David @ NEGST

New BLOG!!

2011-05-17T12:15:00.004+03:00

Hey, so I won't be at NEGST much longer, so I've exported my posts from this blog to a new one: http://davidbawks.wordpress.com/
So please follow my continuing adventures there!

Reflections on NEGST

2011-04-19T22:00:00.003+03:00

As I am about to graduate from the Nairobi Evangelical School of Theology (recently chartered to become Africa International University, but it will always be NEGST to me), there are so many thoughts that fill my head. It’s hard to even imagine how I was when I first arrived at the airport that August evening in 2008. Each year I’ve been here seems like a whole different experience, mostly due to the various friend groups I’ve had since I’ve been here. An exercise I did after my undergrad was to think over the best, most meaningful or impactful classes I’ve had, and list them out, so for my graduate studies here goes:

1) Contextualization (Rasmussen)
I took this class my very first term, and it’s still the most meaningful class I’ve taken. In a number of aspects, it set the stage for the rest of my education here. The most crucial insight I gained from this class is integrating it with classes I took on scripture and OT cultural backgrounds in my undergrad, and realizing that the Bible itself is a cultural document. After taking this class, I look at ministry, church history, evangelism and exegesis in terms of contextualization, and that has helped in all my other classes here.

2) Power Encounter (Kim)
In many ways I don’t think I really understood the power of the gospel until I took this class. Forgiveness is the key to removing the bitterness in your life, and helps to remove all the garbage that can feed demonic presence in your life. The gospel really is power, and transforms everything in you. And this encounter isn’t some dramatic showdown, but is really a “truth encounter” as the reality of the gospel message is put into action in your life.

3) Matthew (Wood)
To sum up this class in one word: justice. Or maybe dikaiosune. Dr. Chester Wood is one of the heroes of NEGST, and it was an honor to have a class with him. I have never traced the topic of justice through the Bible, or seen what a major theme it is in Matthew, but after taking this class I see it all over. And I learned a lot about using scholarly sources, and exploring some of the more confusing stories in the life of Jesus.

4) Greek 4-6 (S. Black)
For the first time, I really felt like I was able to read and apply Greek. And I also learned a ton about how to write, formulate an argument, and compose an exegesis paper. Textual criticism, word studies, the Septuagint, sentence diagramming, syntactical analysis…so many topics were covered in these classes. Almost everything I know about exegesis I learned here.

5) Contemporary Theology (B. Black)
This class was a great opportunity to get back into what I was more used to from my undergrad, some good old (or rather new) Western theology. I love the seminar style, and got to read a number of theologians I had never read before, such as Moltmann, Niebuhr, Tillich, Rahner and others. My final project was on Miroslav Volf, and it was quite interesting.

6) Hebrew 5 (Mercer)
As far as the most skills and knowledge learned during the briefest time, this class would probably be number one. All the Hebrew reference grammars, how to determine the function of a genitive, a Hebrew word study, how to use Bible words, how to make sense of grammatical concepts...this class continued to build on similar concepts learned in Greek but applied them in rather different to Hebrew. I very strongly doubt I will ever be a Hebrew scholar, but at least my ability progressed in this class.

7) African Christian Theology (Stinton)
I didn’t take this class until my senior year, and there were a number of logistical challenges, such as the fact that I was the only student in the class for a while, but nonetheless I appreciated the chance to read more of John Mbiti and consider the implications of narrative theology. For doing seminary in Africa, I really didn’t read all that much African theology, and I’m glad at least this class allowed me to conduct a survey of the more relevant topics.

8) Church Ministry and Mission (B. Black)
Ecclesiology is a difficult subject, to say the least, and this class is probably the one with the most unresolved questions in my mind. I appreciated the visits to other church traditions, learning more about the Catholic and the Orthodox, and thinking through my own views on the organization and structure of the church. Ordination, women in ministry, the gifts of the Holy Spirit…so many highly relevant topics were covered in this course.

9) Daniel (Evans)
This is a bit early to make an assessment, since we are only one week into the class, but so far I am really impressed and looking forward to the rest of the term. There is a lot in Daniel that I don’t understand, and a lot of the reading I have already done has been really helpful in explaining the historical background and the toughest exegetical questions in the book. The paper topics look very good, so I look forward to delving into them and going through the rest of the course.

10) Cultural World of the Bible (Mercer)
This class was more helpful than I expected, and while there are still many cultural elements in the Bible I do not understand, there are many that make a lot more sense now. For example, the temple at the time of Christ—I did not realize it was that big! Tracing the journeys of Paul was helpful, and the reading for this class was quite good.

Honorable Mention: Hermeneutics (Nyende), Sociology of Language (Gibson)

Most of what I have learned at NEGST, however, took place outside of the classroom. I will always remember those who welcomed me when I first came to Kenya, here alone without knowing anyone within 8,000 miles. Taco night—ah the discussions until late in the evening, NEGST policies, classes, theology, politics, culture, being a mzungu in Kenya, and of course heresies. I love have the experience of living in student house, hanging out with my friends, talking, and finding out a bit of what its like in other parts of Africa and the world. I bet there has never been another student at NEGST who has spent as much time as I have walking from house to house and around the fourplex after midnight.

As far as experiences at NEGST, the most meaningful experience for me overall was being on student council. I loved working with the two distinct teams over the two years I served on student council, one as secretary and the next as treasurer. Being on Senate, the deliberative body composed of the faculty heads of departments, IT director, finance, library, etc., was a fascinating look at the inside story of the way NEGST operates. I especially learned about cross-cultural communication, diplomacy, how to structure a message for difference audiences (again, contextualization), and how to deal with really hard situations, such as when like so many babies on campus were dying. And some random things that you wouldn’t expect from graduate theological studies—numerous discussions of asbestos, the fluoride content of water, implications of multiple venues for the production of food on campus, GPA policy, scholarship procedures, needs of extension students, dairy farming and how to run a Tuck Shop.

Being involved in various churches here also gave me some meaningful ministry experience. Being an “associate pastor” at the Life in Christ Outreach Ministries church in Kibera gave me an entirely different perspective on the prosperity gospel. Suddenly theology had distinct relational implications, it wasn’t just an argument in a paper. Until 2010, I had never really done much as far as youth ministry, but for the last sixteen months that’s what I’ve been doing at Nairobi Chapel, and while a lot of it still isn’t entirely natural for me, it’s gotten quite a bit better.

I enjoyed being in the e-group with Esayas and the Nairobi Chapel guys, especially going through plug-in with them. I won’t soon forget that. And my African adventures—taking the bus straight through to Kigali, wandering into DRC, white water rafting on the Nile in Uganda, exploring Mwanza, camping in Abmoseli, slaughtering a sheep in Naivasha, reaching the bottom of the crater of Longonot, driving overnight in a motorbike to Mombasa, swimming for a few hours and then back, overnight again to arrive in time for a full day of class (well only 2 hours late for systematic theology)… Good times.

Christmas Break Update!

2011-04-14T14:14:00.005+03:00

Ok, so much to update on...but let me start with something. My sister came this last December to visit me, which was really awesome, the first family member to visit, and only the second visitor I've had! I showed her around campus, introduced her to my friends, took her to visit a bunch of people, we had a Christmas party at my house, went to visit my friend Zippy's village, had lunch with some friends in Kibera, and relaxed at home and watched the Lord of the Rings.

Some of the people at our Christmas party

Visiting Zippy's village, outside Machakos

We went there along with Shar.

Rachel's first time to have Ethiopian food, injera!

My Kenyan Christmas tree!

Before Rachel came, I went to Mombasa for a few days, traveled to Kisii to preach a few times, went to Meru to visit some friends who are doing a Nairobi Chapel church plant there, and also hung out in Nairobi. It was a pretty good break!

Still to come...some changes, including a new blog, since I won't be at NEGST much longer, and what I'm planning to do after! Stay tuned...

Inspiration of Scripture

2010-11-06T15:08:00.005+03:00

This is an assignment I submitted for Vernacular Scripture:

The inspiration of Scripture means that God works through the authors of scripture to ensure the reliability and trustworthiness of scripture. The Bible is both divine and human in its attributes, and inspiration describes the process of how God was able to supervise and oversee the writing of scripture while maintaining genuine humanity in its production.

This concept of inspiration arises primarily from the second letter to Timothy:

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim 3:14-17, ESV).

Building an entire doctrine of inspiration from this one passage, however, is difficult. Craig Allert notes that the terms theopneustos (God-breathed) and hiera grammata (sacred writings) occur nowhere else in the Bible. He speculates that Paul may have coined the term theopneustos just for this occasion (A High View of Scripture? The Authority of the Bible and the Formation of the New Testament Canon [Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2007], 151-155). Since it is difficult to know precisely what theopneustos denotes, building an overly specific doctrine of inspiration from this one text is treading on speculative ground.

While this passage does not specify how God “breathes out” scripture, slightly more clarify is found in 2 Peter 1:20-21: “…knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (ESV). This passage is more specific in that it addresses prophecy, and not scripture in general. The mechanism for God’s activity is described as being “carried along by the Holy Spirit”, which could imply some kind of mental suggestion or direction.

The divine versus human paradox of scripture which must be maintained despite its logical challenges. Inspiration is truly an incredible concept, meaning that God is able to ensure that His message is accurately communicated, while allowing the individual authorial qualities of personality and style to remain. God has chosen the weak things of the world, including the potential confusion and ambiguity of language to reveal His holiness and majesty.

The incarnation is a helpful concept in addressing the question of translating the Holy Scriptures. While still maintaining his attributes of perfection and power, Jesus Christ limited Himself and took on the form of a man, even that of a servant (Eph 2). God also limits Himself to speaking to humans in their own language. Human language is finite, while God is infinite, and thus a complete representation of God in human language is impossible. John Calvin speaks of God as “accommodating” Himself to humanity, both through the revelation of scripture and the coming of His Son.

In theology, the most responsible (or orthodox) view is generally that which avoids the potential extremes on either side of the theological aisle. In this case, an extreme conservative position is dictation, meaning that God read the Bible aloud word-for-word and the human “authors” merely wrote down exactly what they heard. This results from an overemphasis on the authority of the Bible.

Ultimate authority does not rest in the Bible, but in God. To elevate anything else, even the scriptures, to the status of God is idolatry. Elements of Karl Barth’s view of revelation are helpful in that the “Word of God” is first and foremost Christ Himself, as described in John 1. The Scriptures become the “Word of God” as they point to Christ and His work. However, this order should not be reversed; Jesus is alive, desiring a relationship to us, and the Scriptures are the written record we have of His life and ministry.

On the other hand, to deny any divine activity of God in the writing and transmission of scripture is to go too far in the opposite extreme. God is active in the writing of the Bible, and the human qualities cannot take precedence. The Bible does not contain merely the whims of musings of religious heroes of old. Rather, it is indeed the message of God.

For translation, this means that care must be taken in accurately representing the meaning of the Bible. While every word is important, the cultural meaning of idioms and phrases take priority over a slavish literalism. Scripture is not ensconced in a veneer of plenary structure which transfers exactly from language to language. It is culturally and linguistic specific, and these nuances must be taken into account when translating.

The guidance of the Holy Spirit must be sought when translating the Bible. Translations today are not inspired in the same way as the original scriptures, but this does not mean that the activity of the Holy Spirit has ceased. God is still active in His church, and still desires His message to reach all people. Translation is an essential component of this endeavor, and continues the process of God coming to us, speaking in the words we understand. What could be a more clear representation of God’s mercy than His care in allowing the message of the Bible to be expressed in any human language? Christianity is not a religious pilgrimage where all those desiring salvation must come to Jerusalem and learn Hebrew or Aramaic.

Inspiration is a beautiful concept meaning that God has spoken through the Bible. Not only has God spoken, but He has done so in the language of earth—not of heaven. The original message came in the specific languages of Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic, but can be translated into any of the languages spoken under the sun. As the missionary movement continues to reach out and make disciples of all nations, translation is being used of God to replay the divine message of salvation and grace into all the languages of the world.

Snapshot of Year Three

2010-11-04T09:43:00.005+03:00

Thus begins my third and final year...it really feels like I am almost done with NEGST. This term started off pretty crazy..since I had a remaining term paper from an independent study last term which basically consumed my first three weeks. The school had issued a new set of financial policies over break, so the student council had to petition those...which I estimate took around 20-30 hours of my time the first few weeks of school. So many meetings...and I also missed several classes. But I do enjoy student council, and although it will be a relief I'm sure I will miss it when I'm done in February. It will have been two full years...so I am constitutionally barred from running again:). It does lead to some random moments...from a few days ago "sir, I'm don't know if you are aware but they are shooting the cows...were they given permission to do that?" (we have a new TV studio set up next to our farm). And I doubt I would have spent quite as much time debating the merits of napier grass if I had gone to seminary in the US. Or "servicing" cows... Or the implications of separating rent from tuition accounts...

This year I am living in block R--meaning I was able to stay in a flat after my stint in block M last year. Thank God for leaking roofs, and thus my upgrade from a single room to full apartment. I have been loving the community in R, and have been able to host many people for meals, tea and conversation.

Talking to Sharday, a new American student, has brought back a lot of memories from two years ago, and also showed me that I have changed a lot since I've come here. I'm not nearly as afraid of Nairobi traffic as I used to be. Cockroaches no longer bother me at all, and I haven't killed any in months (once I fished one out of my water and proceeded to finish the water). I no longer boil water, but drink it straight from the tap. I've been pleasantly surprised to find my body can handle more than I thought, including some food "slightly" past its prime... Its nice knowing most people I see, and not worrying about eating nearly as much as I used to do. Ironically, this comes as I don't have an eating group anymore, its just Teke and I, and Jane only comes two days a week now to cook. I'm not totally sure how I eat, probably about half my meals I eat out of the house, but I almost always get food somehow. I counted once that I had eaten in like 8 different places over the period of a week...

This term has been busy academically, and I am taking 18 hours: vernacular scripture, principles of teaching, African theology, Hebrew IV, and Pentateuch. African theology has been great, and I have learned a lot in Pentateuch as well. Hebrew I've actually mostly enjoyed, and my study group with Solomon and Madut has been awesome. Could not do it without them. On the other two I'll attempt to refrain from comment. After this term I'll only need to take 15 hours for second term and then 11 hours, so that sounds awesome right now, and I can work full-time on planning for next July...

I haven't been as active in church as I would like, but I did join a small group off-campus, something I've desired for a while now. I'm excited for how that will go. I'm still have Swahili a few hours a week, but haven't been putting in the time I need to. I'll have a couple weeks in December to study a lot more intensely, and then should have more time starting in January. Still working in the IT lab, and helping out on occasion with the new registration software that still has not been launched yet. And I finally tracked down my compassion child! A few weeks ago I figure out exactly where her church and school are, and got the number of her pastor from my friend. Take that unhelpful internet form where I have to specify the dates I'm in Kenya, the hotel I'm staying in, and pay like hundreds of dollars to hire a car and translator. So I'll go out there to visit as soon as I can make time, probably beginning of Dec. I'm starting to think about December a lot, can't wait.

Please pray for my future after NEGST. I'd like to stay in Nairobi, serve God in some capacity, pay off my Wheaton debt, and sustain myself. Those are the parameters, and now I need to figure out possible ways to do that. There are many, and the question is which is the best one. So I'd appreciate your prayers (and job offers) in line with the same!

Spiritual Warfare

2010-09-28T19:22:00.003+03:00

Being a theology student in Africa, spiritual warfare is something I have often come across since I have been here. It was actually partly my interest in this topic that first brought me to Africa. In my undergraduate studies, I had studied various aspects of healing ministries which address demonic oppression. I wanted to learn more about this topic in a setting where people, as a whole, still attribute many things to spiritual causes (which is not often the case in America).

One of my friends from Burkina-Faso told the story of how his dad went to a witchdoctor. His dad wasn’t a Christian, and he wanted to curse my friend and remove his Christian beliefs. My friend was in another country going to college at the time, and the witchdoctor told his dad that he approached my friend in the spirit, but that there was someone very tall guarding him holding a long sword, and he could not get any closer.

One of the debates I settled pretty early on in my study of spiritual warfare is whether Christians can be affected or influenced by demons. They most certainly can, and I believe that almost all are, to some degree. I have experienced it myself. Ephesians 6:11-12 says, “Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

Spiritual warfare is first and foremost a battle of the mind. Demons operate by feeding you lies and manipulating your emotions. Satan is the father of lies, and this is by far his most effective weapon. We live in a messed up world, and there are so many opportunities to confuse people and destroy their image of God, of themselves, and of others.

I took a class called Power Encounter during my first year studying in Nairobi, and the main thing I learned is that it isn’t really as important to have a “power encounter” as it is to have a “truth encounter.” If someone is demonized, then it may be possible to talk to the demon, have a big confrontation, and cast it out, but this can be dangerous and violent and is often fruitless. More effective ministry is much more mundane. Demonic presence is merely a symptom of a deeper spiritual or emotional problem, as illustrated by the metaphor of flies around garbage. If we only kill the flies, more will come, but if we remove the garbage of the emotional and spiritual baggage from our past, then the flies will no longer find the situation so appealing. They will have nothing to feed on, and will move elsewhere.

Knowing one’s identity in Christ and prayer are essential components to successful spiritual warfare. The most important key to spiritual victory is truly believing the Gospel: that God made you, that He loves you, and that through Christ your sins have been forgiven. They really have been forgiven. For many of us, we don’t really believe that, and we continually relive the failures of our past – and demons love nothing more.

Though I still haven’t completely figured out all there is to discover about spiritual warfare, since coming to Africa, I have realized that the warfare described in Ephesians 6 is literal. I have also realized that the rest of Ephesians 6 is just as literal and applicable to all of us. There is warfare with demonic rulers, but we have all the weapons we need in Christ to overcome. We should be aware of the fight, engaging in spiritual warfare by standing firm against the enemy’s schemes. But we should also realize that the power to stand is not found in dramatic exorcism scenes, but in a diligent trust in God’s word and character.
(I contributed this post to my friend's blog, so I figured why not mine)

Mounting Opposition To New York Islamic Center

2010-09-24T12:01:00.003+03:00

Claiming the neighborhood where the Twin Towers once stood is sacred ground, radical conservative groups are spearheading opposition to the construction of a nearby Muslim community center, a facility that would include a swimming pool and a 9/11 memorial and be located more than two blocks from the attack site. Here are some other projects currently facing controversy:

New York — New Citibank ATM vestibule just two blocks from site of devastating financial collapse
Elizabeth, NJ — Bed, Bath, and Beyond on sacred IKEA grounds
Pearl Harbor, HI — P.F. Chang's location a reasonable cab ride away from the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial
Philadelphia — British consulate on hard-won U.S. soil
Terre Haute, IN — Frito-Lay display planned for Baesler's Market is an affront to the fact that Terre Haute was the original U.S. test market for Pringles
Culver City, CA — Comedy club built next to the site where that disaster Grown Ups was filmed
Provincetown, MA — Organic artisan cheese stand set up next to raw cashew cheese booth at farmer's market
Lakehurst, NJ — Balloon store only three miles from site of Hindenburg crash
Olathe, KS — Barnes & Noble

From the Onion:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/mounting-opposition-to-new-york-islamic-center,17956/

Motorbike to Mombasa

2010-09-21T12:46:00.003+03:00

Ok so this blog really needs some action: we’ll see if this helps. For now I’m going to skip all the other updates I could give and settle for this one story. One Saturday afternoon at the end of May, Anson and I were sitting in my room trying to figure out what we should do. We both were kind of sick of school and wanted to get away (and I didn’t have any major deadlines for like 3 or 4 days, so it seemed like such freedom), so we ran through possible options: Westlands, Junction, something like that. He really wanted to go swimming, which I said was ridiculous, like it was way too cold. I said I would go to the pool but refused point blank to go swimming. We talked for awhile, and then he was like man let’s go to Mombasa. Now for those of you who don’t know, Mombasa is like across the country, 500 kilometers away, like 6 or 7 hours by car. I was like that is crazy, and paced up and down the house ranting for like 20 minutes going through all that could go wrong, how small 125 cc are, and what a crazy idea this was, until after I had worked it all out in my mind, and canceled my lunch appointment for the next day, I was like, ok yeah let’s do this.

