Tipping Points in Global Theological Education ACCESS 2006, San Deigo

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Tipping Points in Global Theological
EducationACCESS 2006, San Deigo

• Russell W. West, Ph.D.
• Asburys School of World Mission/Evangelism

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Mission and Methods Drift
From Apostolate to Academy
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Obstacles Drifting from N.T. Way
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Tipping Point?

• Emerging Church-Based Equipping Movement.
  (Disruptive Technology)
• The Denominational Predicament.
• Emerging Church
• Laity Long Denied
• Adjudicatory-Led Theological Education)

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Tipping Point?

• The Unstable (Fluid, Plastic) Psychological
  Residence of Ministry Learners. (
• Commuter Students on the Increase?
• D.Min. Shifting to Include More Experience

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Tipping Point?

• The Articulate Absence of the Under-Served and
  Under-Represented. Peoples.
• Contextualization of North American Gospel Called
  for
• Racialization of Churches, Rejected
• Socio-Theological Migration from Propositional to
  Communal
• Women in Theological Education, Church Leadership
  and Mission.

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Tipping Point?

• The Saturation of the Colonial Assimilation
  Project.
• Light of Shifting Demographic Centers.
• The Fact of Urbanism.
• The Oral Majority (Primary and Secondary Orality)
• New Language Beyond Inclusive We must add
  to our lexicon the move away from overseas and
  foreigner to time zone, asynchronous and brown
  majority.

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Tipping Point?

• The Yearning of Faculty to Do Mission Rather than
  Do Business as Usual.
• The Missiological Priority, Mother of Theology
• Faculty Who Mission Together, Impact Learners
  Conatively
• Moody Dont Get Caught Trafficking Unlived
  Truth
• Learners Learn More from Me When they See Four
  Clocks (Timezones) on My Office Wall
• Learn More When We Pray Through Operation World
  Weekly

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Tipping Point?

• The Technological Horizon.
• When are we Well Met?
• Fred Rovais Findings Community is More
  Generative in Virtual Classrooms
• The Paternalistic Temptation Perists (Patnership
  Tempers, Investment Frees)
• Closing of the Technological Gap MITs Laptop
  for Every Child Project

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• Last Slide

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Let Me Reduce to You
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What are Tipping Points?
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• Targeted Areas of Work 20042010
• The Association has identified five targeted
  areas of work for sustained attention over the
  next several years. Each targeted area is of
  equal importance, although the programmatic
  implementation varies according to program design
  and project funding.
• Character and Assessment of Learning for
  Religious Vocation. This effort is helping
  schools to develop greater institutional
  understanding about the kind of learning that
  religious vocation requires and increased skill
  in the methods of assessing this kind of
  learning.
• Technology and Educational Practices. The
  Association is assisting schools in making the
  transitions necessary to accommodate and maximize
  the use of information technology to enhance
  educational practices and institutional
  administration.
• Theological Schools and the Church. ATS
  contributes to the renewed attention of member
  schools to the fundamental patterns of
  relationship between theological schools and
  their respective religious communities.
• Women in Leadership in Theological Education. The
  number of women faculty and senior administrators
  in theological education is growing, although the
  percentage of women faculty and administrators
  remains smaller than the percentage of women
  students. ATS provides  educational support for
  women faculty and administrators and assists
  schools in their efforts to include more women in
  leadership positions.
• Race and Ethnicity in Theological Education. ATS
  supports racial/ethnic faculty and administrators
  in theological schools and helps schools to
  enhance their capacity to meet the needs of
  diverse racial/ethnic communities in North
  America.

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Faculty on Mission

• Global Theological Education Theological
  education at Andover Newton has a global outlook,
  and many courses refl ect the multicultural
  reality of world Christianity. A significant
  number of international students come to the
  School. Scholars from Latin America, Europe,
  Africa and Asia often serve as visiting lecturers
  and professors, and also conduct research here.
  Faculty members regularly study overseas, and
  students may pursue a number of opportunities for
  international study. In the last few years,
  faculty and students have traveled to Puerto
  Rico, Honduras and China.

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Theological Literacy, Orality

•  "My generation is the product of church
  education... Without the missionaries and other
  church organizations I would not be here today."
  Nelson Mandela

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• Act Locally, Think Globally, and Demand Handouts
• More from Mitchieville, because once a day is
  never enoughI am a victim of a racist, sexist,
  heteronormative society. My name is Jack... I
  took my shattered extended family, my three
  children, Big Mandingo and Little Mandingo, and
  my wife, to Feminist family counselling. To solve
  our problem, the radical lesbian councillor
  decided that evil heteronormative guidance was
  wrong ... everything foul and corrupt on the
  Spaceship Earth comes from America ... her
  suggestion was to try something non-traditional
  and certainly non-Western. So I took my extended
  diverse family to a Sharia court in Yemmen.
  There, I talked to the head Imam at the Schimitar
  of Remorseless Vengence Mosque and Family
  Counselling Center in beautiful downtown Yemmen.
  I agreed to follow the decision of this impartial
  and fair multi-cultural tribual, to listen to
  their voice, and to celebrate this culture. It
  felt good to let others do my thinking for
  me.The Sharia court decided to have my wife
  stoned to death. I cried at the cultural wisdom
  and justice of this decision. The evil ways of
  America had been put aside! I was invited to
  participate in the happy celebration of
  non-Christian culture by throwing construction
  block sized rocks at my wife in a celebration of
  diversity.

