15 July 2010

This past Saturday marked the culmination of our second year at Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology (NEGST), with 90 students graduating with hard-earned masters degrees. Stephanie and I (Bill) have been here long enough to know many of the graduating class well, indeed to have had most of them in classes that we’ve taught. This past term Stephanie taught second-year Greek students with a focus on translating and understanding Ephesians. She also taught a course on the Gospel of Luke, which a number of students have told me was transformational in their understanding of Jesus and his ministry.

I taught Christian Apologetics, which I wrote about in my last letter. I also taught the third of three terms of Systematic Theology, which focused on both the church and the end times. I’ve become increasingly aware that what we in the West learn as ‘systematic theology’ is actually a very Western way of understanding the Bible and organizing what we understand its contents to be. After centuries of various theological disputes (that is, Western theological disputes), we have packaged up our conclusions and organized them into summaries which we then pass onto the next generation of Christian leaders as systematic theology.

Given this, I’ve been forced to rethink how I should teach systematic theology to a class full of students from across sub-Saharan Africa. These, of course, are students whose world view is different from a Western (e.g. North American or British) world view, whose issues and concerns are different from Western issues and concerns, whose histories and traditions are very different from Western histories and traditions. For example, the 16^th century conflict between late Medieval Roman Catholics and the emerging Protestant movements was a Western fight, not an African fight, as was the conflict between early 20^th century Fundamentalists and Liberals. So this is the challenge that I face as I, a North American Protestant Presbyterian Evangelical Charismatic with Orthodox sympathies, stand before men and women from Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Congo, Cameroon, Nigeria, Zambia, Uganda and Sudan, and try to teach them theology.

I’ll spare you a description of how I tried to meet that challenge. But I thought you might be interested in what a few of my students themselves wrote in their reflections on our year together in Systematic Theology:

‘Students come to NEGST from different backgrounds bringing along a lot of baggage and presuppositions about Christian doctrines on what they believe in depending on their different orientations. Most of us have an influence from Western evangelicals and therefore tend to believe what we have heard or what we have been told without trying to verify the truth. The study of systematic theology at NEGST has helped me understand better on what I believe in by overcoming wrong ideas and I am now keen in finding out the truth for myself from the Bible and looking forward to a more African oriented Biblical theology.’ (Anglican student from Kenya)

‘The Systematic Theology Courses I have taken at NEGST have had a tremendous impact on my understanding of theology in a dramatic way. It has been a paradigm shift experience in the reflections I have had in relation to the understanding of theology and its application in life and ministry. I liked very much the professor’s approach to teaching. It was engaging and provocative in such a way that I would critically examine my former understanding of theology that I had been taught in my church and in my undergraduate studies. I can boldly say that it has laid a solid theological foundation which is sound and comprehensive after it shook and displaced my former foundation. It has also enabled me to put together the theological pieces which existed in isolation from each other.’ (Baptist, Tanzania)

‘I belong to a denomination which downplays theological training and lays emphasis on direct revelation, experience and soul wining. For a long time I could not understand why, and answers given by church leaders were unsatisfactory. This thanks to ST I can now explain has to do with our spiritual family tree as Pentecostals. Through this Systematic theology experience, I have come to appreciate the value of theological training, as I begun to see theology as relevant to my concerns and issues in my African and contemporary context, and not just an academic concern. In the process, I discovered that every Christian is a theologian, and as long as I wrestle with all the hard questions regarding my faith and begin to make sense of it, theology is not optional in my life.’ (Pentecostal, Kenya)

‘This course has challenged my faith in a number of ways and the following are some of the reasons; first, the fact that the task of theology is not so much an intellectual or academic exercise but rather a relational one—knowing God and growing in that relationship is very crucial. Viewing the task of theology from the relational lens has challenged me to shift from focusing on gaining knowledge as an end, to developing my relationship with God and with other people. Thus, based on this approach the goal of theology changes from gaining deeper knowledge, to focusing on the quality of one’s relationships. Arising from all this I have had an opportunity to reexamine afresh many of the doctrines from the relational lens.’ (Presbyterian, Zambia)

