Volume 3, Number 5
November, 2005
Dallas ElderLink Forum 2005 Is Near
The Dallas ElderLink Forum is Saturday, November 12 at the Highland Oaks Church of Christ. Registration is still under way and can be completed on line. More details about registration, schedule, or lodging are available at www.acu.edu/ministry/elderlink/conferences/dallas.html.
The plenary speaker will be Randy Harris speaking on "Doctrinal Disagreement: Must It Be War?" Breakout sessions topics and presenters will include the following: Rick Marrs on "Leadership in the Old Testament," Robert Oglesby, Jr. on "The 360 Degree Youth Minister Evaluation," Jan Hailey on "How Elders' Wives Can Lead the Women's Ministry in Your Church," Tom and Sandra Milholland on "Ministering to Marriages," Fred Aquino on "Becoming Fully Human," David Wray on "The Missional Church," Richard Beck on "Ministering to Believers from All Theological Worlds," and Charles and Judy Siburt on "Help! I'm a Church Leader's Spouse."
Spread the word to other leaders in your church and in other congregations. Join us for an edifying day.
Rochester ElderLink Forum Coming January 28, 2006
The 2006 Rochester ElderLink Forum is set for Saturday, January 28, 2006 at Rochester College in Rochester, MI. The event will again be co-sponsored by ACU and Rochester College. Presenters will include Randy Harris, David Jones, Rubel Shelly, David Wray, John Laster, and a panel of elders from congregations in the area. Details about topics, schedule, and registration are available at http://www.acu.edu/ministry/elderlink/conferences/rochester.html. Plan to participate.
Abraham Malherbe to give Carmichael-Walling Lectures
Dr. Abraham J. Malherbe, Buckingham Professor Emeritus at Yale University, will give the nineteenth annual Carmichael-Walling Lectures at ACU on November 10, 2005, according to Dr. James W. Thompson, associate dean of ACU's Graduate School of Theology. He will lecture on "Indispensable Intermediaries: Paul's Co-Workers" at 4:00 p.m. and on "Mutual Ministry in the Pauline Churches" at 7:30 p.m.. The lectures will be held in room 130 of the Onstead-Packer Biblical Studies Building.
Dr. Malherbe taught at Yale University from 1970 until his retirement in 1994. A native of Pretoria, South Africa, he graduated from Abilene Christian College in 1953 and earned the S.T.B. and Th.D. degrees from Harvard University. From 1963 to 1969, he taught at Abilene Christian University. He is the author of numerous books, including Social Aspects of Early Christianity, Paul and the Popular Philosophers: The Philosophic Tradition of Pastoral Care, Ancient Epistolary Theorists, and the recent commentary, The Letters to the Thessalonians. His students and colleagues have honored him with two collections of essays. He has also contributed many articles in the major dictionaries and journals. He was the co-founder of Restoration Quarterly and the Living Word Commentary series. He is a specialist in the relationship between the New Testament and the Greco-Roman world.
Training Missionaries for the Sake of the Gospel
Mission formation is alive and well in the Graduate School of Theology. The GST houses the only masters level missions degree program presently available in academic institutions related to Churches of Christ. Currently, the GST has 24 declared majors. These are divided evenly between students enrolled in the M.A. in missions degree and the M.Div. degree with a missions track. Commitment to missions is not limited, however, to those pursuing an official mission degree or track. Additionally, 17 students currently enrolled in the M.Div. program are interested in participating in missions in some form upon graduation. This means that 41 students (nearly 20% of all students enrolled in masters-level graduate studies at ACU) are seriously considering or have already committed to domestic or overseas missions.
Many of these students work closely with the Halbert Institute of Missions (HIM) and the area coordinators for each of the various continents. HIM personnel, with the help of GST missions faculty, assist these graduate students in their missional formation through engagement in the classroom, in co-curricular activities, and in personal mentoring. Subsequently, several church-planting mission teams have formed including teams going to Peru, northern Thailand, Boston, Sudan, El Salvador, and the Czech Republic.
