichotomy for many churches. This book will be a helpful resource for those trying to reconcile the integrated relationship between evangelism and social justice as it brings social, emotional, and economic considerations concerning evangelism in conversation with Scripture. The book contains eight chapters, with testimonies woven between each chapter. The book’s strength lies in its diverse representation. It relies on pastors, theologians, former refugees or immigrants, and licensed counselors to present a framework for holistic evangelism. Although the contributors cover a lot of important ground, No Longer Strangers does not address issues such as contextualization or reflexivity, some basic principles for cross-cultural ministry. For example, the contributors seem to presume that the enculturated, Western gospel typically preached within the United States, will be good news for all people. While it is not possible to address all issues surrounding cross-cultural ministry, what was notably missing was any conversation surrounding honor-shame dynamics. Granted that most refugees come from the Majority World, which is honor-shame oriented, an essay devoted to this topic would be useful for those seeking to share the good news with immigrants or refugees. Not only does an understanding of honor-shame dynamics help us in any verbal proclamation of the gospel, but it also helps us to understand how to interact with immigrants and refugees in ways that are honoring and dignifying. Additionally, we miss out on opportunities for transformation when we assume that our worldview and interpretation of Scripture is the correct way.

Two of the chapters were especially impactful. The first is Issam Smeir’s chapter, “Evangelizing the Hurt and Trauma,” which focuses on evangelism to the traumatized. Many, if not most refugees, experience symptoms of PTSD, and Christians seeking to love and serve their neighbors must be aware of how trauma affects one’s spiritual wellbeing. Dr. Smeir writes about the ways that a relationship with God and a supportive church community can lower the risk of developing PTSD for those who have experienced trauma. However, those who have been traumatized are also at risk of manipulation and coercion. Therefore, we must be all the more cautious in our relationships with those who have experienced trauma. Smeir advocates for an approach to evangelism that is highly relational, transformative, and noncoercive when working with those who have suffered.

The second chapter that stood out was Sandra Maria van Opstal’s “Beyond Welcoming.” She argues for the necessity of moving beyond hospitality to solidarity and mutuality. This chapter was notable for its call to reciprocity, an element often missing within evangelism. Hospitality, although important, can still perpetuate a power dynamic of “you need me” if not approached with the intention of relationship. Evangelism practiced in a relational and transformative way is an invitation into a community, to belong as equals. Solidarity is “the act of being with people in all their joys and needs” (76). Solidarity runs counter to the power dynamics often at work within transactional modes of evangelism. It seeks to listen first and ask what others need rather than assume. Solidarity creates a space for mutuality and reciprocity as we relate to our immigrant and refugee neighbors as friends, not projects. We must learn to embrace the stranger as someone we can learn and receive from, someone with whom we can share life. True love requires mutuality, and the words of Jesus remind us that our ultimate witness comes from our love of one another (John 13:35).

No Longer Strangers is a helpful resource for churches, mission organizations, nonprofits, or individuals who seek to welcome immigrants or refugees. Although the book’s intended audience will more than likely be working in their home cultures, one of the book’s shortcomings is that it does not address important considerations for cross-cultural ministry that, if not addressed, can ultimately cause offense or harm. Although this book is for Christians in the United States, it offers insights for anyone who works with refugees or immigrants. While affirming the importance of the verbal proclamation of the gospel, this book provides guidance and important considerations for those who work in intercultural settings with the world’s most vulnerable.

Meredith Thompson

Graduate Student (MA in Global Services)

Graduate School of Theology

Abilene Christian University

This essay is a response given at the 2021 Christian Scholars’ Conference to papers presented by S. Twumasi-Ankrah, Daniel Salinas, and Melinda (Mindi) Thompson, which are also published in this issue of Missio Dei. Writing as the dean of the College of Bible and Ministry at Lipscomb University (Nasvhille, TN), the author highlights the implications of each paper for the “adapt-or-die season” in which Western theological education finds itself.

A Response to Sam Twumasi-Ankrah, Daniel Salinas, and Melinda Thompson1

These three papers all address specific and important matters pertaining to the West’s missional relationship to the Global South. Sam Twumasi-Ankrah makes a case for a strong shift in the kind of leadership resources from the West that are needed in Africa in this new season of partnership. Daniel Salinas underscores the shortage of qualified faculty for seminaries in the Global South, the surplus of qualified faculty in the West/North, and the urgent need for a larger pipeline of faculty who will make this missional shift. And Melinda Thompson tracks the growing proficiency in online education—forced to a new level by the COVID quarantine—and its rich possibilities for educating church leaders while minimizing their displacement from the places where they were called and most needed.

I want to frame these specific issues in the larger missional context of our time. There has been dramatic change in the nature of Christian mission and in the relationship between the West and the South.

It is well-known that the West is becoming increasingly post-Christian and that Christianity is becoming increasingly post-Western. This represents nothing less than a revolutionary shift in Christianity’s center of gravity. The new center is South America, Africa, and the Pacific Rim. Since 1950 or so, Christianity has been expanding at breakneck speed in these regions. By the early twenty-first century, sixty percent of all Christians were in Africa, Asia, and South America. And Philip Jenkins says that at Christianity’s current rate of growth, it will have 3.2 billion adherents by 2050, but only one-fifth of those will be non-Hispanic whites.2

Recent decades have brought a big move beyond the paternalism of the “wealthy” Western churches toward the “poor” churches of the Global South. The deep disparities between Western Christians as “donors”—of money, education, leadership, and other resources—and Christians of the Global South as “recipients” of all those gifts is giving way to a new sense of interdependence and mutuality. In all places, the church is both gifted and needy. The churches of the Global South have deep needs and possess great gifts, while the churches of the West also have deep needs and possess great gifts. And it may be that the needs of the Western churches are greater than the needs of those in the South. In the (post)modern West, Christians are beset by rationalism, by deep skepticism toward the Spirit of God, by the snare of affluence and consumerism, by their own version of cultural syncretism (the deep blending of the faith with secular ideologies), and by the heritage of cultural dominance that is the legacy of Christendom. So the churches of each region need the strengths, gifts, and correctives of the other.3

It is helpful—even necessary—for us in the Western academic context to name the gifts to be received. Foremost among them flows from the fact that churches of the Global South have a more missional theology. The churches of the Christendom centuries were not fundamentally churches on mission. And their theologies, understandably, were not missional theologies. Missions may have been one department in the seminary curriculum, one chapter in a book of theology, or one ministry of a congregation—but mission did not animate, infuse, and shape the whole enterprise of Christian faith. In the Global South, the situation has changed. As the noted missiologist David Bosch said more than twenty years ago, “Third World theologies are missionary theologies, whereas First World theologies are not”; for this reason, “Third World theologies may become a force of renewal in the West.”4 That has been happening. This renewal is one of the Global South’s gifts on offer to the church in the West.

Donald Miller, a Christian sociologist, reflects something of this powerful gift of renewal when he writes in consideration of his many travels to study churches in South America and Africa, “I have come back humbled by my lack of faith, my own failure of imagination, and my resistance to commit myself to the high standard of being a servant of Christ.” He adds that “we in North America live in a bubble of affluence and convenience, and this [deeply] affects our theology.”5 In these extensive travels, Miller rightly identifies what churches in the West could receive from the missional theology of churches of the Global South.6

Churches in the West still have much to give as well. Daniel Salinas notes the shortage of “qualified faculty” for seminaries in the Global South and a surplus of qualified faculty in the North. This is a very telling fact of our time. But note that the focus here is on qualified faculty—and it is important to be clear about what that means. It does not (and should not) refer simply to those who have PhDs in biblical or theological studies and are willing to teach overseas. Daniel crucially emphasizes that candidates from the West must be carefully vetted for evangelical commitments, for a posture of humility and learning, and for a deep awareness that no longer reflects “the West knows best.” I strongly second these qualifications. The South does not need Western biblical scholars and theologians who are ensconced in the modernist paradigm and strongly schooled in and attached to the higher critical approaches to the Bible, where naturalistic assumptions about how to approach the text have tended to predominate and where deistic readings of Scripture are the norm. Nor does the South need those who think that the West’s more “enlightened” views of social morality need to be brought to the more traditional and “backward” outlook of the South.

