Tag: culture

• March 13, 2013

  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…
• March 5, 2013

  Understand the Context to Better Understand the Message

  In the end, most of us would agree that life is not all that easy to understand, that the messages we receive from within and from others and from God are not always clear. As the Apostle Paul famously said; ‘Now we see in a mirror dimly (one translation has ‘in a riddle’)’, always remembering…
• February 27, 2013

  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…
• February 20, 2013

  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:
• February 19, 2013

  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…
• February 17, 2013

  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…
• February 17, 2013

  Reframing the Story

  Originally posted on Theologically Speaking…: As the spring semester begins tonight at The John Leland Center, new courses will commence, new questions will be asked, new books will be read, new friendships will be made, and hopefully each one of us will experience God in new ways as our eyes open to new colors and…
• February 17, 2013

  How do you define Culture Today?

  Culture in the postmodern context is seen not as ‘static, homogenous, closed, ordered and territorial’ but ‘ever-changing, fragmented, porous, chaotic, and translocal.’[1] Culture in postmodernity is: …a pattern of meanings encased in a network of symbols, myths, narratives and rituals, created by individuals and subdivisions, as they struggle to respond to the competitive pressures of power…
• February 9, 2013

  Could the Increase of Interest in Spirituality erode the Church?

  I wrote about the challenge of the church in the postmodern age. One of the key changes in the postmodern age is the increase of interest in spirituality and the reluctance to be limited by organised religion. Other reports have confirmed this: Over one-third of churchgoers attend services in more than one church. One in…
• February 7, 2013

  An Atheist Church?

  An Atheist Church – Atheistic Culture Coming of Age I heard about this new Atheist Church in Britain a few days ago and wondered how would a Christian feel when attending the assembly. My questions are answered by this post, which is an actual account of a person experiencing it on one Sunday. There are…