We packed up and heading out on the motorbike. We stopped for dinner, and by the time we left it was dark, 8 pm. Now I didn’t even know the way for sure, but I assumed Mombasa road was a pretty straight shot there, and lo and behold it worked. At each gas station when we filled up, we would ask how many kilometers to Mombasa, but everyone was like, um you know that you can’t make it on that size motorbike. We were like, yeah we will, and we’ll stop by on our way back to tell you how it was. We had estimated our arrival time at like 4 am, but as we pressed through the night that looked increasingly less likely. We both became quite tired, and had to rest the engine a lot to prevent overheating. It had never been driven for longer than one hour before, poor thing. We were also getting tired, so fairly close to Tsavo national park we pulled off the side of the road to rest. Now I have seen The Ghost and the Darkness, and was aware of the location, so I’ll use standard Kenyan terminology and chalk it up to strong faith… We had a tarp and blanket with us, parked the motorbike right by us, and used our backpacks as pillows. It was awesome, and I slept so well…until I woke up to 4 police officers surrounding us yelling at the top of their lungs to wake us up. It was somewhat disorienting…but they were going on about danger, animals around, but I was really tired, so I persuaded them we would be fine and they finally left. We went back to sleep, and slept for another hour, until we were woken up again by another female police officer and her partner, and then I was like ok, lets go.

We finally arrived in Mombasa around 11 am, at which point I sent some text messages informing people where we were. After eating some Indian food at a restaurant I had gone to with Vincent, we went up to the public beach on the north shore to go swimming. It was pretty sweet, but after swimming for a bit I decided that I should sleep, so I slept on the beach for a few hours. Anson swam the whole time.

When it got dark, we left for Nairobi, stopping a few times for dinner and to rest. Now Mombasa is at sea-level, yeah, and Nairobi is really high up…so I was concerned about the journey back. Anson was really tired, so I did most of the driving at this point. About 1 am, we were probably 200 kilometers from Mombasa, with another 300 to go, and were in the middle of nowhere. Nothing around. I pulled off the road to rest the engine, and what do you know, the front tire is flat. I didn’t see anything I had hit or gone over, and we didn’t find any nail or anything in the tire. I think it just overheated. Now I had been going 90 kilometers an hour seconds before I stopped, and if the tire had gone at that instant…let’s just say it would not have been good. But here we are without a tire, so now what to do. This is pretty incredible to me…but I stopped right by a police check-point, and the policeman came over and kept asking me, so what are you going to do? I had no idea. Fortunately, he didn’t rely on my resourcefulness, but started asking all the buses he was pulling over if they had room to take us to Nairobi. My opinion of police-checks underwent a radical transformation…and I looked at all the buses flying through without stopping with a rather different perspective. However, after about 15 stopped, one agreed, so we threw the motorbike in an empty compartment on the bottom and we bought two tickets. At 5:30 am, we arrived in Nairobi, and it took 4 hours and lots of emotional negotiation before we finally found someone to fix the tire (which costs like $5, I can’t get over how cheap motorcycle repairs are here). So I missed the first two hours of systematic theology…but we rolled into campus only 10 minutes late for field ministry. And I’m pretty sure this story will be remembered at NEGST for some time…

*NOTE* Think of this as belonging to the genre of narrative, true not fiction, but is not intended to offer any propositional truths providing moral lessons leading one to infer the activities related herein are recommended or encouraged.

Reflections on Break

2010-08-11T09:54:00.000+03:00

Camping at Mt. Longonot

2010-04-21T16:09:00.006+03:00

To bring this closer to the present, term 2 was pretty difficult and not so enjoyable. I took 20 credit hours, remained secretary the first half of term (then ran for 2nd year rep, a much easier position), kept working in the IT, and started getting more involved at church. I did have some pretty good classes: Contemporary Theology, Greek 5, Systematic Theology 2, Hebrew 2, and African Traditional Religion. Contemporary was great. After a lengthy struggle, the term finally finished, and we had a two week break. Now last year I was the only student here under the age of 26. Søren and I would often try to get a third person to play games with us, and I don't believe we were ever successful last year. But this year is a different story, and there are now five of us who are 25 or younger, and we often do things together. Since Søren is leaving us soon, one of us had an idea: what if we had a camping trip to say goodbye? I'm still kind of surpirsed it worked out, but it did, and 8 of us went camping for 3 days at the base of Longonot, near Naivasha. Our group was composed of Søren and Charlotte (Denmark), Anson (India), BG and Dama (Kenya), and then Kelly, Aaron and myself (US). Aside from Søren, Charlotte, and me, they are all first year students. It was pretty awesome.

Anson, Kelly and I really tried to climb down into the crater, but didn't make it and had to turn back. It was really rough going, but Anson and I are committed to making it down there. It reminded me a lot of reading The Lost World (Doyle), a great book by the way.
We passed some baton of leadership or something like that.

Christmas at NEGST

2010-04-21T15:19:00.009+03:00

One of my fears in staying over Christmas break was that I would be bored. After all, a month of no class, nothing going on, and most people having left to go home? But fortunately, boredom was not an issue for me this break. I actually had very little downtime. After I had been traveling for two weeks, I spent the last three weeks of break back on campus. I spent some time working in the IT, visiting the people who remained, on and off campus, and a lot of time hanging out. It was so fun. The best part was Christmas Day. I had envisioned for a long time having a Christmas get-together on campus for my international friends who didn’t have other places to go, and it really came together. Kelly, a first year student from America, and I spent days planning, inviting people, coordinating what people brought, shopping, baking, and setting up. We ended up with 25 people, from the US, Denmark, Kenya, India, DRC, and Zambia (and had food from Liberia and Ethiopia as well). It didn’t quite feel like “Christmas”, but I really enjoyed it—I think it may have been my best Christmas ever. Although I was disappointed I missed out on all the snow that Maryland was getting over their crazy winter, and I course I missed being at home with my family (this was my first Christmas away from home). We used the chapel to eat, and then had a time of singing and sharing our Christmas traditions, and then that night played games and hung out at my friends Søren and Charlotte’s place.

Then for New Year’s, there was a group of us that went out to a concert at Nairobi Chapel. It was called Totally Sold Out, and there were like 25,000 people there: it was crazy. Had to have been the biggest party in Kenya that night.

Update: Christmas Break 2009

2010-04-16T14:45:00.004+03:00

So for those of you who might want to hear what has been going on, and not just my theological reflections on random topics, the time has come to say what I’ve been up the last several months. This December break I stayed in Africa, and after a church retreat with Nairobi Chapel, I went traveling around East Africa. I took the bus from Nairobi through Kampala all the way to Kigali, Rwanda (a 27 hour ride). I visited my friend Hillary, who had been in Kigali for a few months working with an NGO. We toured Kigali and saw the genocide museum and the hotel of movie fame. I was really impressed that the city is so clean and orderly (it felt more like being in Japan than in Africa). There is no trash on the streets, all the boda-boda (motorcycle taxis) drives wore helmets and carried one of their passengers, and its illegal to sell things by the side of the road. Then we went up to Gisenyi and stayed there for a few days, went swimming in Lake Kivu and I met up with another friend, Jean Bosco. He is from Rwanda and had graduated from NEGST. I preached at his church there and we stayed with his pastor, and then returned to Kigali.

If you've seen the movie Hotel Rwanda, this is the real hotel. I was really surprised to find it is right in the middle of the city, very exposed.
Rwanda is a really beautiful, green, hilly country.
This is at the genocide museum.
I'm not positive it was this one, but there was a volcano that erupted near this area a few weeks later.

From there I went to Uganda to visit my friend Dennis. We spent a week touring Kampala, went to the Martyr's Shrine, visited a museum, saw the source of the Nile, went swimming in Lake Victoria, and ate a lot of food. It was a good time.

In Kenya we call them matatus, but in Uganda they are called taxis.
By the source of the Nile.
The Ugandan Martyr's Shrine.
We went to a museum that had huts from various tribes.

1 Corinthians 7

2010-04-16T14:31:00.004+03:00

Recently I have had several discussions about 1 Corinthians 7, so I felt I would share some of those insights. It is quite an interesting chapter. In the Order of Service of a wedding I just attended, it was described as recommending that we go into marriage discreetly, reverently, and in the fear of God. Now that sounds really good, and I happen to agree, and I think the Bible does support that, but unfortunately that is simply not what 1 Corinthians 7 says. At all.

This is what it actually says: “To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain single as I am. But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to be aflame with passion” (1 Cor 7:8-9, ESV). My summary: marriage should be based upon the foundation of mutual uncontrollable lust. Imagine that as the basis of a premarital counseling class (so now that we have established you are both incapable of self-control and are burning with passion, let us begin…). In the words of Eugene Peterson: “The difficulties of marriage are preferable by far to a sexually tortured life as a single” (1 Cor 7:9, The Message). Nothing mentioned about discretion or reverence or fearing God.

This passage is fraught with interpretive difficulties. Not only do we have a remarkably negative view of marriage, described as a “concession” against the ideal of singlehood (7:6), but we have the challenge of Paul distinguishing between a command from the Lord and his own personal opinion (“To the rest I say (I, not the Lord)” 7:12, ESV). Now how exactly does that square with the notion that “all” scripture is inspired of God (and what “scripture” is being referenced by 2 Tim 3:16)? It’s tricky.

I think the most difficult verse in this chapter is 36. This is how it reads in the ESV: “If anyone thinks that he is not behaving properly toward his betrothed, if his passions are strong, and it has to be, let him do as he wishes: let them marry—it is no sin” (ESV). Now this seems to be saying that if a couple is engaged, and they would like to be “together,” and they get married, they are not sinning. Ok, good, so the transition from engagement to marriage is not inherently sinful. I kind of took that for granted. But how is he “not behaving properly towards his betrothed”? In this translation, it seems to be related to strong passion, but I am not completely sure what that means. Now the NASU puts a totally different slant on this verse: “But if any man thinks that he is acting unbecomingly toward his virgin daughter, if she is past her youth, and if it must be so, let him do what he wishes, he does not sin; let her marry” (NASU). That is the exact same verse, in a different translation, and it says something completely different. Now someone is “acting unbecomingly towards his virgin daughter”, and apparently this means not allowing her to get married? No mention of passion in this translation. Notice that daughter is not in the Greek, and I have no idea where the translators got that idea.

But the NASU is not the only one that goes with daughter: “But if any man thinketh that he behaveth himself unseemingly toward his virgin (daughter), if she be past the flower of her age, and if need so requireth, let him do what he will; he sinneth not; let them marry” (ASV). On a literal read of this, it would seem that Paul is advocated that if man wants to marry his own virgin daughter, they should get married??? Um surely that can’t be. But if you are saying the father is allowing his daughter to get married, why would you say “they” should get married? Doesn’t make sense.

In Peterson’s translation “his virgin” is demoted to a “woman friend”: “If a man has a woman friend to whom he is loyal but never intended to marry, having decided to serve God as a ‘single,’ and then changes his mind, deciding he should marry her, he should go ahead and marry. It's no sin; it's not even a "step down" from celibacy, as some say” (The Message). That seems a very different idea also, and I am not sure why he interprets it that way.

For those that feel the Greek should answer all of these questions, here you go: Εἰ δέ τις ἀσχημονεῖν ἐπὶ τὴν παρθένον αὐτοῦ νομίζει, ἐὰν ᾖ ὑπέρακμος καὶ οὕτως ὀφείλει γίνεσθαι, ὃ θέλει ποιείτω, οὐχ ἁμαρτάνει, γαμείτωσαν (UBS4). τὴν παρθένον αὐτοῦ does mean “his virgin”, and γαμείτωσαν is 3 person plural, so any translation of let “her” or “him” marry is not correct, but rather a revision to avoid interpretive problems: it says “let them marry”. I don’t know where the ESV got the idea of strong passion (and why they dropped the idea of the virgin being past the prime of her age in some fashion), because it’s not there in the Greek.

Literally, it would something like this: “and if any one doth think [it] to be unseemly to his virgin, if she may be beyond the bloom of age, and it ought so to be, what he willeth let him do; he doth not sin — let him [except as noted above it should be 3rd person plural, them] marry” (Young’s Literal Translation). Doesn’t really help, does it? For those who swear by the King James, the behavior is described as “uncomely”: “But if any man think that he behaveth himself uncomely toward his virgin, if she pass the flower of her age, and need so require, let him do what he will, he sinneth not: let them marry” (KJV).

Well, at least there is no one who could be described as “my virgin”—no daughter, fiancé, or woman friend to whom I am loyal but have now decided to marry, so I don’t need to worry about applying this verse to my life…

Another Nairobi Adventure

2010-02-17T14:38:00.002+03:00

Yesterday night at around 9 P.M. on Ngong road, close by Nairobi Chapel, my friend Aaron and I were returning from getting some pizza when I noticed that my motorbike was starting to sputter, and then it stopped entirely. Now I had been thinking that since I haven’t filled up for like a month, I should probably get gas soon, but I didn’t…I miss having a gas gauge. Anyway, this happened about 200 meters from a gas station, so I was like no problem, I’ll just push it down there and fill up and we’ll continue on our way. Now as I pushed the bike down the road, I remembered I had to walk right through the police checkpoint. To give a little context, I live, or rather drive, in fear of the police. I long ago determined that unless he has a gun and looks like he’s really going to use it, I will never stop for the police. I haven’t had to put that to the test until this past Sunday, when I was going down Ngong road in front of Junction and there were like 4 policemen standing out in the middle of the road, and one of them flagged me down, pointing right at me. I floored it and went right through. Like really, you’re on foot and I’m driving, and you expect me to stop…sorry, you can extort me some other time.

There were about 4 police on our side of the road, and only 1 on the other side, so I pushed the bike across the road and continued towards the checkpoint. Of course, they noticed me, and called across the street, asking what was wrong. I said I was out of gas, and was going to fill up. They said there was no gas there. I said, what do you mean, of course there’s gas there, and continued undeterred on my way. They asked me my destination, and I called back, actually that doesn’t matter, and hurried past them.

Getting to the gas station, prominently marked 24 hours on their sign, I see they are clearly closed. Now I had to think what to do. We are right by a heavily forested area known for bandits who carjack those going through. One of my friends lives not far away, so I could leave the motorbike there, and then we try to catch a matatu home, although they run less frequently at that time of the night, and it is more dangerous. Or I could call someone to bail me out and bring me gas. I called Ben, and he said just wait there.

While we are waiting, someone comes up and asks if we need any assistance. I said that I would really like some gas, and he informs me they are actually closed. I asked why there were closed when their sign says 24 hours, and he says that it is too dangerous to stay open after dark. Cool… So the two of us defenseless mzungus continued to sit by the gas pumps by ourselves, alone with a rather expensive piece of equipment, discussing African church history and marriage in the African context… But then Ben showed up, and I fueled up, and we drove home. Another Nairobi adventure.

Reflections on Relationships

2010-02-11T15:36:00.001+03:00

I think interpersonal interactions are some of the most interesting aspects of being human, and have spent something like thousands of hours over the last several years analyzing and dissecting every aspect of guy-girl relationships. My sophomore year at Wheaton, there would times when I would spend eight hours a day going over every new detail or potential development in a certain situation with my group of relational advisors. I had about 15 guys and a number of girls as well that I would confide in, and with any new development I would make my rounds, getting feedback and advice. People have told me that I overanalyze things, so if you’re reading this and thinking um I need to say something…don’t worry, it’s been said. After a while I decided this was becoming a little ridiculous, and did cut down on the time spent in this area. I have often wondered how much higher my gpa could have been if I had arranged my time slightly differently... But hey, there was a whole lot that I learned in college that didn’t take place in class.

It wasn’t only my own situation that we would discuss, but a lot of people would also come to me and bring their questions and problems. I was always interested to hear what was going on and offer my interpretation and sometimes suggestions for the way forward. My first year at NEGST, I made a decision that I would avoid all the problems I faced at Wheaton, with the hope that my academic performance would adjust accordingly. I decided I wouldn’t become good friends with girls, wouldn’t spend a lot of time talking to them, and wouldn’t become close. I was coming here to study, and my primary goal in coming here was not to find girls, which I did not necessary expect to find here. I was somewhat surprised when I was met at the airport….but that’s another story. Since when I first came I didn’t know how flirting and such things are perceived in this context, there were some girls I was afraid to look at. I remember sitting in one of the first events of the single’s community here, when we all introduced ourselves. People went around and introduced themselves: name is “ –“, and I’m single and praying. Name is “ – “, and I’m single and waiting. Name is “ – “, and I don’t want to become the Pope.

Now I’m fairly sure I am as interested in getting married as any of them, but I would never put it in those terms. I guess in my particular American conservative-Christian cultural background being discreet and avoiding being obvious is prized above all else. I made note of any such female personages and was extra distant with them…just to be sure. Possibly I was too careful, but it worked, and I never had any problems in this arena last year. So if you want to know how to avoid such drama, that’s how you do it. This is very debatable, but I personally tend to feel that a close guy-girl friendship is by definition impossible. Yes, there are some exceptions, and I can think of a few examples in my life of that, but it is for all practical purposes impossible. Now in my definition, I would say that if at any point either one of them becomes interested in the other it is no longer merely a friendship. It may appear to be such, but that is not actually the case. So you can fairly easily have a functional friendship, but it most likely will shift at some point.

It often amazes me that anything ever works out. I have so much respect for all the married couples I know, especially those that have made it work for like a long time. It’s impressive to me. Now I have thought about this a fair amount, and I do really feel that if you both make the commitment, then there is no reason it wouldn’t work out. The key as I see it to recognize that the person you’re with is almost certainly not the best possible person for you. The goal is not to find the best possible person, that “one” this is idly waiting out there for you. The goal is to find someone that is compatible enough with you, and then commit to being with them.

I think if you’re trying to find the most ideal person, you’ll find someone and be so excited. Yeah, this is great, and this is the person I’m supposed to be with. But then, when things start not going so well, or you meet someone else, you realize, wow, that other person is actually a lot better for me. So you end it, and that attitude will not stop once you’re married. I question that very premise. You will never find the person you are best suited for. Like seriously, there are six billion people in this world. So don’t try! I’m fairly sure there are a number of girls somewhere I could marry and have it work. The key now becomes to have high enough standards that the person you choose fits into that category. For example, when I was dating, I made the decision: I’m pretty sure if I spent the next fifty years full-time just looking, I could find someone I’m more compatible with than you (now that could take like thirty-five years, because I was pretty happy with her, but eventually, it’s a pretty good chance). So I don’t care. You’re not the best person for me. But I’ve chosen you, which means I do not care who else I meet. It becomes utterly irrelevant to the decision that has been made. But not everyone thinks that way, as I found out. However, I maintain that attitude, which is what I will bring into my next relationship. Now the goal is to find someone else who thinks that way…and I hope it doesn’t actually take thirty two more years.

The Future of Wheaton?

