timjdavy Bible and Mission

How would you explain Mark 10:13-16 to a child soldier?

First Kill Your Family - Child Soldiers of Uganda and the Lord's Resistance Army by Peter EichstaedtOne of the privileges of teaching in a place like Redcliffe is that you are constantly challenged with new questions and new contexts. A student recently wrote a paper entitled, ‘Child Soldiers in Northern Uganda and Mark 10:13-16’.

I am so familiar with hearing this biblical text read out in the context of a child’s baptism that it was a shock for me to have it juxtaposed with something so abhorrent. But this is precisely the point of trying to engage the Bible with the realities of this world. How should I be reading this text in the light of the experiences of these children? More importantly, how might those children who have been robbed so violently of their childhoods encounter Jesus? What obstacles would they need to overcome in order to experience these life giving words?

Here is the biblical text followed by an excerpt from the website for the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers

13 People were bringing little children to Jesus for him to place his hands on them, but the disciples rebuked them. 14 When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. 15 Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” 16 And he took the children in his arms, placed his hands on them and blessed them. (Mark 10:13-16, NIV)

“I would like you to give a message. Please do your best to tell the world what is happening to us, the children. So that other children don’t have to pass through this violence.”

The 15-year-old girl who ended an interview to Amnesty International with this plea was forcibly abducted at night from her home by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), an armed opposition movement fighting the Ugandan Government. She was made to kill a boy who tried to escape. She saw another boy being hacked to death for not raising the alarm when a friend ran away. She was beaten when she dropped a water container and ran for cover under gunfire. She received 35 days of military training and was sent to fight the government army.

The use of children as soldiers has been universally condemned as abhorrent and unacceptable. Yet over the last ten years hundreds of thousands of children have fought and died in conflicts around the world.

Children involved in armed conflict are frequently killed or injured during combat or while carrying out other tasks. They are forced to engage in hazardous activities such as laying mines or explosives, as well as using weapons. Child soldiers are usually forced to live under harsh conditions with insufficient food and little or no access to healthcare. They are almost always treated brutally, subjected to beatings and humiliating treatment. Punishments for mistakes or desertion are often very severe. Girl soldiers are particularly at risk of rape, sexual harassment and abuse as well as being involved in combat and other tasks.

timjdavy Bible and Mission

Bible Engagement in Intercultural Contexts

Our MA summer school at Redcliffe College has now finished with students on the MA in Bible and Mission programme completing the taught content of modules in ‘Method and Content in Missiological Study’ and ‘Bible Engagement in Intercultural Contexts’.

For the latter we were joined by a number of visiting lecturers:

Eddie Arthur, Wycliffe Bible Translators UK Executive Director, spent time with us thinking through issues such as culture, contextualisation, Bible Translation, orality, ‘Scripture Engagement’ and the relationship between translating the Bible, literacy and an integral understanding and practice of the God’s mission in the world. He got us reading a variety of writers and documents in preparation for each session. Here are a few links to whet your appetite:

The Son and the Crescent: Christianity today Feb 2011

Bible translation and the cross-cultural DNA of the church

Making Disciples of Oral Learners

Check out Eddie’s blog kouya.net and Wycliffe’s website

Ida Glaser is Academic Director of the Centre for Muslim-Christian Studies in Oxford. Ida joined us to discuss the Bible in relation to other religions. She is a superb example of an evangelical scholar who has thought deeply and clearly about the subject while modelling a genuine, careful, gracious but clear biblical engagement with people of other faiths. Do check out her book, The Bible and Other Faiths.

Finally, a team from Bible Society came and shared about there work of Bible advocacy to the ‘cultural drivers’ of Western culture (politics, the media, the arts and education). The team were David Spriggs (Bible and Church consultant), David Landrum (Senior Paliamentary Officer), Matthew van Duyvenbode (Bible Advocacy Officer) and Cristian Romocea (International Advocacy Officer). It was fascinating to see how the organisation’s approach to ‘Bible Advocacy’ has developed over recent years with many innovative and creative projects.

Check out these links to see some of the projects Bible Society is engaged in:

The People’s Bible

Susa website

Enter the Pitch website

timjdavy Bible and Mission

How may this text be overheard?

