Building the Whole Church: Collaborating Theological Education Practices in the Ecclesial Context of South Asia

Foreword

Twenty-five years ago, I visited a house church in western Cuba. During a torrential downpour, I ducked into the back of the house, where I met the pastor and his wife. They brought me into the living room, which had been turned into a sanctuary with a pulpit at the front and wooden benches as pews. A group of thirty to forty young men and women started taking their seats. I assumed that this was the congregation, and that they expected me to preach.

Instead, I started asking questions. I learned that the actual congregation numbered over two hundred and spilled out into the yard outside. These young people had been mobilized by the pastor to plant new house churches in neighboring towns. They were all under thirty years old; they had been Christians for less than five years, had zeal for evangelism, and loved to worship. But they had grown up in officially atheistic schools, had no experience in Sunday school, youth groups, or Christian camps, and no Bible school. But they were leading house churches. Among the challenges they faced was how to preach and teach from the Bible. I asked, Would it help if I sent a Bible teacher once a month for a week at a time? They shouted in unison, "Por favor!"

I began to see the same dynamic elsewhere as I traveled around the world as a young mission agency leader. The church was exploding with growth, resulting in a burgeoning need for equipping ministry leaders. In many places, they looked to me as the leader of a Western mission organization for solutions – which seemed both puzzling and troubling. When I looked for solid local training materials, I came up empty. In Vietnam, our partner’s church planters were being equipped with discipleship materials from a US campus ministry left by a missionary in the 1970s. In northern India, church planters were learning Western systematic theology in preparation for evangelism and discipleship among Hindus! In Senegal, the church planters I saw in a makeshift classroom under a tree looked bored to sleep; something in the pedagogy seemed to be missing.

I wondered: Why are most of the nonformal training materials and programs from the West? Where are the contextual resources? Who is positioned in local contexts to help churches and local missions to develop nonformal training appropriate to the learners? Are the seminaries in these countries part of the solution? Who can help train the trainers for nonformal training? Maybe I was traveling in the wrong circles, but for church planting and mission practitioners at the grassroots level, the cupboard of resources for ministry training seemed to be bare.

In this book, Building the Whole Church: Collaborating Theological Education Practices in the Ecclesial Context of South Asia, Dr. Jessy Jaison argues that silos, gaps, and brokenness that hinder effective ministry training persist in South Asia, if not globally. Her work is grounded in this question: Are there more effective ways to be responsive to the escalating training needs and the challenges faced by the church in our times? Her answer is a resounding, "Yes!"

Dr. Jessy discerns a kairos moment in global theological education. She writes with urgency about the convergence of several major shifts that call us to reenvision and renew theological education. The core of the book is a report on her recent qualitative research which engaged leaders and practitioners in four South Asian countries. She listens to these voices alongside the global dialogue on theological education in the Lausanne Movement and International Council for Evangelical Theological Education (ICETE), as well as recent literature on the subject.

Here is an opportunity for the global church to hear the voices of South Asian leaders and practitioners on the current state and preferred future of theological education and ministry training. We learn their perspectives on accreditation, quality assurance, the role of formal and nonformal training, and the place of the church. We also hear possible ways to move from dialogue about needed change to new models and collaborative action. We should listen and pray, wherever we find ourselves in the world.

Jessy is uniquely positioned to research and to speak on the topic of collaboration in theological education. She and her husband, Dr. Jaison Thomas, have thirty years of experience teaching and leading at seminary level in India, with a deep concern as well for nonformal training for the local church and its mission. Jessy has written widely about holistic ministry formation, research, and program design (among other topics). I am blessed to be a coworker with Jessy through the Overseas Council ministry of United World Mission. She is a strategic thinker, and she leads with conviction, humility, and resolve. Her voice is prophetic.

While focused on the realities of South Asia, this book is important reading for everyone concerned about global ministry training; indeed, for anyone concerned about the vitality of the growing global church and its mission. It envisages a future in which the church is restored to a central role in forming its leaders and in which appropriate collaboration among formal and nonformal theological educators serves the shared goal of equipping the whole church for its mission.

John G. Bernard, DMin

President, United World Mission, USA

Acknowledgments

First and foremost, my gratitude goes to God for his enabling grace, wisdom, and strength that have made this project come to fruition.

