Learning from the Faith Community (original) (raw)
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Practical Theology of Ministry
Je crois, donc je parle, 2024
The Church is one of God's most precious gifts to the world. Jesus, the supreme gift, is the head of this body called to spread the knowledge of the Triune God on earth through a discipleship movement. For over 2,000 years, Jesus has asserted that the correct response is to have more Kingdom laborers because of the leadership problem that plagues human society (Luke 10:1-9). Since then, large and small ministry projects have been set up worldwide. Professionally and amateurishly, every Christian tries to contribute through all kinds of ministries to make the Kingdom of God present in the communities they are called to serve. While some who enter the Christian ministry are aware of the commitment they are making, others function at random. Hence, there is a need for each minister, at their level, to be able to develop a Personal Practical Theology of Ministry to serve better. In this work, we propose to shed some light on this concept, considering some practical ministry experiences.
Ministry seems a very stable category in pastoral theology. However, ministry is far more culturally conditioned than is often realized. This paper was published in the Japan Mission Journal 71/2(2017)151-6
Interpretive Theology in Pastoral Life: A Vision for Doctor of Ministry Education
2012
Theological study as formation for professional ministry is generally divided into four areas: Bible, theology, church history, and practics. Over time, these divisions have formed distinct definitions, hardened their boundaries, and evolved into scholarly disciplines. An underlying inference accompanying this division is the idea that theological education is a linear progression from theory to practice.1 Conservative Christian traditions position biblical authority as the starting point and center of the progression. Regardless of how the authority of Scripture is approached, practics remains the professional application emerging out of a linear process. This idea of linear progression from theory, with Scripture as a starting point and center for theological understanding, to practice, the professional application, defines the theoryto-practice assumption in graduate theological education. Attempts to form a more organic vision for theological education are hindered by accommodat...
Doctor of Ministry Education in a Multicultural World
The Journal of Christian Ministry, 2011
Australia. The overarching goal of the ADME conference theme was to provide an interactive learning environment where participants could holistically explore the question: "How are D. Min. students educated for multicultural ministry possibilities in the local community and global world in which they serve"? A Missiological Perspective on Multiculturalism and the D. Min. Learner The late missiologist Paul Hiebert has observed that those who are involved in the work of meaningfully communicating the gospel in human contexts must master the skill of human exegesis: We need to study the social, cultural, psychological, and ecological systems in which humans live in order to communicate the gospel in ways the people we serve understand and believe. Requiring only a course or two on human exegesis is like preparing a doctor by teaching him to put on Band-Aids, stitch wounds, and administer artificial resuscitation. Christian missions and ministries are as complex as medicine and open heart surgery, and consequently, they require a deep understanding of humans to be effective. 4 According to Hiebert, "we must learn to exegete our own contexts, because these shape the way we understand and communicate the gospel." 5 As an academic community committed to communicating the gospel through teaching, research, scholarship, and the practice of ministry, it is important that doctor of ministry programs are willing to examine the social, cultural psychological and ecological systems that undergird their existence. These systems reflect the theology, structures, resources, and programmatic emphases we utilize to educate and empower the women and men who choose to enrolled in our institutions. Through these systems we influence overtly and implicitly doctor of ministry learners who currently find themselves engaged in a variety of ministry contexts, in local communities and beyond. It is because students often find themselves ill equipped to meet the challenges and struggles related 4 The gospel in
"'Holy Cow! This stuff is real!' From Imagining Ministry to Pastoral Imagination."
How do seminarians move from imagining ministry to embodying pastoral imagination? Stories gathered from seminarians in their final year of study show the complexity of shifting from classroom work, which foregrounds theory and intellectual imagination, to a more embodied, relational and emotionally intense engagements of ministry. Stories about learning ministry articulate a process we’re calling the birth of pastoral imagination. New ministers test their use of knowledge acquired in classroom and books within the limits of actual ministry situations. They become overwhelmed by multiple variables in situations where they must make choices and act. These moments of action are fraught with risk and responsibility for the outcomes. Articulation and theological reflection are formative for students learning the practice of ministry. Implications for theological education include making greater “use of knowledge” in ministry practice and “use of practice” in classrooms. Points of crisis in the student stories raise additional questions about how some complications and interruptions to the “birth process” may present tragic consequences.
Theology of Ministry in the Twentieth Century: Ongoing Problems or New Orientations?
Ecclesiology, 2012
The first World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh in 1910 unwittingly provided strong impetus to unprecedented endeavours to establish an ecumenically agreed theology of ministry. Between the first Faith and Order Conference in 1927 and the Fourth in 1963 an ecclesiological revolution occurred. Its distinguishing achievement was to locate the gift of ministry not in ordination or its equivalent but in baptism. This principle was established on the basis of the New Testament term for ministry, diakonia, understood as a total giving of self in service to others. Consensus to this effect developed around the work of Karl Barth, Eduard Schweizer and Ernst Käsemann, but in ecumenical circles strong tensions developed about the implications for ordained ministry. The linguistic study of 1990 Diakonia: Re-interpreting the Ancient Sources challenged the semantics underlying the consensus and provided a new semantic profile for an understanding of ecclesial ministry. The re-interpretation has been endorsed by subsequent lexicography and by Anni Hentschel's semantic investigation (2007). Theology of ministry in the twenty-first century has the opportunity to enrich the ministry with which the church is provisioned.