Theology for Crossing Cultures

THEOLOGY FOR CROSSING CULTURES

Oak Hill College

TCC FAQs How did the Theology for Crossing Cultures (TCC) course begin, and how has it developed?

The course started back in 2006, when Ray Porter put together a mission course which didn’t stop at the English Channel. Ray, who became the first director of the course, had spent years in Indonesia, with deep experience in crossing cultures himself and in teaching others how to do so. Since then, we’ve had about 40 graduates going through the course. They’re now working on five different continents and have contributed richly to the ethos of the college as a whole in their time here.

I thought Oak Hill trained people for ministry in the UK. What does it have to do with mission?

Oak Hill is very serious about carrying out the great commission of Jesus, to proclaim the gospel of repentance and forgiveness of sins to all nations. If we’re 2 Oak Hill / Theology for Crossing Cultures

going to be faithful to Christ, we have to be a mission college. There are cultures to cross in the UK, and cultures to cross when we leave the UK. That’s the reality in 21st century pastoral mission training.

Is it possible to pass through Oak Hill without being challenged about mission?

We sincerely hope not. The way we’ve structured the Oak Hill curriculum ensures that every student, on whichever stream, is going to tangle with the key ‘crossing cultures’ ideas. Every student is taught to analyse what someone’s world view is in the light of the Bible.

They study and debate how to apply the gospel to people who don’t share a common cultural background, because that’s how cultures relate in today’s world. Meanwhile, the students who are following the TCC stream go much deeper into this area, studying more specialised and more demanding modules.

TCC students do as much theological study as any other student at Oak Hill.

Isn’t that overkill?

We need to get away from the idea that people who are going to do mission work will be OK with a dumbed-down theological education. After all, they’re going out into a very demanding situation, spiritually and theologically. So they need all the training people receive for conventional ministry in the UK – and then some! At Oak Hill, they get the same theological framework, and the same skills and tools, as all our other students, and then get the specialist equipping they need on top of that.

We do not want to send missionaries out theologically naked into very challenging situations. That’s why they get the depth of theology they need to grow and mature in their ministry – wherever they are serving.

Illustration: Elvetica

Deep roots make for fruitful ministry

David Baldwin, Director of Theology for Crossing Cultures at Oak Hill, thinks through the connection between depth of training and perseverance in crosscultural ministry. It’s the same as the link between roots and fruit, he says.

Illustration: johnwoodcock

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A cross-cultural worker thoroughly trained in theology and practical missiology will have deep roots. He or she will be fruitful and able to draw on hidden depths when the going gets tough How much would you pay to train one missionary for overseas service? How many years of their life would you expect them to give in preparation? Difficult questions, without easy answers. But here’s my answer: If your figures aren’t high enough, then you’ll end up paying far more in the long run. You, or somebody else.

BETTER TRAINING, BETTER WORKERS Two pieces of rigorous research into missionary attrition (mission workers who drop out of their ministries) were carried out in 1997 and 2007. The reports, known as ReMAP I and II, don’t make for pretty reading, because missionary attrition figures are very high. But on the positive side, the research found several factors which increase missionary retention. One of them is thorough missionary training: ‘It is obvious that agencies with low attrition have higher requirements regarding missiological training.’

According to the research, the mission agencies which are most successful at keeping their workers long-term expect three times more missiological training and twice as much theological training than agencies with workers who drop out early. Jonathan Ingleby, former head of mission studies at Redcliffe College, Gloucester, spells this out in more detail. He says that mission courses should balance

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their theoretical components with practical. The vitally important components, he says, are courses on ‘leadership, world trends, the social sciences, communication theory, development studies, globalization, world religion, animism, contextualisation, cross-cultural communication and language learning.’

PUTTING DOWN DEEP ROOTS This is happy reading for me as I look at Oak Hill’s Theology for Crossing Cultures (TCC) curriculum, which a number of people put together under Ray Porter’s guidance a decade ago. There’s nothing in that list that we don’t absolutely insist on here at Oak Hill. In fact, we add many more things to the list: Bible handling, doctrine of God, systematic theology, biblical languages, the global church, the doctrine of grace, church history, biblical theology, missiological trends and best practice, the doctrine of the Bible, youth and children’s work, apologetics, and many, many more.

I wouldn’t want to water down that list for two key reasons. Firstly, I firmly believe that a cross-cultural worker thoroughly trained in theology and practical missiology will have deep roots. He or she will be fruitful and will be able to draw on hidden depths when the going gets tough. When my wife and I were in Ethiopia, there were times when we needed to draw on every ounce of training our church had encouraged us to invest in over our four-plus years at Bible college. Every bit of it! Yes, even the church history! Deep roots are what keep you going, and they are what keep you sane and sound in gospel ministry.

Secondly, there’s the research findings of ReMAP. Missionary attrition is at best horribly expensive, and at worst a shameful lack of love for our mission partners and those among whom they minister.

But don’t just take my word for it. Read what Oak Hill student Song Tsai has to say on page 6. I don’t know if Song shops at Tesco Extra, but his basic argument is that

cross-cultural workers need to be Pastors Extra.

We like our pastors to be well trained, don’t we? Well, our missionaries need to have all that training, plus the cross-cultural stuff on top.

If we won’t put up with sloppy training for our pulpits, why would we consider inflicting poorly trained candidates on people on the other side of the world?