We should certainly affirm—with reservations—the value of critical biblical scholarship. Academic biblical studies have helped people of faith to understand the Bible in richer, more accurate ways. It has brought the world of Scripture to life and shed much light on how both the background and foreground of Scripture enable and enrich its faithful interpretation. It enables us to read Scripture in context and to reveal ways we too readily contemporize the text due to our own cultural assumptions.

But much “higher” critical biblical scholarship tends to be shaped—if not overwhelmed—by naturalist assumptions and, thus, to embrace the deep-seated modern convention that “all texts are simply natural, historical entities.” John Webster calls this a “ruinous, even ludicrous” assumption.7 This assumption drives apart the natural and the supernatural, so that modern Western readers of the Bible tend to inhabit a world where God is not present and active, that is, a deistic world. In sharp contrast, the deep assumption of the Great Tradition—and of the churches in the South—is that in and through holy Scripture one encounters the living God.8

The “higher” critical methods should be subordinated to the church’s focus on and participation in the mission of God. As Joel Green insists, the various critical Bible study methods must all be “tamed in relation to the theological aims of Scripture and the ecclesial context in which the Bible is read as Scripture.”9 Missional scholars recruited to teach in the seminaries of the Global South must understand this and be able to practice this kind of interpretation. If not, they will be a dampening force, not an empowering force for the mission of God in the region. Geoffrey Wainwright’s observation seems telling in this regard: “Where, geographically and culturally, the church holds fast to the Scriptures, interpreted according to the classic tradition, it appears that the Christian faith is spreading. Revisionism seems to thrive only amid decline.”10

Jenkins notes that amid the great diversity of churches in the Global South, one of the most visible common features is “the critical idea that God intervenes directly in everyday life.”11 The strong emphasis upon God’s daily activity in everyday life distinguishes the ascendant Christianity of the global South from a dis-Spirited Western Christianity. This burgeoning global Christianity has not been through the travails of the Enlightenment and Western modernity. It has not had two centuries and more of being shaped by the West’s “subtraction stories” (philosopher Charles Taylor’s term for secularization). “Africa has never had an Enlightenment,” says Peter Leithart. “There is no African [David] Hume, with his rejection of miracles; no African [David] Strauss, with his ‘mythological’ interpretation of the gospels; no African [René] Descartes or [Baruch] Spinoza or Kant or Galileo or Newton.”12

As a result, “Africans are not the least embarrassed by the world picture of the Bible—a world of angels and demons, of miracles and exorcisms, of virgin births and life after death, of heaven and hell. . . . They see and hear things in the text that are lost to jaded post-Christian readers in the North.” According to Leithart, “Africans read the Bible in a way that is free of the rationalisms of modern method. They are not content to read the Bible as a source of doctrine, or an account of ancient history, or even as a practical manual that tells them what to do. For African believers, the Bible is a book to inhabit, a narrative to participate in.”13

Christians in the South have much to teach Christians in the West, including theology. Africa is holding up to Western Christians a way to do Christian theology without the confining restrictions of the Enlightenment.

Jenkins, who has been a major chronicler of the rise of global Christianity, sees continued rapid growth throughout the Global South. “Christianity should [continue to] enjoy a worldwide boom in the coming decades,” he wrote in 2011, “but the vast majority of believers will be neither white nor European, nor Euro-American. . . . The era of Western Christianity has passed within our lifetimes, and the day of the Southern [global] churches is dawning.” The Christian movements that are “triumphing all across the global South are stalwartly traditional”; their dominant theological emphasis is “traditionalist, orthodox, and supernatural.”14 And the influence of these vibrantly missional churches is spreading to the West. As the church in the West has gone “lite,” God is raising up vast new expressions of the faith, committed to the spiritual and doctrinal effulgence of the Great Tradition.

Let me close by putting Mindi Thompson’s report on the status of online theological education in the context of this new situation. A key aspect is the deep challenge facing seminaries in the West or, at least, in North America. Mark Labberton, president of Fuller Seminary, said in 2018, “[This is] a time of industry-wide disruption so great that many seminaries are closing. . . . During this era of profound disruption, we believe we must take bold risks and have a bold vision in order to transform for the next season of theological formation. . . . We must reinvent ourselves in order to do it.”15 Frank Yamada, the new president of the Association of Theological Schools, spent his first year listening to most of the 270 member seminaries; he concluded “that schools are changing rapidly and profoundly, perhaps in unprecedented ways; and while these challenges appear daunting, this environment is also generating creativity among schools’ faculties.”16

Yamada observes that two themes run through this new creativity in seminaries: the use of technology, particularly in distance education, and the ongoing need to rethink student formation. The emerging technology and pedagogy for distance learning has changed the landscape. And the COVID quarantine has forced the issue. The new online capacities can be a game-changer for the global South; but not without an important theological and spiritual shift—away from the confining restrictions the Enlightenment has imposed upon the West. To put it differently, the value of ministry training contained mostly within seminary walls is declining and will continue to decline. Mostly closed and isolated academic programming will have a limited shelf life going forward.

North American seminaries are in an adapt-or-die season. As Ben Witherington says, “Those seminaries will survive that are well-grounded in their biblical roots, missionally minded, and future focused, looking for increasing ways to train people to be global Christians who are focusing on partnering with Christians around the world to do theological education.”17

Each of these three papers has lifted up specific ways that seminaries in the West can do that.

Leonard Allen serves as dean of the College of Bible & Ministry at Lipscomb University (Nashville, TN). He taught theology, ethics, and philosophy for over twenty years, serving as visiting professor at Biola University (La Mirada, CA), adjunct professor at John Brown University (Siloam Springs, AR) and Fuller Theological Seminary (Pasadena, CA), and professor at Abilene Christian University. He holds a PhD in History of Christian Thought from the School of Religion at the University of Iowa and is the author of numerous books, including The Cruciform Church: Becoming a Cross-Shaped People in a Secular World (3rd ed.; ACU Press, 2016), Poured Out: The Spirit of God Empowering the Mission of God (ACU Press, 2018), and, most recently, In the Great Stream: Imagining Churches of Christ in the Christian Tradition (ACU Press, 2021).

Gregg Okesson. A Public Missiology: How Local Churches Witness To A Complex World. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2020. Paperback. 288 pp. $18.79.

In this multidisciplinary work, Gregg Okesson, former missionary in East Africa and Dean of the Stanley Jones School of World Mission and Evangelism at Asbury Theological Seminary, affirms local Christian congregations as the “basic unit of a new society” (143), called and gifted by God to witness to the world from within. Yet, he laments that many local congregations manifest a “thin” soteriological witness, focused primarily on individual conversion and transformation, insufficient to address the complex, “thick” realities found within the public spaces in which people actually live. Okesson argues that, to offer a more complex, “thicker” witness that addresses the concerns of the world, congregations must understand the power and ubiquity of the public realm and ground their mission in the “movements” of the Trinity.

While I reserve some criticism for the way Okesson employs certain Trinitarian concepts, this extensively researched book manages to balance specialized theological reflection with concrete ecclesiology in ways that are suitable for a wide audience. The book is constructed in two parts: the first establishes a theological framework for a thicker public missiology, while the second provides examples of this kind of thick public missiology at work in three ethnographic case studies.