This monograph would not have been possible without the support of leaders, colleagues, and research participants around the globe who gladly offered their time to share their challenges and hopes about theological education.

My deepfelt gratitude goes to the United World Mission Overseas Council ministries (UWM-OC) and Dallas Theological Seminary (DTS) for partnering to support this research and writing endeavor. I am forever indebted to Dr. Scott Cunningham for his help at every stage – from finding a conducive study environment to getting the manuscript edited. Being a Scholar-in-Residence at Dallas Theological Seminary gifted me uninterrupted time for learning and reflection. Heartfelt thanks to Dr. Scott and Beth Cunningham for blessing me with your selfless support and the much-needed break amid the months of rigorous research and writing. Thanks to Dr. Michael Ortiz and the Global Ministries at DTS for all the arrangements that made my stay most comfortable during this period of intense work. A special word of thanks also to Dr. Michael and Kathy Ortiz for offering your time amid your busy schedule as I wrestled through ideas and issues in theological education today. Dr. Ramesh Richard has been a great friend and partner in prayer and conversation during this period of writing. A special word of thanks also goes to Dr. Ramesh and Bonnie Richard for their friendship and fellowship.

This project commenced as I was transitioning from my three-decades-long service at the New India Bible Seminary in Kerala, India. I will be forever thankful to the NIBS-NIBC families and to Dr. Alexander and Laly Philip, NIEA, for their sincere association and fellowship in ministry over the past many years.

Several leaders and colleagues have enriched my thinking and sharpened my vision by coming alongside to offer insights, encouragement, and prayer. A special word of thanks goes to Dr. John Bernard for his insights on Regional Training Hubs and his sincere encouragement in this research project. I am grateful for the support of Dr. Ernest Clark, Rev. Josue Fernandez, Dr. Ashish Chrispal, Mrs. Michelle Lee, and the entire team of UWM and OC. I also want to thank Dr. Ivor Poobalan, Dr. Finny Philip, Dr. William Subash, Dr. Malcolm Webber, Dr. Manfred Kohl, Dr. Graham Aylett, Dr. Theresa Roco Lua, Dr. Bal Krishna Sharma, Dr. Lal Senanayake – and the list goes on.

Thanks to ICETE-Langham Publishing team, and especially Mark Arnold, for the sincere support in getting this work published. After my Vital Wholeness in Theological Education: Framing Areas for Assessment published in 2017, I am grateful for another opportunity to partner with Langham Publishing.

My deepest sense of appreciation goes to Dr. Jaison Thomas, my husband, for being my inspiration in life, learning, and service. Thank you for the countless extra miles you walk guiding and supporting me in ministry. Much love to our sons and families, Abraham and Sherin, and Aquil and Krupa, my resolute champions and prayer partners. Thanks to my parents for their constant support in prayer.

Most importantly, my research participants from Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, and India are the ones who deserve the loudest shouts of thanks and appreciation. To each of you I am indebted for your time, attentiveness, and genuine participation, without which this study would not have achieved its outcome. While your names are kept anonymous in this work, I continue to pray God’s abundant favor on each of you as you toil selflessly in theological education across South Asia. I am grateful that the listening process with you all was incredibly insightful, pointing to the need for collaborative listening and cross-fertilizing leadership patterns. May this lead to the ideation and nourishment of a theological education momentum in the most neglected yet most compelling terrain of the church.

Preface

The original idea was not for a book as such, but for a careful process of listening to theological education practitioners in South Asia regarding the scope for formal-nonformal integration and quality assurance across the streams of training. From my experience in theological education in the region, I have often felt that the training systems are so stuck in their own routines that a revisiting or reenvisioning is often pushed out of the agenda, irrespective of how hard we try. Educational sectors tend to focus more on internal maintenance and academic technicalities than on creative collaborations and outcome-oriented ministry formation in serving the needs of the church. Hence I commenced qualitative research on the context, which eventually led to this book which presents the compelling insights from the study.