‘Up until this class, salvation had been a personal affair that focused on God saving a sinner from the eternal damnation. The class discussions were particularly interesting and informative. They brought out loopholes in the conventional understanding of salvation that is marked by responding to the altar call and saying the sinners’ prayer. It became paramount that this is the reason why there is a big disconnect between the number of Christians in our societies and churches and the impact on godly living. By looking at salvation as a bigger plan of what God is doing concerning his entire creation, I realized that as believers our mandate is bigger than we think. It is not about making converts rather it is about creating relationships that reflect the love of God here on earth. The power of the Gospel must change who we are and what we do and how we live with each other.’ (Pentecostal, Kenya)

‘Doing Systematic Theology as a course at NEGST has been one of the most valuable and life-changing things to have ever happened to me. The course has indeed had a revolutionary impact on my understanding of Christianity , moving me from the parochial and egocentric view to the rather more universal and objective view of Christianity and the Church in particular. The lecturer’s approach to teaching this course was at first both baffling and challenging in that it was radically different from what I was used to. Having had the opportunity to study Systematic Theology at the undergraduate level, this departure from the conventional way of doing Systematic Theology, where tutors simply present the students with volumes of information brewed in the Western-skewed theological worldview with the expectation of reproducing it at the end of the course, was quite evident.’ (Pentecostal, Kenya)

I’ve been encouraged and challenged as I read what my students have said, and I hope you are, too! Those of you who pray for us and support us financially, thank you for making this sort of transformational interaction with this next generation of Christian leaders in Africa possible.

Here are some ways that you can be praying for us and our work here.

• Praise for a very good year of teaching at NEGST, and for growing relationships with students and colleagues.
• Prayer for both Bill and Stephanie, that we may rest and recover from a busy academic year and get ready for the new academic year which begins in September.
• Praise for Linnea’s (21) excellent short-term experience in Senegal. She has returned home with a renewed vision for missions and of what her role in God’s world might be.
• Prayer for Caroline (19) as she arrives in Kenya tonight to spend some time with us (15-24 July & 8-17 Aug) and also to Ethiopia (25 July – Aug 7) to visit her old home and friends there.
• Prayer for a peaceful aftermath to the upcoming national referendum on Kenya’s new constitution. Voting will take place on 4 August.
• Prayer that Stephanie’s parents’ house in Virginia Beach, VA would finally sell. This has been a three-year ordeal and complicated our ability to finance the girls’ education.
• Prayer that God would provide the additional $15,000 above our normal missionary support that we need to cover our family contribution towards college costs for the coming year.

By grace,

Bill

(for Stephanie, Linnea and Caroline Black)

NEGST Graduation 2010

The weekend before – Annual ‘Cultural Night’ to celebrate national foods, clothing, music

Bill sampling West African dishes

Lots of singing and dancing (this couple’s from Chad)

Bill teaching the kids a game

Bill and I (Stephanie) decided our American clothes were too boring compared to our African friends, so we ‘borrowed’ Indian culture for the evening (souvenirs from teaching in Bangalore in 2008)

On Graduation Day (10 July) – All dressed up and ready to go

Bill (right) with colleague John Evans (left) and NEGST Student Council Chairman Mweemba Mwaanga from Zambia (center)

Eager graduates ready to march in

NEGST Vice-Chancellor (= President) Doug Carew, from Sierra Leone, with some of the NEGST faculty behind him (me in far left back)

Singing the Kenyan national anthem (not sure we’d ever heard it before…)

From my seat I had a great view of my students graduating—a proud moment for all!

Finally! Happy NEGST graduates

Now for the milling about and congratulations

And then back to our house for a graduation party for Karen Forrest (UK & Gambia)

Linnea’s Senegal Mission Trip

In June, Linnea (far left) traveled to Senegal, West Africa, with a short-term medical team. Working alongside an area doctor and his wife and a team from a local hospital, they held clinics in villages and prisons.

Helping the doctor in consultations

Staffing the mobile pharmacy

Hanging out with local kids

Cute little Senegalese children

Great experience for our future global public health professional!

12 June 2010

Stephanie and I (Bill) are busy with our final weeks of classes for the academic year, with graduation coming in July. Stephanie has been teaching second year Greek students and a course on the Gospel of Luke. In Systematic Theology, I’ve worked through what the Bible teaches about the church (Ecclesiology) and have now moved appropriately into the end times (Eschatology) for our last three weeks together. I thought, however, that you might enjoy hearing about some of the issues my Christian Apologetics class has been wrestling with.