Within the book’s opening chapters, Okesson attempts to give readers a sense of the vast, complex nature of the public realm. He offers a concise overview of the history of “publicology” through the major historical, sociological, and philosophical movements which shape contemporary public life. Although the public realm evades easy categorization, we are ultimately given a broad definition of publics as “spaces both real and imagined, where people participate in life together and form opinions based on the circulation of texts” (41).1 These spaces are so ubiquitous and closely woven together that it is impossible to speak of the public realm using any singular term. It is a tapestry of human communities which “interpenetrate” one another, distinct enough to be identifiable but with borders that are porous and often difficult to distinguish. Nothing in the public realm is truly independent of anything else. Therefore, strict distinctions between public and private, secular and religious, or ways of categorizing various “cultural domains as discrete wholes” (51), must be abandoned. For Okesson, this idea should dispel any illusions of isolation from or separation within the public realm. Congregations exist as one of many alternative publics which are constantly in a state of dynamic exchange with other surrounding publics.

This exchange between congregations and publics, which Okesson refers to as “movement,” “weaving,” “dance,” or “engagement,” is fundamental to his argument. It connotes a wide spectrum of interactive activities in public spaces which result in a greater awareness of complexity, understanding, or thickness. Such movements could consist of virtually any interaction in which Christians engage the public realm– joining a school’s parent association, participation in civic culture or politics, or participation in online social networks. In short, the amount of movement a congregation experiences within the public realm directly correlates to the thickness of its soteriological witness. On the surface, this seems like an obvious affirmation of the need to contextualize the Christian witness, but Okesson goes further. Movement thickens witness, not only because it allows congregations to orient the resources of the Gospel to the contextualized needs of the world, but because such movement finds its inspiration (and power) in similar movements found in the persons of the Trinity (106).

In Okesson’s work, the Trinity is presented as an essential element of the Christian faith that must lie at the heart of any missiological approach to the public realm. Drawing on scriptural narratives and Trinitarian theologies from Moltmann, Newbegin, Tennant, and Volf, he suggests the immanent and economic movements of the Trinity are both inspiration and source for thick congregational missiology.2 As the Trinity achieves a “thick oneness” through internal movement between its distinct, yet interconnected, persons, and moves outward into all of creation, congregations should similarly develop a “thick witness” via the worship of the persons of the Trinity (71) and movement into the public realm.

Okesson’s use of the Trinity as a model for good missiology is in keeping with current trends which assert that the Trinity is well-understood and that its nature should be authoritative or exemplary for the Church. The parameters of a book review do not allow for a thorough critique of this approach to contemporary theology/missiology; however, I believe that Okesson overstates, and ultimately undermines, his case by founding aspects of his theological argument on aspects of the immanent Trinity that cannot be truly known. The doctrine of the Trinity may allow us to affirm the triune nature of God and (most importantly) Christ’s place within the Trinity, but it does not allow us to assume we have some intimate understanding of what this three-in-oneness is like or how it relates to itself.3 Furthermore, even if we could know something about the internal divine relationship, it does not mean that any lessons derived from the Trinity should be considered normative or directly applicable to human beings.4 Even setting these theological concerns aside, in appealing to vague, inherently mysterious, Trinitarian concepts, Okesson fails to give his lay readers concrete conceptual footholds for orienting Christian missiology. Ultimately, these arguments frustrate Okesson’s laudable attempt to provide a compelling missiological vision which is accessible to a wide audience.

The final chapters indicate that Okesson may be aware that his Trinitarian approach could be too esoteric for some readers. He turns from the theoretical/theological to the concrete, offering three ethnographies that illustrate thick witness in churches in Kenya, Canada, and the United States. These churches model Okesson’s missiological vision by naming and mirroring the distinctive persons of the Trinity in their doxology, by expanding their notion of salvation beyond the mere forgiveness of personal sin on the cross, and by deliberately engaging the complexity of the public realm in their teaching and ministries. In Okesson’s words, these are examples of churches that employ his notion of movement to “save people in and for their publics” (254). These chapters, along with Okesson’s conclusion, are helpful insofar as they allow readers to see where the author identifies “thick witness” at work in the actual, lived reality of Christian ministry. Although I remain critical of the immanent Trinitarian models employed, Okesson’s book certainly has value and is certain to spark critical dialogue in the church and in the academy regarding how congregations understand and witness to the visible and hidden publics outside, and inside, their church walls.

Mark Barneche

Associate Director of the Lausanne Program

Pepperdine University

Lausanne, Switzerland

Advances in online learning make it possible to connect seminaries with church leaders around the world, fulfilling the mission of theological education in new and exciting ways. Part retrospective, part hopeful forecast, this article highlights current developments in digital education with an eye toward future missional possibilities.

I started teaching in theological higher education almost twenty years ago. I taught my first online class soon after. And while part of me still feels like that fresh-faced doctoral student, the rest of me knows full well that a lot of things have changed in the last two decades. There are many ways I could talk about the past and future of online theological education. But perhaps starting with a personal approach is most interesting.

I decided to pursue a career in theological education as a missionary endeavor. A college internship with Pioneer Bible Translators confirmed my gifts for language, exegesis, and teaching while simultaneously confirming that a life on the mission field wasn’t the best choice for my health. So I got a PhD, committed to equip others for the mission work I could not do myself. By God’s providence, one of the professors on my dissertation committee was an “early adopter” in the field of online learning. The few conversations we had about his discoveries teaching online classes were enough to get me appointed to the distance education committee in my first job after graduation.

The University of Dubuque Theological Seminary had begun offering online classes a few years before as a way to serve the growing lay pastor population in the Presbyterian Church (USA). To my colleagues, online education was a useful choice for those poor souls who weren’t ready—or willing—to move to Dubuque for a “real” seminary degree. Sadly, that perspective was mirrored in many schools at the time. Online learning was a second-class citizen compared to traditional, brick-and-mortar schools. That “better than nothing” approach persists in some places even today. But for me—a missionary wanna-be disguised as an assistant professor—online learning was a revelation. Here was a way to spread the gospel, to equip men and women for lives of service and leadership around the world. After all, that was the mission statement of the seminary. Why would we not use this tool to expand our reach at every level? When the distance education committee proposed our first online master’s degree, we pointed to the seminary’s mission statement as justification for our crazy idea. I volunteered to lead this new initiative with all the enthusiasm (and naivete!) of a new missionary. When the Association of Theological Schools gave us permission to launch the first accredited Master of Divinity degree online, I had no idea how that move would change the trajectory of my missional-academic career.

Needless to say, I learned a lot during my time in Dubuque. I learned about learning management systems. I learned about accreditation and institutional assessment. Unfortunately, I learned that not every faculty member was as enthusiastic about teaching online as I was. But most of what I learned was about learning itself. It’s astonishing how little I actually knew about teaching when I started teaching. Aside from a voluntary lunchtime workshop, my alma mater did not offer any formalized training in educational theory to their doctoral students.

I may be wrong—I would like to be wrong about this—but I do not think that is unique to my experience in theological education. We send newly-minted graduates into classrooms of their own, assuming the transition from the student’s desk to the teacher’s desk will happen automatically. Most faculty members simply repeat the examples—both positive and negative—that they experienced in their own education. Perhaps that explains the continued use of long, boring lectures. Oftentimes, we do not realize there is any other way to teach. And once we become teachers ourselves our personal insecurities cause many of us to become defensive when someone asks us about the way we teach. You stay out of my classroom—special emphasis on the “my”—and I will stay out of yours. But when I started teaching online, I did not have any past experience as a student in an online class. I was a blank slate, staring at a blank course site. I had to swallow my pride and ask for help: from colleagues who had been teaching in the lay training program before me, from books and articles in the growing field of online pedagogy, and from workshops and conferences offered by groups like the Wabash Center and the Association of Christian Distance Educators.