Another exciting recent development in GST missions is the creation of the Missionary Residency for North America program (MRNA). MRNA is a program designed to equip church-planters with experiential and practical training while MRNA students pursue an academic degree program (M.Div or M.A. in Missions). MRNA is an integrative formation process, combining theoretical and practical training. Presently there are seven full-time GST students involved in MRNA. Many are conducting research that will enable them to discern destinations for church planting teams in North America. Certainly 2005 is an exciting time for missions preparation in the GST.
In August 2005, Dr. Kent Smith joined Neil Cole in Guadalajara, Mexico to provide training in organic church planting for more than thirty full-time mission workers. "The Intensive Organic Church Planters Greenhouse" seminar provides participants with theological and practical tools for evangelism and planting networks of simple, reproducible churches. Follow-up materials allow participants to form on-going learning communities as they work to implement the principles of organic church planting.
For more information on upcoming Greenhouse training, see www.cmaresources.org.
The Changing World of Missions
An Essay by the staff of the Halbert Institute for MissionsSince 1949, the number of Christian believers in China has multiplied not less than ten times, now evidenced in tens of millions of believers in massive house church networks. In Africa over the past 100 years, the percentage of the population that represents Christian faiths has gone from 3% to more than 45%. If present trends continue there will be more believers in Africa by 2025 than on any other continent (over 600 million). In India, over 200,000 churches have been started by indigenous Indian mission agencies in the past 15 years. Singapore sends out more missionaries than any other nation as a rate of one missionary per 1000 church members. The Philippines sends out more missionaries to Muslim people groups than any other nation. Since 1975, the number of Majority World (Third World) missionaries sent out by their national fellowships into cross-cultural service has gone from 3400 to over 95,000, almost equaling those sent out by Western nations. Indonesia, Brazil, South Korea, and Nigeria are among the new centers of Christian influence in the world. More Muslims have become followers of Jesus in the past 30 years than in the previous 1400 years combined. The United States ranks fourth in the world in terms of the number of most unreached people living within our borders. Even in our lands of the Western world, "church" is being re-tooled and reshaped to fit a post-modern world in what we ourselves now term the "post-Christendom" age. Shifts in the centers of influence and vitality of faith are definitely taking place. Dan McVey, (ACU's missionary coordinator for Africa) offers the following exhortation [more ...]
Theology in the Christian University: Prospects for the 21st Century
During the Centennial year, the GST will host a conference on Theology in the Christian University: "Prospects for the 21st Century," March 23-25, 2006.
What roles do theological disciplines play in the Christian university? How do they intersect with other disciplines and inquiries? The answers to these questions have taken several forms in the past century, and numerous challenges complicate the contemporary pursuit of programs that are theologically reflective. As a result, the need for connecting theological reflection with other areas of knowledge is nowhere more keenly felt than in the Christian university.
Given this situation, Abilene Christian University will host "Theology in the Christian University: Prospects for the 21st Century," March 23-25, 2006. This conference will call scholars to rethink the nature of theological education within the Christian university, and will stand out not only for its subject matter, but also for its relevance to the contemporary discussion. The following keynote speakers will help guide our conversation:
Dr. Stanley Hauerwas, Duke Divinity School
Dr. Ellen Charry, Princeton Theological Seminary
Dr. William Abraham, Southern Methodist University
Dr. Darryl Tippens, Pepperdine University
The event will provide an occasion for various religious traditions to cooperate in promoting greater dialogue among Christian education movements. Furthermore, it will furnish an opportunity for participants to investigate concrete strategies for making our reflections on the nature of theological education a reality. You are invited to attend. Register online by February 17, 2006.
For more information
Also on April 20, 2006, at 7:30 p.m. in the Teague Special Events Center, Dr. Jean Bethke Elshtain will be a featured speaker. Dr. Elshtain is a political philosopher whose work shows the connections between our political and our ethical convictions. She is the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics at the University of Chicago. Her books include Democracy on Trial, Public Man, Private Woman: Women in Social Thought and Just War Theory.
