Category: Lesslie Newbigin

My Fall 2013 Required Textbooks at Bethel Seminary for Discipleship, Evangelism, and Leadership courses

Post author By Andy Rowell
Post date July 1, 2013

Here are the textbooks I am requiring for my three Ministry Leadership (ML) courses this fall at Bethel Seminary (St. Paul, MN). I am teaching each of these courses this three times this year and I am teaching each in both traditional format as well as in an online or intensive format. I would love to have you. Registration begins today: July 1st, 2013.

ML 506: Discipleship in Community

Parrett, Gary A., and S. Steve Kang. Teaching the Faith, Forming the Faithful: A Biblical Vision for Education in the Church. Downers Grove, IL.:
IVP Academic, 2009.

This is a thoughtful theological treatment of teaching and theological formation in the church–drawing on the richness of the literature in Christian education, social science, and spiritual formation. Parrett is known as a superb person and teacher as well as (along with Kang) being cognizant of the need to be sensitive and thoughtful about diversity in the church. This is the preeminent text today for helping pastors grasp the spiritual formation task while equipping them for teaching effectiveness. Too many pastors know nothing beyond preaching and thus try to bring the lecture method into all settings including small groups and classrooms and are oblivious of the challenges and rewards of seeing adults, youth, children really learn and grow.

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Life Together and Prayerbook of the Bible. Vol. 5.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress, 1996.

Bonhoeffer's Life Together is both a classic warning against pride in ministry leadership while also being an inspirational description of a passionate, creative, ecumenical, emergency attempt to form pastors for ministry. It is a classic and it only gets richer as one learns more about Bonhoeffer's life and his theological work from the beginning of his career to the end of it which reinforces his ideas here.

ML 507: Missional Outreach and Evangelism

Bowen, John P. Evangelism for "Normal" People: Good News for Those Looking for a Fresh Approach. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress, 2002.

Bowen, with years of experience in post-Christian university contexts with Inter-Varsity university ministry as well as steeped in the biblical and theological thoughtfulness of evangelical Anglicanism, describes the process of inviting outsiders into Christian community. This textbook in evangelism by a leading professor of evangelism sketches the biblical and theological case behind virtually all of the thriving contemporary approaches to church and ministry today.

Keller, Timothy J. The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism.
New York: Dutton, 2008.

Keller, one of our most articulate theologically-interested church leaders is also one of the best examples of an effective evangelists in 2013. Here he plies his craft–knocking down objections to the Christian faith and making his case for it so as to make intellectually plausible the winsome life with Christ which he hopes Christians live out before their non-believing neighbors.

Newbigin, Lesslie. The Gospel in a Pluralist Society. Grand Rapids,
MI: Eerdmans, 1989.

Newbigin, in his life and in this book, demonstrate the full scope of sophisticated philosophical reflection on epistemology in a pluralist world, strong biblical sensibilities, as well as an emphasis on the sociological demonstration of the gospel in the church. In Newbigin, we see a first-rate apologist, academic, missionary, pastor, and leader.

ML 523: Introduction to Transformational Leadership

Northouse, Peter G. Leadership: Theory and Practice. 6th ed., Thousand
Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2013.

Both of my colleagues teaching leadership at Bethel Seminary, Mark McCloskey and Justin Irving, also require this classic leadership textbook which familiarizes students with the latest in leadership theory and modeling.

Wren, J. Thomas. The Leader's Companion: Insights on Leadership Through the Ages. New York: Free Press, 1995.

This books provides readings from a variety of figures throughout history on leadership–fleshing out the analytical contemporary models and theories in the Northouse volume.

Yoder, John Howard. Body Politics: Five Practices of the Christian Community Before the Watching World. Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1992.

This 80-page gem by genius theologian and ethicist John Howard Yoder gives a compelling description of what the church should look like. A leader in the church has the task for wrestling with how this vision compares with the status quo. We'll start the course with this to catalyze our reflection.

Ecclesiology John Howard Yoder Karl Barth Lesslie Newbigin Missiology

John Howard Yoder, at age 30, on Newbigin and the church as missionary

Post author By Andy Rowell
Post date August 16, 2011
1 Comment on John Howard Yoder, at age 30, on Newbigin and the church as missionary

I thought John Howard Yoder's reference to Lesslie Newbigin was amusing in the quote below. This reference to Newbigin is the only reference to an individual contemporary in the pamphlet. Yoder (1927-1997) age 30, not only takes a little shot at Newbigin while agreeing with him fundamentally, he misspells both his first and last name. One book on Yoder is entitled: A Mind Patient and Untamed–untamed indeed.

John Howard Yoder, Ecumenical Movement and the Faithful Church (Scottdale, Pa: Mennonite Pub House, 1958), 32. "The content of this pamphlet . . . appeared serially in the Gospel Herald during January and February 1957." p. 44

"Alone of all the churches of the Reformation, they [the Anabaptists] insisted that the church is essentially missionary, and that she must be separate from the world, even if that world be Christianized; this is an idea which Leslie [sic. Lesslie] Newbiggin [sic. Newbigin], one of the bishops of the United Church of South India, thinks is a new discovery, and which is gradually becoming one of the accepted principles of ecumenical discussion."

Interesting background:

Both Yoder and Newbigin knew Karl Barth in the 1950's when he was articulating his ecclesiology.

Newbigin and Barth worked together regularly from 1951-1953 on the "Committee of Twenty-Five" theologians in preparation for the 1954 World Council of Churches conference. Newbigin (1909-1998) was 48 in 1957 and had published The Household of God–his most systematic book on the church–in 1953.

Yoder took courses with Karl Barth (1886-1968, age 71 in 1957) and others in Basel from 1950-1957.

Barth wrote his three ecclesiological paragraphs in the 1950's: § 62 The Holy Spirit and the Gathering of the Christian Community in Church Dogmatics volume IV.1 in 1953; § 67 The Holy Spirit and the Upbuilding of the Christian Community in CD IV.2 in 1955; and § 72 The Holy Spirit and the Sending of the Christian Community of the Church Dogmatics in CD IV.2 in 1959.

Stanley Hauerwas on “The Church as Mission”

Post author By Andy Rowell
Post date January 24, 2011
2 Comments on Stanley Hauerwas on “The Church as Mission”

Stanley Hauerwas has recently published his most sophisticated treatment of mission and evangelism.

Stanley Hauerwas, "Beyond the Boundaries: The Church as Mission" in Walk Humbly with the Lord: Church and Mission Engaging Plurality (ed. Viggo Mortensen and Andreas Østerlund Nielsen; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 53-69.

Read it at Google Books.

Hauerwas is one of my main advisors in my doctoral work here at Duke and I approach the topic similar to the way he does here. He draws heavily on John Howard Yoder, responds to Nathan Kerr, and cites Karl Barth, Lesslie Newbigin, and Bryan Stone approvingly.

(Note also the reference to former Duke students Derek Woodard-Lehmann (now at Princeton) and Dan Barber).

This is not easy reading. It is part of a broader conversation in theology, political theology, and ethics.