We joked about our first cohort of MDiv students at Dubuque being guinea pigs. I felt like a guinea pig, myself. But as I started to gain experience in online teaching, the missionary in me came to life. I had finally discovered better ways to connect with students, ways that moved me out of the spotlight as the “sage on the stage” and put students at the center of the teaching and learning enterprise. On top of that, the things I was learning about student engagement and community building in online classes worked nicely in traditional classroom settings. I could not contain my enthusiasm.

That enthusiasm for online learning led me to my current position at Abilene Christian University. I met future colleague Tim Sensing at a Wabash Center workshop on spiritual formation in distance education. My missionary zeal for online learning spilled over into a dinner conversation and the (joking!) offer that when ACU decided to get serious about online programs he should give me a call. Be careful what you say out loud: two years later I found myself interviewing for a newly created position as Director of Distance Education for the Graduate School of Theology. This missionary found herself in a new place, a seemingly foreign country, speaking a foreign language about learning management systems and online pedagogy to a group of colleagues who were trying to wrap their minds around hiring a woman to join the faculty. Talk about culture shock! I made mistakes in those first years that still haunt me today. But thanks to the grace of God and lots of grace from my co-workers, we have managed to launch four online master’s degrees for students pursuing various types of theological education.

One of my favorite aspects of our distance programs is the partnerships we have developed with ministry programs in Africa. There is that missionary again, bringing the good news of education to evangelize the next generation of leaders for the church in Ghana and southern Africa. While the Graduate School of Theology had connections with Heritage Christian College and Africa Christian College long before I joined the faculty, their graduates faced huge financial challenges to qualify for a student visa to come to Abilene for their master’s degree. In addition to the financial hurdles, those few students who did manage to qualify had to leave their ministry behind along with family and friends for years of study. I have so much respect for our international graduates who manage to pursue their dreams in Abilene. But we can equip many more ministers, to serve many more churches, by offering high-quality theological education right where they live. God has seen fit to extend the technology needed to participate in online classes into many more places around the world. It is our responsibility to steward those resources wisely for the good of Christ’s Kingdom.

What lessons can be learned from this missionary-cum-educator’s adventures in online learning? A handful come to mind:

• Sometimes the doors that close lead you to even better opportunities you were not looking for.
• There are no second-class citizens in the kingdom of God. What started as many schools’ “better than nothing” to bolster declining enrollment is the delivery method of choice for a majority of student-ministers.
• A little humility goes a long way. Even seasoned teachers can benefit from insights gained through online pedagogy.
• For those to whom much is given, much will be required (Luke 12:48). Theological schools have been blessed beyond measure. It is up to us to decide how we will pass along those blessings where they are needed most.

Our friends at the Association of Theological Schools have learned a few lessons themselves over their 85-year existence. The 2017 Educational Models and Practices in Theological Education Report1 provides a good summary of lessons learned by both the Association and its member schools. Of the 18 individual reports, two focused specifically on online education. Most of the others had at least some connection to online learning even if their assigned topic focused on a different aspect of theological education. While time will not permit a full review of the 200-page report, the “central themes” deserve our attention:

• A focus on learning outcomes and the wide-ranging implications of that focus.
• The key outcome of student formation, recognizing the different understandings and emphases among the schools.
• Emerging forms of context-based education that utilize places of ministry and service as full educational partners.
• Access to theological education that takes a variety of forms.
• An emphasis on cultural competence across institutions.
• Understanding the role of theological schools as one part of the full life span of Christian/theological education.2

It would appear that the past practices of the 110 member schools who participated in the Educational Models and Practices Project inform the present emphases of theological education. This report fed directly into the new Degree Program Standards, which were adopted by the Association in 2020. Those standards reflect a much more open attitude toward online learning, representing an almost 180-degree turn from the predominant thinking during my early days of navigating accreditation requirements based on residential delivery assumptions. We have come a long way.

So, what is next? I am not a fortune-teller or a prophet. I don’t have a crystal ball to foresee exactly what online theological education will look like twenty years from now. I hope I am around to see it, though. The past twenty years have taught me that God can use anything for his purposes, whether that is a failed mission internship or the morally neutral World Wide Web. Recent developments give me good hope for some of the following possibilities:

• Growing leadership in the developing world. The church has shifted geographically; we should look for seminaries to follow.3 Wherever those schools physically reside, their faculty and student services staff will need cultural competence and humility to learn from past mistakes in educational assumptions. Perhaps our friends in missiology can help us with that.
• Programs in languages other than English, taught from diverse perspectives by non-Western professors who are well-trained to teach online. The Association of Theological Schools is encouraging this possibility in Spanish through their partnership with the Association for Hispanic Theological Education. They are expanding options for schools to offer culturally-sensitive online theological education for students in and from Latin and South America.4
• Open Educational Resources providing high-quality educational material directly in online courses, reducing or perhaps even eliminating the need for expensive textbooks.5 Increasing facility in digital literacy coupled with continuing technological advances will make online theological education more affordable and accessible, while simultaneously making it easier for authors from diverse backgrounds to share their work with the world.
• Better (real, honest) partnerships with congregations and other constituencies. Educators must practice open communication and a willingness to listen instead of assuming that what we’ve always offered is what everyone needs.

Maybe that last one is more idealistic than research-based. But a girl can dream. I am not the only dreamer, either. Former Executive Director of the Association of Theological Schools, Dan Aleshire, puts it this way: “The coming moment calls on theological schools to emphasize some things that have been present but in the shadows, for them to do some of the things the church used to do so there will be a future in which the church might be able to remember its task.”6 I would add that theological educators also need to remember their task, which should be focused more on our mission and less on the delivery method.7 We must break down the walls of the ivory tower just as Joshua led the Israelites to break down the walls of Jericho (Joshua 6:1–20). I can already hear the trumpets sounding.

Melinda (Mindi) Thompson serves as Associate Professor and Director of Distance Education for the Graduate School of Theology at Abilene Christian University in Abilene, Texas. She is currently President of ACCESS, the Association of Christian Distance Educators.

Darrell L. Bock. Cultural Intelligence: Living for God in a Diverse, Pluralistic World. Nashville: B&H Academic, 2020. Paperback. 160 pp. $15.99.

In Cultural Intelligence, Darrell Bock engages the exploding arena of cultural intelligence, cultural engagement, and cultural competence. Bock serves as the Executive Director of Cultural Engagement at The Hendricks Center and is a Senior Research Professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary. He approaches this topic primarily from a biblical perspective, drawing upon scriptural resources to inform the church’s interactions with the shifting cultural landscape in North America.

Bock begins his discussion of cultural intelligence by noting that he applies a nontechnical sense of the term. What he writes is more about creating a sensitivity, which “sets the table for moving into developing cultural intelligence,” for “one cannot get to being intelligent about culture(s) without being willing to engage, listen, and many times, learn” (9).

The approach Bock advocates focuses on the “tone and the relational dimensions of such (cultural) interactions” (8). The focus of this tone and sensitivity are those issues that are part and parcel of the significant cultural changes since the 1950s (e.g., birth control, abortion, gun control, and LGBTQ issues). Not only has cultural consensus on many of these issues shifted, Bock notes the loss of what he terms the “Judeo-Christian net” (5). This is the general familiarity and worldview framework that established Christian sources of authority (church, religious leaders, the Bible) that have existed for much of American history. That “net” can no longer be assumed.