There are dozens (if not hundreds) of questions that might be asked of a text when considering a mission hermeneutic. The question, How may this text be overheard? is deliberately ambiguous in order to suggest two themes, both of which are focused on a person or community who do not (yet) believe in Jesus Christ and, so, would not hold that the text in from of them is inspired, authoritative or authentic. The two themes are these:

1. How might this text be overheard? asks the believing community to consider how the unbelieving community can gain an opportunity to encounter this particular text of the Bible. There may well be different approaches for different texts. This question is being answered in a variety of ways this year in the UK because of the 400th anniversary of the publication of the King James Bible. The best place to look for more on this is the Biblefresh website

And perhaps our main question is not just one of exposure to ‘unbelieving communities’. Maybe it should be broadened to ask, How could this text be engaged with in fresh ways by believers?

2. How might this text be overheard? asks the believing community to consider the ways in which a text may be understood or misunderstood if ‘overheard’ by an unbelieving individual or community. This will certainly evoke different responses for different texts but, of course, the answer will be different even for a single text because different people will respond in different ways according to their own contexts and life experiences.
This is in part a prelude to apologetics but I think it is deeper that that. It asks us to consider what obstacles there might be (humanly speaking) to a clear understanding of a text. What technical words or jargon would need to be explained (e.g., with a text like Romans 4)? What background would they need to know to make sense of it in context (e.g., if it were part-way through a narrative)? What if their worldview radically misinterpreted a key term (e.g., a Muslim reading that Jesus is the Son of God)?
In conclusion, at the very least asking the question, How might this text be overheard? forces us to consider ‘the other’. While we are before God, reading and listening to the text, we are reminded that we do so as God’s missional people, tasked with participating in God’s mission to bring to him those for whom the Bible is not yet seen as the words of life.

And, of course, this brings us back (once again!) to the question of Bible Translation. For 340 million people, the first step to answering the question, How may this text be overheard? is, ‘Begin translating the Bible into their heart language’.

timjdavy Bible and Mission

Subversion, Empire, Power and the Bible

One of the startling functions of the Bible that we often miss is the insistent subversion of dominant claims to power that the biblical writers saw in their contexts (think Egypt, Bablyon, Rome, and so on). Do we miss them because we aren’t familiar with the social, cultural and historical elements of (for example) Roman rule? Most certainly. Do we miss them because, in the West at least, we aren’t sensitive to reading texts from a position of powerlessness? Quite possibly.
Preparing for two sessions on our MA in Bible and Mission programme, I came across this quote in Greene and Robinson’s Metavista: Bible, Church and Mission in an Age of Imagination. It is taken from Walsh and Keesmaat’s Colossians Remixed:

If the empire encodes in the imagery of everyday life – on public arches, statues and buildings – the claim that Rome and its emperor are the beneficent provider and guarantor of all fruitfulness, how can a claim that the “gospel” is bearing fruit “in the whole world” be heard as anything less than a challenge to this imperial fruitfulness? Especially if we remember that the word gospel (evangelion) is the very same term that the empire reserves for announcements of military success and pronouncements from the emperor, doesn’t it become clear that there is something deeply subversive in what Paul is saying here? Whose gospel is the source of fruitfulness that will last and sustain the world – the gospel of Caesar or the gospel of Jesus?

The Bible confronts us constantly with uncomfortable questions of identity and allegiance. This is more subtle, I think, than the usual ‘God or mammon’ discussion, valid though that is. How am I capitulating to alternative worldviews and power structures in the place of my devotion to Christ? What imagery would Paul use if he were making his argument in our time?

timjdavy Bible and Mission

Global Theology in Evangelical Perspective conference talks

Last month Wheaton College held its 20th Annual Theology Conference on the subject of ‘Global Theology in Evangelical Perspective’.
You can listen, watch or download all of the papers for free by going to Wheaton’s website.
Here is a list of the speakers at the conference. It is a fantastic line up although I can’t help noticing the absence of any European theologies. Nevertheless, what an excellent resource!

