Leadership of theological educators in

facilitating revitalizing theological thinking

for witness in the context of today
accompanied by community: an exploration
Asian Christian Leadership and Theological Education
ATEM conference, Yangon
August 7-9, 2019

H.S. Wilson
Foundation for Theological Education in Southeast
Asia
 Ministerial Leadership in the church is
predominantly aligned to historically
formulated designated ministries
• Priests (Bishop, Archbishop--hierarchy)
• Pastor, Preacher, Elder
• Evangelist, Deacon, theological educator
• Christian Educator, Church musician
• Trained women, youth, family worker
• Lay leaders, teaching as well as
administration of finance and property
 Hierarchy/power is a reality in Christian
community & it is there to stay
• The requirement by the institutional set
of the church of formal theological
training and ordination of its leaders has
led to clergy and laity divide and also
recognized as so by other religious and
secular bodies.
• Whereas Jesus is perceived as a person
of authority as his ministry was
grounded on morality and spirituality.
 Leadership: Perception of Jesus: Mark: 10
• “You know that those regarded as rulers
of the Gentiles lord it over them, and
their superiors exercise authority over
them. But it shall not be this way among
you. Instead, whoever wants to become
great among you must be your
servant, ... For even the Son of Man did
not come to be served, but to serve, and
to give His life as a ransom for many.”
 Asian vision for spiritual leader
• Asian image of a religious leader is ‘guru’,
enlightened teacher, person of wisdom,
person with compassion for all life.
• Guru has one key goal that her/his disciples
preach and practice the truth, wisdom,
enlightenment, transformation that she/he is
practicing and teaching.
• So for Asians it is easy to accept Jesus as guru
than images presented by Christians
What about improvising the image of Christian
leader in Asia as ‘guru’, teacher, enabler.
• Guru still carries meaning as a spiritual guide
• "Gu means ignorance, and Ru means
dispeller," with guru meaning the one who
"dispels ignorance, all kinds of ignorance", ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guru

• Where as bishop, priest, pastor portrays as

an educated person who is head and
administrator of a institution, congregation,
school, charitable institutions with power to
decide. Clergy dress is a sign of authority like
police or military (salvation army).
 Jesus as Guru and disciples as Shishya: disciples
disciples facilitating other disciples

“Jesus taught in a paradox way. ..messing with disciples mind

paradoxically out of love, …so that they dig deeper into truth,
where they may find themselves.” Anne Lamott
 “Tradition is the living faith of the dead,
traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.”
Jaroslav Pelikan

• Challenges for leadership of theological

educators is to keep the vitality of
theological thinking alive and not let it
to sink to traditionalism.
• Continue religions as wisdom traditions
based on prevailing insights to life
human and beyond
 Challenges for theological educators is to
provide leadership in theological imagination:
“dig deeper into truth”
• Most of the church book stores have hosts of
books and resource material on leadership in
ministry in the context of present day,
sociocultural, political, economic contexts
• However, theological educators have a
specific role of theological formation
and imagination of the Christian
communities
 Role of Theological educators in
providing leadership
• Theology: “the study of God and of God's
relation to the world”.
https://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/theology

• A Christian theologian begins teaching about

of God-human-cosmos relations within
Christian tradition but in the present context
will not be able to limit her/him only to
Christian understanding in Asian context of
religious and cultural pluralism.
 To serve the community, there is a need to
discern the theological quests of communities.
• Three areas of theological inquiries that are
urgently needed in our time diversities:
vReimagining God
vReimagining humanity (updating
Christian anthropology)
vReimagining human communities:
multi-faith, multicultural, multiracial,
multiethnic, multigender, multilateral etc)
 Present paradigm of working towards the
future*
• The popular paradigm is that life can
only be understood backwards, but it
must be lived forward. That is, we begin
with the assumption based on today’s
realities and extrapolate into the future.
• This paradigm makes it easier to be a
result of the past rather than a cause of
the future!
*Naveen Jain, Moonshoots. Creating a World of Abundance. Bainbridge
Island, WA: Moonshots Press, 2018.
 To begin there is need to start with
certain acceptable truths-principles
• God does not belong to us, we belong to
God
• http://www.adherents.com/ 102 Billion, Countless number of gods/religions.

