Categories
Books Duke Divinity School Ecclesiology Ken Carder Leadership Missiology Missional

Ken Carder’s course The Local Church in Mission to God’s World

I am a teaching assistant for Ken Carder's Spring 2010 course at Duke Divinity School entitled Local Church in Mission to God's World (PARISH 175).  Here is the latest version of the syllabus.  Below are the required texts. 

Ken Carder, Ruth W. and A. Morris Williams Professor of the Practice of Christian Ministry at Duke Divinity School, is a veteran pastor and retired Bishop in the United Methodist Church.  50 students signed up for the course.

I first learned about Bishop Carder from reading Resurrecting Excellence: Shaping Faithful Christian Ministry 

by Greg Jones and Kevin Armstrong (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006) when his insights jumped off the page for their wisdom.   For example, see this definition of excellence from Carder. 

Excellence, then, is being a sign and instrument by which creation is healed, reconciliation is experienced, and justice is practiced. Excellence in the pursuit of healing, reconciliation, and justice requires explicit theological vision, Christ-formed character, and skills that shape persons and institutions that approximate God’s reign of compassion, generosity, and joy.  Pastoral excellence includes announcing in word and deed God’s telos, inviting persons and communities to an identity and purpose rooted in God’s new creation, and leading congregations on their journey toward the new creation.   

Kenneth L. Carder, "What does God have to do with excellence?" Faith & Leadership website (9 January 2009) partially quoted in Greg Jones and Kevin Armstrong, Resurrecting Excellence: Shaping Faithful Christian Ministry (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 49.

See also Bishop Carder's other articles at Duke Divinity School's Faith & Leadership website.  

Kevin Baker, the lead pastor at Reconciliation United Methodist Church in Durham, NC, is the other teaching assistant.  Kevin and I are Bishop Carder's regular preceptors for his courses: Introduction to Christian Ministry and Local Church in Mission.  It should be a great course. 

Last year I was the teaching assistant for the course and posted the syllabus and books.  Spring 2009 Ken Carder's course The Local Church in Mission to God's World books

Categories
Books

Books I’m Reading (December 2009 – January 2010)

DECEMBER 2009 – JANUARY 2010 READS

  • Steven M. Cahn: From Student to Scholar: A Candid Guide to Becoming a Professor

    Steven M. Cahn: From Student to Scholar: A Candid Guide to Becoming a Professor
    I read this in one night. It gives a quick overview of how to make it through grad school and ascend the academic ladder. It strongly emphasizes writing and publishing. A great read.

  • Sonja Foss and William Waters: Destination Dissertation: A Traveler's Guide to a Done Dissertation

    Sonja Foss and William Waters: Destination Dissertation: A Traveler's Guide to a Done Dissertation
    Foss and Waters have a formula for writing your dissertation quickly and steadily. They also give lots of great tips for getting along with your supervisor. (I haven't finished this book yet).

  • Christian Smith with Patricia Snell: Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults

    Christian Smith with Patricia Snell: Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults
    My friend Chris tracks young people from his previous study on teenagers and reflects on other quantitative data to profile what is going on with young adults today. (I haven't finished this book yet).

  • William H. Willimon: Conversations With Barth on Preaching

    William H. Willimon: Conversations With Barth on Preaching
    Willimon shows what Barth can bring to practical ministry. Willimon is remarkably savvy about pastoral ministry and his knowledge of Barth is outstanding. (I haven't finished this book yet).

  • Malcolm Gladwell: Outliers: The Story of Success

    Malcolm Gladwell: Outliers: The Story of Success
    This is such a short and jolting read I would recommend it to everyone. I thought this was even better than Tipping Point and Blink. Gladwell's anecdotes about habit, practice, culture and intelligence are fascinating. He is a great writer and I think he is pretty close to being right theologically as well even though he is not a Christian.

  • Michael Lewis: The Blind Side

    Michael Lewis: The Blind Side
    This nonfiction book chronicles the life of Michael Oher who this year will probably finish second in the NFL in the Rookie of the Year voting. He is a left tackle and Lewis explains why left tackles are the second highest paid players after quarterbacks. It is a great story. You can read the book before or after watching the film. Lewis is a great writer. If you love baseball, you must read his 2003 book Moneyball–about the revolution in baseball strategy as a result of better statistical analysis.

  • Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore: In the Midst of Chaos: Caring for Children as Spiritual Practice (The Practices of Faith Series)

    Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore: In the Midst of Chaos: Caring for Children as Spiritual Practice (The Practices of Faith Series)
    Miller-McLemore reflects on the difficulty for parents of finding time for solitude and silence. She wonders whether children might actually help one's walk with God even though life with them is chaotic. She has also written Also A Mother: Work and Family as Theological Dilemma and Let the Children Come: Reimagining Childhood from a Christian Perspective both of which give people with young kids like me (Ryan 4 and Jacob 2 and baby girl coming May 12, 2010) a helpful different perspective. Miller-McLemore is more theologically liberal than I but I really appreciate her deep reflection on the goodness of children. (I haven't finished this book yet).

Categories
Books Duke Divinity School Lesslie Newbigin

Review of Lesslie Newbigin’s 1956 primer Sin and Salvation

I am a teaching assistant for Geoffrey Wainwright’s Lesslie Newbigin course at Duke Divinity School.

Sin and Salvation by Lesslie Newbigin  

5.0 out of 5 stars
Basic theology written for village teachers in India, September 16, 2009
By  Andrew D. Rowell (Durham, NC) – See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)
  

Geoffrey Wainwright, professor of systematic theology at Duke Divinity
School, has called “Sin and Salvation” “a marvelous, moving summary of
the gospel.” Lesslie Newbigin’s book published in 1956 is succinct,
clear and ecumenical.

Newbigin (1909-1998) begins the preface this way,

“This small book was originally published in Tamil for the use of
church workers in the Tamil dioceses of the Church of South India.
Those for whom it was intended are mostly village teachers of
elementary grade, who–although without theological training–have to
bear a heavy share of the responsibility for the pastoral care of
several thousand village congregations in the Tamil country . . . I
began writing it in Tamil but found that the work was proceeding too
slowly and therefore completed it in English, and requested a friend to
translate it. I have therefore tried to write the kind of English
sentences that would go easily into Tamil, and have had all the time in
mind the necessities of translation” (p. 7). (Newbigin describes more
fully the villages he had in mind when he wrote this in chapter 7
“Kanchi: The Villages” of his Unfinished Agenda: An Updated Autobiography).

The Duke Divinity School students who read this book for
Wainwright’s course noted how valuable Newbigin’s little book was for
helping them review theology. They also appreciated the breadth of his
description of what the cross accomplished. Newbigin cannot be pinned
down as merely “Reformed”–his work has traces of Wesleyan, Orthodox
and Catholic theology as well. (See Wainwright’s extensive analysis of
“Sin and Salvation” in chapter one of his book Lesslie Newbigin: A Theological Life.

Fans of Newbigin’s writings from the 1980’s and 1990’s will be
interested to note that even as early as 1956 when he was 47 years old,
he was reflecting on what Darrell Guder later called “the missional
church” drawing inspiration from Newbigin. For example, Newbigin writes
in the preface of Sin and Salvation that he has has decided to treat
the “church” before “faith” because “it is the order which the
non-Christian has to follow when he comes to Christ. What he sees is a
visible congregation in his village. It is that congregation which
holds out to him the offer of salvation” (p. 9).

Most people will likely want to read Newbigin’s later works before
picking up “Sin and Salvation” but as vigorous discussion continues
surrounding the nature of Christian salvation and
justification–consider Justification: God’s Plan & Paul’s Vision by N. T. Wright, The Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul by Douglas Campbell, The Future of Justification: A Response to N. T. Wright by John Piper, and Inhabiting the Cruciform God: Kenosis, Justification, and Theosis in Paul’s Narrative Soteriology
by Michael Gorman)–Newbigin’s Sin and Salvation reminds theologians of
the need to explain the gospel fairly and thoughtfully to preachers,
teachers, students, new believers, and the curious outsider. It is not
surprising that late in life Newbigin developed a friendship with Holy
Trinity Brompton Church in London which developed the Alpha course and
related resources like Nicky Gumbel’s Questions of Life: A Practical Introduction to the Christian Faith. Another recent attempt to clearly and simply explain the gospel is James Choung’s book True Story: A Christianity Worth Believing In and his sketched diagrams. Newbigin would himself acknowledge the need for such resources.

I have reviewed a couple other little known books by Newbigin now.

Book Review: Signs Amid the Rubble by Lesslie Newbigin

Recommended: Lesslie Newbigin’s Unfinished Agenda: An Updated Autobiography