GOSPEL THINKING ABOUT CULTURE

CROSSING CONTINENTS Since the Theology for Crossing Cultures course launched at Oak Hill in 2006, 40 graduates have been sent to serve in 30 countries, with 13 different mission agencies, in the following continents South and East Asia

13

Africa

9

Western Europe (Continental)

8

Americas (Latin and Arctic)

6

Eastern Europe and Central Asia 4 Before thinking about anybody’s culture, we need a foundational theology of culture – what the Bible says about it. Is human culture good, bad, or neither? How, in God’s providence, did the the UK their new home. That’s 1,700 each day. Over the next different cultures come to be, and why are there 25 years, the UK population is likely to increase by 15 percent so many of them? How does the gospel relate to 70 million, and nearly all of that growth will be through to them? We also need to understand our own people of other cultures coming to live in the UK, and the culture and just how culturally bound each and children they bring into the world here. every one of us is.

That’s why every Oak Hill student has to take at least one Respected contextual missiologist Bruce Nicholls cross-cultural mission module before they graduate. I’m (among others) teaches that there are always at least three really excited about this new initiative at Oak Hill, which cultures (and sometime four) which we need to consider shows the college’s commitment to cross-cultural mission if we are communicating the gospel cross-culturally. training for every student, not just those headed overseas.

There’s the Bible’s own culture (actually, there are many See what Philippa Lovell has to say about cross-cultural UK cultural settings in the Bible); my own culture (how I as mission on page 7. a communicator understand the gospel through my own Just off the main drive at Oak Hill is a young oak tree with cultural lenses); and there is the culture into which I am a plaque by it. The simple inscription reads, ‘The Mission communicating gospel truths. This makes a dynamic Tree, 2009’. It was planted by the first graduating batch of triangle of three cultures interrelating. mission students. It’s thriving, and that has something to do with its being dug in properly and its roots going down CROSSING CULTURES IN THE UK deep. I’m confident that the 2009 graduating class, and subsequent graduates, will be following a similar pattern: Cross-cultural mission is not something we only do deeply rooted theologians engaged in fruitful cross-cultural overseas. More than 10 percent of the people currently living mission both home and abroad. That’s why I’m proud to be in the UK were not born here. And year-on-year migration TCC Director at Oak Hill College. increases are set to continue – last year, 624,000 people made Oak Hill / Theology for Crossing Cultures 5

More, not less Song Tsai had already done crosscultural mission in Taiwan. But he came to Oak Hill to study theology because he realised that mission workers ‘need more training than pastors, not less’.

I was born in Taiwan to a pagan and animistic home. My family worship idols – actual blocks of wood. My dad worked for a multinational company, which meant we moved with the job, until we eventually came to the UK. I was 11 years old when we arrived, but it wasn’t until I went to university that I had my first meaningful contact with genuine Christians. I became a Christian in my final year and started serving at International Café, sharing the gospel with international students.

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God called me to serve my own people, so two years after Julia and I were married, we went to Taiwan to serve as missionaries.

Before we went, my thinking was that I’d been sharing the gospel with Taiwanese students for three or four years, I spoke their language, and so why would I need that much more training to go to Taiwan with the gospel?

But as time went on, I realised that even though we shared a language and heritage, there was still a cultural gap between us because of my time in the UK, and deficiencies in my understanding of the gospel meant that I couldn’t communicate it effectively. That’s when I knew I needed a theological education.

It seems to me that the missionary in the field is doing the same work as a pastor – but they’re doing it cross culturally. So missionaries need more training than pastors, not less.

We don’t know whether we’ll be called back to Taiwan, or sent somewhere

else. So our time at Oak Hill is spent equipping ourselves for ministry anywhere. That means studying systematic theology, biblical theology, world views and apologetics. Studying the original languages of scripture means that I can get deeper into the Word of God than I ever have before.

Having space and time to think through the issues we might face working in other cultures has been a tremendous privilege.

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WHAT I’VE LEARNED

Philippa Lovell is a cross-cultural worker who trained at Oak Hill and is now with London City Mission. She talks about the multiplicity of cultures in the UK, and the amazing opportunities this opens up for churches and for the gospel

Before Oak Hill I’d been two years in Sheffield working with women and international students. And before that I had some short-term placements in South America and Egypt.

Walk down any street in Birmingham, or London, or any big UK city, and you’re going to find so many different cultures. That means you need to be trained to engage with the people living here. Accepting that is really just part of loving your neighbours and being able to communicate the gospel.

Even if you’re not going directly into cross-cultural ministry, but are thinking of leading a church, you’ll probably be in an area that has different cultures in it.

And you’ll probably be sending people

are different to them, and they end up searching for an identity. Who am I? That’s an incredible opportunity. With the gospel, we have the answer for what it means to be a human wherever you are in the world. It’s also an amazing opportunity for us to be taught, because this influx of fresh eyes can help us see our cultural blind spots and our prejudices. overseas to work with different cultures.

So understanding cultures is important for everyone.

As people are drawn into our cities, you get a lot of people geographically in the same place, but also a lot of fragmentation. They’ve come a long way from their homes and families, and they’re surrounded by people who

Since leaving Oak Hill I’ve moved to the East End with London City Mission.

I’m working in a community which is predominantly Bengali. My work is about getting to know people, building relationships, and sharing Jesus with them.

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Oak Hill College is a theological college in North London, training men and women for ministry in the Church of England and other spheres of Christian service. Its validated programmes have been developed, and are delivered and assessed by the college. They are awarded and quality assured by Middlesex University.

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