This book then is not about cultural intelligence but, rather, about culturally significant issues for which Bock proposes a framework for engagement. To say this another way, what Bock utilizes is not an anthropological notion of culture but theological ideas and commitments. He notes, for example, Reinhold Niebuhr’s work Christ and Culture as the point where many start this type of conversation. Bock argues for a more “relational” approach that challenges the individual believer about questions of engagement and action. To this end, he applies important New Testament texts, creating a framework from “six key biblical texts that discuss engagement” (8). These are Eph 6:10–18, 1 Pet 3:13–18, Col 4:5-6, Gal 6:10, 2 Cor 5:17–21, and 2 Tim 2:22–26. Bock defines cultural intelligence with insights he draws from these six foundational passages.

The book is organized clearly enough. Section 1, “A Theology of Cultural Engagement” (which is properly more of a biblical midrash on his key texts), includes Bock’s summary points and short exegesis of each key “cultural engagement” text. He then looks at the example of Paul (Section 2, “Back to the Future: Lessons on Engagement from Paul”), contrasting the Pauline critique of the first-century Greco-Roman and Jewish world in Rom 1 with the more nuanced and charitable engagement with Greek philosophical thought in Acts 17. Section 3, “Difficult Conversations: How to Make Them Better,” provides wisdom aimed at helping negotiate conversations about difficult issues. The very brief Section 4, “What is the Purpose of Salvation and the Biblical Imperative of Love?” challenges Christians to think about salvation as something that has specific, political, real-world effects. Finally, Section 5, “Intelligent Cultural Engagement and the Bible: A Second Effective Way to Teach Scripture” challenges believers to move from a “Bible to Life” approach to reading back from “Life to the Bible,” which requires close listening, supple and theologically informed wisdom, and a kind of theological translation.

Bock’s short work offers a pastorally sensitive and grace-oriented approach to difficult issues that puts as much emphasis on the how of engagement as it does the what or content of that communication. Also, Bock offers an approach that assumes the Christian experience of salvation is not merely a heavenly, personal experience. Rather, Christians have a creation mandate that involves managing the world well while being in relationship with others. Bock correctly highlights how many shifts in North America have led to a place where Christian authority is no longer assumed and, indeed, may be scorned. This is, of course, what the missional conversation has been voicing for some time: North America is in a type of post-Christian existence that is best suited to churches that assume a “missionary” posture and read and engage culture as missionaries do. He notes how this forces the church to make new arguments based on new foundations, which rightly draws our attention to early Christian approaches. His “Life to the Bible” approach is one such option.

This approach assumes a move not from an authoritative text to application but rather from life back to the text. Bock frames this as reversing the traditional polarity from “It’s true because it is in the Bible” to “It’s in the Bible because it is true.” This allows, Bock argues, for moving conversations past likely roadblocks with those who do not begin with scriptural authority.

Bock provides several concrete examples of how he sees this working, including a discussion of how he grounds such an approach in Paul’s ministry. Bock places the Paul of Rom 1 (direct critique) and the Paul of Acts 17 (contextually aware bridge-building) in conversation to illustrate how he envisions Paul instructing us today. Noting Paul’s use of the Athenians’ belief system as a starting point, Bock argues that “working with a shared cultural story can be the bridge to the divine story” (49). Essentially, this means that Christians enter into the public sphere and make arguments that do not assume scriptural authority. It requires, among other things, an experiential apologetics and a public theology, two things Christians have not had to develop recently in their North American Christendom context but now must consider in order to communicate effectively.

For Bock to accomplish the book’s goal, readers must engage important and contentious contemporary North American public issues more openly, be more ready to listen, and function as more able apologists for their own beliefs. Bock reminds us that engagement serves “not to defeat the other person but to move toward mutual understanding about why you disagree or where the differences and tension points are” (50).

I see several deficiencies in this work. First, Bock utilizes a definition of culture that literally comes from the Oxford English Dictionary, one that, unfortunately, assumes culture in a more elitist and colonial sense. It simply conflates culture with society. Nowhere does Bock engage in or demonstrate awareness of important discussions of culture from anthropology, critical theory, or theology. Because of this, Bock fails to discuss essential elements of culture such as power distance, indirect discourse, individualism-collectivism, honor/shame and face issues, and so on. Additionally, Bock does not offer an approach to reading culture. Though full of helpful communicative suggestions, Bock’s approach is one of attempting to find ways to apply a relatively conservative evangelical theology through a frame of “cultural” issues.

Finally, though he notes that the image of God is a critical issue (“how we engage culturally and intelligently is how we reflect the image of God, honoring him” [79]), I wish he would have discussed the imago Dei as a warrant for engaging the “other.” He grounds the call and the mode of engagement in a theology of redemption rather than a theology of creation. It seems to me that an approach assuming more of a central role for the imago Dei would fit better with his call to experiential apologetics and serve as a better foundation for the type of cultural listening and engagement he advocates.

Bock’s book won’t satisfy those who have already thought deeply about culture or cultural intelligence. To learn about cultural intelligence as a foundational skill for the contemporary North American church, readers might consider Many Colors: Cultural Intelligence for a Changing Church by Soong-Chan Rah or Everyday Theology: How to Read Cultural Texts and Interpret Trends by Kevin Vanhoozer. More advanced readers would do well to consider the important work by Kathryn Tanner, Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology.

Christopher L. Flanders

Professor of Missions

Graduate School of Theology

Abilene Christian University

Abilene, TX, USA

Sadiri Joy Tira and Tetsunao Yamaori, eds. Scattered and Gathered: A Global Compendium of Diaspora Missiology. Rev ed. Carlisle, UK: Langham Global Library, 2020. Paperback. 680 pp. $44.57.

As a missionary working among diaspora communities in the five boroughs of New York, the following, from Elias Medeiros’s “Local Churches in Missional Diaspora,” was one of many passages I felt compelled to “amen” while reading Scattered and Gathered: A Global Compendium of Diaspora Missiology: “Diasporas are, doubtless, a global irreversible phenomenon with significance for every local church in the world. . . . As a matter of fact, diasporas have always been vitally important throughout the history of redemption and contemporary history, and it is especially crucial in Christian missions today. [Any] Evangelical local church, denomination, or Christian institution that is indifferent toward this theo-graphical historic moment in regards to diaspora missions is already failing regarding the Great Commission” (213).

The book is a revised edition, collecting various works of scholarship that originated from the Lausanne Movement’s Global Diaspora Forum, which took place in Manila, Philippines, in March 2015. Running the gamut of missiological studies, the book’s essays range across a multitude of topics such as: data-heavy analyses of demographic trends around the world (49–69),1 exegetical reflections on diaspora in Scripture (149–64),2 case studies of transnationalism and diaspora congregations in various countries (459–72),3 and thoughts about church planting among maritime workers in the international shipping trade (255–62),4 just to give a few examples.

As with many works of its kind (i.e., compendiums) Scattered and Gathered contains a wealth of scholarly information out of a diversity of contexts—both theologically and geographically—but readers will likely find the essays to be of varying levels of helpfulness depending on their own context and mission. This would be a particularly helpful read for those seeking to understand the phenomenon of international migration or a robust hermeneutic of the gospel’s concern for the migrant or “the other.” And, were it possible for me to begin again as a new missionary, this work is one I would want in hand. It offers essential theological framing, biblical foundations, relevant sociological study, and practical case studies for much of what my team experienced and could have used better frameworks for in our early years in the field.

That said, it is a massive work,5 one I would anticipate most readers using as more of a reference book than consuming as a whole. While the information contained within it is an enormous contribution of scholarship, the academic style of most of the writing requires much of its readers, and the average congregational minister would likely need a deep passion for the subject to engage the majority of these studies.