• Earth/cosmos does not belong to us, we

belong to them
• Church/Christian Community, we do not
own it, we are called to be members of
it.
• Humans don’t own life but life owns us.
Traditional Anthropomorphized images
of Gods are impossible to reconcile
There is an on going progress in multi-faith,
multicultural, multilateral relationship
• As a result of emergent anthropologies from
socio-cultural studies, from physiological
insights and political diplomacies.
• Through decades of inter religious
enragements, derogatory naming the other
has changed from: pagan, heathen, animistic,
primitive; non-believers; members of other
religions; people of other faiths/other living
faiths
 OTHERS to fellow SOJOUNERS
in human relations at all levels.
• Christian communalism is one of the things
that people of other faith are afraid of.
• Shift from being considering so called ‘out
groups’ as OTHERS to fellow religious
SOJOUNERS is needed from all the religious
followers.
• Bulk of religious adherents find this shift
difficult as for most of them religious identity
intertwined with social, cultural, political and
even national identities.
 Looking back to 1956:
Assessment/Critique of Asian models of TE at the
Conference on Theo Edu in SEA at Bangkok
Dean Listen Pope (Dean, Yale DS) visited 20 theological
schools in SEA. In his presentation: “On the
question of the relevance of TE in South
East Asia” Pope warned against ‘slavish
mimicry’ of the West. “You are teaching
Western theology. You have answers from
the West: but are they the answers to
Eastern questions.
This is even repeated today!!
 Immaginative suggestion
Pope: The traditional structure of the
faculty (four fold: Bible, Theology, Church
History and Pastoral practices) may not be
best for Asia.
Why not, Chair of Christian freedom, of
Christian social change, of Christian family
life.
 Asian voice and aspiration
Peter Latuihamallo: (1956)
• What kind of TE is needed in new situation?
As Asia moves from static to the dynamic,…it
must seek to probe and understand agonies,
aspirations and longing for better community
life, for fullness of living.
• We need to be free from the dead weight of
irrelevant history in TE. We must have our
own development.
 Weakening of ecumenism
• Visser ‘t Hooft (GS WCC) Ecumenism must
permeate the total life and curriculum of
theological seminary.
The Record of Proceedings. Bangkok Conference on Theological Education in S EA Feb
21-March 7, 1956. ( partially supported by Nanking Board of Founders NYC)

• In Asia experiment with ecumenical

theological education has faced many road
blocks. Part of it is the understanding of
leadership as protecting the interest of
denominational, regional, ethnic, linguistic,
national identities.
 New understanding of humans and
cosmos
• Humanity is also at the crossroads of
unprecedented innovations in science and
technology in the last few decades and their
implications for life: human as well of all lives
on planet earth and beyond.
• Among other things, it is observed that “Humans have
become a multiplanetary species”. Naveen Jain
• That calls for reimagining about humans and
their anthropomorphized gods-religions.
Findings on intricacies of human brain
• Hardwired to God
Humans have innate capacity for transcendent
relations
Commonality in spirituality but not in
organized religions
• Tibetan Monks-meditation
• Franciscan Nuns-prayer and meditation
• Pentecostals speaking lounges
• Praise and Song worship—feel elated
Same location of brain responded
without any distinctions on the basis of
religious affiliation.
 Brian: Locus of theological inquiry
Neurons/wiring in the brain, and not the palpitations in the
heart is the seat of faith/religions
Genome editing on rat brains.
Neurotheology
Andrew Newberg
Hardwired to be tribes: “Humans are tribal. . . It
is also an instinct to exclude.” Amy Chu
“A tribe is a group of people connected to one another,
connected to a leader and connected to an idea”.
 Robin Dubar
Maintain meaningful relationships is limited to 150, traditional 50,
good friends 15 and to intimate friends to 5.
 Artificial Intelligence
• Artificial Intelligence revolution challenges in
reassessing religious anthropologies
• What would trans-human and post-human
mean to theological exploration
Coexistence with machine
Human understanding of God has a history and
predominantly human projection of their need
 Reimagining God—from the prevailing
anthropomorphized perception of God
• Dialogue with people of other faiths and religious scholars
(pages 12-14), not on the past theological articulations but of the
future. Dialogues have only social and political consequences.