Lectureship Preview
"The Truth Will Set You Free: Studies in the Gospel of John" is the theme for the 2006 Lectureship (Feb 19-22, 2006). Drs. Royce Money and Don Jeans will be the featured speakers Sunday Night. This year's keynote speakers include Samuel Twumasi-Ankrah (Ghana), Dr. David Fleer (Rochester Hills, MI), Dr. Rick Marrs (Malibu, CA), Mike Cope (Abilene), Lawrence Murray (Edmond, OK), and Dwight Robarts (Dallas, TX).
This will be the last February Lectureship. The event will move to the fall (September 17-20, 2006). Given that ACU is currently celebrating its centennial, several special events are planned for February, including honoring Drs. Paul Faulkner and Carl Brecheen for their years of supporting Christian marriages. Make your plans to attend now as motel rooms will go quickly. http://www.acu.edu/events/lectureship.html.
Food, Music and Sharing the Good News in European Cities
Three years ago a few leaders of Catholic, Anglican, and Evangelical churches came together and prayed about a way to share their faith in Jesus throughout their city. This happened in Lille, a large city in northern France. An evangelical minister from a church in Leeds (Great Britain) shared with them how the churches in that city worked together in evangelism by offering outdoor giant BBQ lunches during the summer months. Thousands of people received an invitation to these free meals. The invitation mentioned that Christians organizing the meals would also share their faith through music and conversations at the tables.In 2004 when Rita and Yann Opsitch (Mission coordinator for Europe with the Halbert Institute of Missions) heard about the project for Lille, they contacted the religious leaders of the BBQ project in the city of Lille and offered to help out with a group of students from ACU. The organizers were happy to get more helpers since they had discovered that there were never enough people to talk about Jesus to the thousands who came for the BBQ lunches. During the summers of 2004 and 2005 Yann and Rita with the help of ACU students and faculty worked with "En Route Ensemble" (Walking Together), preparing meals, inviting hundreds of people in the streets, and sharing their faith while eating with people. One remarkable aspect of this outreach is that the organizers made it clear that the purpose was to invite people to become acquainted with the Gospel; freedom was given the workers to invite people to their own congregations. Hundreds of people reacted positively to this outreach when they learned that it was the effort of all Christian churches in the city and not just one denomination.
Through this effort members of the Church of Christ in Lille and students from ACU were able to talk about the Good News. A significant aspect of this effort is how it brought together people of so many backgrounds and how all were touched by this effort. It was a great encouragement for the small congregation in that city to witness thousands of people coming together to hear about the Lord. Members of the church are still in touch with a number of people contacted through the BBQ effort. This outreach communicated a positive effort to people weary of religious divisions and who are looking for something new.
The organizers have the vision of a major BBQ outreach throughout European cities in the coming years.
Taking the Gospel to Sudan
Over two years ago (summer 2003), Bryan Harrison knelt in prayer with three American and five Sudanese brothers. They were dedicating a small stone memorial in Nimule, Sudan. As Bryan prayed, he committed before God and these Sudanese brothers to tell the story of the people of Sudan. He did not know what he could promise in terms of tangible help, but he promised that he would not remain silent about what he had seen and heard.This past summer Bryan traveled again to Sudan (on a survey trip) with a team of several Americans, a Ghanaian, and a Sudanese. They placed a few more stones on the memorial. As they prayed, Bryan committed himself again to speak out on behalf of the Sudanese. Their story is one of war, poverty, destruction, and chaos, but it is also a story of hope. It is a story that needs to be heard.
In Nimule, Sudan, the group saw the beauty of the Nile River juxtaposed with the struggling existence of tens of thousands of displaced people living in camps. They played with precious smiling children in a field only 50 feet from a pile of AK-47s and a unit of SPLA soldiers.
The group worshiped with vibrant churches on Sunday and on Thursday spent time with children who had been abducted by the evil rebel army known as the LRA. Before these children were rescued, they were brutally raped, thoroughly abused, and trained to be killers. They now live in an orphanage safe from physical harm but deeply wounded in their souls.
Civil War has ravaged Sudan for all but eleven of the last 50 years. Since 1983 as many as two million southern Sudanese have been killed and 6 million displaced (forced to live in camps hundreds of miles from their homes). The war has touched every facet of society. The infrastructure has been devastated: there is no telephone or postal service, no paved roads (and very few decent dirt roads), and thousands of people lacking sufficient food, clean water, and medical care. A whole generation has been denied the opportunity for education (even primary school) as most school buildings lie in ruins. The few schools operating in Nimule today are funded from the outside by Jesuit Relief Services.
