Look at the Book

We're going to the Desiring God National Conference, where John Piper will be demonstrating and showing us what to expect when they launch Look at the Book this fall. This post from the DG blog tells a little bit more about the conference and has a "Lab Preview" video (shown below). I'm really looking forward to this.

Why study Church history?

“Ecclesiastical amnesia is a serious and crippling disease. A church without a memory is doomed to invent the churchly and the theological wheels anew. The writing of religious history, in other words, is the necessary prop our naked memory requires in order to draw upon the accumulated wisdom of the ages, enabling us to withdraw at our need the deposit of insight and truth generously stored up for us in written form.” – Michael Bauman, Historians of the Christian Tradition

“It is the forgotten, not the remembered past, that enslaves us.” – C. S. Lewis

One for the history books

Finally received all my books for my next course, "History of Christianity I". This is way more history than I really want to read about. I haven't taken a history class since high school, and it was always one of my worst subjects because I just wan't any good at rote memorization... all the dates, names, etc! I'm hoping things will be different this time...haha

While I was waiting for some of my other books to arrive, I read ahead in Eusebius: The Church History. Eusebius was a pioneer, so to speak, being the first person (in the 4th century) to try to document the early history of Christianity. By today's standards, he wouldn't be considered a very critical/analytical historian. But I think he was just doing his best to gather, organize, and sift out reliable accounts from rumours and traditions. So we see that Eusebius makes a few errors and slip ups, based on what we know now in this age. Every time I come across one of these types of footnotes, it challenges me a little bit. Is what we know about the early history of Christianity reliable? Do extra-Biblical sources align with what we read about regarding Paul's missionary journeys? What about the other apostles' missionary journeys and martyrdom? How much of it is legend and tradition? Well, I guess I have 3 other books and the lectures themselves to help me think through all this.

Neighbours

I know more Canadians living in our apartment complex than NYers...

Done!

Yes! I submitted my last paper........of the Orientation Seminar. still have a gablillion more courses to go...

Setting me straight..again...

I'm so thankful to God for allowing us to host Gary W for a night before he heads out to Asia for a month of training. The 3  of us talked for a good amount of time, and Jovi and I were very much blessed by his encouragements and wise, godly counsel.

Among other things, he reminded me that my seminary education will be most effective when I'm learning and applying all that knowledge in the midst of my personal ministry context. Serving in my local church will also help motivate me to get through my studies. I needed this reminder. Gotta stay out of that ivory tower.

Thesis Topic

I finally have a tentative thesis topic... This is what I submitted:

So far, my thesis topic (or research question) is: "What role do 2nd and 3rd generation Asian-American Christians have in evangelizing to Asian immigrants in America?" The Asian-American demographic actually consists of many ethnic groups, so I will be focusing on people of Chinese descent. I think this is an important topic because as Asian-Americans continue to grow in affluence and are the fastest growing ethnic group in the US, there is also an increasing number of Asian-American Christians. So the purpose of this research is to consider how this group of Asian-American believers, who are more fluent in Western culture, can participate in bringing the Gospel to Asian immigrants, who may never have heard of Jesus Christ.

In the course of my research, I plan to look at Paul's missionary journeys and the epistles (Biblical Studies) to see how the apostles went about preaching the Gospel to areas where there is a mixture of cultures. It might also be interesting to look at Timothy, whose father was Greek and mother was Jewish. Secondly, I would see what the Bible as a whole says about spreading the Gospel to other cultures (Systematic Theology?). And finally, looking at the Church's history, I will examine if other cultures have had similar situations, and also, how the Gospel has already made inroads into the Asian immigrant population in the past.