timjdavy Bible and Mission

GOCN forum on missional hermeneutics

If you are at the meetings of the Society of Biblical Literature or the American Academy of Religion later this month in San Francisco, check out the GOCN forum on missional hermeneutics. This forum has been critical for the development and dissemination of thinking in the whole area of reading the Bible through the lens of mission (see, for example, the 2009 issue of their enewsletter on missional hermeneutics).

Here is the info on the meetings from the GOCN website:

The annual GOCN forum on missional hermeneutics will be held in San Francisco at the annual meetings of the Society of Biblical Literature and the American Academy of Religion. We will host two sessions.

Session 1
1:00 PM to 3:30 PM
11/19/2011–Golden Gate 6

Reading the Parables of Jesus Missionally

George Hunsberger, Western Theological Seminary, Presiding

Jason S. Sexton, University of St. Andrews
Reading the Parables Theologically to Read them Missionally: A Missional Reading of the Early Galilean Parables in Luke’s Gospel

Lois Barrett, Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary
Reading Matthew 13 Missionally: Training for the Reign of God

Colin H. Yuckman, United Presbyterian Church of New Kensington
A Shadow of a Magnitude: Reading Luke’s ‘Parables of the Lost’ Missionally

Klyne Snodgrass, North Park University, Respondent
Session 2
4:00 PM to 6:30 PM
11/20/2011– Golden Gate 8

Panel Discussion of Michael J. Gorman’s Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Following the Lamb into the New Creation (Cascade Books, 2011)

Michael Barram, Saint Mary’s College of California, Presiding

Darrell Guder, Princeton Theological Seminary, Panelist
John R. Franke, First Presbyterian Church, Allentown, PA, Panelist
James Brownson, Western Theological Seminary, Panelist
Sylvia Keesmaat, Trinity College – Toronto, Panelist

Michael Gorman, Saint Mary’s Seminary and University, Respondent

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Translating the Bible into Action in French, Portuguese and English

Translating the Bible into ActionOne of the core texts for students at Redcliffe College is Harriet Hill and Margaret Hill’s Translating the Bible into Action: How the Bible can be Relevant in All Languages and Cultures. It is essential reading on two particular modules: Story, Song and Social Networks: Bible Engagement and Oral Culture’ on the BA(Hons) degree in Applied Theology in Intercultural Contexts programme; and ‘Bible Engagement in Intercultural Contexts’ on the MA in Bible and Mission.

The excellent Scripture Engagement website has just announced the translation of Hill and Hill’s book into French, under the title, Traduire la Bible en Actes: Manuel pour faire un bon usage de la Bible dans chaque langue et culture. It is also available in Portuguese: Colocando a Bíblia em Ação: Como tornar a Bíblia relevante para todas as línguas e culturas.

This is a really important and helpful book. Here’s the blurb and contents:

“Clear, simple and readable – very practical, fully supported with further reading … exactly the kind of thing that is needed.” Chris Wright, Langham Partnership

A tried and tested resource that encourages meaningful Bible use in multi-lingual contexts through both written and oral media.

Individual chapters can be used as a standalone interactive workshop in church or mission contexts. Chapters (with further reading) are also appropriate as a text for graduate studies. Includes activities, assignments, further reading resources and links for useful websites.

CONTENTS

1 Barriers to Engaging with Scripture
2 Using Appropriate Scripture Products

Theological Foundations
3 Language in the Plan of God
4 Culture in the Plan of God
5 Mother-Tongue Scripture Use and Church Growth

Multilingual Churches
6 Using Scripture in Multilingual Churches
7 Helping Interpreters Perform Well
8 Multi-Ethnic Churches

Relevant Bible Use
9 Identifying Relevant Issues
10 Providing Necessary Background Information
11 Preparing Bible Studies
12 Addressing Human Concerns: Trauma Healing
13 Addressing Human Concerns: HIV-AIDS and the Church
14 Preparing Sermons
15 Meditating on God’s Word

Sharing Faith
16 Bible Storying
17 Preparing for Good News Encounters
18 Engaging People with Scripture in Evangelism
19 How Muslims Use the Bible
20 Engaging Children and Youth with Scripture
21 Family Prayers

Using Your Gifts
22 Engaging People with Scripture through Music
23 Engaging People with Scripture through Drama
24 Engaging People with Scripture through the Visual Arts

Literacy
25 Mother-tongue Reading and Writing for Literates
26 Basic Literacy and Scripture

Passing It On
27 Research, Marketing, and Distribution
28 How to Bring about Change
29 Preparing for Scripture Engagement Seminars

 

timjdavy Bible and Mission

Mary and Joseph as 21 century teenage parents video

Youth for Christ in the UK have just brought out a video that puts a contemporary spin on an ancient story. Here’s the blurb and video:

A short film looking, from a modern perspective, at how Mary felt when she found out she was carrying the Son of God, Jesus Christ.