2010-01-25T15:24:00.003+03:00

This is a fascinating article about the current decision being made to replace Dr. Duane Litfin as the president of Wheaton, some of the controversies during his tenure, and the implications of this decision:

This spring, the board of trustees at Wheaton College will appoint a new president. As the flagship evangelical institution—the “Harvard of the Christian schools,” say the tour guides—Wheaton will be closely monitored by other colleges, by pastors and churches around the world, and by observers of Christendom generally. Indeed, in a November 2009 article, the New York Times went so far as to characterize Wheaton, Illinois as a kind of “evangelical Vatican.”
This year also marks the college’s sesquicentennial: 150 years since fiery abolitionist Jonathan Blanchard founded it on land given to him by city father Warren Wheaton. As a result, 2010 promises to be a time of looking forward and looking back.
Friends of Wheaton certainly have much to celebrate: during outgoing president Duane Litfin's 17 years in office, the college expanded the physical plant, grew the endowment, added two doctoral degrees, kept tuition costs impressively low, increased admissions selectivity, and weathered financial crises better than many institutions. Long before the attacks of 9/11, Litfin sent the lance-toting “Crusader” mascot into much-deserved retirement. Many excellent hires of younger faculty on Litfin’s watch bode well for the future. Despite the protests of some deep-pocketed older alumni, Litfin revoked the infamous rule against off-campus drinking and dancing. And in marked contrast to many American colleges with religious roots, Wheaton has not strayed from the core commitments on which it was founded.
Still, when one spends time talking with Wheaton faculty, students, and supporters, alongside real appreciation one is also likely to hear expressions of deep concern about the unusually pro-active roles that Litfin and his provost, Stanton Jones, have assumed as the definers and defenders of orthodoxy across the college. On the eve of transition to new leadership, this concern needs to be aired—not for the sake of settling scores, not in a spirit of smug judgment, but rather to provide one more important perspective as the college and its constituency look to the future. Thus, though it is far too early for a definitive account, perhaps a philosopher can rush in where historians fear to tread.

To continue:

http://www.somareview.com/whitherwheaton.cfm

Dan Brown Theology

2010-01-25T14:10:00.007+03:00

Reading any Dan Brown novel is a holistic experience: an engaging mix of art history, historical theology, secret societies, cutting edge scientific advances, deranged villains, chase scenes, elaborate conspiracies, complex riddles, New Age mysticism, and biblical references. Sure, you can dismiss is at escapist fiction, but I think reflecting on the theological implications of his various books can be so interesting.

The Da Vinci Code remains one of the best books I have ever read, and I believe it has been the most effective anti-Christian propaganda tool of my generation. I really think one of the most effective ways to combat anything is to write a popular novel, then fill it up with pseudo-history, half truths, and deception masquerading as the historical framework of your story. Imagine the uproar of a similar popular novel trashing the character of Muhammad and distorting the origins of Islam. Of course, as the writer of your novel, you hide behind your genre and claim that its all fiction, so who cares. But people don’t read that way. Obviously there is no real Robert Langdon running around Europe trying to find the descendants of Christ, but what was the vote on the divinity of Jesus at the Council of Nicea? What if that was the first time anyone had imagined Jesus as God? Who is sitting next to Jesus in the painting of the Last Supper? Was everything in Christianity a cheap rip-off from the Roman mystery religions? Even if people are somewhat skeptical about all the details, the general picture sinks in, and I can guarantee you that the perception of Christian has been influenced.

Anyway, this is actually about The Lost Symbol, which I read during my rather infrequent downtimes during this past Christmas break. I did enjoy reading it, but at the end I found it so empty and ridiculous. It’s a less interesting version of National Treasure. By the way, if you haven’t read The Lost Symbol yet, and would like to, this will probably ruin it for you, so you may as well stop now (and I also give away the ending of National Treasure).

One of the biggest theological points made in The Lost Symbol is that we have divine potential within all of us. Ps 82:6 is quoted multiple times: I said, “You are gods.” Even as Jesus said: The kingdom of God is within you (Luke 17:21). The following section is fairly long, but I think its worth including:

“Peter, the Bible and the Ancient Mysteries are total opposites. The mysteries are all about the god within you . . . man as god. The Bible is all about the God above you . . . and man as a powerless sinner.”

“Yes! Exactly! You’ve put your finger on the precise problem! The moment mankind separated himself from God, the true meaning of the Word was lost. The voices of the ancient masters have now been drowned out, lost in the chaotic din of self-proclaimed practitioners shouting that they alone understand the Word . . . that the Word is written in their language and none other.”

Peter continued down the stairs.

“Robert, you and I both know that the ancients would be horrified if they saw how their teachings have been perverted . . . how religion has established itself as a tollbooth to heaven . . . how warriors march into battle believing God favors their cause. We’ve lost the Word, and yet its true meaning is still within reach, right before our eyes. It exists in all the enduring texts, from the Bible to the Bhagavad Gita to the Koran and beyond. All of these texts are revered upon the altars of Freemasonry because Masons understand what the world seems to have forgotten . . . that each of these texts, in its own way, is quietly whispering the exact same message.” Peter’s voice welled with emotion. “ ‘Know ye not that ye are gods?’” (on my pdf version its page 327)

You know what’s interesting is that my professor in systematic theology class just made almost the same point. He said that salvation is not about having our sins forgiven and going to heaven. We were looking at the heresy of Arianism, and to combat this view, Athanasius argued that God became man so that man might become God. If, as Arius said, Jesus was just a great creature, then this process is not possible. Now, what Dan Brown is saying is different. Brown is basically peddling an updated, retooled Gnosticism. We have the divine spark within us, which must be harnessed and eventually freed from this depraved realm of flesh. The goal of Christianity is to become like Christ, not to become our own god with our own little universe.

At the same time, in the section above Peter makes some good points. I agree that it’s terrible when religion becomes a tollbooth to heaven. I despise the chaotic din of those declaring the Bible is written to them and claiming the promises of wealth and prosperity. That’s what’s so subversive about any of these novels, is that so much truth is mixed in with the error. There was a council, and there was a vote, over how the divinity of Jesus was to be understood in the church. Yes, if mankind is completely separated from God, then the message of the Word is lost. That’s why you have to balance transcendence and imminence. Both are true, and neither can be denied without losing Christianity.

I’ve probably missed the point somewhere, but the biggest thing I found so dumb was the fact that after solving all of those puzzles, running all over the place, having this whatever director of the CIA involved, all these people killed, like thirty occurrences of different people being like “this is the biggest deal ever,” we end up with Langdon basically having a heart attack when he looks out from the Washington Monument. I quote:

The wave of shock and disorientation that tore through Langdon’s body reached down inside and spun his internal compass upside down. He nearly fell backward as his mind strained to accept the utterly unanticipated sight that was before him. In his wildest dreams, Robert Langdon would never have guessed what lay on the other side of this glass.

The vision was a glorious sight.

I’ve seen DC from the Washington Monument before. It’s not THAT amazing. I also really appreciated the sunset view over campus from my T7 dorm room freshman year. My friend George has a more impressive view of Chicago from his apartment. The book ends with them looking out over a sunrise from the top of the capital building. That’s cool. There’s also a fair amount talking about the benefits of wisdom, books, etc. I like those things too. But the build-up throughout Lost Symbol is so completely out of proportion to anything they find.

Ok, I guess I’m simply too materialist to appreciate whatever pluralistic drivel Dan Brown is trying to teach me about finding the grains of wisdom in all religious writings and the commonalities in Isaac Newton, Ben Franklin, so on and so forth. I just like how in the end of National Treasure they actually found…treasure.

Demythologization

2010-01-20T16:12:00.005+03:00

Reading a section from Kerygma and Myth, “The Mythological Element in the Message of the New Testament and the Problem of its Re-interpretation,” by Rudolf Bultmann, was an interesting experience for me, as I realized I actually agree with much of what he is doing. His project sounds an awful lot like what I learned to do in ... contextualization. One of my paradigm shifting movements during my last year at Wheaton was taking Old Testament Cultural Environment, where we read many of the Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) sources that influenced the Bible. That’s right, the Bible was actually influenced by its cultural environment, which was a revolutionary concept for me that did not at all fit into my previous understanding of the Bible.

I came to realize that the cosmology that undergirds the Old Testament is that of the “cosmic dome”: that the earth is flat, with a solid sky above with holes for rain and tracks for the stars to roll in, held up by pillars. Hades, the land of shadows, is underneath the earth as the abode of the dead (this concept has been reinforced by a number of conversations with Ben Byerly, who is a big fan of the cosmic dome). That is what the Jews believed. However, it has been well debunked by the advances of science and technology, and I am convinced that the earth is not flat and the sky is not solid. This concept is my standard illustration of the cultural nature of the Bible, the necessity of contextualization, and the dangers of an uncritical literalist reading.

Bultmann begins his project of demythologization by explaining this very same concept. He then goes on to include angels, demons, the Devil, all spiritual forces, miracles, the resurrection, second coming, etc. in this rubric of pre-scientific cosmology. Now I believe quite firmly in all those things. The question immediately came to my mind: why does he lump all these things together, and how do I separate them? Some of you reading this doubtless consider my belief in God and demons just as absurd and irrational as I consider anyone who still believes in a three-tiered world. Bultmann makes the statement that “there is nothing specifically Christian in the mythical view of the world as such. It is simply the cosmology of a pre-scientific age.” I completely agree. I don’t think mental illness is caused by the moon, or that lightning demonstrates the anger of the gods. However, my definition of this cosmology is much narrower.

I find the modernist rejection of anything supernatural ridiculous: it simply does not match the reality of life as we know it. If there is no such thing as the supernatural, it is a very strange category for every culture that has ever existed to invent. The current intellectual environment is much more conducive to a reality beyond what we can touch and see, albeit this becomes a very eclectic world spirit cosmic energy Dan Brownish meaningless religious nonsense. At least that is better than a blanket rejection of anything beyond the strict confines of scientific verification.

Yet, at the same time, I was raised in a strongly empiricist atmosphere, and when my motorbike doesn’t start, I look for mechanical reasons and don’t really consider spiritual causes. I understand the difficult in believing in something you can’t see or hear. That’s why I believe Christianity is fundamentally not provable by apologetics. You can’t assemble arguments that will win over anyone if they are smart or rational enough. At some point you do have to step, or leap, out in faith.

Reading Bultmann reinforces my idea that just about everything comes down to contextualization at some point. The question becomes how well is that contextualization done. I think Bultmann’s goal is rather similar to mine. I’m still thinking through how I would answer my question above—which might have potential for a future taco night topic—, but my initial response is that I believe the earth is flat both on good evidence and personal experience. I have seen a globe and traveled quite a ways across the world, and the explanation for the world being round makes perfect sense to me. I have also had a great deal of experience with the supernatural, both firsthand and from others. I have not spoken to demons personally, but I know a number of people who have, and everything I have heard and read about this is corroborative and fits with my cosmology. Since coming to Africa, I have modified my Western, scientific viewpoint to be even more inclusive of the power of spiritual forces. I think about the presence of demons in doing ministry and when I’m affected negatively in various ways. So I’m not being completely arbitrary as I reject a three-tiered world, an understanding of stars as angels, but keep the basic premise of unseen spiritual forces at work in our world.

There is a lesson somewhere here: learn to contextualize well.

(if you are interested in reading my professor's, Dr. Bill Black, thoughts on the same subject, they are found on his blog: http://onesimusonline.blogspot.com/2010/01/bultmann-in-africa.html)

Moving Past Postmodernism

2010-01-16T17:49:00.010+03:00

As I consider my life, there are a great number of uncertainties, especially at the present moment. I don’t know where I will be after my graduation, although I feel it is more and more likely that I will stick around, if not Nairobi, at least Africa for a few years. I’m not exactly sure what I will be doing or who I will be working for. However, one thing I am fairly sure of is that I enjoy doing theology. Ever since I have been about 14 I have said that I will be a theologian: not pastor or professor, but a theologian. Um I have since discovered that that is a bit difficult, similar to being a practicing philosopher, which does not generally constitute a livable position (although I remember looking for pizza in the phonebook with my friend Ted at Wheaton, and right before pizza there was one entry for philosopher, not sure how well that worked for him…).

I went into my Contemporary Theology class 95% sure I was going to go drop it after that period, since taking 20 hours is crazy and my life as I have embellished it following my academic void of only 12 hours last term is completely unsustainable. However, as I sat in the first class and listened to our professor talk about theological method and learning how to present our theology, and think about the prospect of getting back into primary sources again, I couldn’t resist. And so far its been pretty awesome. We read Schleiermacher for class on Tuesday, and then for Friday we discussed the first section of Barth’s groundbreaking 1919 Commentary on Romans. I’ve read it before, but it brings back memories of amazing classes at Wheaton such as Doctrine of Scripture and Global Theology, where I really started to learn how to carefully read and critique theology.

One of the things I hope to do with my life is to take the context we are in and provide careful theological reflection to address the pertinent issues that I see in the world today. I feel that so much theology I have learned and see theologians doing, especially in the West, are merely rehashing the old debates that we have been engaged in for the last 500 years. I really appreciate a lot of Reformed theology, and that framework forms the foundation for a lot of my theology, but I don’t want to spend my live refighting those battles over and over. Calvin wrote for a particular time and place, and while he remains one of the very best theologians of all time, and I have a high respect for history, we need to move past the 16th century…

To give a very rough history of intellectual movements over the last few hundred years, the Enlightenment demolished the place of the church and tradition as the unquestionable authority and set up reason in its place. Modernity took reason, applied it to every imaginable subject, tried to bring mankind into a whole new era of perfection, did make a lot of progress, but didn’t change the fundament nature of man. WWI basically showed where that project ended up. Much of postmodern thought questioned the whole premise of modernity, and noticed that we are actually very limited, and can’t achieve perfection, and even the things we think we know are only from our perspective. This concept can be rather discouraging, and so a lot of people have decided that there is no truth and nothing actually matters at all.

I think postmodernism gets a lot of things right, and corrects most of the particularly egregious elements of modernity. Just look at the mess that resulted from the mix of modernity and missions… However, it is always easier to deconstruct than to construct. I can tear apart theological systems, sermons, etc., much easier than I can propose an alternative one. What must be done now is to take the positive insights of postmodernism and construct a new paradigm that will allow for forward movement. According to the Wikipedia article on Post-postmodernism:

Since the late 1990s there has been a widespread feeling both in popular culture and in academia that postmodernism "has gone out of fashion."[11] However, there have been few formal attempts to define and name the epoch succeeding postmodernism, and none of the proposed designations has yet become part of mainstream usage.

One of the things I hope to do with my life is to not only observe but be an active formulator of the next age of philosophy. I think the best theology is done along with and in response to philosophy, and that these two disciplines are ultimately inseparable. Theology must take into account the current intellectual, political and social context and produce reflections that establish how Christianity is to be lived today. This is what Vanhoozer and N.T. Wright are doing, just to name two, but there will need to be a new generation that takes up what they have done and continues. Some of the concerns that theology is facing now are massive issues such as justice, poverty, the nature of the church, the nature of interpretation, a reassessment of truth, and seen more clearly from the perspective of much of the third world questions such as witchcraft and the nature of sustainable development. Quite a daunting task…

The Real Story Behind the US 08 Election

2009-12-17T14:32:00.001+03:00

Travel Tips

2009-12-17T13:04:00.003+03:00

As I’ve been reflecting on my recent travels through East Africa, I felt I had some gems of wisdom to share with any of you who may be less “experienced” travelers.

1) You’re probably busy and thinking about a lot of other things, so its best to mentally prepare as you’re hastily skimming through a guidebook a few hours before you arrive and you realize you know next to nothing about this place.

2) Don’t calculate an exchange rate in advance, rather just work it out in your head right after you get change from someone and then you can figure out later by how much he defrauded you.

3) Try to arrive at the bus station at least 30 seconds before the bus leaves [this was only a 3 hour bus ride that cost about $5, for my major bus rides I was there about an hour early].

4) If you are in a country such as Rwanda and you know no French or Kinyarwanda, try asking around in Swahili. This will get a response maybe 30% of the time.

5) Don’t top up your airtime in advance when the price is set and it’s readily available, but wait until you are potentially almost out—and hence stuck with no way to contact anyone—and the credit is almost completely unavailable, meaning if you are lucky enough to find some you get charged twice as much.

6) Don’t bother to write out important numbers such as the people you are meeting in the places you’re visiting. Wait until you try to recharge your phone’s battery and it goes crazy for no reason when you plug it in, refusing to start at all—again meaning you are stuck with no way to contact anyone, and this time its even worse because you can’t even get the number to call using another phone. Then someone at the table next to you will probably offer you their Blackberry so you can go on facebook and look up all the numbers people sent you in facebook messages.

7) Another strategy in the situation above is to try random things with your phone to get it to work, and if all else fails, take out the battery and let it sit separately from the phone for at least two or three hours. This seems to make everything okay again.

8) If you don’t know why some outlets shut down your phone, just keep trying them until you find one that works.

9) If you realize its prohibited to bring something like plastic bags into a country, that you think would come in handy later, stick them in your back pocket and hope for the best.

10) When you realize that you have forgotten to bring an immunization certificate like yellow fever and you don’t remember which countries require it, you could try asking the bus conductor, but you’ll probably just find out that he doesn’t know. Don’t sweat it, and hope that you can sweet talk your way through the border if the need arises [although, um that won't always work]. It probably won’t.

11) If crossing the border into a potentially sketchy area like the DRC, try looking as far as you can from the border, maybe confer with your friend, and if it looks okay go for it.

12) If you only want breakfast and you don’t want to actually change money somewhere, just wander in the first hotel you find and chances are they charge in dollars.

13) If you’re in a bus, and they are playing really ridiculous music videos from the 80s, such as one demonstrating the dangers of drunk driving—“I was caught, caught, for breaking the law…”, or a fire truck going to put out a woman who is “on fire”, just go with it and enjoy.

14) As long as you don’t take too long at stops, buses don’t usually leave you behind.

15) If you’re on a beach and Arab men want to take a picture with you and a white girl, let them. This applies to any African men or boys as well, unless they are being really annoying.

16) If you’re on a beach and it looks like it is about to begin pouring rain, try to time it so you leave exactly five minutes before the rain starts. A good follow-up strategy is to hang out at a hotel for the rest of the day, playing cards and watching Al Jazeera. Try overpriced tea or if you’re very bold, a piece of “traditional” apple pie for only 9 dollars, and rather strange filling.

17) If there is a volcano that looks suspiciously active near you, try to ignore it.

18) Preaching can be a good way to get by in many countries. I was a visitor, so most of this was not just because I preached, but when I stayed with my friend’s pastor I received dinner, breakfast, lunch, tea, Coke, several bottles of water, a bed for the night, my church clothes ironed and folded, my shoes brushed, a three hour ride from the place upcountry back to the capital, and an Rwandan shirt. They were very generous.

19) Safari njema.

Year Two, Term One

2009-11-30T17:53:00.003+03:00

So this term I have really dropped the ball on blog updates. It's not that there is nothing going on; rather, it's been kind of a lot. However, my time has been spent a little differently. Last year, although I did a number of things, my time was generally speaking spent in class and doing school work. This term it was not.

I only took 12 hours this term: Systematic I, Homiletics, and Greek IV. Systematic and Homiletics were on Monday (from 8 - 5), and then Greek IV was Tues and Thur afternoons, 2 hours each day. That means I had no class Wed or Fri, and nothing every morning after Monday (except chapel). It was quite nice. I also had Swahili tutoring, 4 hours a week, which took a lot of my energy. I am getting a lot better but I still have a long ways to go. I moved from working in the IT office doing projects and support to working in the lab, which means I now work about 30 to 35 hours a month. I was also made a grace group leader (grace group is a small group of students, staff and faculty that meets Friday morning).

Student council work has also continued, but it has been significantly lighter this term than last year. Our council is only in office until February, so its only a few more weeks left. I am leaning against running again, but I am getting a lot of pressure to continue as the secretary. We'll see what happens.

Having transportation has made such a difference. I've been able to get out and visit people more often, and just going to the store is so much easier. I still need to develop my skills navigating in very heavy traffic, as I found out today. I went through Nairobi for the first time during the day (with a passenger), and it was rather challenging. But I have gotten so much more used to driving, and aside from really heavy traffic it's been a lot of fun.

