Wrapping Up and Moving Forward

Theme: Energising Community: Theological Education’s Relational Mandate: Wrapping Up and Moving Forward
Purpose: International Consultation for Theological Educators
Dates: 5-9 October  2009
Location: Sopron, Hungary
Full Program: C-09 Programme Booklet

Chris Wright
International Director Langham Partnership International

During this Consultation, we have thought about:

• The biblical and theological foundations and importance of community and relationships. Hwa Yung and Henri Blocher served us a feast of doctrines: of God the Holy Trinity, of the church, and of humanity. We received helpful insights into both negative and positive roots and aspects of Western individualism on the one hand and traditional communitarianism on the other.
• The importance of enacting community in theological schools, with Joseph Shao reminding us of the essential family nature of Christian community and what that can mean in practice in an institution.
• Oscar Campos urged us to take seriously the importance of equipping students for the kinds of ministry that foster community.
• And who will forget David Baer‟s image of the concert, of institutions of theological education making music together in four dream concerts: distributed theological education; the harmony of formal and non-formal modes of training; building centres of excellence and ending the practice of everybody trying to do everything in every place; much greater collaboration between academy and church, with a return to the New Testament concept of pastor-teachers.
• Daniel Bourdanné impressed on us the urgency of theological education genuinely serving the church and avoiding the isolation and distance that so easily afflicts it.
• Looking more widely, Riad Kassis, insisted that institutions of theological education must contribute to the needs of the wider community around them and send out women and men according to the model of James Bond (that well-known theologian…), thoroughly briefed, trained, resourced, and supported.

To read the full document, click here.

Materials from the C-09 session are also available on the TheologicalEducation.net website. You will find the presentations under the ICETE / 2009 Sopron, Hungary link.

Each presentation is listed as a separate article. The article itself only includes a brief description of who presented the session and when. The actual presentation materials are included as links at the bottom of the article. This is also where videos will be posted as they are available. Please note that all ICETE materials are provided for your personal use. Please do not copy or distribute without permission from the original presenter. Contact information is included in each article.