Two weeks ago I arranged for my class to join me in the back room of a seedy hotel on the road into Nairobi. There we were, sixteen of us and six of them, seated in rickety plastic chairs around some requisitioned tables. We were meeting with a group of Kenyan homosexuals and gay activists as part of my attempt to get my students to get to know and interact with people who are different from them. As you might imagine, this event, held in secret for reasons that will become clear, profoundly challenged the Christian and cultural assumptions of many in my class.

In Kenya, homosexuals fear being known as such. For some, it means being driven out of their families. For others, it means being fired from their jobs. For still others, it could be a death sentence, as there have been recently a number of cases of suspected homosexuals being doused with kerosene and set alight.

I have been attempting to help my Christian Apologetics students understand different world views from the perspective of those who actually live in those differing worlds. A month ago, it meant bringing a Buddhist Lama to class. This time, it meant going off campus to meet a leader and members of the local Metropolitan Community Church and to hear firsthand what it is like to be both gay and a Christian from their perspective. We also met members of a local ministry who reach out to gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people and asked them to tell us why they do what they do. And we heard from three young Kenyan men, all of whom are gay, one of whom is HIV+. The other two had never been tested. They didn’t want to know. I wanted my class to hear their stories. I wanted my class to hear the best arguments used by those who support and affirm same sex orientation. And I wanted my class to realize that this wasn’t simply a Western issue (as is often argued here), but a Kenyan issue, even a local issue.

Christian Apologetics is usually taught assuming that Western issues like secularism are the primary issues that Christians everywhere are dealing with as they engage ‘the world’. But in a place like Kenya (and perhaps in a place like where you live), this too often means learning all about answers to questions that nobody here is actually asking. Instead, I want my students to engage with the issues and questions that people actually have, which means getting off campus and finding real people to talk to. My students have divided into groups and have headed off campus in search of marginalized people with whom they can engage and get to know. One group has gotten to know some local matatu drivers (operators of local mini buses), a group of people despised for their unscrupulous character and recklessness behind the wheel. Another group has been several times to a local nightclub and gotten to know some of the patrons there. A third group went downtown to try to get to know sex workers (though not in the Genesis 4:1 sense!) and what their world and lives were like. A fourth group attempted to get to know members of the Mungiki, the notorious local mafia. In doing these things, we have created controversy and lots of discussion on campus, with even the academic dean expressing concern that people might wonder, ‘Why are NEGST students meeting with “sinners”?’ ‘Why are we sending Christians to nightclubs?’ ‘How can you spend time with these people just listening to them and not refuting their claims or their lifestyle?’ Our salvation has even been called into question! It has reminded me of some of the criticism directed against Jesus and his disciples by the Pharisees of his day.

My students have had to take class time and talk about their efforts to meet and talk with ‘their people’. The guys who went downtown in search of prostitutes had us laughing so hard at their misadventures that our sides hurt. They had some difficulty persuading these women that they really weren’t clients but that they just wanted to talk, as part of a class project. (‘Uh huh, sure. We’ve heard that before!’) They told them they would pay for their time just to talk. This got their attention, and so the four of them ended up having a conversation in the nearby brothel’s reception area under the watchful eyes of the hired security.

Once the two women understood what our guys were trying to do (after an admittedly awkward start), they opened up and poured out their stories. Turns out that both women had been abandoned by husbands who left them to raise children alone. Both said they would gladly stop being prostitutes if they could find other jobs that paid a living wage. They both said they were trying to make sure that their children did not end up on the streets like they did, but that getting an education requires school fees, and that requires money. Both women said they were members of local large Pentecostal churches, but that in fifteen years none of the leaders had ever been to visit them, with one exception. Turns out, one of the church elders showed up at the brothel last year and unwittingly chose the member of his church. When she mentioned the fact that she attended his church, he told her that what happens on Sundays was his business and that what happens here was hers. He has since become a regular client.

My class members were shocked to discover what these women’s lives are really like. They began to realize that these women are people just like them, with real needs and hurts and issues. Plus my students were shocked that people like these women are not ‘out there’ but right here in our midst, even in our churches. In fact, this has happened again and again, to everyone’s surprise. Almost all of the matatu drivers, night clubbers, Mungiki members and homosexuals have had some connection with the church. But they are all having to lead secret lives, because their fellow church-goers would be scandalized to know that such ‘sinners’ were in their midst. Of course these women would be driven in shame from their churches if it became public knowledge that they were prostitutes. And of course the elder in question would likely be casting the first stone.

