How important is it to recognise the elements of a culture in order to communicate the gospel effectively? How do we prevent the gospel from being distorted or lose its theological integrity as we share the gospel across cultural boundaries?
If you’re a pastor leading a church with people from different cultural backgrounds, or you may be involved in cross-cultural ministry, these are practical questions you’ve probably considered. To put it simply, if you’ve ever been in ministry, chances are you have adapted how and what you communicate with a variety of people from different backgrounds and ages (e.g.those from Gen Y tend to think a little differently to say the Baby Boomers). Communicating in a way that helps people to relate to what we’re sharing is really contextualising. When it comes to sharing the gospel, how can we better engage with people who may be different to us, without distorting the message?
BST will be running an intensive from 7-11 July 2014 that will explore the topic of contextualisation.
Dr Scott Moreau, leading Professor of Intercultural Studies from Wheaton College (U.S.) will be teaching the intensive in July as a guest lecturer at BST.
“Everybody ‘contextualises‘—the question is whether it is done well or done poorly. In this course we will examine seven dimensions of contextualising the life of God’s Church, providing a reasonably comprehensive view of what contextualisation is and how you should engage it. After laying the biblical and theological foundations for contextualisation, we will explore each dimension in turn, explaining the dimension, illustrating it through examples found around the globe, and engaging in discussion on how this may be applied in the settings of the students,” Dr Moreau said.
Dr Scott Moreau has been on faculty at Wheaton for 23 years and lectures in Contextualisation, Folk Religions, Intercultural Communication, Cross-Cultural Teaching and Learning, Spiritual Conflict and Trends in Missions. His latest published work includes Contextualisation in World Missions: Mapping and Assessing Evangelical Models.
If you’re interested in enrolling for the intensive, Contextualisation of Theology & Ministry Practice with Dr Moreau, there are several course options. You can either take the unit for credit as part of a Master of Arts in Theology/Ministry. The Masters of Arts is an accredited course of the Australian College of Theology and is FEE-Help approved for eligible students.
Or, if you’re not looking to do the Master of Arts, but would like to sit in on Dr Moreau’s lectures, you can enrol to audit the unit for $260.
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