Despite its scope, I finished the work wishing it had included more practical suggestions for engaging in mission among the diaspora. Readers seeking principles and frameworks for ministry or an understanding of global trends should be more than satisfied by the works contained here. But for those with questions about how to initiate spiritual conversations with their diaspora neighbor, how to become a good cross-cultural learner, how to facilitate a Bible study cross-culturally or not in English (for ministers who are monolingual), or how to acquire other practical skills required for missions among diaspora communities, Scattered and Gathered will prove a valuable resource but likely not one that equips them with steps to take toward beginning such a ministry.

The church is on mission in a world increasingly shaped by the migration of international people groups. The nations Christ sent us to in the great commission may now live next door, providing the opportunity for the people in our pews to act as missionaries even where they live, work, and play in their everyday lives. Publications like this one are vital. I would recommend any church planter or missionary have a copy of Scattered and Gathered in their library. Without reflection on the type of missiological thinking contained within it, they are likely ill-equipped to work within our globalizing context. Yet, I also hope that works like this serve as a catalyst for the writing of diaspora ministry books more oriented toward the practice of cross-cultural discipleship. If the thinking contained here cannot bridge from the academy to the ordinary believers in our pews, then the church will remain unprepared to bear witness to the nations now living among us.

Seth Bouchelle

Director of Equipping

Exponent Group

The Bronx, NY, USA

Rob Martin. When Money Goes On Mission: Fundraising and Giving in the 21st Century. Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2019. Paperback. 287 pages. $14.99.

In a recent conversation with a distinguished Christian grantmaking organization, Rob Martin’s When Money Goes On Mission was recommended as a handy map for the task of fundraising for Christian mission. Martin’s résumé includes working for a Los Angeles rescue mission, a brief stint as US Director of the Lausanne Committee, and nineteen years as the executive director of First Fruit, Inc., an estimable Christian charitable foundation. He currently coaches ministries and foundations in fundraising, among other organizational issues, as well as serving as a Senior Associate for Global Philanthropy and a seminar leader on Fundraising for the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization. Clearly, Martin is well-versed, well-traveled, and well-positioned to pen a book on the topic. This is affirmed by a slew of enthusiastic endorsements from an impressive list of stalwarts in the fields of Evangelical Christian philanthropy and mission. And though I have no expertise in the intersection of these enterprises, with this review I add my voice to those applauding Martin’s work. When Money Goes On Mission delivers an engaging and insightful guide to the (commonly thorny) terrain of mission fundraising.

Martin traverses the terrain in four parts, each containing several chapters. The chapters navigate various issues and perspectives of both funders and funded, but together they are calibrated to Martin’s thesis that missional fundraising should nurture “a communion of giving and receiving” (63). This is Martin’s true north that orients money on mission. Thus, throughout the book he works to redescribe fundraising as a relational partnership (“communion”) that is transformational rather than merely transactional. At the end of each chapter, he nicely captures that chapter’s particular contribution by completing the sentence “When money goes on mission . . ..” A notable strength of the book is the intermingled real-world narratives that advance Martin’s direction or illustrate his directives. His stories are entertaining and substantive, in no small part because they are frequently autobiographical. His narratives, his conversational writing style, and his relative concision—given the expansive ground he covers—help make this book an ideal compass for missionaries and mission funders.

Part one argues that the shifting landscape of mission to the global South calls for a new paradigm of partnership between local, Majority World “missional entrepreneurs” and moneyed, Western givers (Martin prefers the clumsier “autochthonous leaders” to designate indigenous mission leaders for reasons never adequately justified). This new paradigm contrasts with previous eras/models of mission work in that it values balanced mutuality between giver and receiver. Genuine mutuality is hard if not impossible to come by, Martin avers, where the giver and receiver are not interdependent within their local context—that is, “financially sustained for their own core operations within a local context” (50). Such a forceful statement should give pause. Commitment to this core value means that indigenous leaders should seek local funding strategies and plan for sustainability accordingly without foreign financial dependence. When it is appropriate, cross-cultural giving ought not short-circuit the discipleship, joy, and freedom that arises from local sustainability and accountability. Martin’s prescription will necessarily raise eyebrows; nevertheless, he rightly attempts to come to terms with the unfolding era of locals truly owning their own mission efforts—their governance, finances, results, and growth—and hence, partnering as trusted equals with outsiders who are called to accompany them.

Part two meanders between the themes of faithful trust in God and excellence in practice. In my estimation it lacks the same degree of constructive focus as the other three parts; the chapters could have been consolidated to make for an even tidier read. Martin holds up a commitment to excellence as the essential counterpart to relying on God’s provision when working or investing in mission. If one is practiced without, or at the expense of, the other, then money on mission operates in dangerous territory. Faithfulness cannot be translated willy-nilly into measurable outcomes, but neither ought it be used to excuse inefficiency. How givers and receivers measure efficiency should be rooted in organic effectiveness—which can often only be discerned up close—rather than transactional benchmarks viewed from a spreadsheet. Throughout this section Martin uses the metaphor of catching the wind on a sailboat to express the connection between the human and divine roles in the communion of giving and receiving (though the chapters in this part have much more to say to the receiver than the giver).

Part three examines in sequence the themes of trust, purpose, character, ideas, and track record as marks of excellence of leadership with money. In these chapters Martin comes across as a coach in the locker room of mission leaders who want givers to join their team. He stresses the need for accountability (“if you can’t be fired from your position, you’re not accountable” [139]). He emphasizes that leaders must clearly define mission direction in view of clearly defined needs—and they must be able to articulate how they are making progress. Martin lifts up trustworthiness as an essential character trait for mission leaders. Yet, he perceptively parses trustworthiness in terms of being a person with courage in the face of weakness, change, challenge, or opposition. Opposition is sometimes “disguised as good ideas that are not necessarily God’s ideas” (166). Martin recommends strategic planning for the short term (~18 months) that aligns strategies with missional context and purpose. Givers fund strategy when they ascertain and agree with its destination. Extensive long-term planning, however, usually wastes more resources than it contributes in the dynamic circumstances of mission. Finally, a ministry’s track record discloses not just the ability of the mission but also the future potential of the mission—and the latter helps especially to build investor confidence. Leaders should not neglect honestly relating the “Ebenezers” (1 Sam 7:12) and even the failures in communicating the mission’s way forward.

Part four distills practical recommendations on the nuts and bolts of the fundraising process. Martin gives direction, among other things, on board-executive relationships, the hunt for potential donors, communication with existing donors, and grant proposals. These chapters offer a trove of advice, accumulated by years of experienced fundraising and funding, for mission leaders seeking concrete “how to’s.” In offering his wisdom, Martin continues to underscore that mission fundraising must aim to nurture a communion of trust and accountability that leads to a mutually transformative relationship.

The task of uniting givers and receivers in responsible, faithful partnership is not simple, especially when money crosses cultures on mission. It takes thoughtfulness, transparency, patience, hard work, and humility—in a word, love. Love, Martin emphasizes in the concluding chapter, both maps the way and is the destination of giver and receiver. Martin is to be thanked for plotting the topography for the journey and showing us with wit and wisdom that the journey can be—indeed, should be—a pilgrimage of love.

Nathan Bills

Senior Lecturer and Head of the Department of Theology

Heritage Christian College

Accra, Ghana

In order for theological education to fulfill its mission of preparing church and global leaders, partnerships are a must. This paper explores partnerships between institutions in the Global South and scholars in the Global North as a practical strategy to benefit both sides.

Theological Education today is facing two concurrent situations that require our active participation. First, theological education institutions in the Global South (GS) are growing in numbers and opening programs in new places. Second, there is a surplus of graduates with theological and biblical degrees in the Global North (GN) competing for a limited number of openings every year.1 My aim in this paper is to present a proposal that will address both situations in a way that will benefit both sides.