I have also made several trips: to Mombasa, a village near Homa Bay (on the shore of Lake Victoria), and overnight trips closer to home. Last year I almost never left campus during term, so this has been really unusual. As far as papers, I only had one actual paper assigned this term, only six pages long. That is crazy. Greek IV was a really good class, and I learned (mostly) how to diagram sentences in Greek. I also found that my Greek is quite functional, which was a pleasant discovery.

The first few weeks of the term, I felt I wasn't making friends very well with the new students, but the last six weeks or so I have really come to appreciate them. Søren and I were able to find enough people to actually play games with us, for the first time ever (yeah Aaron and Anson)! I've reverted back to some of my Wheaton habits, like hanging out and having intense discussions until 1 or 2 am. Good times.

This past weekend I went on a retreat with Nairobi Chapel, and it was really good. I joined their small group that meets on campus this term, and we went through a discipleship book called Mizizi. It is probably the most comprehensive and intensive small group book I have seen. I didn't agree with everything, but overall I though it was quite good, and well suited to the Nairobi context. I think I'll finally consolidate my split loyalties and devote myself whole-heartedly to Chapel (instead of attending NPC Woodley but having most of my friends, connections, small group, and some ministry experiences at Nairobi Chapel). That would be good to resolve that, as its been an ongoing dilemma for me for a while now.

Tomorrow I am heading out on more travels. I'm traveling by bus through Uganda to Kigali, Rwanda (thats a 24 hour bus ride). I'll spend a few days there visiting friends and then stop by Uganda on the way back to visit some more people. I'm looking forward to it, and then I'll be on-campus (or around Nairobi) for the rest of the December break (with a possible trip to the coast as well). It will be sweet. Last year I was really excited to go back to America for Christmas, but this year I'm really happy to be here. It's a good feeling. Last year I wasn't a big fan of Nairobi, but it's been growing on me. When we were taking the bus back from Homa Bay a few weeks ago, as soon as I saw the lights of Nairobi I was really glad to be back. It felt like I was coming home.

Mombasa: The Ferry [part 2]

2009-10-23T12:45:00.003+03:00

In Mombasa, we stayed with a pastor named James. He lives on the south coast (since the city of Mombasa is on an island). To get from the south coast to Mombasa the only way is the ferry, which runs 24 hours a day. Cars and trucks are charged, but people ride free. And there are a LOT of them...

Mombasa [part 1]

2009-10-19T21:36:00.004+03:00

My class schedule this term is rather light. I have two classes on Monday, and then one class for the rest of the week. The week before midterm break, one of my professors left for a conference. So I had no class from Monday until the Tuesday of the next week. Naturally, I decided to go to Mombasa, the Kenyan vacation destination of choice. I went with my friend Vincent, who until recently lived across the hall from me in Q (he is currently being temporarily relocated due to flooding in his room).

It is a pretty sweet place.

Are Evangelicals About to Collapse?

2009-10-05T15:46:00.003+03:00

We read this article for systematic theology. I'm curious what you all think about this. I invite your comments.

The coming evangelical collapse
An anti-Christian chapter in Western history is about to begin. But out of the ruins, a new vitality and integrity will rise.
By Michael Spencer

We are on the verge – within 10 years – of a major collapse of evangelical Christianity. This breakdown will follow the deterioration of the mainline Protestant world and it will fundamentally alter the religious and cultural environment in the West.

Within two generations, evangelicalism will be a house deserted of half its occupants. (Between 25 and 35 percent of Americans today are Evangelicals.) In the "Protestant" 20th century, Evangelicals flourished. But they will soon be living in a very secular and religiously antagonistic 21st century.

This collapse will herald the arrival of an anti-Christian chapter of the post-Christian West. Intolerance of Christianity will rise to levels many of us have not believed possible in our lifetimes, and public policy will become hostile toward evangelical Christianity, seeing it as the opponent of the common good.

Millions of Evangelicals will quit. Thousands of ministries will end. Christian media will be reduced, if not eliminated. Many Christian schools will go into rapid decline. I'm convinced the grace and mission of God will reach to the ends of the earth. But the end of evangelicalism as we know it is close.

Why is this going to happen?

1. Evangelicals have identified their movement with the culture war and with political conservatism. This will prove to be a very costly mistake. Evangelicals will increasingly be seen as a threat to cultural progress. Public leaders will consider us bad for America, bad for education, bad for children, and bad for society.

The evangelical investment in moral, social, and political issues has depleted our resources and exposed our weaknesses. Being against gay marriage and being rhetorically pro-life will not make up for the fact that massive majorities of Evangelicals can't articulate the Gospel with any coherence. We fell for the trap of believing in a cause more than a faith.

2. We Evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people an orthodox form of faith that can take root and survive the secular onslaught. Ironically, the billions of dollars we've spent on youth ministers, Christian music, publishing, and media has produced a culture of young Christians who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they feel about it. Our young people have deep beliefs about the culture war, but do not know why they should obey scripture, the essentials of theology, or the experience of spiritual discipline and community. Coming generations of Christians are going to be monumentally ignorant and unprepared for culture-wide pressures.

3. There are three kinds of evangelical churches today: consumer-driven megachurches, dying churches, and new churches whose future is fragile. Denominations will shrink, even vanish, while fewer and fewer evangelical churches will survive and thrive.

4. Despite some very successful developments in the past 25 years, Christian education has not produced a product that can withstand the rising tide of secularism. Evangelicalism has used its educational system primarily to staff its own needs and talk to itself.

5. The confrontation between cultural secularism and the faith at the core of evangelical efforts to "do good" is rapidly approaching. We will soon see that the good Evangelicals want to do will be viewed as bad by so many, and much of that work will not be done. Look for ministries to take on a less and less distinctively Christian face in order to survive.

6. Even in areas where Evangelicals imagine themselves strong (like the Bible Belt), we will find a great inability to pass on to our children a vital evangelical confidence in the Bible and the importance of the faith.

7. The money will dry up.

Read the rest of the article at http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0310/p09s01-coop.html

Or, if you would prefer to read the original blog posts:
http://www.internetmonk.com/archive/the-original-coming-evangelical-collapse-posts

Pikipiki

2009-09-28T14:07:00.002+03:00

Last week I bought myself a pikipiki. It’s a Focin, 125 cc, and seems to work well. I was told it gets 55 kilometers to the liter, which would roughly translate to 125 miles to the gallon. Not bad. As this is Africa, this not just me getting a motorbike, but the whole community, so there have been about 10 to 15 people that have helped me get it started, joked that all their future transportation needs have now been met, offered suggestions on where to park it, checked out the features, and so on. Not to mention the hordes of children that descended also, climbing on it, feeling around, trying on the helmet, even taking the key at one point. It's nice to have other people also invested in your life!

The issue of safety may have occurred to some of you, so rest assured that I am taking things very slowly and am also very terrified of Nairobi traffic. I've been out practicing twice so far, going slow on the dirt roads behind the campus, and getting a feel for everything. It will be a long time before I take passengers or venture into high traffic scenarios. It is frustrating still taking matatus places when I have transport but I want to be careful. Of course, I'd appreciate any prayers for safety!

This is my parking spot, right by my building to discourage theft.

Africa Let's Worship

2009-09-26T22:21:00.006+03:00

About a week ago there was a group of us from NEGST that went to an annual event called Africa Let's Worship. Its a worship service that goes from 9:00 pm until 6:00 am. Its big, about 10 to 15 thousand people big. We went 2 hours early to get seats, and by around 9 the church it was held in filled up and no one else could get inside. Thousands more were in tents outside the church.

I really enjoyed it. It was certainly high energy, and had quite a bit of technical trouble, including the power going out and the entire church going pitch dark, but it was a lot of fun. It was also very reverent at times, and we lots of time for prayer. We didn't stay the whole time, but left at 1 am. Next time I think I'd like to stay longer.

Alpheus and John as we were holding down the seats.

Somalia: A Libertarian Paradise

2009-09-04T18:37:00.005+03:00

For those in America that feel government is starting to do too much, there is a place where the government does nothing at all. I thought the video was pretty funny.

http://humanitarianrelief.change.org/blog/view/come_to_somalia

Here is an example of an article extolling the benefits of the Somali situation:

http://mises.org/story/2066

(for some reason the link doesn't show up on this one, you have to copy the address)

You want me to bring what?

2009-09-04T17:51:00.005+03:00

Coming back to America and then returning to Kenya can be a somewhat stressful experience, I have found. For those of you unfamiliar with such an experience, here is a list of the things I have been asked to buy in America and then bring to Kenya with me (usually with no money down and an unspecified repayment in the general future):

- 7 laptops
- 3 digital cameras
- jeans
- shoes
- weights (the little magnetic ones you add to dumbbells)
- water filter part
- Hebrew textbook
- 1000 CDs
- an entire suitcase of textbooks for the bookstore
- credit cards (but I'm not buying these, just bringing them)

If I were to have brought all of those things back with me, if would have been roughly 200% of my total luggage allotment and would have cost around $3000. I am bringing back 3 laptops, 1 digital camera, the water filter part, the Hebrew textbook, and the credit cards. That's a bit more manageable. I must say, my favorite request was the 1000 CDs. It came less than a week before I leave for Nairobi...

Summer 2009

2009-08-18T01:43:00.001+03:00

Blogging again. Ok, so I am no longer in Nairobi and have just arrived back in Maryland after traveling around the county. Last semester ended quite well, although it went right down to the wire. I thought I would never write my final papers, but I did, and they finished up better than I expected. Curtsey of my slot on Senate, I went through the graduation procession all decked out, trailing all the professors with Ken (student council chairman, also on Senate). I got to meet John Mbiti, the father of contemporary African theology, which was exciting. The graduation parties were a lot of fun, and so much food. From the time I finished up my last paper on Wed till I left on Monday, I spent basically the whole time attending various functions, hanging out and visiting all the people I had been basically ignoring for the last month of school (and packing up my entire room). It was fun.

Then I flew back to Baltimore, was at home for a few days, then flew out with my family to Seattle to visit my grandparents and other relatives out there. I was there for two weeks, then flew to Chicago for a wedding Aug 1st. I was a groomsman (wearing a tux for the first time), and helped out with the preparations as much as I could. It was a good experience, and everything came together by the end. Then I spent the next week in Chicago with all my friends in the area, of which there are still a lot. It was awesome spending time with all of them. I miss Wheaton people. After that, my family picked me up and we drove up to the UP of Michigan, and stayed with my grandmother there. It was quiet and relaxing.

Tomorrow I’m helping my sister move down to college in Virginia, then the next day my friend starting grad school at George Washington. I have three weeks until I return to Nairobi and the craziness of life really picks up again…

Interview with Thomas from Liberia

2009-07-10T05:58:00.002+03:00

For African Church History class, we were assigned an oral history project. I interviewed my friend Thomas from Liberia, and he has quite a story to tell. I asked if I could post it, and he agreed. We had to do a transcript of our interview, and I have not edited it. These are very selected excerpts, however, since the transcript came to five single spaced pages.

So they were fighting all over, a battlefront all over. And this process was tense for every Liberians. And so the government troops almost relent in the middle of the war, but they kind of divided themselves, those who were able to submit to Charles Taylor troops came on his side and were fighting for him. So those who remained independent, they also formed their own group, then those who diverted from their own groups: so we had more than 5 different groups fighting the same civil war. So as a result, people would come from outside of the country and just form their own group, people would remain in America and begin to support group and they organize people and the people begin to fight.

Ok, as for the church, I think the main issue was that most of the members left and went exile, ok, like my church went to Ivory Coast, other people went to Guinea, some went to Sierra Leone, some went to Ghana, some went to Nigeria. So the few people that remained in Liberia where I was, some of them actually became apostate because of the situation they found themselves in. Some begin to mix Christianity with other religions. Some begin to go for protection, we saw Christians going to herbalist to get protection for gun-proof. Ok, so when you get the gun-proof you begin to fight for Charles Taylor I think you begin to lose your identity you Christian identity so many people backslid because of this issue. Some other people were carried away by peer pressure because your friend comes from the battle-front and tells you, my man, this thing is easy, if you go and fight nothing will happen. Just take your own time and just follow instruction. Some Christians even join their friends to fight the war. Ok, so the church was greatly affected.

[Thomas went to Ivory Coast as a refugee.] The Ivorians decided that since war is in our country, we left our country and entered their country we brought the ugly feeling and the ugly behavior with us. So any ugly thing that any Ivorian does, they would say, those Liberians are the ones behaving like that. So I decided to leave Ivory Coast.

So while the war was going on I entered Liberia, and there was some friends of mine who took… When I was a student at ABC I bought some produce, coffee and cocoa, so I kept it in my house, in my home town. But these rebels conquered the place and they begin to take my coffee and cocoa and bring it over to Ivory Coast to sell it. So I decided, I saw one of my friends who said, “Oh, your coffee you left over there is now for the rebels, and they are taking the coffee and selling it.” So I decided to go back and get my coffee because my family never had anything. So I crossed the river, I never went to the rebel side, I went down the river because Liberia is bordered by Ivory Coast and there is a big river that divides the two countries, so I went across the river downstream, and I was able to cross and get to my village. So I passed and went to the town, I saw some of the coffee even though they have taken some, but I took two bags and carried to our village and I hired people, we took it and brought it to Ivory Coast. I sold it, and I paid people to come back for the balance.

So when I came, I decided to actually be in Liberia, but the question that came to my mind is what am I going to do in Liberia when war is going on? But the way I observed the rebels, their behavior and other things, brought another idea, God spoke to me that I think I should be in the midst of these people and be able to talk with anyone that would be open to me. So I begin to evangelize. Yes. So from one person to another, I begin to talk from one place to another, from one village to another village, until I was able to establish 6 different preaching stations in different, different villages, ok. So these six different preaching stations, I went back to the Ivory Coast and brought one of my friends who worked along with me. So we used to walk like 13 hours in a day to go from village to village to evangelize. But the best thing I did was, I could not go from place to place like that without handling arm, ok, so I decided to go for their training. So I went, they trained me, and they taught me how to handle the gun, how to dismantle it, and how to assemble it. So they taught me everything, and I managed to get one from their main commander. So he gave me the arm, I just used to handle the arm and move from place to place.

I do not take part in anything that they do, but I always advise them when they were doing wrong and remind that that this country you see would never remain like this. Though you are killing some people, but other people would remain alive. You may kill a brother of another sister, and this sister will live to see you another time: what will you tell the person? So I was able to convince most of them, and I was able to relieve some other people that they arrested who were going to Ivory Coast, citizens leaving the country because of war, they were rescued and they want you to remain with them. And they don’t feed the people. So once you arrest somebody and you are not able to feed the person I would go there and say, “But if you keep this person the person will die. You either release them, or continue to feed them daily.” Now if you can’t feed them, then I will tell you, let them go. So I was able to help plenty of people.

Dr. Jusu

2009-07-10T05:51:00.005+03:00

Ever since I first saw Dr. Jusu at NEGST, I have been very intrigued by him, because he seemed a very dynamic and distinctive professor. I just came across this biography, and I think it is fascinating. People at NEGST tend to have such interesting stories behind them, and their life experiences are so different from anything I have experienced. His profile is found here:

http://www.cisf.org/dr-john-jusu-sierra-leone

For any of you who might happen to be considering seminary, another reason to come to NEGST is to meet and learn from people like Dr. Jusu...

Does Your Pastor Preach Like This?

2009-07-09T19:34:00.012+03:00

Maybe your church needs a little more passion.

These videos were taken a few months ago at the Life in Christ Outreach Ministries church in Kibera.

Cranmer's Eucharistic Theology and the Book of Common Prayer?

2009-07-09T19:22:00.004+03:00

I have no doubt that all of you have been wondering recently, what on earth is the relationship between Thomas Cranmer's Eucharistic theology and how he crafted the Book of Common Prayer? Good question. Obviously I had been wondering the same thing, and fortunately I wrote a paper on this very topic and it is now available for your perusal. Since Blogger does not let you upload documents, I started another blog for that purpose. Check it out:

http://davidbawks.wordpress.com/2009/07/09/cranmers-eucharistic-theology/

Third Term

2009-06-25T16:41:00.004+03:00

It's a bit difficult to sum up the entire term in one post. But I'll see what I can do. Basically, this term has been all about student council. That's where I put my time, focus and energy. For a few weeks it was on my mind constantly, like every waking moment. I have found that as secretary, I have rather a lot of responsibilities. I have also discovered that there are a lot of things the student council does that could be done better. Many times I have felt that if I could be a full time secretary, 40 hours a week, then I could do a decent job. One of my responsibilities is for our secretary office, which offers typing, binding, and printing services. Unfortunately, most month the office only makes about half of the salary of our administrative secretary that we do employ full time to run the office. So we have to subside that office with our more profitable divisions, such as the farm. I have been trying to think of ways to make more money, and also how to incorporate a writing center into our secretary office. NEGST really needs a writing center, and getting that started, and sustainable, is one of my goals while I'm here.

I also have a lot of meetings and consultations, and of course it can be boring, but actually I have found that I do enjoy a lot of it. I like knowing how the school runs and hearing the inside story on things. Most meeting have actually been okay as far as length, but then the Senate meeting yesterday was seven and half hours, and I found that a bit long! I've researched such diverse topics as asbestos and GPA policies, and met with so many people over these issues. Raising money for the school to get charted by the Kenyan government, figuring out how to include all students in the graduation banquet, approving the leave of our employees, working on our financial systems and guidelines, handling various requests of the student council--these are all things I've had to do over the last few months. Leadership in a cross-cultural setting is really interesting, and presents a lot more challenges. Most things that are communicated are misunderstood. I've engaged in so much interpretation over what things really mean, the fine art of reading between the lines.

Since I am still a full time student, I have also had some classes to attend and assignments to do. This term I only took 14 hours, my lightest load yet, and I have had more difficult getting papers done this term than ever. At one point or another I was behind in each class, the first time I've turned in papers late at NEGST. I'm taking African Church History, Matthew 1-13, Introduction to Missions, and Introductions to Urban Missions. Matthew was the best, and hearing Dr. Wood's theology of justice was fascinating. Each term so far I've experienced a paradigm shift in my theology: 1st term, contextualization; 2nd term, power encounter; and 3rd term, Matthew and how justice is a huge theme in the Bible, and especially in the teachings of Jesus. I see it all over the place now. Justice really has never been emphasized much until I went to Wheaton, and then it was primarily social justice, which is obviously a big part of it, and really important, but I don't think its all there is to justice. This is something I certainly hope to continue studying in future.

Matthew has also taught me to be much more curious about what I read in the Bible. I've realized that there are so many things I've accepted at face value and never questioned, and when I think about why or what exactly it means, I have no idea. Like why was Jesus baptized? I found out that I really don't know, and I don't remember ever really considering that question. I wrote a paper on it and I still don't think I know. I mean, I do have some thoughts and ideas about it, its not completely meaningless, but there is a lot about it I think I'm missing.

Second term I was largely focused on my ministry involvement in Kibera, but I became too frustrated and had too many problems with the church and at the end of the term decided I could no longer continue there as an "assistant" pastor. Since then, I've been attending NPC (Nairobi Pentecostal Church) Woodley but I haven't really gotten involved. I hope to when I return in September.

I would also like to buy a motorcycle, and was planning to do so but the process of finding one and buying was just too difficult and I didn't have time to really shop around and find one. That's something else I will do in September, and although I must admit I am rather nervous about driving a motorcycle around here, I'm also really excited! It will be so awesome, and to have my own transportation... amazing.

Postmodernism and Development

2009-06-23T22:07:00.001+03:00

Lest any of you doubt that I am actually in graduate school, and think that my life consists purely of vacationing and the excitement of exotic travel, this more academic post should help to disabuse you of that notion.