This film was produced to accompany the KS3 RE Resource ExploRE by Youth For Christ. For more information, and other videos, please visit http://www.explore-tv.co.uk/

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Ross Wagner on the Apostle Paul and the missio Dei

The concept of the missio Dei is foundational for understanding a missional reading of the Bible. We, the church, are involved in mission because we are sent by God to participate in his mission.

Ross Wagner is a New Testament scholar who teaches alongside Darrell Guder at Princeton Theological Seminary. A couple of publications to mention, which I have just added to the Bible and Mission books and articles section of this microsite:

Wagner, R. Heralds of Good News: Paul and Isaiah ‘In Concert’ in the letter to the Romans, Leiden: Brill (2002).

Wagner, ‘Missio Dei: Envisioning an Apostolic Reading of Scripture’, Missiology, 37:1 (January 2009), 19-32.

The first title links to a Google preview. The second was part of an issue of Missiology dedicated to the theme of missio Dei. Here is the abstract to Wagner’s article:

A theological account of the nature and function of Scripture in the church is properly situated within the larger context of the missio Dei, God’s merciful self-communication to the world in Jesus Christ through the power of the Spirit. Exegetical soundings in 2 Corinthian, Philippians, 1 Peter, and 1 John illustrate the fruitfulness of an “apostolic hermeneutic” that attends to the waus in which these texts address and form the church as the community of the reconciled who are called into fellowship with the triune God as active participants in God’s won work of reconciliation. 

A couple of other related links:

Gorman, M. (2011) ‘Missional Musings on Paul‘, Catalyst On-line, 37:2.

Hunsberger, G. ‘Proposals for a Missional Hermeneutic: Mapping a Conversation‘, Gospel and Our Culture Newsletter eSeries, 2 (January 2009). Subsequently published as G. ‘Proposals for a Missional Hermeneutic: Mapping a Conversation’, Missiology, 39:3 (July 2011). This mentions Wagner’s work as part of Hunsberger’s round up of scholarship on missional hermeneutics up to that point (late 2008).

timjdavy Bible and Mission

NIV and NLT available for free download with Youversion for 48 hours

YouVersion is a very popular way of reading many versions of the Bible online or on your phone. Normally you need to be connected to the web to access it but they recently announced that you will be able to download for free the NIV and NLT for offline use. There will only be a 48-hour window for this so don’t miss out!

Here’s the blurb from the email:

Some of you have let us know that you lost your offline Bible versions after upgrading or replacing your phone without having offline translations backed up. Most versions in the Bible App are available to download anytime. However, a few are not, so we reached out to our friends at Biblica, Zondervan, and Tyndale, and they have graciously allowed us to offer the New International Version (NIV) and the New Living Translation (NLT) for a limited time.

For just 48 hours next weekend—from 12:00 AM October 30 through 11:59 PM Central Time U.S. (GMT -5) October 31—you’ll once again be able to download the NIV and the NLT for offline use. (When you download a version, that means you can read it in the Bible App even when you’re offline—that is, when you can’t connect to your service provider or to the Internet.) Special thanks go to Biblica and Zondervan for making the NIV available, and to Tyndale for the NLT.

timjdavy Bible and Mission

Lausanne World Pulse on the Bible and Orality

The latest issue of Lausanne World Pulse features an article titled, ‘International Orality Network’s Declaration on Making Disciples of the World’s Oral Learners through Audio Scripture Engagement’.

It it they make the point that

There are 4.35 billion people in our world who are oral learners. They are found in many cultural groups in the villages and in global cities around the world. We recognize that sixty percent of the world’s population can’t, won’t, or don’t hear the gospel when we share it simply because it’s often coming through literate means they don’t understand and to which they do not relate.

The word of God is unchangeable, but the manner or method in which it is communicated does change. We celebrate that God has worked intentionally throughout history to bring his word to the peoples of the world utilizing various media formats, including oral communication, scribe and hand written text, the printed page, and digital means.

The Gutenberg Press enabled a print revolution and unprecedented spread of the word of God. Oral means were available prior to Gutenberg, but a scripture literacy revolution was empowered by means of making the full Bible available to every person who could read. We stand today at another seminal point in history in which digital technology makes it possible for every oral learner to engage with God’s word in audio and audio/visual formats.

The International Orality Network aim

to influence the Body of Christ to make disciples of all oral learners. We believe that the foundation of discipleship is the shaping by, and obedience to, the word of God. It is the inalienable right and privilege of every person to have access to the word of God in his or her own heart language and in a media format he or she understands.

They then issue a number of challenges:

We call upon the Body of Christ to expand the reach of this revolution by making the entire word of God available to every person who can hear.

We call upon the Church to embrace engagement of the audio scripture among oral learners with great urgency.

We call upon the Church to engage all unengaged, unreached people groups and to place into their hands any and every available audio portion of God’s word in their heart language.