Andrew Walls – The Rise of Global Theologies
Gene Green – The Hermeneutical Challenge of Contextual Theologies
Ruth Padilla DeBorst – Hispanic Theology
Q&A with Ruth Padilla Deborst and Gene Green
Juan Martinez – Latin American Theology
Terry LeBlanc – Native American Theology
Q&A with Juan Martinez and Terry LeBlanc
Samuel Escobar – Liberation Theology and the Development of Latin American Evangelical Theology
KK Yeo – Chinese Theology
Amos Yong – Asian American Theology
Q&A with K.K. Yeo and Amos Yong
Samuel Escobar – Chapel Service
Martin Accad – Middle Eastern Theology
Ken Gnanakan – Indian Theology
Q&A with Martin Accad and Ken Gnanakan
James Kombo – African Theology
Vince Bacote – African American Theology
Q&A with James Kombo and Vince Bacote
Lamin Sanneh – The Significance of the Translation Principle
Mark Labberton – Implications for Church, Ministry and Mission
Jeffrey Greenman – Implications for Teaching and Learning Global Theology
Speaker Dialogue Panel

timjdavy Bible and Mission

Bedtime stories, Bible Translation and the global church

I’ve posted before on the uncomfortable privilege we English-speaking Bible readers have: numerous versions of the Bible for meditating, studying, reading out loud, and so on. And yet there are around 340 million people who don’t even have a word of the Bible in their heart language.

Bible-availability-wise, we in the English-speaking West are living in corpulent luxury while our brothers and sisters in many parts of the global church have nothing; not a single scrap of the Word of God in their own language. How is this anything other than a scandal?

My three-year-old daughter has more of the Bible written in her ‘language’ than what I can only assume must be at least hundreds of thousands of pastors, if not millions!

Ralph Winter (quoted by John Piper) provides a neat metaphor that might apply in this context. He describes the vessel, The Queen May and how it was used in peace time and war time. In doing so he illustrates what can be done with resources when pushed. I’m not always comfortable with the way the warfare language is used in mission contexts but we might want to consider how his description challenges us in the West in relation to our Bible-wealth: what luxuries would we be willing to do without in order to make sure the rest of the global church has what it so desperately needs?

The Queen Mary, lying in repose in the harbor at Long Beach, California, is a fascinating museum of the past. Used both as a luxury liner in peacetime and a troop transport during the Second World War, its present status as a museum the length of three football fields affords a stunning contrast between the lifestyles appropriate in peace and war. On one side of a partition you see the dining room reconstructed to depict the peacetime table setting that was appropriate to the wealthy patrons of high culture for whom a dazzling array of knives and forks and spoons held no mysteries. On the other side of the partition the evidences of wartime austerities are in sharp contrast. One metal tray with indentations replaces fifteen plates and saucers. Bunks, not just double but eight tiers high, explain why the peace-time complement of 3000 gave way to 15,000 people on board in wartime. How repugnant to the peacetime masters this transformation must have been! To do it took a national emergency, of course. The survival of a nation depended on it. The essence of the Great Commission today is that the survival of many millions of people depends on its fulfillment. (quoted in Piper’s Don’t Waste Your Life)

timjdavy Bible and Mission

Making a Biblical Studies programme missional, part 2

Redcliffe's web page for the BA(Hons) Degree in Applied Theology in Intercultural ContextsThis is the second in a series of posts exploring the Biblical Studies side of the new curriculum at Redcliffe College. Specifically, I’m aiming to inform and excite you about the way we are trying to make our teaching of Biblical Studies a thoroughly missional activity. Check out part 1 of the series for an overview and introduction.

The first thing to say is that we no longer have a module entitled, A Biblical Basis of Mission.

Yes, you heard me right! Traditionally, Bible Colleges have run courses in the Biblical Studies department called something like, Introduction to the Old Testament / Introduction to the New Testament, and then the Missiology/Theology department might have a module on a Biblical Basis of Mission.

But should these really be separated?

If, as I have contended on numerous occasions in this blog, the Bible is thoroughly missional, should not an overview course of the Bible take account of its missional character in a fully integrated way?

