Week 10 – Response to Kathryn Alford’s blog on “Mission of the Church – Fuellenbach”

Kathryn is very correct in stating that “faith should be almost visible through our words and actions.” In fact, our faith and love for God should pour out of every pore of our body. Our lives should be an over-abundant testimony of God’s love in our lives and of our over-abundant faith in Him. I agree with St. Francis of Assisi –“Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words.” The way we live our lives should tell our faith stories; if not, are we truly being different from the world that people will see the gift we have been given through Jesus Christ and want to know how they can get it? I pray that my life makes people ask what is different about me and how they can receive the gift: Jesus.

Week 10 – Maori “Jews” and a Resistant Reading of John 5.10-47 – Mary Huie-Jolly

“[S]ome Maori referred to themselves as ‘Jews’ rather than Christians,” states Huie-Jolly (Sugirtharajah, 224), because of the binarism of Jesus’ Sonship’s consistency with imperial domination. The Maori prefer to refer to themselves—as Israel did—as “‘the chosen people’” (Ibid., 231). I find this fascinating because Christians today view themselves as God’s chosen people, just as Israel did; however, we see no issue of Jesus’ Sonship being a binarism creating an “other” and yet it does, especially for those people who already feel oppressed by other people groups. How careful we must be as Christians not to come across as being superior or creating the binarism of “other”!

Week 10 – Exodus-Toward-Egypt: Filipino-Americans’ Struggle to Realize the Promised Land in America – Eleazar S. Fernandez

I think Fernandez chose a wonderful biblical narrative to illustrate Filipino-Americans’—as well as other minorities within the United States—struggles. Many of my international friends have come to study in the United States solely because it is “the land of opportunities”, and yet some of them feel like captives or the oppressed people—whether socio-economic, racial, or other discrimination solely because they are neither white nor American citizens. How can I—as a white American—truly identify with what they are going through? How can I aid them in dealing with the oppression they receive?

Week 10 – How Local Divine Powers were Suppressed: A Case of Mwari of the Shona – Dora R. Mbuwayesango

Even though the Christian missionaries meant well in referring to Mwari as the Shona name for our Christian God, Mwari—the Shona’s god—has such a deep meaning in different ways than the Christian understanding of God. Figuring out what language to use in the contextualization process would be very difficult because there’s a fine line of balance between A) wanting to contextualize Christianity into terms the people will understand more clearly while B) not taking away from their own culture and identity. This is something I still struggle with trying to comprehend. What would you do?

Week 10 – God at the Crossroads: A Postcolonial Reading of Sophia – Mayra Rivera

I enjoy how Rivera connects Sophia with the identity of her people, los atravesados–”‘the crossed’ [who are] [n]ot from here; not from there” (Sugirtharajah, 238).  I also truly enjoyed Rivera’s insight of Sophia being ideal and countering with the foreign or strange woman, the “other” as colonialistic (Ibid., 240).
On the other hand, I feel that many times Rivera switches Sophia to something she—Sophia—is not. For instance, Rivera replaces “the Word” with Sophia in John 1:1. Strong’s Concordance is very clear that in John 1:1-18 “the Word” is referring to the Son of God (James Strong, Grk. 152: #3056).

 

Week 10 – Wednesday

Today’s class was a wonderful wrap up of the items we have been learning about all semester. I especially appreciated Dr. Bolger’s point that we need to make sure that Jesus is our model for missions–not just other missionaries, such as Paul. We can learn everything we need to know from our Master, Lord, Savior, and Friend, which is such a great encouragement in our faith journey. I also found Dr. Bolger’s model of proposal–awareness, understanding, evaluate, experiment, (re-evaluate,) and commit to it–as a very useful tool for facilitating change within my church community and the Church worldwide. I truly have enjoyed this semester! 

Week 10 – Monday

I can’t believe it’s the last week of class already! Today’s class really hit me AFTER class when Dr. Bolger revealed to me that the church is not necessarily refering to the church service of the congregation but rather the community. I am not sure how to go about my paper anymore, but I’m sure that God will reveal His direction for me, because He is so faithful.

Week 9 – Response to Andy O’s Blog on Bourke’s “Reading a Woman’s Death”

I do agree that mission trips–especially short-term–must be very careful of who they send and how they interact with the people in affirming or condemning the culture. I do, however, think that the missionary has a very difficult line to walk on when the culture from which they are learning has practices that mar the people’s identity or that are truly demonic. Bridget Cleary’s death, brought about by the superstitions of the fairy legend making her husband believe she would come back again, was not healthy and needed to be addressed. I do not think those exploiting the situation responded correctly nor do I commend them. How would you recommend addressing that type of situation if you were a missionary on the field?   

“Concert and Salsa Dancing” Birthday Party

Almost finals week… crazy, huh? Well, after turning in your last paper, everyone in the Church and Mission class (invited your friends) is invited to come to my birthday party, next Friday, December 7th. We will meet at Cristian Cazacu’s Romanian Concert in Travis Auditorium, which starts at 7:30PM. After the concert, we will move to a free salsa dancing club in the area. I’ll give more information on that later this week to those who ask me or are my friends on Facebook. It will be a great night of good, clean fun… for those of you worried about freaky dancing, don’t be! I’ve been told the people at this club respect their dancing partners  Yaya! 

Week 9 – Two Models for the Future Church – Fuellenbach

I was excited in reading Fuellenbach’s assessment of the “two models for the future church”–one of heirarchical structure, the other of decentralized charismatic structure–and how the two models must work together. As 70% of all Roman Catholics are in the 2/3rds World, the Holy Spirit is evidently moving within the BECs (Basic Ecclesial Communities) of the 2/3rds World. I especially appreciate “[t]he basic images it uses [for the] people of God (all are equal), body of Christ (living organism), and Creation of the Holy Spirit (charismatic entity)” (Fuellenbach, 169). My image of the Church is a combination of both models, which will be good when I go onto the mission field and will be hopefully better able to relate to the Church of that culture than if I were to only accept the West’s heirarchical model of the church.