As I’ve been researching my term paper for Intro to Urban Ministry, looking at development and urban ministry, I was somewhat surprised to find such a philosophical element to the development debate. There are many ways to understand and do development work, but one of the most prevalent is the modernization paradigm, currently being espoused as neoliberalism (according to David Simon, see below). I assume modernization in this context would be basically countries such as Kenya becoming “modern,” like the West, in the sense of getting electricity, roads, media, etc. The postmodern perspective critiques this idea as being problematic on many levels, such as the assumption that we are more “advanced” than others, and we then merely duplicate our lifestyles and impose them on others. Such issues as environmental sustainability also point to the consequences if everyone were to have an American standard of living: not good. Even looking at the current economic crisis, from my devout reading of NY Times columnists I get the impression that there is a systemic shift going on in American attitudes towards consumption and having a lot of “stuff”—most of which they don’t need. Showing off wealth by going shopping and buying ridiculously overpriced clothes and other things doesn’t seem quite as cool anymore.

Back to postmodernism, I hadn’t thought of its implications in this specific aspect; but I realize now that this “movement,” if it can be organized to that extent, affects all academic disciplines. Some of the conclusions arising from the postmodern critique of development end up in the realm of anti-development: it shouldn’t be done at all. Well, that is probably not the most helpful way to go about this issue! I found the following quote quite fascinating:

Most postmodernists and postcolonialists have great difficulty in embracing the concrete development aspirations of the poor in practice, despite their theoretical sophistication. Part of this trend is a growing retreat to the cosy Northern pavement café—a favoured haunt of those with panoptic vision(s)!—from the rigours and challenges of field research in the South, by hiding behind the conveniently hyped 'crisis of representation' of who has a/the right to speak or write on behalf of Third World 'others'. (Simon, 185)

This sounds quite a bit like the conversation going on theology concerning African identity and the nature of authentic, African theology (or theologies). Of course, it is true that we as outsiders cannot make their decisions or speak on their behalf, but in terms of development, does that mean we do nothing? And then of course there’s the whole debate over dependency and all its related problems, but I won’t be able to solve that here! I suppose I should get back to actually writing the paper, but I thought this was quite an interesting idea. I’ll leave you with this:

What I am suggesting is the importance of a healthy scepticism towards some of the more sweeping and emotive formulations of post-everything, which may universalize from particular case studies in a manner reminiscent of modernist theorizing, be elitist as practised by its advocates despite the supposed concern with precisely the opposite, and may actually be of little practical use in addressing poverty and providing basic needs. Moreover, critiques of conventional developmentalism and the search for more meaningful, appropriate and socially grounded and bottom-up alternatives are not new. As with the different definitions of development and the examples of basic needs and environmental sustainability given above, there is a long pedigree of initiatives and theoretical formulations stretching back decades… (Simon, 190)

(from David Simon, “Development Reconsidered; New Directions in Development Thinking,” Geografiska Annaler, Series B, Human Geography 79, no. 4 (1997): 183-201.)

Getting Stuck [Mwanza part IV]

2009-05-30T14:03:00.021+03:00

On this side it looks fine.

But there was this huge ditch on the other side we didn't see coming up the hill.

We eventually dug under the vehicle, put the jack down below, lifted it up, filled in under the tire with stones, and backed up.

On the road back to Nairobi, we suddenly found ourselves stopped behind a whole line of cars. This is why.

We all tried to avoid getting splashed from the truck, but I got really muddy anyway.

The bus did make it through, but I was quite afraid it wouldn't, and would just fall over!
We finally escaped by driving out on the open field around the water.

Ha. Success. I've tried to do this post about 5 times over the past 10 days, and now it finally worked. Our faster internet finally came through, and it does make a difference. Ok, now the vacation is over. Now time to get back to school updates!

Mwanza [part III]

2009-05-19T09:13:00.004+03:00

A ferry on Lake Victoria.
We went to visit an orphanage in the making. It was in quite a remote area, and had really good views of the lake.
We played volleyball on the beach.
Another really nice house right on the lake.

Mwanza [part II]

2009-05-18T16:05:00.006+03:00

Mwanza has really been built up over the last few years.

Some of the houses we walked by were really interesting.
I must say that I was blown away by how nice some of the missionary houses were. It helps that it costs about 1/10th of what it does in the States...
I found my accommodations acceptable.

Mwanza [part I]

2009-05-18T15:29:00.006+03:00

At the rate I'm going, I'm not going to finish blogging about this last break before we get to the next break, so I need to step it up.
Therefore, this post is about Mwanza, where I spent the majority of my trip. Dr. Rasmussen, my professor for contextualization first term, asked if I would be interested in going to visit Mwanza, Tanzania, with them. He had been a missionary there for about 13 years, teaching at the Lake Victoria Bible College, before he moved up to Nairobi to teach at NEGST. After staying one night in Nakuru, I took the overnight bus to Mwanza, itself quite an experience. We left Nakuru at 1 am, got to the border around 7 am, and got to Mwanza around 2 pm. At one point, we were stopped for a long time, about 30 minutes I think. I didn’t know why were stopped, but the engine was just running and nothing was happening. After a while, people started to get upset, and they all streamed out of the bus, and one guy was like, come on, we’re going to go protest. I was like what!, but I went to see what was happening. They went out and started yelling at a police officer, and then the driver was in the little station on the side of the road filling out paperwork, and then a few minutes later he finished and then we went on our way.
A village I saw out of my window. This is something I haven't seen much around Nairobi.
Another bus whose voyage appeared to be rather less fortunate than ours.We got a good view. It's a very hilly city.
It reminded me of being out at Warm Beach Camp, north of Seattle, looking over the Puget Sound.

Transcending Epistemology: Towards a Postmodern Theology

2009-05-11T22:18:00.000+03:00

This is curtesty of my friend Søren Dalsgaard, from Denmark. I came across a paper he posted, and it is quite good. Enjoy!

http://scdalsgaard.wordpress.com/2009/01/10/postmodern-christian-theology/#comment-1292

Warning: it is a bit technical.

Staying in Nakuru

2009-05-08T09:21:00.000+03:00

After camping in Naivasha, a group of us stayed at another student's place outside Nakuru. It was quite a nice place

Slaughtering and Roasting a Sheep, part I

2009-05-05T21:02:00.003+03:00

Esayas slaughtered it and skinned it the Ethiopian traditional way, and explained the significance of all the various parts. Parts of the fat, like on the rump, are really good and used for special purposes. Sleep are slaughtered for special occasions, like a wedding or the story of the prodigal son.
It took hours to get it all ready and then to roast it, but it was quite good. We ate just about everything, except the lungs and the head. Some people even eat the head, they prepare it in some special way. They said the tongue was good, but we didn’t bother to cook it. I don’t know exactly what I ate, but I’m pretty sure I ate part of the heart, kidneys, intestine, and some of its four stomachs.
Edwin (pictured above) made a stew out the intestines, and it was really good, much softer than the rest of it, which can be kind of hard to chew.
Overall,it was quite an experience, and I thought a lot about all the biblical images concerning sheep, like Jesus being killing as a sheep, and how we are like sheep going astray. We had devotions Sunday morning, which was Palm Sunday, and Dennis pointed out how the sheep was brought into our camp with great triumph, and we were all excited, taking pictures with it, and then led it away and killed it. Just like how Jesus entered Jerusalem and then was killed a week later.

Slaughtering and Roasting a Sheep, part II

2009-04-30T21:05:00.006+03:00

##The title should provide some guidance, but some pictures may be disturbing for some viewers.##

Yes, I do realize I am starting with part II, and I didn't plan to break things up this much, but the internet is refusing to allow me to load more pictures. So we'll start with the second part of the process.
We ate just about everything, except the lungs and the head. Some people even eat the head, they prepare it in some special way. They said the tongue was good, but we didn’t bother to cook it. I don’t know exactly what I ate, but I’m pretty sure I ate part of the heart, kidneys, intestine, and some of its four stomachs. It was all really good.
That is some of its four stomachs, roasting away.
Philip was a chef extraordinaire. He spent hours over the coals tending the meat! Edwin also made a stew out the intestines, and it was really good, much softer than the rest of it, which can be kind of hard to chew.
The remnants of our dearly departed (and tasty) friend.

Next time: part I... (and theological application)

Buying a Sheep

2009-04-28T22:27:00.008+03:00

One afternoon while we were there, Edwin suggested that we climb this small "mountain" to go swimming, so we did.
On the way back, we passed a shepherd herding a little flock along the road. Edwin had already mentioned that you could buy a sheep for 1000 shillings (about $13). That seemed a great deal, so we asked the guy about buying one. He demanded 3000, which did not seem as great of a deal. We actually decided against it, and started walking back, but then changed our minds as Philip saw I was disappointed and said I had to have a story to tell back home. Edwin ran after him and we finally got a sheep for 2000.

I dragged it back to our camp, and it was somewhat stubborn, as I had heard about sheep.

Along the way back to the camp, we came across more animals. Philip was enjoying himself...

When we entered our camp, the paparazzi descended, and we all took our pictures with the sheep. Ok, the library is closing so I must leave. You'll have to check back to see what happens next...

Camping In Naivasha

2009-04-26T16:18:00.007+03:00

Camping in Naivasha was a blast. I was worried about rain, but the weather was beautiful the entire time. I joined a small group retreat from Nairobi Chapel, of while I have never participated in the group before, I did know most of the members. It was a rather diverse group: Philip (The Gambia), Dennis (Uganda), David Fugoyo (Sudan), Edwin (Kenya), and Esayas and his family (Ethiopia). There were some other Kenyan ladies as well who are not NEGST students.

This was the road from our campsite to the lake. It was about a half hour walk, and we could see an outline at the end, which did not move the entire time. We couldn't figure out if it was alive, but it was, and turned out to be some zebras enjoying the shade.

The lake was really dry, as you can see.

We found what we believed to be hippo tracks.

This was our central cooking and fellowship area. We camped in four tents, but I figured you'd probably seen a tent before so I didn't bother to upload a picture. Next post: slaughtering and roasting a sheep...

Hiking in Karen

2009-04-24T09:08:00.004+03:00

The week before I headed off on my travels, I went hiking with Njeri at this little-known nature area she knew of that's only a few minutes from campus. It was quite a nice place.

This bridge was a tad rickety but we made it over.

Along the way there was this rather small cave. Reminded me of spring break sophomore year...on a much smaller scale.

There was also a waterfall. Overall, quite a good hike.

Back from Vacation

2009-04-23T22:40:00.004+03:00

I've actually been back over a week now, but I'm still getting fully adjusted back to school work and email and all those sorts of non-vacation things. My various journeys were quite awesome and eventful, and thus will take a bit of time to document and upload here. I had hoped to post some pictures of when I had gone hiking actually not for from campus, here in Karen, but the internet is not cooperating and the library is almost closed. I have over 500 pictures, and when I get time to brave the time-consuming process of putting them on here, you all can see a bit of what I was up to. If you haven't heard from me in a while, there's a decent chance I've been meaning to write you, and I hope to get around to that within the next several days. Although my course load is lighter this term, it has been quite a bit of work already. Ah, I see one picture has loaded. That was the entrance to the park, so I'll leave that as a taste of what's to come.

Off on Vacation...

2009-04-03T11:43:00.003+03:00

So I hope the rains will hold off for just another few days, but I will be camping at Naivasha for the weekend, so I'm looking forward to that. Naivasha is on the Rift Valley, and I've heard its beautiful. I'm going with an ecclesia group from Nairobi Chapel, and we'll be there until mid Sunday, and then we'll be going to stay at Kinyua's house (another student here, a former leader of the singles group), not far from Nakuru. On Monday night I'll take the overnight bus from Nairobi to Mwanza, which goes through Nakuru. The whole ride is about 11 hours, and I'm cutting off 2 by picking it up in Nakuru, but that's still a bit of time! Then I'll be in Mwanza until Easter, and then we'll come back Monday. There's a professor here who lived there for many years before coming to NEGST, and he's going back with his family for a visit, and I'm staying with them. I imagine I'll have some updates when I return...

Kenyan Initiation

2009-03-31T14:42:00.002+03:00

I have now been inducted as a full Kenyan: robbed on a matatu. This has been quite a weekend. On Saturday, I went down to Nairobi to meet with Pastor Emmanuel to discuss my future church involvement. As I got out of the matatu once we had arrived downtown, I realized my phone and iPod were no longer in my pocket. I was the last to leave the matatu, and I assumed it had fallen out of my pocket, so I went back to check, but it was gone. I had been reading during most of the ride down Ngong road into town, ideal for maximizing my time, not quite so good for guarding against thieves. Thinking back, I remember when the guy next to me sat down, he stumbled, slipped against my leg, and apologized. At the time I thought nothing of it, but I’m sure that’s when he picked my pocket. Losing the iPod is pretty lame, but my phone is quite cheap, and I’m really glad they didn’t get my wallet. That would have been not cool. I have always been skeptical of the possibility of someone reaching into my jeans pocket and removing something without me noticing. These pockets are not loose! Half the time I can't even get something like an iPod out without the headphones getting all tangled in everything. But he was good, and I have a certain respect for someone who can do that without me noticing.

I waited for Emmanuel for an hour and a half, and was just about to leave when I walked into him. Our meeting place is “bomb blast,” the location of the American Embassy bombing in the 90s, and we had met there several times before. We had both been there the entire time, and I don’t know how we missed each other, but when he called me and I didn’t answer, he assumed I wasn’t there and waited in a restaurant. Frustrating. We went to Safaricom customer care, and were finally able to transfer my old number to a new sim card, although I didn’t have my passport with me, didn’t know the serial number of my phone (seriously!!), couldn’t come up with three numbers I normally call, and didn’t even know what my tariff was (the rate you’re charged for a call). Emmanuel provided his number, which I had called, otherwise I would have had nothing. I also found out that the guy who had stolen my phone transferred 980 shillings of credit to another account, which is traceable. I had put on 1000 shillings worth of credit half an hour before it was stolen, something I do about once every six weeks…

I filed a police report, which required going to the front desk, the waiting room next to it, room 5, then being told to go to room 4, going to get an abstract from this sketchy café place behind the police station, then having to go upstairs to room 6, finding there was no one in room 6, and then going back to 4, and waiting for a stamp. I finally got it. I went back to Safaricom to track down my things, but was told I had to go to CID HQ, the Criminal Investigation Department. It’s like the Kenyan FBI. So on Monday, I went back to Nairobi, and after at least an hour of wandering around, finally found the bus station and a matatu on route # 100, and went to CID. I went in and was told at the front desk they could do nothing unless they have an official letter from the police station where I made the report. I was not pleased, and said that I had been told to go there, and was not returning with nothing. This eventually brought me to the next person, who explained the same thing, but I just sat there and kept looking at him, and refused to accept that. That brought to an agent, and she seemed pretty on top of things. She was from somewhere in the Middle East, and I don’t think I would want her tracing me. She took all my information, and called Safaricom, but they didn’t want to tell her anything without an official letter. While I was waiting in the waiting room, the other guys waiting with me pointed out that however transferred my credit must have known my pin number. I had not thought of that, so they said it must be an inside job, someone who knows me very very well, most likely my girlfriend. I told them that was actually rather unlikely. Another guy waiting next to me was this clearly rich business man, and he had received a death threat a few days ago. After threatening him, this person wanted to meet to arrange for a higher payment than whoever had hired him. The businessman decided to go to the police instead, and was trying to figure out who was trying to kill him. Since both him and his wife had been called, he thought it was someone close, and was suspicious of his driver.

I finally accepted that I would need to go back to the police station and have them send CID an official letter. So if I had known that, it would have taken about 5 more minutes on Saturday, to have them send that letter. Instead, it took me 8 hours to figure that out on Monday, but that’s Kenya. I figured I had the time and was curious to see how the Kenyan police system worked. We'll see if anything happens.

In other news, I finally took all my exams and finished all my papers, so I am now free. It's quite nice. I'm either going camping at Naivasha Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday, and then taking a bus from Nakuru to Tanzania on Monday, or riding with Dr. Rasmussen to Tanzania on Saturday. The rains have started, so I'm a little skeptical about camping. We'll see how it works out.

Kibera Praise

2009-03-14T13:48:00.029+03:00

This is the church I've been involved with in the Kibera slum of Nairobi, the second largest slum in Africa. I like to describe it as "carnival music." It is high energy and they love it.

I love the dancing! They really get into it.

Cultural Insights from Sociology of Language

2009-03-13T09:30:00.009+03:00

In every culture, there is significance in how you greet someone. For cultures, this is more defined than for others. In Japanese, you use entirely different forms to address someone who is considered a member of the “outside group” than you would in addressing a member of the “in group.” In many African languages, there are different ways to address someone depending on whether they are the same age as you, older than you, or younger than you.

How you address your father is also very important. I learned that in many cultures you can never use your father's first name. If someone else has the same first name, this can become tricky, since you can't say it and have to find other ways around it. In some ways, America is the same: it would be very strange to call your dad by his first name. However, in Africa it certainly seems a bigger deal. In Nigeria, the wife does not even call her husband by his first name. She calls him another word, maigida, which means literally “the owner of the house.” If there are children present, then you address the father with the name of the son: father of so and so. I hear this all the time: Mama Hannah, Mama Ada, etc. It seems to work well.

I just finished a history exam, and I think it went well. We had to write an essay on revivals from the 18th to the 20th century. I know a bit about that. Now I'm off home to finish editing someone's paper, maybe work a bit more on my sermon for Sunday, take a shower, and make some rice for taco night. Then I'm off to taco night, and tomorrow the work continues. 3 papers left, 2 finals, 2 weeks. Manageable.

Death at NEGST

2009-03-11T20:51:00.005+03:00

One of my friends from my academic advising group lost his one year old son a week and a half ago. It was so sad. It was really sudden, he got sick Sunday afternoon, they took him to the hospital and then he died at 12:30 am. I don't know what it was. It really shook up the community last week. There was a huge stream of people that came through his house to visit the morning after, and I also went and sat silently for about 30 minutes and then I left. For two nights last week we had meetings around a bonfire, having us gathered around in the dark, singing songs, hearing messages of encouragement, and praying. I haven’t experienced anything quite like that in America. It felt really genuine to me. One of our chapels last week was dedicated to him as well. The burial was on Saturday, at his home upcountry, and there was a big caravan from NEGST that went, 37 I heard. I was debating going the whole week, but since I was not feeling well on Friday and it would have involved traveling all day, I decided against it. Had I known I would have canceled preaching on Sunday, I might have reconsidered, but it was probably better for me to stay.

It is not common for a member of the NEGST community living on campus to die, but certainly death, especially of infants, is much more common here. There was a former student who lost her son one day after he was born just a few weeks ago. What do you say when that happens? I'm glad there were so many others to comfort and talk to them, and I didn't have to say anything. I think its usually better just to be there and not say much. I think that's what I would want if I were in that situation.

The Last Few Weeks

2009-03-10T08:21:00.002+03:00

The last few weeks have been pretty busy. I did win the race for secretary, which has brought an entirely new onslaught of responsibilities. Counting the votes was really interesting: we all voted, writing the name on a little slip of paper, and then putting in a box. Then each candidate picked a rep, and the electoral commission and the reps dumped all the papers onto a table at the front of the chapel and separated them into the separate piles. Then they went through the piles as the entire group counted aloud. Never heard of that before. I managed to pull it off 65-29.

The first couple weeks being secretary were kind of rough, and I had so many hours of meetings, and my emails probably doubled. These last couple weeks haven’t been as bad, and I haven’t even had a meeting since last Monday. I’m not positive about this, but I bet I’m the youngest student to ever be on the student council. I wonder if there’s any way to find that out.

