Category: Culture
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Church – quit admonishing the world and start engaging!
One of my favourite authors and renowned historian, John Dickson, was interviewed by Marshall Shelley and Drew Dyck recently. The interview, which is titled, ‘The Church in Secular Culture – Moving from a stance of admonition to mission’ is available in the Leadership Journal. Below is the excerpt of a section of interview which I think speaks…
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Useful Resources for Mission at the International Bulletin of Missionary Research
The April version of the International Bulletin of Missionary Research has a number of interesting articles. Articles are available for free at the website after your subscribe to its email newsletter. Among articles which are relevant to faith, culture and mission in the postmodern context are: 1. Emerging Adults and the Future of Missions by…
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The Pope who Stunned the World
There is a post at the Read the Spirit site entitled ‘Rediscover John XXIII, a Pope who stunned the world!‘ Many have thought that the new pope, Francis I, brings a refreshing aura with him into the office. So it would be natural for one to look back curiously for past popes with similar ‘aura of…
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The Difference between Contextualization and Inculturation
From my MA Dissertation: Inculturation is centred on culture. This marks the primary difference between inculturation and contextualisation. Most Protestants consider inculturation as a subset of contextualisation. Bosch for example, placed inculturation under contextualisation together with liberation theology; with inculturation the primary concern is the relationship between faith and culture, while liberation theology includes the…
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Cultural Anthropology Course Material Made Available Online
Cultural Anthropology is now a necessity for mission studies. Surely no student of inculturation would want to miss out course material on cultural anthropology, especially if is in good quality and produced by a top university. The good news is MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) has just a course like this. Under its Open Courseware, MIT…
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Should Christians do the ‘Harlem Shake’?
I suppose we all heard of ‘Harlem Shake’. Now that some Christians are doing it, people start to wonder if it is wrong for Christians to follow suit. They are especially concerned with the fact that Christians seem to copy the meme without thinking much about the origin of the dance and why they are doing…
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Discipleship as the Means to counter the Culture of Consumerism
‘If we don’t disciple, the culture sure will, and it’s doing a good job of it.’ Jesus took twelve and that seems to work quite well! I have referred to books by Alan Hirsch during my research and they have been very helpful and easy to read. Below are two of them:
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The Beards of Ministry
From: Out of Ur: The Beards of Ministry. These types are familiar to those of us in the Christian circle. I am not sure if this would ring a bell for others who are not in this ‘culture’. It is obvious that Christians in general has created for themselves a certain common understanding, which forms certain…
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Missiology and Homiletics – Preaching and Context
Much has been said about contextualisation and the contribution of anthropology and social studies to the work and theology of mission. In this post, Dr. Priest argued that these disciplines should be incorporated into the art of preaching. According to him, such contextual preaching has been around for a while, in the example of Billy…