We call upon the Body of Christ to devote energies, strategies, and resources to provide access for all oral learners to engage the entire word of God through audio/digital means, so that every tribe, tongue, and people group may hear, understand, and have the opportunity to respond!

timjdavy Bible and Mission

Missional hermeneutics reading part 2

Today on the Reading the Bible Missionally module of Redcliffe’s MA in Bible and Mission we finished off our foundational work surveying the missional hermeneutics literature, before plunging back into Chris Wright’s The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative.

Following our look at Wright and Bauckham’s approaches (mentioned in the previous post), students came prepared to share about writers such as Michael Goheen, Dan Beeby, Darrell Guder and James Brownson.

Here are references to some of their works. If you are interested in taking it further check out our Bible and Mission books and articles page.

Beeby, H.D. Canon and Mission (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 1999).

Beeby, H.D. ‘A Missional Approach to Renewed Interpretation’ in C. Bartholomew, C. Greene and K. Möller (eds), Renewing Biblical Interpretation (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 2000), 268-283.

Brownson, J.V. ‘Speaking the Truth in Love’, International Review of Mission, Vol 83, No. 330 (1994), 479-504.

Brownson, J.V. Speaking the Truth in Love: New Testament Resources for a Missional Hermeneutic (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 1998).

Goheen, M.W. ‘Continuing Steps Towards a Missional Hermeneutic’, Fideles, Volume 3 (2008), pp.49-99.

Goheen, M.W. A Light to the Nations: The Missional Church and the Biblical Story (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011).

Guder, D. ‘Missional Hermeneutics: The Missional Authority of Scripture‘, Mission Focus, Annual Review, 15 (2007), 106-121.

Guder, D. ‘Missional Hermeneutics: The Missional Vocation of the Congregation – and How Scripture Shapes That Calling‘, Mission Focus, Annual Review, 15 (2007), 125-142.

timjdavy Bible and Mission

Missional hermeneutics reading part 1

Today we had the first two sessions of the Reading the Bible Missionally module on Redcliffe’s MA in Bible and Mission. The course itself takes its structure from Chris Wright’s The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative. By the end of the course we have read the whole thing. But fantastic though Wright’s book is, it is also important for students to have a good grasp of other writers in the field.

So today we had an introduction to the development and legitimacy of a missional hermeneutic, alongside discussions of the methodologies of Chris Wright and Richard Bauckham.

To get a flavour of some of the literature have a look at this microsite’s Bible and Mission books and articles page. In the meantime, here is a selection of the things we’ve been looking at today:

Bauckham, R. ‘Mission as Hermeneutic for Scriptural Interpretation‘, Currents in World Christianity Position Paper, Number 106 (1999).

Bauckham, R. The Bible and Mission: Christian Witness in a Postmodern World (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 2004).

Goheen, M.W.  ‘A Critical Examination of David Bosch’s Missional Reading of Luke’ in C.G. Bartholomew, J.B. Green and A.C. Thiselton (eds.), Reading Luke: Interpretation, Reflection, Formation (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005), pp.229-264.

Hunsberger, G. ‘Proposals for a Missional Hermeneutic: Mapping a Conversation‘, Gospel and Our Culture Newsletter eSeries, 2 (January 2009). Subsequently published as G. ‘Proposals for a Missional Hermeneutic: Mapping a Conversation’, Missiology, 39:3 (July 2011).

Wright, C.J.H. The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative (Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 2006).

Wright, C.J.H. Truth with a Mission: Reading All Scripture Missiologically, Southern Baptist Journal of Theology, 15.2 (2011), pp.4-15.

Tomorrow we turn our attention to Dan Beeby, James Brownson, Michael Goheen and Darrell Guder.

timjdavy Bible and Mission

Christmas Unwrapped

As ever, Bible Society are thinking of creative ways to engage people with the Bible this Christmas. They have produced a series of envelope stickers that depict the story of the nativity along with a website where people can read the Christmas story for themselves.

The images themselves are beautifully done. Here is a video from the Christmas Unwrapped website.

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Some Bible and Orality websites

This week in our module Story, Song and Social Networks: Bible Engagement and Oral Culture students had to report on websites and ministries that deal with issues of orality and Bible Engagement. I asked them to explore the websites and consider three questions:

1. How do they define or assume orality in relation to the people they work with?

2. What kinds of projects interest you?

3. How do you think the projects might be contextualised to a different context you are interested in?

Lots of great discussion!

We used the list of sites available on the Bible and Orality resources page. Currently the list is as follows:

Bible Society
Bible Storying
Chronological Bible Storying
Communication Across Barriers
Faith Comes By Hearing
Global Recordings Network
International Orality Network
The Java Club
OneStory Partnership
Orality Strategies
Scripture Engagement
Scriptures in Use
Simply The Story
Story4All
T4 Global Blog
Wycliffe Bible Translators (UK) 

Are there any sites we’ve missed? Leave a comment to suggest ones you think we should be including.

And if you want to reflect on issues of Bible and orality in more depth, you can always come to Redcliffe on either the BA(Hons) in Applied Theology in Intercultural Contexts, or even the MA in Bible and Mission!