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In the midst of these overwhelming obstacles, however, the church in southern Sudan is vibrant and growing rapidly. In 1983 as few as 15% of the people in far southern Sudan professed faith in Jesus Christ. Today approximately 85% of these people are believers. Their faith, which lives and grows in a context of immense suffering, is strong and deep.
When they give thanks to God for their food and when they say in prayer, "we trust you, God" a profound gratitude and dependence is expressed. In central and northern Sudan, however, Islam is still the majority faith (approximately 70% of the nation are Muslims). The southern Christians ask Christians throughout the world to join them as they go forth to reach their Muslim neighbors.
Nearly every ministry imaginable is needed in Sudan. Please pray for Sudan and for students like Bryan Harrison and Elizabeth Talley who are forming a team to serve long-term in this great nation.
Ministers Support Network Offers Encouragement to Minister Couples
The mission of the Ministers Support Network is to care for ministers and their families as they face the challenges of ministry by providing spiritual nurture, supportive relationships, and wise coaching. The Ministers Support Network ministry was established in 1996 and has been providing encouragement retreats called Sabbaticals since 1997 free of charge to minister couples who could benefit from a time of rest, spiritual renewal, and personal coaching. The retreat site is the Summers Mill Retreat Center in Belton, TX. MSN hosts three retreats per year (April, July, and October). Each retreat begins at 5:00 PM on Thursday and concludes on Sunday at 11:00 AM.
The MSN staff team includes four experienced minister couples--Paul and Gladys Faulkner, Eddie and Annette Sharp, Charles and Judy Siburt, and David and Jeanne Wray. Minister Couples are invited because some church leader has recommended them, or because one of the staff team couples recommends them, or because minister couples request to be invited. If you or someone else you know could benefit from a special time of encouragement at an MSN Sabbatical, please contact Dr. Charles Siburt at 325-674-3732 or siburt@bible.acu.edu.
2005 Ministers Salary Survey Results Now Available
The results of the 2005 Ministers Salary Survey are now available on the Ministry Resources web page at http://www.acu.edu/ministry/salarysurvey/2005_survey.html.
Dr. Charles Siburt, Vice President for Church Relations at ACU, recently administered a nation-wide survey to gather information about current levels of compensation for ministers in the Churches of Christ. This survey was completed by 585 ministers of diverse ages and ministry positions and from churches of all sizes. The survey compares minister compensation packages, including allowances and benefits, as well as comparing number of years in ministry and educational background and experience. With this detailed information, it is difficult to establish any basis for a salary standard. It does, however, document the current compensation range for ministers and provide powerful information for reassessment and reevaluation of a minister's compensation package.
ACU hopes the survey will be an invaluable resource for ministers and other church leaders, as they consider and negotiate compensation packages that provide the highest level of support for ministers in Churches of Christ. The survey will be revised and updated annually. Dr. Siburt anticipates that more churches and ministers will participate each year, providing a greater pool of information for increased precision. If you were unable to participate in the 2005 survey but would like to participate in the future, please send your name and email address to ministry@bible.acu.edu.
Now Accepting Applicants for the Doctor of Ministry Program
Applications for the Doctor of Ministry program at Abilene Christian University are being accepted through January 15, 2006. The Doctor of Ministry is an advanced degree oriented toward ministerial leadership. Applicants must meet the following criteria for admission:
- Have an accredited Master of Divinity degree or its educational equivalent.
- Have completed three years of ministry since completing their first theological masters degree (M.A. or M.Div.).
- Have a minimum of a 3.2 GPA on graduate work.
- Have a minimum of 450 on the oral component of the GRE (Graduate Record Exam) or a minimum of 40 on the MAT (Miller Analogies Test).
- Have strong references.
If you would like to know more about the Doctor of Ministry Program at ACU, please contact Dr. Charles Siburt at siburt@bible.acu.edu or 325-674-3732.