More than this, I would suggest that running separate modules is communicating something rather unhelpful to students; that you can have an introduction to the Bible separate to an introduction to Biblical mission.

So we now have modules in the first year called ‘A missional introduction to the Old Testament’ and ‘A missional approach to the New Testament’. These courses orient students both to the the context, content and contemporary significance of the books of the Bible, but also look at how the Bible is a product, record and tool of mission. This approach is an attempt to bridge the disciplines of Biblical Studies and Missiology. It also means that a students gain a solid foundation in the content, interpretation and missional nature of the Bible, and a thorough basis for understanding the church’s missionary identity and task.

To flesh this out in more detail, here is some course info.

In the first year students take two compulsory Bible-focused modules (though they can do a biblical language as well):

  • A missional introduction to the Old Testament
The module aims to introduce students to the background, content, interpretation and contemporary relevance of the books of the Old Testament. Questions relating to the thinking and practice of mission will be asked throughout.
This module covers:
1. An introduction to the missional nature of the Bible, particularly in relation to the texts of the Old Testament;
2. An overview of the books of the Old Testament accounting for issues such as historical context, genre, structure, contents, main themes, interpretation and application;
3. An exploration of the significance of Old Testament texts for the thinking and practice of mission.
  • A missional introduction to the New Testament
The module aims to introduce students to the background, content, interpretation and contemporary relevance of the books of the New Testament. Questions relating to the thinking and practice of mission will be asked throughout.
This module covers:
1. An introduction to the missional nature of the Bible, particularly in relation to the texts of the New Testament;
2. An overview of the books of the New Testament accounting for issues such as historical context, genre, structure, contents, main themes, interpretation and application;
3. An exploration of the significance of New Testament texts for the thinking and practice of mission.
Having build a solid foundation for Bible and Mission, the challenge for the second year is to see how that works when looking at particular texts in more depth. Next up, Missional texts: Psalms and Genesis 1-11; Missional texts: Luke and Acts; and Interpreting the Bible in intercultural contexts.
timjdavy Bible and Mission

Making a Biblical Studies programme missional, part 1

Redcliffe's web page for the BA(Hons) Degree in Applied Theology in Intercultural Contexts

This post is the first in a series that I hope will inform and excite you about the way in which we have sought at Redcliffe to make our teaching of Biblical Studies a thoroughly missional activity.

Today I will give a broad introduction while subsequent posts will unpack what we are doing at each stage of the degree programme.

The world is changing fast so we need to constantly develop our training to meet the increasing complexities and new challenges and opportunities of mission. To that end, over the last few months at Redcliffe we have been working hard on a revamp of our entire undergraduate Applied Theology in Intercultural Contexts programmes.

One of my challenges as the main lecturer in Biblical Studies has been to see how the Bible-focused modules can reflect recent developments in the area of Bible and mission. Specifically, we have been more intentional about integrating (1) the missional interpretation of the Bible, and (2) the growth in Scripture Engagement across the curriculum. This reflects the values of the Centre for the Study of Bible and Mission where we look at both mission in the Bible/the missional nature of the Bible, and the Bible in mission.

In addition to Greek and Hebrew, these are the Bible-focused modules students can now do (It is worth noting that these modules are just one part of the overall training, so there are plenty of other modules students can do as well. And, of course, there is biblical input into other modules too).

First year
A missional introduction to the Old Testament
A missional introduction to the New Testament

Second year
Missional texts: Psalms and Genesis 1-11
Missional texts: Luke and Acts
Interpreting the Bible in intercultural contexts

Third year
Missional texts: Isaiah
Story, song and social network: Bible engagement and oral culture

One of the most interesting discussions and decisions is to drop the module we have traditionally taught called ‘A Biblical Basis for Mission’. I’ll explain more about that in my next post! If you can’t wait until then, drop a comment in the box below to suggest why we might have done that…

timjdavy Bible and Mission

What will Revelation 7 sound like?

