tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post7234274523179061720..comments2024-03-27T17:15:37.606-04:00Comments on Triablogue: "The problem of whiteness"Ryanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17809283662428917799noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-53815444379190328062016-10-19T22:10:55.143-04:002016-10-19T22:10:55.143-04:00Thanks for that. Thanks for that. stevehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16547070544928321788noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-82051878767719910672016-10-19T17:38:28.971-04:002016-10-19T17:38:28.971-04:00Couple of thoughts...
~ A large number of Christ...Couple of thoughts... <br /><br />~ A large number of Christians in India with the exception of those in denominations having mainline connections, would resent Kirk's lumping. They would not identify with the guy's theology. Christianity is growing there. My church (back in India) grows at the rate of a new family a week. This is an indigenous church - not one set up by decaying liberal mainline missionaries from yester-century. <br /><br />Also... I think the internet will change how things work there in the future. Doctrine are the railroad tracks of the Church. You lose that, you lose the Church. The net will make resources available for free or dirt cheap. This will fuel scholarship in the future as the internet connections improve - which will happen. <br /><br />~ Raj<br />rgbraohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01243742903460712693noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-7248319642609387882016-10-19T13:27:04.313-04:002016-10-19T13:27:04.313-04:00Thanks for that.Thanks for that.stevehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16547070544928321788noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-23215467089687355402016-10-19T11:44:43.627-04:002016-10-19T11:44:43.627-04:00There are a couple of related fronts of Christiani...There are a couple of related fronts of Christianity supporting the movement from West to East and South: missionary/church-planting activities and Christian scholarship.<br /><br />Scholarship necessarily follows missions and not the other way around. That is, scholarship supports missions from behind by educating missionaries. Only when an area has reached certain saturation with the Gospel can a pattern of scholarship begin to be supported in that area.<br /><br />Although the West is largely post-Christian, it still has the capacity to support orthodox Christian scholarship amid the abundance of liberal and unorthodox (un-) Christian scholarship.<br /><br />Two primary factors have hindered the movement of scholarship from the West:<br /><br />1. Underdevelopment of civic structures: economic, political, and cultural factors. I include these together because they are interrelated. It's hard to do Christian scholarship where the resources aren't available to support the work. You need an abundance of costly books to begin with. Then you need to be able to afford to have some people not in the work force to be dedicated to scholarly pursuits. You also need legal support for it. It's hard to do genuine Christian scholarship in Saudi Arabia, for example, since it won't be tolerated in their universities. Few places outside the West are able to support Christian scholarship. India and South Korea are the big two that I can think of.<br /><br />2. The pattern of Western missions fueled by a kind of superiority complex. That is to say that Western missionaries don't seem to have caught the vision for raising up their replacements from the areas they have gone to. If there is evangelism to do, "let's go do it," instead of, "let's raise up the local churches to do it." So you get short-term missions with no sense of working through the local churches to do follow-up and continue the evangelism after the teams are gone. Or you have long-termers who become the go-to people in their areas for anything ministry-related. Even in India, where they have theological colleges and seminaries, still look to Western missionaries to do what can and should be done by their own scholars and graduate-degreed ministers. This kind of mentality is actually harming local churches by making them dependent on Western ministers and funding instead of growing into mature churches capable of handing the ministry that we have been commanded to do.Jim Pembertonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01446388434272680014noreply@blogger.com