Context Of Ministry Research Articles

A Madness to Our Method: Congregational Studies as A Cross‐Disciplinary Approach to Contextualizing Teaching and Learning in Theological Education

Abstract. This article explores congregational studies as a valuable teaching tool for contextualizing theological education across disciplines. As a form of pedagogy, congregational studies situates learning in a particular local ministry context. In addition, such a pedagogy apprentices learners within a particular “community of practice”– namely, that of professional church leaders of various types (lay, clergy, professional educators, etc.) having the knowledge and skills that allow them to read diverse contexts of ministry and improvise appropriate and faithful strategies of action within those contexts. After describing one seminary teaching experience in which congregational studies methods formed the pedagogical framework for an interdisciplinary course on the Bible and religious education, the article puts forward a practice‐based theory of adult learning to explain why congregational studies methods are particularly helpful to adult learners engaged in theological education. The article concludes by briefly addressing some problems and limitations to pedagogical processes based upon congregational studies. (The research for this article and its writing were supported by a grant from the Wabash Center for which I am deeply appreciative. An earlier version of this article was presented at the 2004 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion’s Academic Teaching and the Study of Religion Section.)

Towards a narrative theological orientation in a global village from a postmodern urban South African perspective

This article was motivated by two of the major challenges which I believe congregations are facing within the context of ministry, namely postmodernity and globalization. After seeking a fuller description of these two challenges I sought a theological orientation within such a context (postmodern global village) as well as an ecclesiological praxis that could be transformative and redemptive within such a context. I believe to have found in the narrative orientation an appropriate way for doing theology in the postmodern context. The climax of this journey (story) is in the fusion of horizons between the theory-laden questions of descriptive theology and the historical texts of the Christian faith within the narrative orientation. I discovered that truly transformative and redemptive praxis is only possible within language communities narrative communities). These narrative communities cannot exist in isolation, but are continuously confronted and relativised by the stories of other communities in the global village and therefore these language communities need to be open to the fragmentation and pluralism of the global village, otherwise they will not be able to respond to the reality of the globalization and postmodernity. The narrative communities needed a story (sacred story) that did not deny the reality of fragmentation and pluralism, but could incorporate this reality into its story. I found this story in the story of the cross and therefore refer to the narrative communities as communities of and under the cross of Christ. These ideas formed the basis for a transformative praxis within a specific congregation, namely Pastoral Redemptive Communities. These narrative communities are not an answer to the postmodern global village, but they do offer a way of proclaiming Christ crucified and allowing the deconstruction of the cross to create a community which is a redemptive alternative to the reality of the postmodern global village. This journey was a critical journey in dialogue with other disciplines (economics, philosophy, psychology and sociology) thereby opening it up for further dialogue within these other sciences as well as dialogue with other religious communities.

Negotiating Mission: A Canadian Stance

Introduction Mission is, quite simply, the participation of Christians in the liberating of Jesus ... wagering on future that verifiable experience seems to belie. It is the good news of God's love, incarnated in the witness of community for the sake of the world. (1) Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting over and over announcing your place in the family of things. (2) Mission is the church's agenda, its raison d'etre. Yet, what should be and do in the world of the 21st century? Like the church today, I am both fated and free, formed as both colonizing and colonized. I am shaped by missionary community and white Canadian academic woman's privilege and constraints. (3) There are many ways in which to frame the future of for this century. In this paper I will take one focus and assert that God's for the sake of the beloved world includes healing ourselves with the solidarity of others, and that justice/love is the single standard for diverse discourses of mission. I frame in this way to explore how can be rethought as the relation between particular understanding of church (as shaped by context and social location) and particular understanding of the world, where both are governed by norms of justice/right relations. I will begin with snapshot of the Canadian context of ministry and mission, which will include something about my own denomination, the United Church of Canada. Secondly, I want to problematize through the case of Canadian churches confronting the legacy of their complicity in the cultural genocide of Aboriginal peoples, to indicate how and relations connect when justice is construed as healing transformation. Lastly I will reframe as practices Of solidarity that enhance justice/love of right relation. (4) Canadian context of mission: Crisis What shapes the Canadian context and its diverse population of some 30 million people? Canada is colonized and colonizing nation in the shadow of the American empire and the profound shifts in late 20th-century capitalism, especially globalization. Ursula Franklin assesses globalization as a war against people. (5) As nation, Canada faces major debt and structural adjustment programmes, with foreign loans accounting for forty percent of our national debt. Traditional economies based on fishery and renewable resources have collapsed. The so-called restructuring of the Canadian economy means that many face the bankruptcy of family farms, the weakening of the food industry and health care systems, and the loss of many thousands of jobs as industries more to the southern United States, Mexico and other areas of the world. We have major federal and provincial cutbacks to health, education and social programmes. More and more people rely on food banks. Those who are most vulnerable to HIV/AIDS in Canada, as in Africa, are women, especially those facing homelessness, unemployment, prostitution and domestic abuse. (6) Violence against women remains national horror. Many youth, even those with university education, are unlikely to have long-term jobs during the course of their lifetimes. Radical social theorists say that Canada increasingly bears the marks of two-thirds world country, with growing underclass and more powerful elite. In short, with the global organization of the economy, Canadians especially experience both the demise of traditional church and community life as well as an unprecedented religious and cultural pluralism. On the one hand, fundamentalist Christians reassert the old notion of mission as bringing the truth for civilizing alien cultures. On the other hand, old patterns of ecclesial domination--Christendom-style--are seen as source of despair, and as colluding with newer forms of globalization that eviscerate persons, communities and the earth. …