The class still has a couple of weeks to go. I will be asking them to sum up what they have learned about these different groups and their world views, and what our response as Christians and local churches should be. Already, several students have said that this has been the best and most challenging theology course they have ever taken. For me, it has simply re-emphasized something that Admiral Dan Cooper (a member of our church in Reading, PA, and a godly friend) said in my hearing years ago: ‘Everybody is a people.’ I’ve become increasingly convinced that if we Christians understand this, then 90% of our apologetic task would have already been accomplished.

So that’s a bit of what we’ve been up to these past few weeks. Here are some ways that you can be praying for us and our work here.

• Prayer for both Bill and Stephanie teaching at the Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology (NEGST): Bill teaching Systematic Theology, and Ministry and Christian Apologetics; Stephanie teaching Greek Exegesis, and the Gospel of Luke.
• Praise that Stephanie finished drafting revisions and updates to the standards that govern theological education across the continent as part of her work as Accreditation Officer for the Accrediting Council for Theological Education in Africa (ACTEA). This draft is now being circulated for wider input.
• Prayer for Caroline (19) and Linnea (21) during their summer break from studies at the University of Virginia. For Caroline as she works as a nanny on Hilton Head Island, SC, the first part of summer, and then as she travels here to Kenya to spend some time with us and then on to Ethiopia to visit her old home and friends there. For Linnea, who right now is in Senegal in West Africa on a short-term medical mission trip through Africa Inland Mission. She, too, will be working when she gets back to the US next week until the new school year starts in August.
• Prayer that Stephanie’s parents’ house in Virginia Beach, VA would finally sell. This has been a three-year ordeal and complicated our ability to finance the girls’ education.
• Prayer that God would provide the additional $15,000 above our normal missionary support that we need to cover our family contribution towards college costs for the coming year.

Thank you so much for your willingness to stand with us in prayer. None of this would be possible without you!

By grace,

Bill

(for Stephanie, Linnea and Caroline

Around and about…

In May my (Stephanie) work as ACTEA Accreditation Officer took me to another Overseas Council ‘Institute of Excellence’ for presidents and board members of theological schools in various regions of Africa. (That’s me, brown shirt in the front row.) It’s a good chance to chat with leaders of our partner schools—much easier and cheaper than flying to visit them all. I’ve been to OC Institutes in various places including South Africa (2008) and the Ivory Coast (2009). Conveniently, this one was closer to home, just outside Nairobi.

My tablemates for the week happened to be my former and current bosses (and friends): at right, Dr Desta Heliso, Director of the Ethiopian Graduate School of Theology where Bill & I taught before. At left, Dr Douglas Carew (from Sierra Leone), Vice-Chancellor of NEGST where we teach now.

And here’s Douglas talking with my other boss, Joe Simfukwe (left) from Zambia, who is ACTEA Director. Joe is Principal of the Theological College of Central Africa.

Back at NEGST, I’ve been teaching an MA/MDiv course on the Gospel of Luke this term, using a ‘manuscript Bible study’ method where each student works with an unmarked text of the gospel typed out with no paragraph breaks, no section headings, etc. The idea is that they work together around tables making their own discoveries from the text and discussing them in groups, after which we debrief as a whole class and I add in the scholarly bits. Thought you might enjoy these photos of my Luke students discovering and discussing…

 I never quite realized how much people talk with their hands until I looked at these pictures! But I love watching the conversations going on all around the room.

And also at NEGST, I am pleased to report that after repeated attempts the whole Biblical Studies Department faculty finally managed to bring our robes, hats, etc., on the same day so we could take a photo.

That’s Douglas again (front left); our department head, Dr Peter Nyende (front center); and NEGST Academic Dean, Dr Samuel Ngewa (front right).

Meanwhile, in further pursuit of our goal to get to know our Kenyan ‘homeland’ better, last weekend Bill and I went with friends to visit an archeological site about an hour away where the Leakeys and others have excavated 600,000- to 800,000-year-old stone hand axes.

Yep, somebody chipped that rock into an axe about 700,000 years ago.

Once he was satiated with the history and science bits (which for my husband takes quite a while), Bill entertained himself by chatting with the local Maasai women and shopping for souvenirs. 

 

(Sorry, no family photos this month, but next time maybe some from Linnea’s medical mission project in Senegal…)