Session 10 (maybe?): Tammie

1) In PM, perhaps we should be preparing pastors to be pastoral missiologists? What do you think?
Training pastors to be pastoral missiologists can only be helpful as postmodernism becomes more prevalent, but, more importantly, training pastors as missiologists can assist pastors as it would provide pastors the skills to deal with the inevitable cultural changes that develop in lesser ways than the paradigm shift we see with postmodernism. Even though I am not a "pastor" in an official sense, I have been a volunteer youth leader for a little more than 10 years. Even in that period of time, I have seen the mindset of the students shift from those who (at least from what I saw) accepted the faith of their parents as their own and seemed satisfied with answers based on Scriptures, commentary and study. More recently, students are far more comfortable asking questions in general. They are satisfied with an "I don't know" kind of answer and, though they might ask why, they seem satisfied with understanding that there are some things about God that we, as humans, just don't get. They want experience over explanation. They want informal over formal. I think for me it is a good thing that I wasn't trained as a youth minister right off the bat because without a formal training to which I may have been unduly attached. Rather, I have sensed the changes happening and sought the answers through reading a wide range of books even before starting seminary. As a result, my ministry has become more effective - not in terms of numbers, but in terms of the growth I sense in the students through the questions they ask and the things they do. If pastors are prepared as missiologist, spotting these adjustments, communicating the changing times to the congregation and adjusting our own ministry processes would be greatly improved.

2) Are the Hindus saved? (Chapter 14)
My gut reaction as one who grew up in the church with the phrase "Jesus is the way" emblazoned on my mind is to say, "No" but with no stronger proof than that is what I was always taught. In the past few years, especially, I have been thinking about this question, brought on in part by a question from one of my students to which, at the time, I felt I had given a wholly inadequate answer. A friend of two of my students had been killed in a car crash. By all accounts, this was a wonderful, friendly young man. The students were concerned because the young man claimed to be an atheist. They wanted to know if that meant he was now in hell. As it turns out, my answer to the girls last night falls along similar lines as Newbigin's assessment in chapter 14; that is, no one knows the heart of the individual except God therefore it is not for us to say whether or not this young man was in heaven or hell. For all we know, he could have been a believer who was going through a period of doubt and just used that language loosely without holding to it as a true belief. And, we don't know what transpired in his final moments.We must, as Newbigin says, contribute to the dialogue by sharing the gospel and allowing the Holy Spirit to work in the hearts of the people. I particularly liked his statement on page 183 in which he talked about how all roads do not lead to the top of the same mountain, but that some of the roads lead over the precipice and, in Christ, we have been shown the road.

3) Self-awareness missiology examination, how has your culture impacted, distorted, or uncovered the gospel? (Chapter 15)
One of the more dangerous (if you can call it that) distortions that has come from culture is accepting the view that God is love, but ignoring the image of God as just and as a righteous judge. For example, they remember that Jesus pardoned the woman caught in adultery, but conveniently forget that he also told her to leave his life of sin. Some of my students and I were talking about this topic recently and how such a view leads people to a lesser view of God and to not taking seriously the calls to righteous living that are found in both the Old and New Testaments. I think this stems from the deeper distortion that Christianity equals happiness. If God wants us to be happy, surely he wouldn't judge us, the culture says. The prosperity gospel which seems so popular in certain circles today (Joel Osteen, anyone?) is a further distortion that has been taken into the church itself.

It isn't always a negative exchange as advances in technology help to spread the gospel and to allow Christians to join together to shine into the world's darkness. For example, on Tuesday morning, I read a blog entry that spoke of heavy hearts and eternal hope. In the comments on the post, a commenter mentioned a Facebook group that had been created called "Pick A Hokie" in which students on Facebook were asked to go to the Virginia Tech network and pick one of the VT students at random and send them a note telling them that they were praying for them. Some entries on the Facebook page indicated that VT students were getting the messages and that they were appreciating them. Just a few years ago, there wouldn't have been a blog to which people could go to find gospel-based words of encouragement or a networking site that would allow students touched by the gospel to share the hope that they have with the students directly involved in the tragedy. In this sense, I believe technology is impactig the gospel as it allows us to share the gospel in ways and places that have never been explored before.

4) Reflect upon the topic of the powers (Chapter 16). If they are disarmed, but not removed from their place in the "excluded middle" until the consummation, why?
It seems I have been saying this quite a bit to my students over the last couple of days, but it is part of God's purpose in the world. We may not understand why they are allowed to exist or to do what they do, but we trust that they will, in the end, serve God's purposes just as the powers behind Caiaphas and the Jewish leaders served as the human agents that led to Christ's crucifixion. From a human viewpoint on Good Friday, that was a victory in the eyes of the principalities and powers of the world, but we know that on the first day of the week the real victor was revealed as the tomb stood empty. The principalities and powers form the structure of human society and are meant to serve Christ, but when they attempt to gain his throne, they become powers for evil. This, then, is the struggle that Christians face as we work to unmask the powers and reveal the true ruler in the living God.

5) Ask your question for the class and me to discuss.
On page 215, Newbigin writes, "There are good grounds for saying that the secularization theory has been accepted uncritically by Christians to justify a social institution. The idea of a secular society has been attractive to Christians because it seemed to hold out the hope of a peaceful coexistence between the religions and worldviews." I just wonder what y'all think of the statement and how it might blow the Sunday School class apart if instead of letting the class rail against the secular society, we shared this quote that (it seems) says the church is complicit in creating the myth so that it can keep God in a box. How might our interaction (especially in terms of sharing the gospel) with society change if we recognize it not as a secular society but as the pagan society that worships gods that are not Gods?