Posts Tagged ‘theology’
interview about Asian American theology symposium
Dr. Young Lee Hertig, Director of Institute for the Study of Asian American Christianity-SoCal and Asian American Women On Leadership, coordinated the inaugural Asian American Equipping Symposium, an event that brought together ministry leaders and theologians to engage in some robust reflections and discussions about contextualizing theology for and by Asian Americans. Or it’s also been described as reimagining.
Watch this video with Dr. Young Lee Hertig to hear the story of what happened there on the grounds of Fuller Theological Seminary:
Good thing they’ve recorded the presentations for all to benefit, and all to build upon the good work that began. [aside: we cannot rely on oral tradition to share the wealth of knowledge & experiences!] And, when the video and audio recordings are available, it’ll be at www.isaacweb.org . For a more detailed written (typed) report summarizing the event, you can read that here.
Am I a sell-out too?
Danny Yang has now apologied for triggering a firestorm of comments for his provocatively titled blog post, Is Francis Chan a sell-out?
The title obviously struck a nerve, and provoked a good number of mis-readings and reactions, even though it was clearly spelled out in that very blog post that Danny did not think he was a sell-out:
I don’t really think he’s a sell-out; I believe Chan is living faithfully to what GOD has called him to be.
Does that mean the question was mis-stated in the first place? Maybe not. There is a rhetorical device called a hypothetical question where a question may be posed, even though the answer is already known as a definitively absolutely “no.” It’s used in the Bible, you know. Paul posed the question, “Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?” Of course not! Is he a sell-out? Of course not!
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debrief on the Fuller conversations
I got an invite from Daniel Lee [facebook profile], a Th.M. student at Fuller Theological Seminary, who is coordinating a newly-formed group on campus called Asian American Theological Fellowship. Last night was quite the privilege for me to share a presentation titled “Reaching the next generation of Asian Americans”.
More than a handful of my long-distance compadres asked about my thoughts and feelings about last night’s engagement. Here they are, in 3 parts: the presentation, the group, and the potential.
The presentation. This presentation consisted of 59 PowerPoint slides. If I ran thru them Lessig style, no big deal, but I dwelled on many of them, skipped a few, and lost track of time. Meaning, I think I went long– I did go longer than I had planned to. As I debrief here, it dawned on me that since I first built this presentation in September 2007, I’ve added on more slides to cover frequently asked questions. Now after (maybe) 5 iterations, I’ve only added more and more slides — didn’t remove any. No wonder I went long! If I were to take Guy Kawasaki’s 10/20/30 rule of Powerpoint, get it down to 10 slides, I maybe could summarize it as:
- The opportunity is huge and urgent to reach more Asian Americans. The population will double in less than 50 years.
- Churches naturally have a life cycle like any organization. From time to time, church must adapt to cultural changes to revitalize, or else.
- Ethnic Asian churches have adapted to several models of multi-generational multi-lingual churches to accommodate both Asian-language speakers and English speakers.
- We’ve got so much more to offer. On the whole, in comparison to other racial groupings, Asian Americans are the most educated and have highest earnings. These resources have yet to be fully activated for Kingdom purposes.
- Healthy churches grow AND reproduce.
- In the past 10 years, there’s been an exponential growth of new churches effectively reaching next generation Asian Americans.
- New churches doing church a new way are found all over the United States. It’s not just a “West coast” phenomena.
- We still need more new English-speaking Asian-led churches to reach the next generation, and the unchurched majority.
- Ask not how can we keep “them” in church. Ask how can we reach more people for Jesus.
- It takes all kinds of churches to reach all kinds of people.
a Conversation between Keller, Piper, and Carson
Astonishing to hear Tim Keller say at the begining of video segment 2 of 6, “I disagree completely…” Watch the videos for context of this conversation between Tim Keller, John Piper, and D.A. Carson.
The video is shot in real-time conversation between 3 persons, which is way more visually interesting than the typical interviewer-interviewee dialogue. [the video's shot in black-and-white, no need to adjust your monitor]
I’ve put the 6 video segments together in this playlist for contiguous convenient viewing. [aside: why I like Keller more than Piper]
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4 questions for Ed Cyzewski on theology
The Coffeehouse Theology blog tour makes its stop here today! Ed Cyzewski, author of Coffeehouse Theology: Reflecting on God in Everyday Life, responds to 4 of my burning questions here. 
I didn’t want to ask the typical junket questions like what is the book about, and he’s already explained why he wrote yet another book on contextual theology.
What would you like to ask Ed Cyzewski? Add a comment below, and since the blog tour is here today, he’ll respond!
Here’s my exclusive interview with Ed Cyzewski –
djchuang >> Having studied theology and thought about it a lot, I’m so glad that you’ve noted other ingredients that shape our theology besides the Bible, namely, tradition, God, and the global church. Some people say they have “no creed but the Bible.” What would you say to them, since I don’t think they’d read your book?
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