Person in Mission: Social Theory and Sociality in Melanesia

Missionaries constantly struggle with misperceptions caused by ideas and understandings that they brought from home, some of which lie deep within their worldview. One foundational assumption posits the existence of persons according to substance, not according to relationship. It seldom occurs to the missionary that there might be other ways of understanding persons. It turns out that every culture has a folk sociology to account for things like, but not exactly like, individual, self, and society. How people perceive themselves and their world provides the context for ministry, if we can only discover how person and sociality are constructed.

Journeying on the Margins

Abstract This article is written from the perspective of marginal people and places in the inner city of Pretoria, South Africa. Using a narrative-contextual approach to pastoral care and counselling, this chapter describes the socio-cultural context of ministry, and the story of a changing inner city community. The stories of the authors, their story of journeying with Siena-a young woman at-risk, and the emerging story of an ecumenical pastoral community, defining itself in relation to people and situations on the margins, form the soil for reflection. Based on the different but overlapping stories, the nature and identity of pastoral care and counselling are described within a postmodern paradigm, proposing the pastoral worker as a facilitator, companion, or co-participant in a pastoral journey. It calls for a humbler approach to care and counselling, acknowledging the limitations of the pastoral worker, and that knowledge and meaning are co-constructed through relational conversations, and in communities of concern.

Healing in the Context of Ministry

Healing in the Context of Ministry

Invitational Leadership: A Model for the Future

This article explores the desire of the author to find appropriate frameworks and processes for individuals and companies to think strategically and explore models of leadership. He is concerned to use corporate models in developing such strategies in the church context generally and the youth ministry context specifically.

Religion in Gerontology: From Benign Neglect to Belated Respect

Aging and God: Spiritual Pathways to Mental Health in Midlife and Later Years, by Harold G. Koenig. Haworth Pastoral Press, Binghamton, NY, 1994, 544 pp., $79.95 (cloth), $29.95 (paper). Aging and the Religious Dimension, edited by L. Eugene Thomas and Susan A. Eisenhandler. Auburn House, Westport, CT, 1994, 241 pp., $57.95 (cloth). Cohesiveness and Coherence: Religion and the Health of the Elderly, by Ellen L. Idler. Garland Publishing, New York, 1994, 277 pp., $67.00 (cloth). From Age-ing to Sage-ing: A Profound New Vision of Growing Older, by Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and Ronald S. Miller. Warner Books, New York, 1995, 303 pp., $21.95 (cloth). Humanity Comes of Age: The New Context for Ministry with the Elderly, by Susanne S. Paul and James A. Paul. Risk Book Series No. 64, WCC Publications, Geneva, Switzerland, 1994,143 pp., $11.50 (paper). Religion in Aging and Health: Theoretical Foundations and Methodological Frontiers, edited by Jeffrey S. Levin. Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA, 1994, 253 pp., $46.00 (cloth), $23.95 (paper). Research on Religion and Aging: An Annotated Bibliography, compiled by Harold G. Koenig. Greenwood Press, Westport, CT, 1995,173 pp., $55.00 (cloth).

Cultural Mandate, Evangelistic Mandate, Prophetic Mandate: Of These Three the Greatest Is…?

Mission programs, like mission theologies, tend to fall into two broad categories: cultural and evangelistic mandates. Current debates have raised the question of which of the two should be assigned priority. In this article the author contends that, from a biblical perspective, all mission(s) is God's mission(s). Hence, priority should depend on the context of ministry. The prophetic mandate is therefore proposed both as a way out of the prioritization dilemma and as a third dimension of mission that bridges the two mandates into a dynamic, holistic missiology. The thrust, strategy, and relevance of a prophetic ministry are discussed.

