Sivin Kit’s Garden

2 Hostages killed now.

Appreciate the updates from Eugene Cho.

Set them free …

Lord, in your mercy … hear our prayer.

Contextual Theology: Liberation and Indigenization

Wow this was already brewing in 1976 USA ..

Towards a Contextual Theology

I think this is worth putting up again. From Asia!

Contextual Theologizing: Future Perspectives

A Roman Catholic point of view …

Bulletin for Contextual Theology

Africa leads the way here.

Palestinian Contextual Theology (pdf)

An unexpected find.

Cultural Alienation and Contextual Theology

worth some time here …

Contextual Theology: a Reading Guide

Library time is coming soon!

A Voice from South Africa: Charles Villa-Vicencio

I heard him in an interview once and was deeply impressed and impacted by what he said.

Maori Theology

This is going to stretch me!

Teaching Theology in an Asian Context

I know for sure some statements and quotes in this paper will scare some Christians … press on!

What’s ‘contextual’ and what’s ‘theological’ about contextual theology?

Interesting observation:

“one of the ironies of contextual theology is that as discipline or discourse it is not in fact bound to any context. For instance, an exercise in contextual theology in South Africa can be recognized as something similar in form to an exercise in contextual theology in Japan. Despite the clear differences in context, both know they belong to the category of contextual theology. There are certain conventions, methodological commitments and ideological presuppositions that make contextual theology a particular general form of theological discourse not at all tied to any particular context.”

Contours of Contextual Orthodoxy in the Beloved Community

A surprise find …

Contextualization Bibliographies

Another round to the library …

Annotated Bibliography on Contextualization

wow!

De-westernizing Doctrine and Developing Appropriate Theology in Mission

Much food for thought here.

Some Theological and Hermeneutical Developments of the Earliest Eucharist: Discerning a Case for Contextual Theology

This is going to be a long day.

Perichoresis and praxis in Usenet

Interesting how the tools of contextual theology is applied here.

Mission and Proselytism as Challenge to Theology and Church Life in Eastern Europe (word doc)

An Eastern European context …

It’s been a while since my last random thoughts.  It’s been a tiring one month.

Physically …

Emotionally ..

Mentally …

even spiritually …

this morning (which was a heavy rainy morning!) I had a slow motion acrobatic fall on some pretty hard concrete while walking Gareth towards his class room.  I had some realizations … my slippers are too slippery .. and I’m pretty heavy … it took me some time to get up before a shocked teacher and another equally sympathetic and shocked parent .. Gareth was standing at the side wondering what happened!

The result?  Nothing broken … but there’s still some pain on the lower left body … nothing serious I think.

Watching some of my favorite music on Youtube has been relaxing.  so, I decided to share them with those reading this blog as the days come by. Most of it is related to the acoustic guitar and vocals .. two of my most favorite instruments

Elysia was very nice tonight when she came over to me and said “I ’sayang’ you Ah!” (sayang means care in Malay)  Then suddenly, I had Gareth on my right and Elysia on my left stroking me gently because they knew I had a hard fall.

Tomorrow will need to be a day set aside for extra recuperation and recovery.

Nice to have dinner at home the last three nights.  May Chin’s cooked …. most of the time we eat at our parents place during the week.  So this has been a special treat.

Still thinking of the name for Baby No. 3.

Need to catch up with lots of reading.

Need to decline some speaking engagements and redirect them to friends.

I need to start some serious writing in the coming weeks. Good to have my neighboring PhD pastor willing to help me out in one of the modules for my masters in Theology (part-time).  I hope to confirm another NT scholar for my other paper.  Better get two done this year hopefully.

10 years of serving as a full time pastor (3 and half as a youth & worship pastor, the last 7 as the pastor of Bangsar Lutheran Church) has brought me - or humbled me to a place where I confess my limits and failures.  I’m thankful for the surprising fruits and blessings … there has been some precious lessons I’ve learnt.  And these insights will determine how I re-orientate myself the next 5 months and beyond.

I like the silence I hear right now.

The temperature is perfect after the rain.

I’m off to get some warm water … the taste of warm water was something which reminds me of my grandma.

The fall made me think of my age … but lately, I’ve been growing increasingly less able to interact on issues which to me have become childish.  I do think many of the things we spend energy on is just too much of a luxury for us. Ah .. I caught myself repeating this theme again.

Yesterday, when I was driving one of the friends from United Voice back … we were talking about our grey hairs.

I don’t miss being single.  But in terms of time, intelligence, money and energy … things changed once we’re married and things change even more when the children come.  And because of that, I don’t think I can ever relate to others as if I am single .. it’s just impossible and irresponsible especially when the immediate loved ones are affected.  As a single person, I didn’t have to think about this so much and thus I was more free roaming.  Now, it’s different … It’s not better or worse .. it’s reality.  That’s ok.

And now, I continue to get back to my normal energetic self. step by step.