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Intl Network in Advanced Theological Education
(INATE)

• Theological institutions in Brazil, South Africa,
  India, China (Hong Kong), Hungary and Norway are
  co-operating through the mutual exchange of
  students at advanced level (Masters programmes)
  and of staff, through a common development of
  curricula for a globally oriented contextual
  theology, and through research and information
  exchange. The network will promote and facilitate
  interchange in all directions North-South,
  South-South, South-North, and will thus be a
  programme where mutuality and equality is given
  high priority. It is hoped that this co-operation
  may represent a new and feasible model for global
  relationships within advanced theological
  education.

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INATEs Mission

• The thematic frame for this academic co-operation
  is contextual theology. By contextual theology we
  understand a theology that is conscious of its
  contemporary social, cultural and political
  embedded-ness, and the ways in which this
  embeddedness bears upon the theological endeavour
  and its results. At the same time, this
  contextual theology is committed to contributing
  constructively to the trans-formation of the
  context in which it is embedded, answering to its
  challenges and working towards the solution of
  urgent problems.

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The Ecumenical Institute of the
World Council of Churches
(Bossey, CH)

• The Graduate School at the Ecumenical Institute
  of the World Council of Churches in Bossey,
  Switzerland is uniquely located to do theological
  education for a global environment.
• Faculty and students represent diverse
  backgrounds, professionally, spiritually,
  geographically, culturally, linguistically and
  academically. The content of lectures and
  seminars is diverse and interdisciplinary.
  Contemporary social sciences, with attention to
  economics and environmental studies, are often
  included in readings and discussions. The forms
  of social interaction are also diverse informal
  and formal worship, scholarship and daily life
  dyads, small groups and school-wide gatherings.
  All participants contribute their individual
  religious experiences to a pluralistic forum for
  common reflection. Each individual is recognized
  as a valuable resource for the group as a whole.
  Validation of the students' contributions, based
  on their life experience, is critical for
  affirming them as adult learner-collaborators.

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• A major benefit of such international, ecumenical
  study for the individuals involved, and for the
  life of our churches, is that over time
  friendships take root and as they do a space is
  created that did not exist before. It is neither
  yours, nor mine, but ours. This enables a common
  distancing from home, a common effort at
  understanding the other, a common attempt to be
  open to the questioning of one's own thought and
  situation. This reflection, based on friendship,
  can be very important in the analysis of global
  dynamics. Thus, one can for example begin to
  re-evaluate global dynamics in the light of
  experience not only of the self but also of the
  other.

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• Additionally, participants in the making of a
  pluralistic community at Bossey can also evaluate
  their experience as a microcosm of the
  confrontations of cultures and economies on a
  global scope. Included in the experience are the
  many paradoxes inherent in this kind of
  laboratory for learning. For example, although
  the curricular design rests on the assumption of
  honouring and respecting diversity, the official
  languages are Western European, especially
  English the bibliography the students' work from
  is disproportionately European or North American
  the food, climate and physical plant are all
  Swiss. Students are encouraged to represent their
  diverse backgrounds but in a European-bounded
  context. While most of the world's population
  exists in poverty, the Bossey community is
  composed of people who have travelled the world
  to get there and who while at Bossey live in
  first-world comfort. The intentional naming of
  these contradictions and inconsistencies gives
  them salience and invites discussion and critique.

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• The common language also encourages the
  examination of the nature of authority. Authority
  may be understood as deriving from different
  sources authority by control of access to
  specialized knowledge authority by formal
  organizational role authority by longevity
  authority by breadth of influence authority by
  mutual respect and acceptance. Economic and
  status differences in back-home contexts are
  equalized to some extent by all being students,
  on the one hand, and equal contributors to the
  community social experiment, on the other.

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• Many institutions are paying special attention
  not only to international students and
  international faculty, but also to diversity
  within their local communities ethnic, economic,
  racial. This diversity may serve as both a
  resource to education and as a field for applied
  theological work. The interaction with people
  from other contexts and traditions helps check
  the tendency to interpret everything through a
  parochial lens.

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• While there is an implied, secular international
  political and economic hierarchy among peoples
  and nations, there is no longer, or there should
  no longer be, a centre and a periphery in
  theological education. Students and professors
  from North America or Europe have as much to
  learn from study in Korea, Brazil or elsewhere,
  as do those students or professors who find their
  way to countries in the North and the West. It is
  critically important that together they explore
  the answers to such questions as What is it that
  holds us together in the midst of global dynamics
  that seem to separate us? How does the experience
  of one part of the church inform the identity of
  the whole body? What is the moral claim of one
  part of the church in a specific context upon the
  rest of the church?