BOOK REVIEWS

Books reviewed in this article: Judges (Old Testament Guides). By A.D.H. Mayes. Daniel (Old Testament Guides). By P.R. Davies. The Prayers of the Bible. By R. E. Clements. Studies in the Gospel of Mark. By Martin Hengel. The Priority of John. By J.A.T. Robinson. Persecution and Martyrdom in the Theology of Paul (Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series, 6). By John S. Pobee. Exegesis at Qumiun: 4Q Florilegium in its Jewish Context (Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplementary Series 29). By G. J. Brooke. Jesus and the Kingdom of God. By G.R. Beasley‐Murray. The First Coming: How the Kingdom of God Became Christianity. By Thomas Sheehan. The Logic of God Incarnate By Thomas V. Morris. The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, Vol. III: Studies in Theological Style: Lay Styles. By Hans Urs von Balthasar, translated by Andrew Louth, John Saward, Martin Simon and Rowan Williams. Theology on the Way to Emmaus. By Nicholas Lash. Theology and Ministry in Context and Crisis: A South African Perspective. By John W. de Gruchy. The Triune Symbol: Persons, Process and Community. By Joseph A. Bracken. Culture and Eschatology: The Iconographical Vision of Paul Evdokimov. By Peter C. Phan. Lonergan, Spirituality, and the Meeting of Religions. By Vernon Gregson. Understanding Karl Rahner: An Introduction to his Life and Thought. By Herbert Vorgrimler. Encounter with God. By Duncan Forrester, James I. M. McDonald, and Gian Tellini. The Liturgy of the Hours in East and West. By Robert Taft. Beginning to Read the Fathers. By Boniface Ramsey. The Thought of Gregory The Great (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought 4/2). By G.R. Evans. The Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire (Oxford History of the Christian Church). By J.M. Hussey. The Mediaeval European Religious Lyric: An Ars Poetica. By Patrick S. Diehl. Tradition and Change: Essays in Honour of Marjorie Chibnall. Edited by D. Greenway, C. Holdsworth and J. Sayers. The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading. By Jonathan Riley‐Smith. English Episcopal Acta II and HI: Canterbury 1162–1202. Edited by C.R. Cheney, Bridgett E.A. Jones, and Eric John. The Calabrian Abbot: Joachim of Fiore in the History of Western Thought. By Bernard McGinn. St Thomas More. The Answer to a Poisoned Book (Complete Works, Vol 11). Edited by Stephen Merriam Foley and Clarence Miller. The Reign of Elizabeth I (Problems in Focus). Edited by Christopher Haigh. Paradise Lost and the Rhetoric of Literary Forms. By Barbara Kiefer Lewalski. Episcopal Vision/American Reality: High Church Theology and Social Thought in Evangelical America. By Robert Bruce Mullin. The Sinews of the Spirit: The Ideal of Christian Manliness in Victorian Literature and Religious Thought. By Norman Vance. Religious Belief and the Will. By Louis P. Pojman. Education, Persons and Society: A Philosophical Enquiry. By Glenn Langford. Reason and Right. By Garth Hallett. The Value of Life: An Introduction to Medical Ethics. By John Harris. Just Health Care (Studies in Philosophy and Health Policy). By Norman Daniels. Music and the Emotions. By Malcolm Budd. The Development of Plato's Political Theory. By George Klosko. Montaigne in Motion. By Jean Starobinski. Godly Learning: Puritan Attitudes towards Reason, Learning and Education, 1560–1640. By John Morgan. Michel Foucault: The Freedom of Philosophy. By John Rajchman. Sexual Desire. By Roger Scruton. The Sexual Creators: An Ethical Proposal for Concerned Christians. By André Guindon. Divorce and Remarriage. By Theordore Mackin. Annulment: Your Chance to Remarry Within the Catholic Church. By Joseph P. Zwack. Annulments. By Lawrence G. Wrenn.

Street Ministry CPE: An Experiment in the Haight-Ashbury

Describes a non-institutional Clinical Pastoral Education program focusing on street people and the ways CPE students discovered for ministering to them. Argues that the advantages of this CPE model include (1) a unique context for ministry, (2) greater growth in pastoral identity through less identification with institutional authority and more identification with those ministered to, and (3) a different perspective for ethical and theological reflection than is usually found in more traditional CPE programs.

Book Review: Theology and Ministry in Context and Crisis

Book Review: Theology and Ministry in Context and Crisis

Book Review: Theology and Ministry in Context and Crisis

Book Review: Theology and Ministry in Context and Crisis

The Problem of Contextualization

THE TERM “contextualization” broke upon the slumbering world in 1972 with the publication of the Theological Education Fund (henceforth TEF) report entitled Ministry in Context. The task of the committee, as stated succinctly in the preface to the report, was “to discern more clearly the new issues and the new challenges in theological education seen in the context of the radical change in the world scene, particularly in the Third World.” After two years of deliberations, the study committee discerned four areas to be contextualized, but “the most crucial to this discussion was ‘contextualization in theological approach’ ” (TEF 1972:29).

The pastoral counselor as specialist within ministry

The article attempts to demonstrate the continuity of the specialized ministry of pastoral counseling with all Christian ministry. By the use of a case fragment from a pastoral counseling case, it attempts to raise three central issues which, in terms of how they are dealt with, can determine whether or not a particular experience of counseling is Christian ministry. These issues are: the role of the minister and the context for ministry; the way in which the method of counseling can be shown to be related to a norm for Christian ministry; and the way in which the counseling process is interpreted and understood.