New Books of Interest by CBS Faculty
The Body Royal by Mark Hamilton
The present volume seeks to identify the underlying code of meanings about the Israelite king operating in various ways in texts and other artifacts surviving from the culture. The focus is upon the (living) body of the king, its anatomical characteristics, its constitution through ritual, and the conventions concerning its proper self-display by the king. This study combines careful linguistic and historical-critical analysis of the texts considered (both biblical and ancient Near Eastern, the latter used comparatively where appropriate) with a critical use of contemporary approaches to the study of signs in language, objects, and movements (semiotics), in general, and the study of the body, in particular.
This book argues that the royal psalms contain a set of officially sanctioned notions about the royal body and its use. The king was thought to have an outsized, superhuman body owing to his being the son of the deity, a status he attained upon his coronation. Other texts, often from circles outside the royal court, significantly altered these notions.
The king's body was thus for ancient Israelites the locus of reflection on power, gender, religion, and even international relations. Through careful historical analysis, it is possible to reconstruct the terms of an Iron Age intellectual inquiry that still influences our contemporary world.
The Body Royal can be ordered from Biblical Interpretation Series .
Communities of Informed Judgment Newman's Illative Sense and Accounts of Rationality by Frederick D. Aquino
Is Christian belief rationally acceptable? Must every Christian defend his or her beliefs with exhaustively logical arguments, or is belief solely a matter of faith rather than logical argument? In Communities of Informed Judgment, Frederick D. Aquino offers an alternative route, showing how John Henry Newman's notion of the illative sense of reasoning paves a way for constructing a fresh account of the rationality of Christian belief. Moving beyond both modern and postmodern accounts of rationality, Aquino constructs a proposal of informed judgment, blending Newman's notion of the illative sense of reasoning with recent work in social and virtue epistemology.
The first part of the book focuses primarily on Newman's treatment of the illative sense in the Grammar of Assent, with the University Sermons as a backdrop. The second part addresses the problem of securing a common standard of justification. Though Newman acknowledges the social and communal facets of judgment, his focus is primarily on the personal dimension. Aquino develops Newman's insights into a social epistemology of informed judgment, transposing the problem of common measure into a problem of trusting the illative sense as a reliable belief-forming process in communities of informed judgment.
An original contribution to Newman studies, the book has an interdisciplinary focus, drawing from recent work in social epistemology, virtue epistemology, and cognitive science. It also takes up issues relevant to the philosophy of religion, epistemology of religious belief, systematic theology, ecumenical dialogue, and studies in John Henry Newman.
Communities of Informed Judgment can be ordered from Catholic University Press.
Seeking a Lasting City: The Church's Journey in the Story of God by Mark Love, Douglas Foster, and Randall Harris.
The latest volume in the Heart of the Restoration Series focuses on the nature of the church.
Seeking a Lasting City is about church, for the church, and by thoughtful, careful, and creative church-men whose lives and essays are profound evidence of a high view of their subject and audience.
Seeking a Lasting City is an ecclesiology in service to the church, making intelligent theology readable for every one serious about living Christianity in community. Each chapter abounds with energetic thinking and engaging prose, blending serious ideas with even more serious ways for implementation. If this book is consumed by preachers, elders, and Bible class teachers it will spark meaningful dialogue and renew essential commitment, helping us recover our original sensibilities as a story-formed people living in these post-Christian days.
--David Fleer, Vice President for Church Relations and Professor of Religion and Communication, Rochester College
Seeking a Lasting City can be ordered through ACU Press by calling 1-800-444-4228.
The Body Broken: Embracing the Peace of Christ in a Fragmented Church by Jack Reese
"What to do about differences within the Body of Christ? Jack Reese shows us how to love and serve Jesus and, at the same time, faithfully love one another. In The Body Broken, Reese restores my faith that those who gather at the Lord's Table can be one." --William Willimon
The Body Broken can be ordered by contacting Leafwoodpublishers.com
Upcoming Courses in the Graduate School of Theology
Fall 2005 Courses
January and Spring 2006 Courses
May and Summer 2006 Courses
Weekend Courses
Internet Courses
