Sunday, July 17, 2011
Rainy Friday Links
Colouring for a rainy day... a tiger with boxing gloves. Tesco Value colouring books do not disappoint.Niamh and I went to the park and got caught in a rainstorm. From sunshine to a torrential downpour in no less than 5 minutes. Got to love summer weather in the west of Scotland.
Emma (along with some other church leaders and community workers) is out at the Scottish Parliament today* meeting with Scottish Justice minister Kenny MacAskill about the issue of destitution amongst asylum seekers. I’m sure she’ll have more to say on that later!
(*I wrote this yesterday, but had some problems uploading to Blogger)
Niamh is currently colouring, so have a few moments of peace to post a blog. Came across a few links that might interest people.
First... some theology:
For a couple weeks now, I’ve been enjoying the talks from this year’s Wheaton Theology Conference. The theme: “Global Theology in Evangelical Perspective.”
One highlight for me was the opening address by Andrew Walls, a historical theologian described by Christianity Today a couple years back as “the most important person you don’t know." He gives a helpful overview of the landscape of global theology . Walls challenges us to think about the why we do this thing called "theology" in the first place. In his own words (taken from his paper “The Ephesian Moment”**, but more or less reiterated in the WTC talk):
The purpose of theology is to make or clarify Christian decisions. Theology is about choices; it is the attempt to think in a Christian way. And the need for choice and decision arises from specific settings in life. In this sense, the theological agenda is culturally induced; and the cross-cultural diffusion of Christian faith invariably makes creative theological activity a necessity.
Martin Accad’s overview of Middle Eastern Christian theology was excellent (he's soon to publish a book on this topic, something I'm looking forward to). I also enjoyed Samuel Escobar's contribution.
Only one criticism of the conference is noticeable absence of anything from the European context. I know church planters with Christian Associates and Urban Expressions in Glasgow who are doing some creative and encouraging work on theologising in a post-Christian urban context. I also think of developing Evangelical theologies coming out of Eastern Europe; places that used to be the recipient of much mission work prior to the fall of the "Iron Curtain", but are now becoming sending nations. I think of a Romanian pastor who was on ITeams training with us (his father had worked with Ricard Wurmbrand); he had interesting thoughts on this paradigm shift for Romanian Evangelicals and how this influences his understanding of contextual mission in contemporary “frontiers” such as Central Asia.
Still, this is a minor gripe and I'm aware the topic is huge and one conference couldn't cover everything. The resources from the conference are excellent and definitely worth a look. Many thanks to must go to Wheaton College for making all these resources available online for free!
Second… some photographs:
I recently stumbled across photographer Alixandra Fazzina’s work on the Somali refugee journey, "A Million Shillings". Extremely powerful images.
Much of Fazzina’s work is showcased with Noor Images (from what I understand, it's a bit like a photographers' cooperative). In addition to her photographs, the website exhibts other high quality works of photojournalism from around the world. The recent reports on South Sudan and Yemen are particularly compelling.
**cf. Andrew F. Walls, “The Ephesian Moment,” The Cross-Cultural Process in Christian History (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2002), pp. 72 – 81.
Grandad & Grandma