This is great to see both of them in action together. Precious.

This made me appreciate Bach better. I had fond memories of my visit to the church Bach was the chief musician during my first visit to Germany.

Gareth is already out .. and doing well. So these videos are delayed telecasts .. but it does give you a feel of the wait I had while he was in the operation theater. I was alone in the waiting room so I landed up talking alone … but perhaps having some of the you who read this blog in mind

I was very encouraged to see about 18 of our church members spent the Sunday afternoon 29 July 2007 after the Sunday worship gathering to hang out and have this picnic with our friends at United Voice. BLC and UV has had a pretty long relationship of about 7 years. And I think slowly but surely, we are beginning to see greater fruit coming out of this partnership and support.

This is the only video I could take since my batteries ran out. all of the other pictures are loaded on my Facebook.

This year I found myself in numerous forums or talks on socio-political realities. But nothing beats the simple down-to-earth times of being in touch with human realities in conversation, listening, playing and interacting with those who are often under the radar or in some cases ignored. I’ve noticed many a times we are sucked into our own worlds of self-indulgence (even if it’s legitimate ones) and then further are self-curved in our already self-centred orientation. So, getting out in the hot sun (with a little wind), sitting on the grass, spending time with our friends from UV moves us closer to our humanity.

And in my view, it takes us out of the comfort of words and appreciate the wonder of another human being created in the image of God, provides for space for self-examination, and an openness to see where God’s Spirit is at work, how we together can join in into seeing “His reign” and “His joy” brought to the concrete realities of people right before us.

 Latifah Mat Zin: Reaffirming The Supremacy Of The Constitution

Issues relating to the Malaysian Constitution will not fade away so easily will it?

  Church

Pretty good from my young reflective friend ..

That Islamic State Issue

As I said earlier, it’s not going away anytime soon.

 Denkwürdiges Geheimnis: Festschrift for Eberhard Jüngel 

I should at least try to read him someday when I’m free … for fun?

“More than any other theologian, Jüngel “placed God’s advent at the centre of his thought. Since God comes, we must speak of him and we can think him. Without God’s advent, there would be no faith, the Christian would have nothing to say, and Christian theology could not think any truth” (p. ix).

Although God comes always “from himself, to himself and through himself,” he nevertheless comes “to the world and to humans.” Indeed, God comes “as the mystery of the world by showing himself as the human God” (p. x). And this coming of God as the world’s mystery is by no means a “worldly necessity” – on the contrary, it is “more than necessary.” God’s coming “does not follow from any conditions inherent in the world, nor does it fulfil any preceding human needs” (p. x). In other words, God is neither merely possible nor necessary for the world – instead, he is actual, since he freely comes to the world. And because God comes to the world again and again, “we must always speak of him further, and we can never be done with thinking of him” (p. xi).”

A little Spanish theology, anyone?

I love this excerpt:

“The church has generally presented two perspectives on the Christian mission: on the one hand, there is a presentation of the gospel which only encompasses the spiritual dimension of the people; and on the other hand, a presentation with an almost exclusive focus on the social dimension. In the first perspective, it is thought that the church’s only mission is to save the individual souls of people and to make them useful for the internal work of the church. However, in this way the mission of the church excludes attention to the urgent tasks and responsibilities of society, as though the only thing of interest was the “spiritual life” of the people, and not their lives as flesh and blood people living in concrete society.

On the other hand, in the opposite understanding of the church’s mission, there is commitment only to the social liberation of people from structures of political, economic and cultural oppression. Certainly, the church cannot be absent from these struggles and from the denunciation of these forms of oppression, especially when dealing with sectors of society that are more vulnerable to abuse. However, history has shown, specifically in Latin America, that these struggles often run the risk of forgetting the specifically Christian discourse, with an almost exclusive focus on the instruments of mediation. Here, it is forgotten that the transformation of the human being can only happen from inside out – and this cannot be realized by any political or sociological theory, but only by the power of the gospel.

The way I see it, Christian discipleship has to do with concentric circles. First is the personal decision to follow Jesus, then this decision is expressed in communal life, and finally the community takes on its social responsibilities.”

 The stories we live by

 Thanks Jason for this. Interesting, it’s similar here in Kuala Lumpur - Busy, Tired, Passing Through are also the stories on many people’s conversations. Good closing questions:

“And any one seeking to do life together, mission in community, locally, faces these dominant stories that we order our lives around. How does the Gospel engage and challenge this monolithic stories, and set us free to live by a different story, and identity? And what are the stories that we order our lives around that you hear?”

I suppose the increase of music, and videos lately is perhaps because I have nothing much to say! When I first heard this version of the song, it blew me away!

it’s been a pretty good weekend …

Gareth is back home now. We stayed only one night in the hospital. No worries, nothing major. Only a minor procedure.

I managed to do two brief interviews with the brave boy! Both father and son look pretty funny in the second interview