Institutions of theological education in the GS face several challenges, one of them being limited access to qualified faculty. There are several explanations for this. First, most local people with theological or biblical degrees find employment in the GN. For example, only two out of ten Africans studying theology in the GN return to Africa.2 It is hard for the seminaries in the GS to compete with the wages and benefits institutions in the GN offer to faculty. Second, the growing anti-Western sentiment in many countries makes it unpopular for Western scholars to serve in the GS.3 Views of colonization, imperialism, and relationships between North and South are part of the difficult dialogue affecting cooperation and missionary involvement. More specifically in missiology, the talk is about “Americanization” of the gospel and the church. In the words of John Gatu, general secretary of the Presbyterian Church in East Africa: “[Our] present problems can only be solved if all missionaries can be withdrawn…. The churches in the third world must be allowed to find their own identity…the continuation of the present missionary movement is a hindrance to this selfhood.”4 Third, recently most traditional mission agencies have shifted to concentrating their efforts on the “unreached,” leaving theological education to the side. The current trend in many mission agencies is making it more difficult to raise funds for ministries like theological education.

Among the mission agencies still open to supporting theological education in the GS is the one I am affiliated with: United World Mission (UWM). UWM has a specific program, the Theological Education Initiative (TEI), to come alongside institutions in the GS and help them connect with qualified faculty mostly from the GN. To quote John Bernard, president of UWM:

Our Theological Education Initiative (TEI) is built on the assumption that contextualized theological education is critical for the church everywhere, but especially in the global South in the light of the growth of the church over the last 100 years. The enterprise assumes that North American Christians—for a significant portion of our TEI cohort of missional scholars are daughters and sons of the North and the West—still have an appropriate and important role in the world, particularly in the area of leadership formation and theological education. Finally, TEI builds on the assumption that global partnership is an imperative of the global church and that partnerships that strengthen local institutions and leadership are highly strategic as they seek to build local capacity and sustainability. We have deep respect for our brothers and sisters who are serving in churches and institutions around the world. As we seek to roll up our sleeves, come alongside and serve in ways that strengthen the church as it fulfills its identity and pursues its mission.5

I want to highlight some of the concepts John Bernard mentions. First, he underscores the crucial need of “contextualized theological education.” Contextualization is something we in Latin America have been working on for a long time. Even as early as 1929, Mexican professor Gonzalo Baez Camargo invited the emerging evangelical leaders to “latinize” the gospel, to make the message touch the realities of our Latin American people.6 This is a key element in TEI’s approach to theological education: it needs to be contextual, avoiding imperialism and foreign impositions but maintaining an open dialogue among the global Evangelical community. TEI wants to recognize local need, culture, and idiosyncrasy in the process of vetting candidates for faculty in the GS. The time of exporting agendas and programs without any consideration of the indigenous capabilities is over. UWM emphasizes that in the twenty-first century, missionaries must go as learners, collaborators side by side with the local believers, under native leadership and supervision. This marks the end of the idea that the West knows best.

The second concept I want to highlight is partnership. In our globalized world with immediate global access and networks, partnership is a must. Real partnership “strengthens local institutions and leadership” and benefits both sides equally. In this kind of partnership, both voices are heard, no one side receives or gives more than the other, and any side can terminate the partnership anytime. In this kind of partnership, there is a high degree of collaboration between the partners. There is no room for paternalism, or simply considering one side better than the other. This is a Christian partnership between two sides that are committed to the values of the kingdom of God, a partnership that brings glory to God and serves the church. As a North American professor teaching in the GS said, “I have learned so much and benefited most by coming to serve in this country. I have learned so much more than was possible had I stayed in my country.”

Finally, Bernard states that theological education has as its ultimate goal to serve “in ways that strengthen the church as it fulfills its identity and pursues its mission.” The church is the primary beneficiary of theological education. History teaches us that institutions that started within the church and later became estranged from their ecclesial roots lose relevance and even their Christian identity. We must be aware of the danger of turning theological education into an exclusively academic exercise that loses contact with its bases and severs its connection with the church. Academic excellence and pursuits are laudable only when they are put to the building up of the people of God.

These three concepts—contextualization, partnership, and church—are in the DNA of TEI and the partnerships we pursue. As TEI’s director, David Baer says:

At the Theological Education Initiative, we seek adroitly to place missional scholars on the faculties of select partnered theological communities. Anchored in partnership by this placement of highly trained personnel, we then scan for opportunities to enhance faculties as they pursue in concert the particular vocation of their theological community. None of this is simple. None of this is easy. We seek to break cycles of mediocrity in teaching and research. We strive to interrupt damaging patterns of poor vocational alignment that load missional scholars with burdens which break down their capacity to pursue the calling God has woven into their lives over long years of discernment and preparation. This is our calling, no higher or better than anyone else’s, but ours. This is our insertion point in the missio Dei.

To conclude in answer to the two situations above—difficult access to qualified faculty by theological institutions in the GS, and the surplus of graduates in theology and related fields in the GN— we as TEI provide a platform where both sides meet and find solutions to their dovetailing needs. We have seen that this is possible and produces excellent outcomes.

J. Daniel Salinas is originally from Bogota, Colombia. He holds a PhD from Trinity International University in Historical Theology. He is the author of several books in English and Spanish on the history of Latin American Evangelical theology. Currently, he teaches for Biblical Seminary (Medellín, Colombia), Asian Theological Seminary (Manila, Philippines), and Life Theological Seminary (Bhubaneswar, India). He is the associate director of the Theological Education Initiative, a program of United World Mission. He is married to Gayna, and they have three children.

As a consequence of the expanding academic profile of many young professionals within the Churches of Christ in Africa, the “pew” appears to have outgrown the “pulpit” in relationship to levels of education. Such a growing phenomenon poses a challenge to ministers who have been equipped by Schools of Preaching (SoPs) as the nature and scope of courses taught in SoPs are inadequate to respond to the contexts and challenges facing the emerging generation of African Christians and churches. The School of Preaching (SoP) model introduced by Western missionaries now calls for an African recalibration.

Introduction

In many places within the Churches of Christ in Africa, the “pew” appears to have outgrown the “pulpit” in regard to levels of education. The expanding academic profile of many church members, especially those of a younger, professional demographic, poses a challenge to ministers who have been equipped by traditional schools of preaching (SoPs). Generally speaking, the duration, nature, and scope of courses taught in SoPs are inadequate to respond to the contexts and challenges facing the emerging generation of African Christians and churches. As a consequence, the SoP model introduced by Western missionaries now calls for an African recalibration.

Context Then and Now

As a leadership training model, the SoP was timely for the context in which it was introduced. For many students who grew up in the pre-independence era of Africa, no occasion was more desirable than the day one graduated from middle school (junior high). In that era, the knowledge and competencies a middle school graduate had acquired were adequate enough for him (or the people in his community) to think that middle school education was tantamount to “finishing school.” After all, he was among the privileged few to receive formal (Western) education despite the fact that it was only a middle school standard of education.

Such was the background in which the pioneer American missionaries of the Churches of Christ set up the SoPs to develop ministers or church leaders in different places on the continent. Thus, the level of formal education of most ministers of the gospel who graduated from SoPs, in comparison with that of the average member of the church at the time, was equivalent to, if not above, those in the pew.

Today, however, the story is different. Much of post-independence Africa has seen considerable growth and development in the education sector, particularly in the last twenty-five years. Whereas twenty-five years ago college graduates represented less than 1% of Ghana’s youth, now college/university graduates represent 5% of the youth population (between ages 15 and 35), and this figure will only continue to rise.1

On the global scene in the areas of humanities, science and technology, business, and so on, growing numbers of young, migrant Africans make significant scholarly/professional contributions because they have had the benefit of attending institutions of higher learning. In religious traditions other than Churches of Christ in Africa, growth in higher education among members is quite apparent because those church traditions embraced higher education as an integral aspect of their mission endeavors for the primary purpose of developing the human capital of their churches. It is, therefore, a common characteristic in Africa, among faith traditions other than the Churches of Christ, to find gospel ministers whose academic and professional profiles are comparable to their educated church members because both categories have had the opportunity to study in institutions of higher learning established by their church traditions.