Consider this quote by Craig Keener in his NIVAC commentary on Revelation 7 (pp249-250):

How should we envision Revelations’s multicultural throng? Both archaeology and writings from John’s day show us that his audience knew of not only the Mediterannean world, but also of kingdoms and traders from west and east Africa, India, China, and the British Isles, all peoples so remote from the first Christians that the image of “every tribe” may have demanded considerable faith. Our geographical knowledge today is richer, and the gospel entrenched in far more cultures. Imagine the multicultural chorus of saints from all ages – ancient Israel’s Levite psalmists, clapping African saints with joyful praises, European Reformers with their majestic hymns, monks with their Gregorian and Ethiopian Coptic chants, Latin American Pentecostals with shouts of triumph, messianic Jews dancing the horah, and a generation of North American street evangelists doing gospel rap!

Many Christians today think that the gospel obliterates cultural distinctions (and sometimes expect Christians from other cultures to simply join their churches and assimilate into their “normal” cultural style of worship). But this text suggests that, far from obliterating culture, God takes what is useful in each culture and transforms it into an instrument of praise for his glory.

On Wednesday 30 March Wycliffe’s Eddie Arthur will be delivering Redcliffe’s 2011 Lecture in Bible and Mission on Reading the Bible with the Global Church. In view of Keener’s comments it would be interesting to consider what our worship might look like if we did that alongside the global church as well.

timjdavy Bible and Mission

Mission accomplished – the book of Revelation

We’ve reached the astonishing vision of Rev. 7 in Redcliffe’s module on Revelation. I’ve posted before on this chapter when considering what James Brownson describes as the multicultural presence of God. This time Chris Wright provides the insights in a chapter on Particularity and Universality in the Bible, in his The Mission of God (pp249-251, his italics):

Revelation 4-7 is a comprehensive single vision-a neck-searching, mind-boggling vision-in which John “sees” the whole universe from the vantage point of God’s throne at its center. The meaning of the history of the world is symbolized in a scroll in God’s right hand, which was slain. In other words, the cross of Christ is the key to the unfolding purposes of history; or, in terms of our argument here, the unfolding mission of God. Why is Christ worthy to govern history? Because he was slain. And what difference has that made? The song of the living creatures and twenty-four elders explain it for John, and for us.

You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals,
because you were slain,
and with your blood you purchased men for God
from every tribe and language and people and nation.
You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God,
and they will reign on the earth. (Rev 5:9-10)

The song gives three reasons why the cross is the key to history.

• First, it is redemptive. People who were lost, defeated, or enslaved in sin have been “purchased” for God. Humanity will not go down the drainpipe of history into the abyss.

• Second, it is universal. Those who have been so redeemed will come from “every tribe and language and people and nation.”

• Third, it is victorious. The Lamb wins! He and his redeemed people will reign on the earth.

The echoes of Old Testament Scripture are clear. The universality of the Abrahamic promise is captured in the list of tribe, language, people and nation. And the specific calling on Israel in Exodus 19:5-6, to be God’s kingdom of priests in the midst of all the nations of the whole earth, has now itself been internationalized and projected into an eternal future of serving God (as priests) and reigning on earth (as kings). The rightful place of redeemed humanity is that they are restored to their original status and role within creation: under God and over creation, serving and ruling. This is the wonderful combination of priesthood and kingship that redeemed humanity will exercise in the redeemed creation.

The climax of this vision, with the sixth seal, brings together the 144,000 crowd, representative of the historic twelve tribes of Israel, with the immediately following panorama of that innumerable multinational host of the redeemed, the final fulfillment of what God promised Abraham:

After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people, and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice:

“Salvation belongs to our God,
who sits on the throne,
and to the Lamb.” (Rev 7:7-9)

If, when God first called Abraham and designated him and his barren wide in their old age to be the fountainhead of his whole mission to rescue creation and humanity from the woes of Genesis 3-11, we imagined the sharp intake of breath among the astonished heavenly hosts, then in John’s vision we are not left merely to our own imagination. For he goes on to tell us:

All the angels were standing round the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They fell down on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying:

“Amen! Praise and glory
and wisdom and thanks and honor
and power and strength
be to our God for ever and ever. Amen!” (Rev 7:11-12)

And God, in the midst of the resounding praises, will turn to Abraham and say, “There you are. I kept my promise. Mission accomplished.”