After my week devoted to student council, I really buckled down and started working on my assignments. Last Wednesday was a banner day. I saw in my room all afternoon and wrote four papers (4)! It was incredible. It’s probably the most productive day I’ve ever had, and none of them were due the next day. They came to around 14 pages. Granted, most of them were reflection papers, and I had thought about them, and had written down a few words in brainstorming, but I still wrote them all. 3 of them were for church ministry and mission, and 1 was for power encounter. It was about time though. We have four papers to write for church ministry and mission, all due at the very end of the class, and I had written none of them, and it was the 9th week out of 10. I really like that class. Two of the papers were about our church visits to churches outside of our tradition, and one was about our tradition’s view of ministry and authority. I visited an Eastern Orthodox Church with a group from the class, and I wrote my second paper on my church in Kibera, which is quite unlike any church I’ve attended in the States. Then I wrote up a paper on the Orthodox Presbyterian Church’s view of ministry and authority, which I have thought about a great deal so it was not too difficult.

I’ve also been sick about three times the last several weeks. None of them were very serious, although I did go to get tested for malaria once and it came back negative. Twice I ended up feeling really tired and sleeping all afternoon Sunday and Monday. This Sunday I was supposed to preach, but my throat has been sore since Friday and I couldn’t talk very well Friday or Saturday, so I canceled that. As Christine pointed out to me last term, there is no soap in most of the bathrooms, and almost every time you pass anyone, and definitely whenever you greet someone, you shake their hand, so...not a great situation. I hope I’ve finally getting over this cold, I’ve been feeling a bit better today.

Now it’s the 10th, meaning last, week of class. Crunch time…

Jars of Clay!!

2009-02-27T17:21:00.008+03:00

So this past Friday night I went out to the Jars of Clay concert. At first I was debating if I should even go, since Friday is taco night, definitely my favorite part of the week. But we have taco night every week, usually, so how could I turn down a special one-time occasion like this for taco night? And then taco night was canceled, so I didn’t even miss it.

The concert was a lot of fun, and experiencing an African concert is quite different than an American one! I went with my friends Søren and his wife Charlotte, from Denmark, and then we met up with Njeri, who had a car and drove us the rest of the way. The official time was listed as 6-10 pm, which seemed pretty long to me, but I figured that opening acts would take up at least half the time. I was wrong: they took up the entire time. Jars of Clay didn’t start playing until 10:05 pm, and they only played for about an hour, until around 11:15. Of course, the concert didn’t start until about 7:20. We got there at 6:40, and they were still setting up the stage and didn’t look anywhere near ready. I got some food to tide me over until the end of the concert.

The purpose of the concert was AIDs awareness, and we learned that 1 in 10 Kenyans are not aware of the existence of testing and assistance, that 2 in 3 Kenyans are not aware of their status, that 3 in 5 of those infected are women, 4 out of every 5 infected do not know it, and only 5% of the budget is used towards youth prevention. I have no idea who’s budget.

All the opening acts were Kenyan, as far as I know, and the first several were not very good. The songs were highly unoriginal and the music was not very good. There were so many opening acts, one list I saw had 9! But they got increasingly better, and by the time we got to the last 2 opening acts they were quite good, and people really got into it and were dancing all around. A lot of the music is heavily reggae influenced, and just sounds very African. The very last performance was the best. I learned that Eric Wainaina is the most popular artist in Kenya, Christian or secular, and I recognized some of his songs from matatus. Probably this had to do with the time, but by the time Jars of Clay came on a number of people had left, and there was not quite as much energy as there was before. Jars of Clay was good though, and I recognized several of their songs even though I don’t listen to them much. I actually saw them play a concert this summer in Wheaton where they were the opening act for Steven Curtis Chapman. That was a great concert as well.

Afterwards we wanted to go out for Ethiopian food, but it was midnight by this point and all three Ethiopian restaurants were closed. So we went to a club that Njeri used to frequent in her younger days but had not been to for a while. It was interesting, and the food was really good. I had a steak, for almost a third of what I pay in a month for my eating group. I didn’t get to bed until almost 3, so that set me back sleep-wise for a few days. But it was fun, since I don’t really get out a whole lot it was nice to have something to go to. A Jars of Clay concert in Kenya.

NEGST Politics: Running for Student Council

2009-02-10T08:51:00.001+03:00

Since my arrival here at NEGST, I have noticed that the student government here, called the student council, seems much more useful and powerful than my previous experiences with student government. Members of the student council are obvious leaders on campus, and they are much more in touch with the inner workers of the school and student life in general. As I considered my involvement at NEGST, the student council seemed a good way to get to know the school and other students better. Thus when I was approached to run for secretary, I agreed.

Elections are being held tomorrow, and I am running against a second year student I have actually not met. There are only 3 contested elections for the 11 positions on the cabinet, and mine looks to be one of the closer one. I’ve heard different opinions: one of my friends (currently on the council) is optimistic I will pull it out, telling me “the stats on the ground are with you,” but I’ve heard from two others that it is very close, so I’m curious what will happen. Obviously I don’t really want to lose, but otherwise its not like a huge deal, and I don’t plan to campaign much if at all. We’ll see what happens. According to another of my friends, my opponent being Kikuyu has the “Kikuyu coalition” behind him, but I have the “international student block” behind me, as well as most of the “first year block” as well. I’m not sure people vote in those categories here, but maybe he’s right. Definitely a different mindset than I’m used to. American politics are analyzed according to demographic, so that’s the same, but not tribe. It is an interesting introduction to NEGST politics, if perhaps not representative of African politics in general.

I’ve had a few people comment on differences between American and African political styles. I gave a brief speech to the single group when we met this past Thursday to watch a movie, and someone asked if the rumor that I won’t be back in September are true, and I replied that it is true, I will possibly (likely) take a year off to work. When I was asked to run, I was very upfront about that, which means if I win (and I find a job) I would only serve half a term and then they would have to replace me in September. Someone commented that in Africa, you wouldn’t say that, but American’s are much more open about those types of things. I have also had several people tell me that all I need to do for campaigning is pass out brown envelopes to everyone. Clearly they’re joking, but obviously there is a reality behind that as well. I suppose if I get desperate enough, that would be one way to contextualize myself for African politics…

GOOD Kenyan Food

2009-02-09T17:15:00.000+03:00

In the past, I have been quite negative about Kenyan food. I am pleased to report that I have found a Kenyan dish that I think is delicious, and has no American equivalent. It’s a Kikuyu dish (Kikuyu is Kenya’s largest tribe) called mukimo. It looks like green mashed potatoes with bits of corn in it, which is almost exactly what it is.

The ingredients of mukimo are green maize, pumpkin leaves, Irish potatoes, and (sometimes) green peas. These ingredients are boiled, and although I took notes on how it is made, they are slightly confusing and I can’t quite figure out what should be boiled with what. It appears the Irish potatoes should be boiled separately. I’ll try to take the time to watch how it is made so I can make it myself. I’ve been meaning to do that with ugali and chipati as well but I haven’t gotten around to it.

The first time I remember having mukimo was at the Fun Day put on by the student council last term to welcome new students. We had a ton of food, of all different kinds. More recently I had mukimo at the Tamu Café, a little place on-campus that serves lunch for very reasonable prices (usually less than $3), and I had it with mbuzi choma, which is goat. Goat is pretty good, although I have found it very tough to chew, and my mouth is always sore afterwards. It was also served with kachumbari, which consists of chopped tomatoes, onions and dhania. Dhania is their name for cilantro. Basically, this combination of food is amazing. Goat I could substitute for another meat if goat is not readily available, although I do find something cool about eating goat, but this meal is one I would like to add to my future diet. So far the only Kenyan food I have any interest in adding to my future diet. There you have it: a good Kenyan dish.

Swahili and I.T.

2009-02-03T14:41:00.000+03:00

Last term I was fairly busy, getting used to being here, keeping up with people back home, but pretty much with classes. This term I decided that I really should not spend all my time doing that, so I've been trying to spend more time doing other things. I worked in the I.T. office last term as well, but I've been a more consistent about going in to work this term. What I do is very flexible, basically I show up on my own time and do whatever there is to do. It's best when I have projects to work on, like last term I documented the network (as far as I could). This term it looks like I might be helping out with the website, so we've been getting familiar with the software we'll be using. I would love to be proficient enough to design a website, that would be sweet.

I have also started studying Swahili. We started an informal class that meets twice a week for an hour, and I also arranged for 2 hours of tutoring a week (one hour of tutoring costs more than twice as much as the entire month of class). So I have Swahili for an hour a day Monday - Thursday. If I'm intentional about using it, I could use it all the time: my hallmates speak Swahili, the guys I eat with speak Swahili, when I buy bread at the Tuck shop on-campus, checking out books from the library, most of my friends in class, at church, maybe half the songs we sing in chapel, when I go shopping outside NEGST, in the matatu, basically all the time. I'm familiar with most greetings now, some basic verb construction, and a little vocabulary. Here's a brief lesson:

Ninasoma Swahili.
I am studying Swahili.

You attach prefixes to the verb to indicate person and tense. Ni means I, na means present tense, soma means study. Nilisoma means I studied. Nitasoma means I will study. Unasoma means you study. Mimi is the first person singular pronoun, so to emphasize that I'm doing it, I could say, "Mimi ninasoma Swahili" (I myself am studying Swahili). Just like Greek, where the verb includes the person but you can also add a pronoun. I would love to actually be conversational in another language. If I work hard, it is definitely possible. Until next time. Kwa heri (good bye)!

The Inaguration

2009-01-21T22:07:00.000+03:00

Last night I watched the inauguration for almost 3 hours, and it was a lot of fun. There were 12 of us all crammed into Shadrack and Alpheus's living room watching it, mostly singles, and they were asking me all these questions about what was going on, the layout of the capital, and so on, so I described it to them. Its kind of weird to be around people in a foreign country who are as interested in my politics as I am, some almost more so, but nice. I'm really glad I was here for so many important milestones of the election, for the last part of the race and the results and then the inauguration.

I thought it was pretty solid. I thought Rick Warren's prayer was good, and the speech seemed very somber but it was appropriate. Still pretty ambitious, that's for sure. They had some trouble with the oath, it seems that both of them mixed up the word order, which I thought kind of funny. Now I can guarantee you that if Bush had any connection with that mess-up there would be no end of columns decrying his stupidity and speech impediment.

Several of the guys I was watching it with, one guy from Sudan in particular, were really sad to see Bush go. They were like, he's my man, and he's a real leader, made the hard choices and stuck by them, and it won't be the same without him. When discussing it today, a few people said they were surprised that Bush didn't give a speech.

In the middle of the lady reading poetry, they switched to the national convention center in Nairobi, and they were slicing up and handing out this big cake, and it was so funny. None of them cared about the poetry, they were like he's signed in, lets party.

Overall, it was a really good feeling, very uplifting, both watching it, and especially seeing with all my friends here. Now we get to see what actually happens.

Sweatshops: Good or Bad?

2009-01-21T11:59:00.001+03:00

Probably for most this question would not be very difficult. However, I recently found an article that presents a different side of the story.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/15/opinion/15kristof.html?scp=1&sq=sweatshops&st=cse

My friend Peter pointed out his fascinating bio:
http://www.nytimes.com/ref/opinion/KRISTOF-BIO.html

After reading The World is Flat, by Friedman, I've always felt that the globalization debate was more complicated than most make it out to be. I've always heard Walmart and other demonized for enslaving so many in their factories, but reading about how desperate the factories (and those working in the factories) were to land a position on the Walmart supply chain presented quite a different picture.

Kristof is basically arguing that sweatshops are often better than the alternative, the example he gives being a garbage dump. For too many the choice is between a sweatshop and ... nothing. So what should we do about that? He argues that merely shutting down sweatshops without providing an alternative source of income is not helpful. And in many ways I have to agree. Fair trade is such a difficult issue. Something to consider.

Contextualization

2009-01-16T14:29:00.001+03:00

Before I came to NEGST, I looked through the description of all the classes they offered, and three classes especially stood out: power encounter, contextualization, and introduction to urban mission. As I looked through the classes offered during registration for my first term, I was delighted to see that contextualization was an option and did not conflict with any of my required classes. Taking it required an overload of 20 credit hours, which at times seemed too much, especially during my first term. Some weeks it seemed that I spent as much time on contextualization as my other 5 classes combined, but it was definitely worth it.

It is a complex process that defies simplistic definitions, like most, but basically contextualization is the discipline of translating the gospel into another culture. Everything we have experienced in Christianity is culturally conditioned. All theology is contextual theology. This does not mean there are no universals, or that nothing applies across cultures, but it does mean that our experience of Christianity comes culturally packaged. This is not in itself bad or wrong, but when undertaking missions in other cultures this becomes very important.

Contextualization is a relatively recent field, and has been fraught with controversy. Especially until more recently, most missionaries have operated without any understanding of their cultural assumptions, and when coming to Africa transform their convertees to a white, Western version of Christianity. Obviously this is what Christianity is, and all the old pagan African ways must be discarded. This has resulted in a myriad of problems, not the least of which is the practice of Christianity as a foreign religion that does not pertain to many core issues facing African Christians: the treatment of ancestors, protection from evil spirits and witches, polygamy, issues of sickness and healing, etc. As missions scholars began to think through this situation, the need for a holistic, contextualized gospel became apparent. I was pleased to find that Wheaton College was one of the pioneering institutions in this field.

The broad contours I've sketched above did not come as a shock to me, but many of the specific questions we wrestled with during the class I found very difficult. What do you do as a pastor when a mother in your congregation accuses the widow who sits in the back row of cursing her child using witchcraft? What is the relationship between form and meaning? For example, when you enter a culture can you appropriate their old places of worship for Christ, or must you start fresh? What word do you use for God? If you are in a Muslim context, can you use Allah, which is simply the Arabic word for God, or does that have too much religious baggage? How do you explain sin in a culture with 20 different terms for wrongdoing or evil when all of them differ in subtle ways from the broadly encompassing connotations of the English word "sin"? Can you explain Jesus as the greatest ancestor, or will that lead to more confusion? What parts of traditional African religion can be understood as a preparation for the gospels, and which parts must be rejected as antithetical to Christianity?

I'll try to return to some of these issues in a future post, but for now I'd like to focus on how contextualization has changed my thinking. Contextualization has dramatically shifted the way I think about so many things. It really is incorporated into how I approach the Bible, thinking about churches, historical events, etc. I'll look at each of these in turn.

The entire Bible is really one continuous example of contextualization. Calvin uses the term "accommodation" to explain how God lowers himself to our language and concepts. The Old Testament is a prime example of this. The ancient Jews believed that the sky was a solid dome, with little holes where the rain came through, and tracks for the stars to roll around in. The earth is flat and held up by pillars, and sheol is the abode of the dead below the earth. The Bible does not correct any of these beliefs, but rather operates within their paradigm. God used their cultural views to transmit His revelation. The book of Acts is a testament to the cultural shifts the gospel underwent as it spread beyond Judaism to the Gentiles. Moving beyond circumcision, sacrifices and other Jewish regulations was a difficult transition, but necessary for any of us who are not Jewish to be accepted into the Christian faith. All of the epistles are an example of the contextualized form the gospel takes on in each area. Every context is different, with its own concerns and questions, and our theology must reflect that.

A local church body is also a reflection of contextualization. This may be a good or a bad example, but it will be an example. Willow Creek was held up in some of the articles we read as a great example of contextualizing the faith to postmodern suburban middle class Americans. You may not like what they are doing, but that is their foundation. I despise many characteristics of smaller African churches I have visited, but they are undoubtedly well contextualized for their environment. Any church can be examined in terms of what they have done to incorporate their setting and reach the people around them. Most churches today, for example, are held in the local language (or the language of their target group), which is an excellent contextually sensitive choice.

Church history can also be understood in those terms. Once in class, our professor made the point that the Reformation is more than a theological movement, it is a contextual movement. The mass was conducted in Latin, and none of the people knew Latin, so when Luther decided that German services should be done in German, this revolutionized the church. The people could understand what was going on!! He translated the Bible in German, wrote songs in German, encouraged Sunday school education, and made the church incredibly more relevant to people's lives. Dr. Rasmussen said that there is a trend that the regions with Latin-based language stayed Roman Catholic, and those with other languages switched. One of the big factors was language: many people were not making a theology choice in the various disputes raised by the Reformation, but they wanted to go to a church where they understood the service. The entire history of missions can be seen as the journey of the Christian faith from an entirely Jewish religion to a dazzling variety of languages and cultures across the world.

There is much more I could say, but I'll wind down at this point. The most practical take-away for me was the necessity of knowing my context. When I preach in Kibera, I must try to adjust my message to their comprehension level and address the issues they face. This past week when I was preaching in Kibera, I used the story of the rich young ruler to illustrate a point, and it suddenly struck me: this story does not apply to them at all. It applies to me. I am the rich one, and they are the ones who are poor. It was a strange moment. So wherever you are: know your context. Understand how to communicate. Location, location, location. It applies more widely than you may think...

Back to Class

2009-01-09T15:25:00.000+03:00

It is nice to be back in class. This term I am taking power encounter, Hebrew II, church ministry and mission, sociology of language, and Reformation thru modern church history. Unfortunately I don't have a blow off class (like postgraduate research) this term, although sociology of language looks interesting and easy. Last term I was able to get through church history by relying on the wonderfully comprehensive notes provided for us, and um focusing my attention in other ways during class time, keeping track of the main points but able to accomplish many other things as well. Hebrew remains my GPA arch-nemesis.

People have been very welcoming since I've been back. One thing I noticed is that everyone greeted me with "Happy New Year," even up through January 6th! I mean, yes I hadn't seen you since before the new year, but really, that was like a week ago. It seems that most other place a great deal more importance on New Year's than the US. I know Japan and China does, and now I've seen that Kenya does too. I think a big difference is the centrality of Christmas: I wasn't here, but the impression I've gotten is that Christmas is not as big of a deal here. In the US, Christmas is so huge that for New Years most people can only manage go out to drink and by 12:00 has passed its over. Christmas really is the capstone of an entire month, which here does not seem to be true in the same way. So New Years gets the lion's share of the attention.

I still marvel at how many people here know my name. The other day the lady cleaning the classroom building said, "Hi David! How was your Christmas?" And I was thinking, how do you know my name, I don't think we've ever met. Probably about 30-40% of the people who greet me by name I don't know, have no idea who they are. But they all know who I am. Its to be expected, I shouldn't really be so surprised.

One more story from Heathrow. I was sitting, waiting for my flight, on much nicer chairs than most US airports can boast, when I noticed what this really cute girl sitting across from me was saying. She was talking about the difference between being in graduate school and her undergrad, and she made a lot of good points; I could relate. Then she started talking about ministry, and Sunday school, and various opportunities she thought the church was missing. So she seemed to be a Christian. Then she started talking about Swahili, and I was like my goodness, you have got to be kidding me. How much more could we have in common? I debated it, but I couldn't bring myself up to go over and introduce myself and inform her that we had many similar interests. Maybe I'll run into her sometime, I don't think the world of white English speaking Christians attending graduate school with at least some experience of Swahili is really that big...

Heathrow and Jet Lag

2009-01-08T13:14:00.000+03:00

Well, I have been rather neglectful of this blog recently, as I have been in the US over break, meaning that I have avoided anything that resembles work. It was really good to be home, and it went by really fast. I was both in Maryland at home and out in Chicago catching up with my Wheaton friends.

The flight this time went though London, and I was curious what Heathrow would be like, since I had read it's a terrible airport: unreliable, dirty, just not good. However, on my brief way through, I think it was one of the nicest airports I have ever seen. It was really modern and fancy, with the usual shopping and restaurants, but more upscale than I expected. I found this Japanese restaurant that was really authentic, they had yakisoba, tonkatsu, ramen, and even edamame as a side (for like 4 pounds, 6 or 7 dollars). I got ramen, and it was real ramen, quite filling, and cost 9 pounds, which came to 12 dollars with tip. Rather expensive, but only a bit more than the usual price for genuine Japanese ramen, like non-instant. It's really a whole different food.