Within the Churches of Christ in (much of) Africa, levels of higher education among the more youthful membership manifestly have outpaced the level of education of most of those who are trained in SoPs. The SoP model of training leaders, without doubt, has been a tremendous blessing in preparing evangelists and leaders for the churches (and continues to make a positive impact in some places on the continent). This notwithstanding, the duration, nature, and scope of education offered by the SoPs, as well as academic capacity of many of their teachers, libraries, and so on, call into question whether the graduates are adequately equipped to address the complex social, political, economic, and religious contexts that now confront most emerging professionals.

Current Challenges Confronting SoP Graduates in Churches of Christ

As a consequence of secular higher education and exposure to the negative aspects of Western culture, young people in the church (i.e., the church’s future leaders) are increasingly questioning the realities that their parents and grandparents took for granted. Large numbers of the educated, young Christians seem unsatisfied with the answers their Christian parents or preachers provide them: for example, belief in the Bible/Christianity as the only source of truth, compatibility of science and religion, slavery of Africans and colonial entanglement, and so on.

Part of the apparent disillusionment of many youth in the Churches of Christ in Africa comes as a consequence of unmet expectations that their preachers provide persuasive philosophical/theological responses to questions and issues prompted by the cultural milieu. They expect (even need) the leaders of the church to put into place practical interventions that would address societal problems like youth unemployment, livelihood empowerment, tribal/civil war, terrorism, and environmental degradation. Therefore, beyond teaching people what they must “do to be saved,” church leadership and especially preachers require help in being equipped to provide reasonable, Christian responses to the concerns of the burgeoning generation of leaders of the African church.

The Need for Christian Higher Education Institutions in Africa

What is urgently needed is the establishment of private Christian universities on the continent of Africa (apart from public universities) to address the holistic needs of the people. This is especially so for Churches of Christ. The SoP model of leadership training falls short in some key domains that are better addressed by institutions of higher learning. In the following, I present three reasons that make the task of building institutions of higher education a critical work for the next chapter of participation in the mission of God in Africa.

First, SoPs attract only a slice of the student population that universities accommodate. SoPs largely neglect women, who represent the vast majority in most churches. SoPs also have little place for most of the talented young men in churches who do not have the calling for full-time ministry. The Christian university, in contrast, provides a broad spectrum of learning that integrates Christian faith and values for all categories of people in and even outside the church.

In short, Christian colleges and universities empower both young Christians and those with the calling for full-time ministry with the necessary intellectual, theological, and vocational skills (beyond what the SoPs provide). The issues of concern to young professionals in the pew—and to their contemporaries outside of the church—will continue to plague this demographic even if SoP ministers have successfully taught them the “truth of the gospel.”

Second, SoPs cannot offer the comprehensive, or holistic, education that today’s preacher needs to equip churches and Christian young men and women. Beyond training in preaching and traditional “church work,” today’s ministers need a wider base of knowledge and an advanced skill set that is the purview of a university curriculum. So, for example, ministers who know how to carry out verifiable research on the communities where they plant churches, place their research into conversation with published literature, or set up ministry intervention(s) that would transform the conditions of life in the context where they serve are better equipped for ministry today.

Third, SoPs lack the institutional bandwidth to produce more contextually appropriate literature for the African context. It is no secret that SoPs in Africa perpetually depend on written-for-the-USA textbooks to train African church leaders.

Implications of Establishing Christian Colleges/Universities within Churches of Christ in Africa

The time has come for Churches of Christ in Africa to collaborate with Christian universities and supporters in America to develop accredited, contextually appropriate Christian colleges in Africa. This certainly presents a number of vital implications, but for the sake of brevity I submit only three:

Implication #1: The Churches of Christ in Africa must take the lead to establish institutions of higher learning as a Christian response to continental need. These institutions stand a much greater chance of survival in what admittedly is often a precarious social, economic, and political environment if they are inspired and led by indigenous Africans.

The story of Heritage Christian College (HCC) in Ghana may serve as a case in point. Five years ago, under the auspices of the elders of the Nsawam Road Church of Christ in Accra, Ghana, we started HCC after receiving government accreditation. With 37 students, HCC began as an African-led church response to a continental need. Current student population stands at 382, and the vision of HCC is “to become a flagship Christian university in Africa for the purpose of advancing the kingdom of Christ and national development.” Apart from offering academic degrees, HCC operates a number of practical training institutes and centers, including the Center for Entrepreneurship, Philanthropy and Ethics (CEPE), where we require all students, regardless of their area of study, to take a series of hands-on practical entrepreneurial classes. As a part of this sequence of entrepreneurship training, students propose business plans and are given the opportunity to compete for seed-capital to fund their business start-ups.

Implication #2: Christian university administrators and faculty, particularly those in the United States, likewise have an obligation to assist in helping to establish Christian universities in Africa.

I recognize that this is a strong statement. Nonetheless, I believe administrators and faculty members of universities affiliated with Churches of Christ have a duty to God to collaborate with the few institutions of higher education that are emerging in Africa. Yes, a duty to God, because scholars and professionals in the West have the wherewithal that positions them as those who “have plenty for supply” for those who are less resourced in relation to higher education. As the apostle Paul reminds us, “Whoever gathered much had nothing left over, and whoever gathered little had no lack” (2 Cor 8:12–15).

It is no secret that the task of setting up a chartered Christian university requires major funding to develop the needed physical infrastructure. But it is also the case that there is a great need for credentialed faculty in nearly all the major fields of learning. In this regard, the West has an embarrassment of riches. Thus, the commitment on the part of Western Christian universities and Western Christian scholars to offer a helping hand involves figuring out how to encourage Western academics (and administrators) to find ways to contribute—both in the short-term and long-term—in African institutions of higher learning.

Implication #3: Western sponsors of mission in Africa should prioritize work and workers that fill the gap of the needs of today and tomorrow and not yesteryear.

At the present time, there is little need for American missionary families to be sent to evangelize or plant churches in most of Africa, primarily because the SoPs on the continent can train nationals to do more effective and efficient mission work. Instead, what Western mission-minded churches and sponsors can do is, first, partner with mature local church leaders or the leadership of an existing SoPs to train more indigenous cross-cultural evangelists. Second, American churches need to reconsider who counts as a “sponsored missionary.” More specifically, I am thinking of the need for churches to send “missional scholars” who have the academic credentials needed in emerging colleges/universities in Africa.

Conclusion

The SoPs have undoubtedly served a very useful purpose in the mission work among Churches of Christ in Africa over the years. Nonetheless, at this point in the Christian movement, as the continent of Africa moves to center stage in the global expansion of Christianity, Christian higher education beyond the SoP model is urgently needed to give depth and breadth to leadership training. By establishing accredited Christian colleges/universities, a plenitude of learning opportunities will be made available for the current generation in the Churches of Christ. These opportunities will develop God-endowed intellectual and vocational gifts and deploy such gifts in ways that will contribute to the holistic growth of the kingdom.

A Christian institution of higher learning, unless it has lost its core identity, can serve as a missional laboratory as it intentionally prepares the minds and faith of young people with education that integrates Christian faith and learning. Africa needs such institutions.

Sam Twumasi-Ankrah (EdD) is the President of Heritage Christian College, Accra Ghana. He also teaches leadership, Bible, ministry, and mission courses, having served previously as minister of the Nsawam Road Church of Christ for three decades.