The Crossroads of Christianity and Culture

When I was first sent as a missionary to Austria I was almost immediately invited to a theological commission meeting for churches in Central Europe.  This seems like a great idea until I realized that in the commission meetings everyone spoke German.   Suddenly my PhD didn’t really mean a whole lot.  Even when I could understand what the discussion was about, I really couldn’t say anything.  And if I did say anything I sounded like a five-year-old because that was about the level of my German at the time. Without the language all your knowledge, all of your insights, and all of your experience is locked up inside of you and it cannot be communicated.   It is no different when we come to the cultural realm of digitally mediated relationships.  It is a realm and a culture with its own language.  It is a visual language, and an aural language. It is a language with its own forms and grammar.  And if you don’t communicate in that language then you ca...

It hasn’t been a secret for nearly a decade that Christian theological education faces some very difficult challenges. Some of these are well documented. Over the last 30 years or so, the number of accredited theological schools has more than doubled. Independent evangelical churches have sought to reassess and, in some cases, expand the educational qualifications of their pastors by creating their own theological schools and remaining independent from established denominational seminaries and older non-denominational schools. Yet over the last 20 years there has been both a decline in applications for graduate level theological education and a shift away from the Master of Divinity to shorter and more focused degree and certificate programs. These changes are driven by shifts in the understanding of Christian vocation, membership declines in mainline denominations and the leveling of growth among independent evangelical churches.  Beneath these readily observable changes are tecto...