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• There are other new important actors on the
  global stage who have become part of a broad
  international conversation. For example, one
  finds around the world the growth of
  international grassroots movements which
  understand and work effectively in international
  alliances and action. The internationalization of
  many local grassroots movements is part of the
  context of local ministry. Indeed the church,
  itself both local and global in scope, is, as
  part of its witness to the world, often an
  integral part of such grassroots movements.

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• Theological education can serve the church, as
  well as the wider social world, by providing
  forums and themes for interaction among people of
  diverse backgrounds.

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Forces of Globalization

• Centripetal Diffusing Forces
• Spread of market economy
• Development of new 24/7 - 360 Degree trading
  patterns
• Dissemination of cultural products (movies,
  music, fashion, sports)
• Adoption of mass media technologies
• Rapid international movement of capital

• Centrifugal
• Integrating Forces
• Economic integration of TNC mergers
• Regulatory integration TCC such as World Trade
  Org, World Bank
• Cultural integration of consumerism in global
  elite class
• Increased instability from TNC competition on new
  scales
• Assertions of identity politics --
  race/ethnicity, gender, age, histories, religions
  and class compensating for powerlessness

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The Ethics of Being

• serious disadvantages to which Christians must
  pay attention. The first among these
  disadvantages is critically important the
  millions and millions of the world's inhabitants
  who for one reason or another--age, gender, lack
  of training and education, lack of buying
  power--have no value for the market economy, and
  are thus effectively excluded from it.

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Valuing, Being and Doing

• The conditions that stretch our theoretical
  paradigms and associated behaviour are not
  distinct, but reciprocal and mutually
  influential. Thus it is difficult to discuss
  issues of understanding separately from issues of
  action.

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• Difference has always existed, but it has
  generally been addressed through bifurcation,
  both conceptually and in action. The world was
  divided between us and them between the haves
  and the have-nots between the oppressor and the
  oppressed the saved and the condemned.
  Globalization has made difference so pervasive
  and urgent that the bipolar response is
  conceptually and morally inadequate. The bipolar
  response is also inhumane. Theological education
  needs to address difference, both intellectually
  and in practice. The exploration of pluralism is
  an alternative to outdated and ethically bankrupt
  responses to difference.

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• The lives of local churches and communities all
  over the world are being restructured by global
  economic dynamics. These dynamics, while powerful
  and pervasive, are often difficult to discern in
  local contexts, unless one is trained to do so.
  Pastors need to he trained to recognize the
  social effects of large-scale economic forces on
  local communities in order to understand the
  lives of their parishioners and help them to act,
  to make faithful and informed individual and
  collective choices. To equip pastors adequately
  with tools for understanding globalization,
  theological education needs to incorporate
  interdisciplinary investigation of large-scale
  forces.

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• Driven by globalization, the rapid unfolding and
  complexity of the human tapestry poses complex
  moral dilemmas. Moral imagination is essential in
  making sense of the interplay of local and global
  forces. Even when it is well understood that
  global dynamics are helping to structure local
  life, theological and ethical reflection may
  easily confuse a moral evaluation of the local
  effects of such dynamics with a moral evaluation
  of the global processes themselves. This
  misattribution and faulty logic is represented by
  the old saying, "What's good for General Motors
  is good for the USA". That is, if our local
  economy is benefiting from the global economic
  dynamics, it must be good for everyone,
  everywhere. Indeed, people across the world
  suffer the effects of a global economy that
  functions in a way that benefits the United
  States and other rich countries. In a global
  economy one cannot conclude that the moral
  results are neutral. In a complex global economy
  an adequate ethical evaluation cannot be made
  based only on local or regional observation and a
  parochial world-view.

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• The phenomenon of the growth of self-centred
  consumerism is, for instance, common across many
  cultures. It is as if around the world millions
  of citizens and their leaders have arrived at the
  common conclusion that the market economy is what
  defines human life, and that in the end we should
  all agree with the market assumption that we are
  what we consume. This market-driven logic,
  connected in many ways to the dynamics of
  globalization, merits common reflection and
  analysis across national boundaries,
  denominational boundaries and even religious
  boundaries as together we seek to grasp its
  meaning, and to develop appropriate responses to
  it. No people of faith can let this ideology of
  globalization be the last word in defining the
  meaning of human life.

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Globalization Means What?

• It means that economic dynamics of an
  unprecedented scale are in force.
• It means that actions upon the natural
  environment no longer have only regional or local
  consequences but worldwide impact on the natural
  habitat.

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• Within this context, the social and cultural
  arenas are torn by competing tendencies towards
  integration, on the one hand, and, on the other,
  fragmentation and divisiveness.
• Economies and consumption patterns seem to be
  ever more integrated, but churches and
  communities seem to be increasingly fragmented.
• The assertion of identity today easily becomes
  anti-ecumenical, local, removed from and in
  opposition to the global forces that are shaping
  our lives. (1)