It’s been quite a fruitful two days. Yesterday I had a chance to sit through some lectures on “Preaching Prophetic Narratives” by Princeton Prof. Seow which as always was insighful – he worked through passages from 1 Kings 19-21 and 2 Kings 5 and I felt it helped me appreciate good exegetical work combined with theological connections with our context today. The overdose of dim sum and conversations during lunch was memorable too 🙂

I managed to borrow 6 books from the local seminary to get my more focused wider reading started. It’s already April and I’m only at a brainstorming stage with a few “hunches” …

Talking with Dr. Ng was helpful today just to get a feel of some areas that I may have missed and possible resource people I could get in touch with. I felt really affirmed in choosing my concentration on Ecclesiology for my Masters programme. Ms. Wong was also kind enough to point me to The Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization and check out some recent work from Evangelicals.

Loads of thoughts floating right now .. like .. it’s those “I wonder” moments .. very scattered though …

– I wonder what was the understanding of church like during the Patristic period? how was the interaction between the apostolic fathers and the desert fathers? what about the church as it was moving toward Asia?
– I wonder what has been our Asian self-understanding of the church especially after the “missionary” era? maybe engaging Lesslie Newbigin and Vincent Donovan might be helpful .. as they kind of were in the Asia & Africa and then returned to UK and USA. hmmm … of course, then that leads to some interest in the Gospel and Culture Network in UK, and also in USA as well as New Zealand, the overall emerging church conversations and Emergent (as a more organized attempt) specifically.
– I wonder who has written specifically on church from Malaysia or Asia(I heard that there a substantial theological work from Singapore)? How do we think about church, be church and do church here? where can we move forward? I know fragments here or there and the Roman Catholic Bishops in Asia have been working on it. I found something from the Christian Conference of Asia yesterday at the library.
– of course, as a Lutheran, I’ve wondered about early German Pietism and its relationship with institutional Lutheranism of its time. 🙂
– so lots of “wondering” (not “wandering” .. though there’s an element of that too!)
– of course apart from the content, I’m also wondering how to work out the modules I would like to take and the possible workable thesis proposal etc. It;s not OhD, but it’s definatelt a personal quest.