Back at Fuller

I'm back at Fuller Theological Seminary for a two-week class as I work toward my doctorate. Now in the second of a four-year program, I'll eventually complete a D.Min. in Missional Leadership. During this course we will focus specifically on ecclesiology, addressing such questions as "What is the church?" "Who is the church?" and "Why do we have church?"

The D.Min. program I am working on is concerned with a missional theology. The goal of this program is to examine and better understand the place of an ever-increasingly decentralized church, struggling for legitimacy in North American culture. Missional theology found its birth in the work of Leslie Newbigin, a western missionary to India, who returned to England in 1974 only to discover a thoroughly post-Christendom Europe. Newbigin realized that he needed to develop the same sensitivity to socio-historical context in Europe that he had so diligently pursued in India. He returned to his homeland as a foreigner, a missionary in a pluralistic society. Through the work of Darrel Guder, Craig Van Gelder, Alan Roxburgh (my program adviser) and others, the “Gospel and Culture” network was founded to address the new place of a dislocated church in the western world, and to ask how the church could prophetically engage a postmodern world without trying to re-establish a culture of Christendom. This is now my task as I study.

So, I sit here tonight in eager anticipation of our first session tomorrow morning. More later....

Comments

[Tim]

James, wish you were here. We'd have lot's to talk about!

[James Bergen]

Hey Tim. Have a great couple of weeks. Good questions you will be having conversation on. Look forward to continuing them here in our context. Will be praying for you, and your family, over the next couple of weeks.

James