But I digress. My sleep schedule has been rather warped since I have arrived. I got in Saturday night at 9:30 pm, went to bed at 2 am, then woke up at 5 am Sunday morning. I went to church, and then came back and fell asleep at 2 pm. I woke up a few times, but didn't get up until midnight. I hadn't eaten all day, so at 2 am I made some freeze dried beef stew which I had gotten for Christmas. I'm sure you all can relate, you know being in Nairobi and eating freeze dried food in the middle of the night because you can't sleep. I was up from midnight to 4 am, and then slept until 7:30. I went to my 8 am class, and then actually didn't go to bed until 11, but woke up anyway at like 3:45 am. Its getting better though, I didn't get up until 5 today. It's kind of nice, pretending I'm a morning person, having several hours to do things before my 8 am class, but I know it won't last. And it will also be nice to be on a normal schedule again. Its now 2:15, so I should go have lunch. I decided to utilize the faster internet capacities afforded by lunch hour (1 to 2), but the window of half decent speeds has passed. Until next time...

Top 10 Influential Classes at Wheaton

2008-11-08T13:42:00.000+03:00

Theology Letterman Style

This is a little break from NEGST, but it is something I've been thinking about as I process my Wheaton experience. I appreciate many of these classes at Wheaton much more now in light of the classes here at NEGST, and noticing differences in how I think about and approach things.

*Note: Ranking anything is a tricky and not always useful enterprise, especially when people are involved. The following should not be considered a list of the best classes I’m had, although that does inevitably play a role in my consideration. The numbering system is also somewhat arbitrary, and not hard and fast by any means. However, in considering my intellectual development, the following classes were highly formative for me, and have permanently affected how I think and study. Thus I believe the list is constructive. It is most useful to those still attending Wheaton, and for anyone else it may not be nearly as interesting.*

1) New Testament Criticism – Dr. Burge

This class made theology seem real and so addictively fascinating. When I was reading about the battle raging for the integrity of the Bible, the dating of Galatians, and the rigorous methods employed to respond to attacks on the biblical text, it was so exciting for me. Generally it seems the more that is expected from me in a class, the more I learn, and this was certainly true in this class—one of the most intensive classes I’ve ever taken. Through dealing with form criticism and working to defend the gospel accounts as legitimate portrayals of the historical life of Christ I felt like I actually grasped—at least on a basic level—the dynamics of criticism and how to enter the conversation.

2) Old Testament Cultural Environment – Dr. Hill

This was a relatively short class taken during my last semester, but it really challenged so much of what I believe about the Bible, and how I’ve always thought it was written. Looking at the similarities between various flood and creation accounts was illuminating in showing the cultural and literary effect upon the Bible. Dr. Walton’s book on the cultural world of the Old Testament painted a vivid picture of the culture and worldview that characterizes those writing the OT, and so many of his insights were new and revolutionary in my understanding of the text.

3) History of Philosophy – Dr. Benson, Dr. Talbot and Dr. Borden

Reputedly the 2nd (behind organic chemistry) most difficult class at Wheaton (it’s not), this class spans an entire year and is the essential foundation of the philosophy major at Wheaton. This class certainly had one of the highest ratios of information I had never heard before to information I already knew. Discussing and working through these issues was so thought provoking and difficult, and these issues have strongly defined how I have interacted with almost every class ever since. Some concepts that really stand out are Plato’s notion of recollection, Locke’s blank slate, Kant’s concept of the neumena and the phenomena, Kant’s categories of understanding information, the transcendental turn, and various postmodern ideas about knowledge and language. This class was an excellent compliment to Historical and Systematic theology, which I took concurrently to the two halves of this class.

4) Hermeneutics - Dr. Schultz

This was my second Bible class at Wheaton (during my freshman year) and set the stage for many of my later techniques for studying the Bible, finding resources, doing research, and using the library. Fairly difficult and extremely crammed because we were doing a semester’s worth of work in a quad (it has since been expanded into a semester class), I found the lectures, exercises, and final exegesis paper all very helpful. Definitely this was a class I enjoyed.

5) Senior Seminar: Global Christianity – Dr. Treier and Dr. Cohick

Another class with a very high percentage of new content, this was one of the most interesting and unique classes I have taken. This is one of the few classes in which I would check the clock with dismay because time was running out and I found the discussions so fascinating. I wish theology from all over the world was integrated into all theology classes at Wheaton and not tacked onto the end in one class. I learned a great deal from the considerable reading for this class. The concerns in theology in Africa, Asia and South America are so different and have much to teach us in the West. Our discussions in this class were great and I feel that we were able to interact and meaningfully engage the content we were reading. Student presentations at the end explored many issues I would have never been able to consider otherwise. Researching the nature of deliverance ministry and demonology in Ghana was a new project for me, and quite pertinent given that I was already planning on going to Africa for seminary.

6) Theology of John Calvin – Dr. Spencer

Most of this class went way over my head, and I felt very much out of league, but still I gained a basic knowledge of John Calvin, and also some important principles for studying theology. The amount of reading assigned for this class was absolutely overwhelming, the most I have ever had for any class. Two things stand out that have shaped how I consider theology ever since: the principle of “foils” and that of accommodation. The idea of foils is fairly straightforward despite its strange sounding name; all that it means is that often when approaching an idea there are two extremes on both side, and the correct way lies between the two. Often when I have come upon a problem this idea has shaped my initial response. First, I determine the extremes, and then I attempt to determine a mediating answer. This does not fit all issues but has been very helpful for me. The second principle gained from this class is one that Calvin emphasized through his theology: accommodation. In revelation God has accommodated Himself to us, which is in many ways an incredible thought, and this has far-reaching implications for biblical interpretation and application.

7) Historical Theology – Dr. Lauber

My favorite thing about this class was the textbook, which read like a novel to me: I would read it just for fun. Learning about the early church and the debates over the nature of God and theology was at times confusing but essential for a genuine understanding of the church. This is one of the classes that led me to choose history over philosophy as a double major, even though it’s not even a history class, technically. This is the class where the study group that would help sustain me most of the way through the theology major started. This was also my introduction to Dr. Lauber, who became one of my favorite profs and has written several key recommendations for me.

8) Doctrine of Scripture – Dr. Spencer

I have come to very much appreciate Dr. Spencer’s style for doing a class: reading the best authorities on a subject and wrestling through the stances they take. Elaborating a solid theology of the scriptures as the Word of God is difficult, and I am much more aware of the various disagreements and tricky areas. This is probably the main class that I actually understood some of what Barth was saying, which I consider an accomplishment!

9) Systematic Theology – Dr. Treier

One of the most fundamental and notorious classes of the Bible/theology major at Wheaton, I did not learn as much from this class as I expected but I did still learn quite a bit. The most helpful exercise was the assignment due at the end: writing your own confession of faith. Having to take a stance upon many issues of which I am still not sure of a position was helpful and thought provoking. Many of the topics treated in the class overlapped with the content of historical theology, which I took first, but it was a good repetition. I still get confused with several of the heresies…

10) The Bible as Literature – Dr. Ryken

This class stands out as one of the most memorable and time consuming classes of my Wheaton career. Anyone who has taken this class, or any class with Dr. Ryken, will immediate understand—the pig of progress, dress up day, optimum day, use of “technology”—but for those who have not it is impossible to adequately describe. The time I spent on this class drained much of the time that would have gone to systematic theology instead, largely explaining my disappointment with that class. This class was an excellent survey of the literary approach to interpreting the Bible, and Dr. Ryken is one of its pioneers and leading proponents. When I was taking hermeneutics at NEGST, and he was listed under literary approaches, I was able to question certain aspects of how the subject was presented, since I had an in-depth exposure to this methodology.

Honorable Mention: Intro to Christian Education with Dr. Root, Theological Ethics with Dr. Lauber, Theories of Origin with basically the entire science department, and History of Christianity in North America with Dr. Long

An Ideal Day

2008-11-05T17:52:00.000+03:00

So a basic day at NEGST looks something like this: I get up before 8, often not very much before 8, and go to class, which for me start at 8 Monday through Friday. At ten, we have a break for chapel Tues, Wed, and Thur, which goes from 10-10:45. Then we have tea. On Monday, we have an adviser group meeting at 10, called Field Ministries, but it really doesn't have much--if anything-- to do with the field or with ministry. On Friday, we have grace groups, a small group that you are assigned to that includes staff, faculty, and students. Different members take turns leading, and its quite a good mix of people. I enjoy my group, its always interesting and there are usually refreshments as well.
I have class from 8 - 1 pretty much every day, although one class was moved from Wed to Friday afternoon, so I have class from 8 - 4 on Friday. At 1 I head back to the housing compound for lunch, and then I have a quiet time, read, do homework, things like that. At 4 I often head over to IT to work there for an hour from 4-5, and I do whatever project is at hand. At around 6 there is a group that plays football in the field behind Q, where I live, so I go out and join them sometimes. I'm really bad but it is a lot more fun than running by myself. If its been a sunny day then I can take a hot shower, since the solar panels on the other end of my building work, so I use the bathroom on that side. Its really great, but it means rainy or cloudy days are doubly unfortunate.
At 7 I go to eat dinner. After that, I go back to my room and do more homework or relax or something like that. At 8:30 M-Thur there is a Hebrew study group that meets, so I decided if I want to have any chance in Hebrew it is very helpful to attend that group. Then I head back and I tend to go to bed earlier here than in America, generally around 11 or so, sometimes I do stay later and read or finish up work but not often past midnight.
So that's a general day. I've never done all of those things in one day, but we'll see if it happens: that would be my ideal day at NEGST. Oh, and to celebrate Obama's victory in style, Kenya declared tomorrow a national holiday. That's right, because America elected Obama, the entire nation of Kenya will have the day off. And we won't have class, and all the offices and the library will be closed. I'm thinking American-Kenyan relations won't be the biggest issue facing Obama over the next few years...

The First Few Pictures

2008-11-01T12:00:00.000+03:00

This is the entrance to the student housing compound. You can see a bit of the parking lot. Married students live on the lower two floors, and singles live on the top floor. Each building has a letter, from around H to T. I live in Q. As you go in, you would take a right and my building would be straight ahead.
This is the local supermarket, only a few kilometers down the road. The store is called Nakumatt, and the area or suburb is Karen. It is a very nice store with just about everything you would need. The groceries are on the bottom floor, and the household items such as mattresses, plates, appliances, and books are on the second floor. They even carry a number of American brands, but those are much more expensive.
Here's a picture of Emmanuel and myself. This is at the meeting of the Anointed Learning Institute, after I preached on the Jesus' words from the cross about being forsaken. This is at a hotel in Nairobi; they rent out a room for the afternoon for their meeting.

This is the 1st year football team that triumphed over the continuing students! It was a lot of fun, probably one of my best memories so far. You can't see me very well because of the trophy. We actually had enough players to play a real game, full field, with a referee and jerseys and everything. Most games since then have not been as well attended, but this was the kickoff of the season.

Kenyan Food

2008-10-27T13:09:00.000+03:00

I am a very big fan of food, and I do not consider myself very picky. I enjoy Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indian, French, Italian, Greek, American, Mexican, and Ethiopian food to name a few. However, I do not like Kenyan food. It is simply not very good. I have never been to Britain, but I have always heard that British food is some of the worst ethnic cuisine in the world. Unfortunately, Kenya has been dubbed the “Britain of Africa” in regards to food. French food is generally highly regarded, and areas of Africa with more French influence such as West Africa has much better food. I don’t know that the French caused this, but it is interesting how it worked out. Someone said that Kenya is so fertile, almost any food can be grown here, but somehow all the recipes have been left in West Africa.

Earlier I talked about my initial dilemma in hiring someone, but this has long since been resolved. I found (or rather was placed in) a group of four other single guys to eat with, and we hired a lady named Jane to cook, do laundry, and clean for us. She cooks lunch and dinner Monday through Saturday. We are on our own Sundays and national holidays. I paid 2500 shillings for the first month, around $35. Rather a good deal. It ended up being a little short, so we each paid 3000 shillings for the next month ($42), which is still a good deal. Now this does not buy American meals, i.e. meals with meat, every day. We have meat probably twice or three times a week. This is problematic for me, because my basic standards for a meal is that there is rice (or potatoes, spaghetti, etc), meat, and some kind of a vegetable (although that is more negotiable). The meat is a very important part of this formula.

The most common Kenyan meal is ugali with spinach. Ugali is made from maize flour, and looks just like mashed potatoes. It is a little more gritty though, and is comparable to a very firm, non-watery version of cream of wheat. It has a generally bland flavor, but is quite dense and almost impossible to eat on its own. I dislike it, but people here love it. When I asked Emmanuel what his favorite food was, he said ugali. Ugali!! I can’t help but feel that he is missing out on some good food. One time when I was at a restaurant, I saw these guys ordering ugali, and I was thinking you probably have ugali every single day, and you come to a restaurant when you can order almost everything, and you order ugali. Incredible. I’ve heard that for Kenyans who move away to somewhere like America that one of the more difficult things for them is missing ugali. I guess it’s all what you’re used to.

The other guys in my group are really great, and very understanding of my situation, and they told Jane that ugali should always be complimented with something like spaghetti, so I don’t actually have ugali very much. Generally we have rice, boiled potatoes, or spaghetti, with some kind of vegetable stew. Sometimes it has beef as well, sometimes its made of peas, carrots, things like that.

What really gets me through is the dinner invitation. This wonderful thing is when a family asks me to come over for dinner, and I always accept. This food has always included meat, and is very good. About once a week for lunch I go to the Tamu Café, which is affiliated with the guest house, and is quite good and rather reasonable, about 150-200 shillings for a meal (2-3 dollars). Being here I feel like that’s a lot, and if I ever spend more, like 500 for a meal (7 dollars) I feel like I’m being super extravagant, and I feel guilty. In the US that really isn’t much at all, but here it feels like so much more.

To clarify about what I said earlier about food being expensive here, anything imported or American is expensive. Peanut butter can be 5 or 6 dollars for a jar. Cereal is also expensive. Meat is very expensive, maybe 8 or 10 dollars for a package of chicken I would expect to cost 4 or 5. Now if you don’t shop at the store, but at the market, things are cheaper (especially if you’re not white). Vegetables and flour, the basic essentials here, are rather cheap. But in the US, if you were to live off cakes baked from flour along with spinach, it would be pretty cheap too.

This ended up being rather long, so one of these times I will try to be shorter. And pictures are coming as well! I had trouble uploading them last time, but I’ll keep trying.

My Attempt at Contextualization for Kibera

2008-10-19T18:30:00.000+03:00

This morning I preached in a church in Kibera, thanks to an invitation by Evangelist Emmanuel. It was fairly small, about 10 people. I chose to preach on 1 Peter 2:1-12, and to illustrate it I decided to modify the story of the three little pigs to an African context. This is what I came up with:

(Note: This is not exactly the sermon I actually preached. I didn't quote either the passage from Isaiah or from Mark, and I made up a lot of other things along the way, like about sheep and sin and sacrifices and things like that. I didn't use any fancy terms like "unadulterated," which came from a Bible dictionary, either. Having a translator really does change the dynamics of what you're saying and how you say it.)

Introduction

To begin, I would like to tell you a story I heard in America when I was a child. That story is about three little pigs and a wolf, but since I’m in Kenya it will be about 3 little goats and a lion. Here in Kenya you have lions, in America we do not. Yesterday I was able to see some lions, which was very exciting. Here’s the story:
There lived three little goats who were brothers, and they each went out and build a little house. The first goat was not very clever, and he wanted his house made very quickly, so he just made his house of grass. The second goat was thinking that grass is very weak, but he did not want to take a long time either, so he made it of sticks. The third goat was very clever, and he took many weeks to make his house, but he made it out of stone.
Now there was a lion that lived by the goats, and one day he was very hungry. He went out hunting, and he came to the first goat’s house. He said, “Come out because I want to eat you!” The goat said “No, go away!” The lion said “Well then I will break down your house and eat you!” The goat’s house was only grass, and the lion broke it down easily and ate the goat.
This goat was very little, and the lion was still hungry. So he went to the next house and said “Come out I want to eat you!” The goat said, “No, go away!” The house was only made of sticks, and the lion broke it down and ate the goat. But this goat was little as well, and the lion still wanted some more. So he came to the third house made of stone. He said, “Come out because I want to eat you!” The goat said “No, go away!” The lion rushed at the house and tried to break it down, but the stone was strong, and he could not break though. The lion was angry, and he looked all over the house to find another way inside. But all the windows were barred, and he couldn’t find another way. Finally he noticed the chimney. He crawled up onto the roof, and then slipped into the chimney and went down. However, the goat was boiling milk for chai, and he had a big pot of milk boiling over the fire at the bottom of the chimney. The lion fell into the pot and died, and instead of tea the goat had lion stew that night.

Today I’m preaching on 1 Peter 2:1-13. I’m going to talk more about this story later, but first I’m going to read the passage.

1 So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. 2 Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up to salvation— 3 if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.

4 As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, 5 you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 6 For it stands in Scripture:

"Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame."

7 So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe,

"The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,"

8 and "A stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense."

They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.

9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

11 Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. 12 Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. ESV

Peter was one of Jesus’ twelve disciples, and he was one of the top leaders of the early church. He wrote this letter from the city of Babylon, and addressed it to all the elect scattered from Israel. In the Old Testament we read that the Assyrians and the Babylonians captured Israel, and they took them as captives all over the world. Peter was writing to these Jews that were foreigners in a strange country. This letter was written to encourage the believers who were going though persecution, many of them were being killed for being a Christian. It is a very hopeful letter and tells them to continue to trust in God.

I. In verse one, we are called to give up five different things: malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander.
Peter is giving us a list of evil things that we must avoid. The best way to avoid something evil is to replace it with something good. In Galatians Paul tells us the fruits of the Spirit that will help to drive out these other things from our lives:
Gal 5:22-24
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. 24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. ESV

II. Milk is how we grow up to salvation.
a. What is milk?
"Pure" milk meant that it had not been mixed with anything else; the term is used in business documents for sales of unadulterated foods, foods that have not been mixed with anything else. Have you ever had bad milk? Bad milk is not good for you; we must have the right milk!! I know some of you have had babies, and you know how they love to have their milk. What happens when they don’t get milk? They aren’t happy, are they? And they will not grow without milk.
i. Prayer
ii. Reading the Bible
iii. Ministry

b. Reaching out to others is essential to growth in Christ. You have not learned something until you teach it to someone else.
There are hundreds of thousands of people that live here in Kibera, and I know many of them have not been born again. They do not have a relationship with Jesus Christ, and they do not know the love of God. I encourage all of you to find someone this week who does not believe in Jesus and tell them what He is doing in your life, and how great He is. Tell them how they can accept Christ and follow Him with their lives.

c. First you must have experienced that God is good!!
Do all of us here believe that God is good? If we do not, then all the milk in the world will not allow you to grow. First we must believe that God is truly good, and that He will always love you and never forsake you. In Psalm 16:11 David is saying that “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right are pleasures forevermore.” It does not always seem that God is good. Many times it seems God has forgotten us. However, God is faithful, and His promises are true. He will always work things out in the end.