Reza
Aslan,
God: A
human
History,
2017
 Christian scripture and traditions
needs to be supplemented
• Moving on from Karl Barth “read the Bible in one
hand, and the newspaper in the other”
• Creation/earth is God’s open book (creativity)
• Cosmos is God’s open library [Origin of life]Astrobiology
 Curriculum needs to be shaped by three
interconnected concerns from the present pattern

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Holistic theological
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es
Scripture and Scriptures
From all
Up to date data on human capacities, earth segments
community, cosmic exploration of life
Inherited Bible-Scripture/tradition and
myths; to Bible-Scripture/tradition and
Scriptures/living Traditions of Asia
 Paradigm shift in working towards the future*
(Repeat)
• The popular paradigm is that life can
only be understood backwards, but it
must be lived forward. That is, we begin
with the assumption based on today’s
realities and extrapolate into the future.
• This paradigm makes it easier to be a
result of the past rather than a cause of
the future!
*Naveen Jain, Moonshoots. Creating a World of Abundance. Bainbridge
Island, WA: Moonshots Press, 2018.
 Flip Fop approach
• Naveen Jain:
• But let us flip the paradigm, and
begin with the imagined future
state, and work backward to the
present.
• For theo edu: Willingness is to
venture to what is usually assumed
as impossible or non acceptable.
 Implication of Navin Jain’s
suggestion of Flip Flop for The Edu
• On Jain’s principle, theological
education has be a transformative
enterprise to think about the
possible Asian Jesusologies,
(christologies) and ecclesiologies for
emergent Asian-global humanity,
and work backward to the present.
Pose
Divine to human nature of theologies
• Chen Zemin (-2018) Theology is the theory of the
spiritual experience of the church...in a given
historical period….The truth of the the Bible
and the gospel of Christ are not limited by
time and space. (Chinese Theological Review, #29 p. 30)
• Drawing on that wisdom, one can say
theological education is a system for
ministerial formation to meet the need of a
given historical period and needs to be
updated to do so in changing historical
situations. [World mission to Intercultural studies via WC]
 New structure for theological
education
In many parts of the world free standing
theological seminaries are (English Ref legacy)
• amalgamating with secular Christian higher
education (colleges and universities), other
than those who are controlled by
denominations/groups for protecting their
confessional or sectarian particularities OR
• Upgrading as universities (Indonesia, Thailand,
Myanmar).
 By existing seminaries working with or becoming
faculty of Christian colleges and universities

• Would benefit from the interconnectedness

of all knowledge (secular and sacred).
• Would benefit from the up to date research
in the fields of science, anthropology,
sociology, psychology, history, political
science, management, and religion etc,
instead of getting them via theological
teachers or occasional visiting faculty.
 Advantages
• Locating theological education in a higher
education institution also provides a good
opportunity to seek the assistance of the
Ministry of education for theological education.
At present the positive role of religions in all
levels of human activities is universally accepted
including the United Nations.
• New innovations need much more financial and
other resources like access to digital libraries,
and research and seminar grants available
through foundations and educational ministries
of a country.
 For claiming our citizenry rights of religious
communities
• It is a fact that the academically trained
ministerial leaders have been contributing to
the moral and ethical foundations of their
members and thus helping in the process of
individuals and communities becoming
responsible citizens of their respective
countries. This reality has to be brought to
the attention of the concerned bodies of the
state for supporting theological education.
 For furthering academic reach
• Locating theological education in a higher
educational setting also opens up the possibility
of offering dual discipline degrees like theology
and social work, theology and management,
theology and paramedical, theology and
paralegal, theology and public health, theology
and ecological care, theology and cosmology etc.
• This could also be an avenue to get
accreditation from secular universities for such
courses and theological education degrees itself.
 Dreaming and discerning
• “Our greatest motivations in life come
from NOT knowing the future”.
• Innovation is a unavoidable process
• Adopting the best practices we notice in
others in our context is imitation.
• Innovation is daring to dream, and
experiment, and not to give up in
possible initial setbacks for various
reasons.
 Inspiration from SONY for leadership

Core Value:
Being a pioneer, not following others,
doing the impossible.
Purpose:
To experience the sheer joy of innovation
… for the benefit and pleasure of the
general public.
 Historical legacy of knowledge transfer versus
new expanding frontiers of knowledge
• There is a challenge and opportunities faced
by traditional including theological education
in the face of knowledge dissemination.
Steadily rising and their “digital sea”
providing access to sources of knowledge.
• Access to lot of knowledge online and other
sources often restricts mentoring that played
key role in leadership formation.