III. Stones
a. Nature of stones
In our story earlier we saw that stones are strong, they are defense against the devil. Peter later says that the devil is like a roaring lion seeking who he may devour. What kind of a house are you living in? Is it one of grass or of stone? Are you living off the milk that will make you grow and that will destroy the devil when he attacks you?! Just as we must have the right milk to grow, we also must live in the right house.

b. We are living stones ourselves!
If there is one thing I know about stones, it is that they are dead. They are not alive. They are heavy, they are strong, and they are dead. But Peter says we are living stones! We ourselves are stones that make a spiritual house for God. We were dead in sins and evil, but God has made us alive. He has made us strong and powerful. He lives within us, and together we make up the body of Christ. We offer spiritual sacrifices just like the Israelites in the OT offered animal sacrifices. These sacrifices are prayers and praises, our abilities, our time with God and helping other people.

c. Cornerstones and Stones of Stumbling
Peter is quoting from the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah is saying in 28:14-17:

Isa 28:14-16

14 Therefore hear the word of the Lord, you scoffers, who rule this people in Jerusalem!
15 Because you have said, "We have made a covenant with death, and with Sheol we have an agreement, when the overwhelming whip passes through it will not come to us, for we have made lies our refuge, and in falsehood we have taken shelter"; 16 therefore thus says the Lord God, "Behold, I am the one who has laid as a foundation in Zion, a stone, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone, of a sure foundation: 'Whoever believes will not be in haste.' ESV

Peter is also quoting what Jesus said in Mark 12:10-11.
10 Have you not read this Scripture: "'The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; 11 this was the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes'?" ESV
A cornerstone is the most important stone in a building. Jesus is our cornerstone, and everything we do must be built on Him.

Peter also talks about a stone of stumbling and offence. If a stone is in the middle of the road, it can trip you up. Stones can make a matatu ride very bumpy! The gospel can also be like a stone, and some people are thinking about God and going towards Him and then they come to the gospel and fall right down. Jesus offended many people, and eventually was killed, but just like a stone he did not waver and He stood firm.

IV. God has chosen us!!

Peter says that those who have been rejected of men have been chosen by God. Has anyone here been rejected by man? I have been rejected before. If you have been rejected, know that God has chosen you!! Hallelujah. God is good. We are chosen, royal and holy. Did you know you are chosen, royal, and holy? We are a race, a priesthood, a nation, and a people for God’s own possession. When God has redeemed us, we are no longer our own, but we belong to God. We are all these things for the purpose of proclaiming the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. That is what God’s church of living stones is for. We all stand together to form a strong building that must hold against the attacks of Satan and reach out to others with this message of God’s light.

V. We must be pure and honorable.

Peter was writing to people that lived far from home in strange countries, facing danger and persecution. We may not live in a strange country and have the same persecution, but we are all strangers on this world, and must remember that we belong to God’s kingdom, which is not of this world. Remember the list of the fruits of the Spirit I read earlier. These are the fruits that help us to fight against our passions and desires. This is a war against our soul.

Why is this war important? Peter says that we must keep our conduct honorable, so that when people think we are evil, they see our good deeds and glorify God instead. There are many people watching you, and our lives are important. Let us serve God in the power of His Spirit.

Conclusion

Review story and the nature of stones. God has chosen us and put all of us in the place we are in so we can serve Him there. You are all here for a reason, and God has work for you here. Tell your friends about how strong God is, and how must better it is to live in his light than in darkness. You are a royal priesthood and a holy nation. You form God’s house in Kibera. He will protect you against evil and against the plots of the enemy. His Spirit will keep you strong.

Ministry Update

2008-10-13T11:56:00.000+03:00

Doing ministry has been an ongoing question and challenge since I've arrived in Kenya. I'm not here only to study; I'm here to prepare for ministry. And doing ministry is obviously one of the best ways to prepare and apply what I’m learning. One of the best ways to do ministry is through the church, but as I have not settled upon a church that is not yet an option. However, this past week, some ministry opportunities opened up here for me.

Contacts are very helpful in any field, and ministry is no exception. Thank you to Rob Welch for sending contacts my way!! I’ve already met several Kenyan pastors through him, and received more invitations to come and preach than I will able to do. This story starts in a cybercafé in Nairobi. Evangelist Emmanuel (www.freewebs.com/evangelistemmanuel) sat down at a computer, and the website that has been left on the screen was For His Glory Ministries, Rob’s ministry’s website, which incidentally I also assisted in updating while I was working for Rob (an evangelist based in St. Louis who does crusades all over the world, www.forhisglorymin.org). Emmanuel said he kept coming back to this website, and he was very impressed and excited by it, and eventually worked up the courage to email Rob and ask him to come out and do a crusade here in Nairobi. Rob forwarded this to me, and I emailed Emmanuel and we had lunch here at NEGST. A week ago I went to visit his church as well, which was an awesome experience. It was very Pentecostal, and the first service was definitely a lot stronger on the message than the second service, which seemed more like an extended pep rally, but it was real and African. Most of the churches I've visited near the school have been very American and not as authentic in my opinion. So this was a welcome change.

After church I went to his house for lunch, and this was definitely one of the poorest areas I’ve seen yet. There was sewage running along the road and garbage everywhere. Finally we came to his house, and he had a tiny kitchen, a squat toilet with a curtain in the corner, a couch, and a bedroom. The roof was bare sheet metal. He had a month old son, Dennis, and Emmanuel said I was the first mazungu (white person) that the baby had ever seen.

In addition to his own ministry, Emmanuel also leads a school for pastors called the Anointed Learning Institute. They operate mainly by correspondence, and meet once a month at a hotel in Nairobi to turn in assignments and hear a message. Emmanuel asked me to come and preach/teach for them this past Saturday, two days ago. About 15-20 pastors were able to come, and they all wanted to visit their church and preach. I feel it went well, assuming they were able to follow my English, which I will have to keep working on as I adjust to ministry here. Sometimes English feels like a different language here, and accents and speaking style can make communication difficult both ways. I talked about how to study the Bible and the significance of Jesus’ words at the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me [hint: I don’t think He was actually forsaken]?” That was exciting, and it did wear me out. Next week I’ll be going to a church in Kibera, one of the largest slums in Africa, to preach. That will be a little different setting that I’ve been in before, and I’m not sure what I should say! Any suggestions are appreciated.

I hope to be working with Evangelist Emmanuel into the future, and if I can form something like a Nairobi Evangelist Team (moving from CET to NET) that would be great. I’m very impressed with him and his ministry: he’s passionate, humble and honest. I really hope he is able find more support and ways to bring his goals to fruition. He has many dreams, and would like to be able to come to America and study some day. I've glad I was able to meet him.

First Reactions to Kenya, Part 2

2008-10-13T11:17:00.000+03:00

*Note: This post is somewhat outdated, since it was written the first week of September. The Sunday referenced was August 31st.*

The next day I took the bus into church to Nairobi Chapel, and it was very interesting. They meet in tents, and the main area is a huge tent with chairs set up on this patio-type area, all cobblestones. I thought the backdrop of the church was so interesting, it was this painted landscape all along the back of the stage, and it was like the epitome of suburbia. There were little streaks like you are looking through glass onto a grass lawn, and then there was a swing set and a trampoline, and then a fence and another house behind it. It looked nothing like houses I’ve seen in Kenya and very much like typical American suburbia, which we always decry in places like Wheaton. But that’s what they strive towards; they see it as a good thing. It was really weird. I really enjoyed the service, the worship seemed so genuine. It was natural and cheerful and it was great. Then they had a skit that was like the worst type of gender stereotyping, with the guy lounging on this couch they brought onto the stage watching “football” on TV while his wife is cleaning and he orders her around and is a complete stupid jerk and goes through all the tasks that a women should do. I was a little surprised, but I guess some things are universal. But then the message was really good, I was impressed. He talked about gender and he brought out things I had never considered before. He talked about how we (meaning mostly guys, who have generally determined most interpretation) view the word “helper” in the creation account as meaning servant, lower, assistant. And honestly that kind of how I’ve always seen that when I’ve read through, like it seems to set up women in a subordinate and somewhat demeaning way. But then he went through all the uses of that word, and 16 of the 20 or so times it’s used, it’s used of God: “The Lord is my helper” type of thing. And obviously when I read that I don’t think of God as being in any type of subordinate relationship to me in that context. I may have heard that before, its sounds a little familiar, but hearing it presented that way really did change my perception of that passage, which doesn’t often happen. Then he went through the commands given to men and women and how they have been distorted, and some of that is more particular to Africa but still interesting. For example, when the man is told to leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, but in African societies it is the women who moves into the compound or place of the man, generally very close to the man’s family. And how the women is cursed with childbirth and the man is cursed with tilling the soil, but the women are made to work out in the fields as well as go through the pain of childbirth. This pastor gave the keynote at the last Urbana, and he was a really good speaker and teacher. I’ve heard his session was amazing and that I really need to hear it. Then we had tea after that, and I really like their tea, I’m so glad we do it so often. Every day we’ve had a break for tea at 10, and I think that continues into the term, so I am glad of that.

I’ve been shopping three times already, and its quite an experience. I had to buy a water boiler, because all the water has to be boiled, so that’s a little different. I bought food, an electric adapter so I can plug things in, cleaner, and a bunch of other miscellaneous things. I still need a cell phone, mattress, rice cooker, and things like that. Philip (from The Gambia, which I think is really funny that its so small and they call themselves that, but then we call ourselves The United States, but like The Kenya sounds so dumb) has been one of my best friends, we’ve gone shopping together every time and I bought his things for him since he didn’t have any money. We’ve had lunch together twice and he came over to eat dinner once too since there was no gas in his kitchen. When we have breaks for orientation he’ll propose we walk somewhere like the computer lab or he’ll go along with me if I need to turn something in. I’ve also done quite a bit with Njeri, who is single, which really does help in relating to someone. She took Philip and me shopping and is a lot of fun. When we were shopping I saw Philip showing her the latest book by Joel Osteen (Becoming A Better You), and I was thinking, great, I can make fun of American materialism and individuality and selfishness with my African brethren, so I walked over there. When I got there Philip was saying, yeah this is so good I didn’t have room to pack it but I think its one worth buying and having while I’m here. Njeri was all in agreement, so I didn’t really say anything, and it struck me both how cynical I am and how unfortunate it is that those are the types of things that represent American Christianity overseas, when most people I know would be somewhat skeptical of a Joel Osteen. It was a revealing encounter. The guy who was staying across the hall from me played K-Love for several hours the first two nights, and I’m sure he loves it. So different from Wheaton culture, and even the whole HNGR social justice element. One of the standards of NEGST that I had to agree to, in the student handbook, in addition to no drinking, gambling, drugs, was that I would respect the authorities set up by God and not participate or have anything to do with boycotts, strikes, protests, riots, or any of that type of thing. They have a tendency to get very violent here, so I guess that does make a significant difference.

I’m trying to think what else I was going to say. There is so much going on and so much I’ve been thinking about so its rather overwhelming. I found that have a café here which is very reasonable by my standards, 170 shillings for a hot meal, less than three dollars, so I think I’ll be doing that fairly often, because dealing with all that cooking and going shopping is such a pain. But then I feel bad because I’m the typical American that eats meat and all these expensive foods, so I’m not sure what to do. The other guy on my floor for dinner took some potatoes, chopped them up, boiled them in water, and ate them. He had nothing else, did not flavor them, or anything. Just boiled potatoes. If that’s all you eat that can’t be healthy!! I’m the only way who has put anything in the fridge at all. Yesterday an American family invited me over to eat, so that was good. They have two little kids, and I spend a few hours over there so that was nice. Ok, so for cleaning clothes the only real option is to hire “house help,” and they get paid a standard rate of 50 shillings an hour. That’s like 73 cents, per hour!! I’ve always heard about low wages, but I figured things would be proportionately cheaper, but they’re not here. I guess if you live in a hut and just grow your own vegetables you could live off that, and probably a lot of them do, but if you go to the store and buy like a radio or anything electric or basic food like rice or canned goods it costs about the same as in America. I can’t imagine paying someone that little to do that work, it just seems so wrong. But apparently if you don’t you’re seen as really uppity because you’re not sharing your wealth and hiring someone to do your work. And most students hire people to clean their rooms and bathrooms I think and cook for them. I mean, its dirt cheap. I really think I can do my own cleaning, and it seems such a bother to go out and buy the food and then tell them what you what to be cooked, and then it case it doesn’t come out right or something, it just sounds so difficult. So for sure I’ll hire someone to clean my clothes because I have no other option, but as far as the other cleaning and cooking I just don’t know, its really weird to me.

The other thing I’ve trying to figure out is what program to concentrate in. Basically the MDiv is a 9 term program, 3 for 3 years, and there are a lot of designated classes everyone has to take like 90 credits or something. Then within your program you have 43 credits which differ. I came in as general studies, which is basically meaningless: I can’t specialize and I can take whatever I want, whenever I want (for the 43). Or I could take Biblical studies, which basically means I only take Greek and Hebrew beyond the MDiv requirements. Or I could take Missions Studies, which would have sweet classes like contextualization and evangelism and things like that, which would be arguably more useful and relevant than more Hebrew and Greek. And since I don’t really enjoy Greek, it would be more enjoyable and interesting to me. But I feel like if I’m going to a seminary, I’ve got to take Biblical languages beyond just one year of one language, which is the only core requirement. I want to get good at Greek, to be able to actually read the Bible and not just struggle with it. If I take more classes than the requirement, which is difficult to get approved, I would have to have above a 3.3, get the permission of the instructor and the program director, then I could do it. I’m meeting with an advisor tomorrow and hopefully that will help sort things out.

My First Reactions to Kenya

2008-09-16T17:04:00.001+03:00

I started writing this when I had only been here for 24 hours, and even by then I’d already had so many thoughts about being here. It is so different, its impossible to even describe. This is definitely the craziest thing I have ever done, by far. Going to Wheaton was nothing compared to this. Going to Japan was nothing compared to this. In a lot of ways it seems just like I expected a 3^rd world county to be, dirty and dusty and somewhat scary. The airport was really interesting, the first impression I got was it was more like a community neighborhood airport than an actual legitimate airport. It was quite a strong contrast with Amsterdam, which was a really nice airport, one of the most modern airports I’ve ever been in. Once I got to Amsterdam that was when my trip started to look a lot more diverse and foreign. Flying KLM was so much nicer than Northwest, foreign airlines are just in an entirely different league than American airlines. They served good food, I didn’t like all of it but it was actual real food served well, even with warm hand cloths and the whole works. The entertainment system was ridiculous, it even put Asian airlines to shame based on my few experiences with them. They had movies, like a lot of movies, TV shows, music, news, sports, games, email as well as the cool flight tracking. It actually made things a lot more difficult to choose; usually I pick out like one of the four movies available and watch it, but I spent about half an hour just looking through all the options.

When I first arrived in the airport, I went into the bathroom and it looked more like a basic restroom at a gas station than what you generally find at an airport. As I went through the airport, I noticed a large number of people, mostly families with little kids, sitting down in big groups all over. I think they were waiting for visas to go through or something? This was not by the gates but in the areas leading up to the exit and immigration. I got in the line to purchase a visa, which was not a line at all but a huge disorderly mass of people, and there were a lot of people, and no one was moving. It looked like it would take a while, but then this airport guy walked by and was like, there’s another counter over here to get it, and directed us down the hallway. I went down and was among the first of the group to get there, and it was completely empty, no one in line. About two minutes after I got there, there were at least 60-70 people behind me, maybe more. So that sped thing up a lot. Once I got to the front, I handed the girl the paperwork I had filled out in the plane, folded, and she took it without even looking at it and put it back in this big pile spilling all over the desk. There were a few things I had questions about on the forms, and I asked her if she could look at it and make sure it was done correctly, and she responded, “No one will ever read it.” I was like, ok. I guess if that works for you all I’m fine with it. She had on a nametag that also had Kenya written on it, and the motto underneath was “Say No to Corruption.” I found that to be a deeply inspiring sentiment to form the vision of a country. After I went through that section, there was a huge poster proclaiming “Smile You’re in Kenya,” and that was somewhat more cheering. Then I collected my bags and went through immigration, and the officer looked at my passport and asked what I was doing there. I said I was a student studying theology, and he was like, “Theology is good. You are a good man.” And he waved me through without asking any other questions. I then found myself in the section where there are at least 100 people all lined up behind these ropes to meet people holding up their little signs. I felt very much like a celebrity walking up and down the red carpet, scanning the crowd for anything that said David Bawks or NEGST or something like that. Unfortunately, none of those signs materialized and I ended up setting my luggage down in these area by all the taxi people, who of course swarmed all over me and I received about 4 offers of a taxi within the next two minutes. I said there was someone meeting me, but they all seemed rather doubtful about the chances of that and advised if no one showed up in the next five minutes I should really take their taxi instead. I managed to hold them off, but after a few minutes I began to wonder what I should do. They were asking me if I had a number, and I found a number for the school but when one of the guys called it no one answered, and I didn’t have a number or even a name of the driver picking me up. All I was told is that there would be a banner with my name. After only about 5-10 more minutes, though, this girl and a guy walked up to me and I saw a little sign indicating David Bawks that they were holding, so I met my first friends at NEGST. We went over to a little restaurant to get a snack and tea, and talked for a while and I explained how I ended up coming to Nairobi. We were waiting for someone else to come in, Philip from The Gambia, and eventually he made it through the airport and then we headed out. I thought it was kind of funny that when he said where he was from, the girl who picked us up, Njeri, was like, um, I’m demonstrating my ignorance, but where is that? So not even Africans know all the countries here. Apparently there has never been a student from The Gambia who has come to NEGST, at least not that anyone can remember. We gave him a standing ovation later during orientation.

So then we starting driving to NEGST from the airport, and that was quite an experience. In a lot of ways I feel like coming to Kenya is like going back in time. Most of the cars here are from the 80s, there are no washing machines, everything is washed by hands, you hire servants to do pretty much all the household work, the key for my room looks like its from the Middle Ages, and the building where I’m living looks a lot like a medieval keep, or military barracks or something like that. The vehicle we took from the airport was this old truck, and it was quite a ride back. The speed limit was posted as 50 (kph), but we definitely hit 120 and a lot of the time cruised at 100, which still isn’t that fast but seemed really fast. Apparently speeding isn’t their top concern here. They drive on the left side of the road here, which I didn’t realize, I thought that was only in Britain and Japan. The roads were really bad, very bumpy, and a lot of the time we were in the middle or on the right because it was smoother and then we would swerve back when we saw other cars coming towards us. As we were on our way back all of a sudden they said, oh yeah, we have random police checkpoints, and we slowed down and there was this mess of cars going every which way, and I saw these two inch metal spikes down on the road. There weren’t even any police, just the spikes, staggered across both lanes. At another checkpoint later, there was a police officer with an assault rifle slung across his shoulder (it looked like an AK-47 but I wasn’t completely sure), but he just stood there on the side of the road and didn’t do anything. We stopped at a restaurant, and they said they were considering going to another place but that to go any further down this road was too dangerous. That hasn’t been a general criteria for me in selecting a place to go is considering the relative danger, but I’m been a lot more cautious here than I usually am, and I’m always thinking about people robbing or pick-pocketing me.

Finally we got to NEGST, and I felt like I was entering a military compound because there was a wall with a gate we went through, the guard let us in, and there was wire all along the top of the wall. Just about all the windows here are barred. There are cows on campus, so right now through the student association I am the part owner of six cows. There are clothes hanging up everywhere, little kids playing all over the place, and even gardens planted all around our housing buildings, so it looks a lot like the pictures you see of Africa. Going into my room was a shock at first, but now that I’ve gotten used to it, I feel kind of bad because its one of the nicest rooms I’ve seen, and I have more furniture than any other room I’ve been in. My room has a bare cement floor and walls, and the ceiling is rather dirty and stained wood. The light bulb was blue tinted and about the brightness of a night light, so you could hardly see, and there was no mattress, blankets, or anything. There was a little wooden frame for a bed, an industrial looking desk, a rather large book case, and a wardrobe unit thing. There are all made of wood. Every room I’ve been in has been a different shape and had different furniture, which seems odd since I think they all cost the same. Perhaps they don’t, but one room I went in had a bed, desk, bookcase, and that was it, and there was a large hole in the roof which leaked and brought in bugs. That was Philip’s rooms, and he didn’t have a blanket either the first night so he had a much rougher time of it than I did. Someone gave me a mattress and blanket to use for the first night and so I was all set, but I once I was alone in my room it really struck me how far I had gone and how different this place is.