Changes are occurring in theological education globally on an unprecedented scale. When gaps between training sectors diminish the impact of training on the mission and growth of the church, we are forced to choose to either listen and change or disregard and die. Participants in this study and the authors cited categorically demand the revitalization of our training practices for the building up of the church. This in no way negates the importance of contextually relevant and well-functioning theological education in seminaries or any other institutional forms. The study suggests that the core mandate of theological education (TE) is to think outside the box of conventionality and serve toward the sustainability and growth of the church. To this end, educators and strategic leaders and administrators in TE are summoned to collaborate or explore new models that effectively address the needs and meet the challenges of the church on the ground.

Presenting a model based on the research, namely the Regional Training Hubs (RTH) in South Asia, this book envisions a breakthrough collaboration which will help the entire land to be irrigated, not just certain sections of it. It advocates for the whole body of the church to be equipped consistently in a vision where the church lives as God’s redemptive goal and not as a side actor. Collaboration of all sectors of training is regarded as central to the equipping of the whole church in discipleship, leadership, and mission. The study envisages that such church-focused collaborative models will simultaneously serve to synergize all other forms of theological education. Change or we die. This cannot be overemphasized. Collective wisdom and listening set the way forward. The church as an organic body will keep growing in God’s plan, and each generation has to offer strategic spiritual and educational support in context to make it flourish in changing times.

Abstract

There is an enormous dearth of trained leaders in the church, and the exigency to accelerate missional increase across South Asia sets the background to this project. The changing landscape of theological education amid global cultural shifts warrants a conscientious revisiting of the purpose and philosophy of training endeavors. Examining the collaborative prospects of formal and nonformal trainings through a qualitative listening process, this work proposes the church’s centrality as a biblical and missional inevitability in theological education. Set in the South Asian context but with a broader relevance, it calls theological educators to make sure that the outcomes of upper-level consultations are trickling down to the church, which is the key agent and the primary stakeholder of training. Having listened to global and local voices, the author examines how the forms of TE have shifted from their goal of church/mission-centeredness, and suggests the Regional Training Hubs (RTH) model as a cogent solution that models polycentric listening and relationship-oriented collaborations. To this end, subsequent action research processes will implement and trial the RTH prototypes in South Asian countries. The future of theological education, irrespective of forms and modalities, must be about envisioning a thriving church by strategically blending spiritual and relational momentums. Institutions and situations keep changing, but the church’s mandate stands unaltered. The study recommends genuine listening, persuasive generosity, theological conviction, and relational collaborations toward a church-centered, mission-enhancing theological education paradigm. It envisions all-level discipleship, all-level leadership, and all-level missional-social engagement for the building up of the church, to which, by way of consulting, resourcing, and mentoring, all forms of training endeavors will serve.

1

Introduction: The Shifting Terrain of Theological Education

While formal-nonformal negotiations are fervently taking place, the recent global shifts in theological education (TE) call for a comprehensive definition and reenvisioning of the contexts of the church and mission in South Asia. Theological education that has been taken over by seminaries and then willingly outsourced by churches has grown increasingly disconnected from the church. This is a time-worn lament in literature and consultations, yet the issue remains mostly unresolved on the ground. As the world becomes progressively more globalized, and local settings are beginning to encounter crises of identity and direction, the forward trajectory warrants a more attentive listening to local voices, continued learning, and a complete trust in God. Disengaged strategy-making or enforcement of training packages may have no impact on church growth as the missional scenario is constantly changing. This study supposes that the church on the ground in every community is constrained to own theological or missional wisdom as its vocation. Genuine collaborations of varied forms of theological and ministerial education seem to be crucial for the sustainable thriving of Christianity in the region. The church should be the driver of the theologically grounded mission force to build the kingdom of God among all peoples. And, while a large number of theological institutions keep shifting their training forms and agendas according to sociocultural or political waves, we recognize the church as the only organic agent that can unswervingly fulfill this mandate amid persecution, pandemics, wars, or any other crises that might shake the world.

Major dysfunctions in the formal and nonformal approaches to theological education have historically been identified, and these are explored through the listening process in this study. For theological education to sustain its relevance and effectiveness in a fast-changing world, this study proposes an essential revitalization through a church-focused collaboration of training practices. Across the spectrum of theological education, the study recommends an essential reenvisioning of contextual relevance, quality, and collaboration – all toward the building up of inwardly healthy and missionally vibrant churches.

Let us consider various scenarios.

We need equipped disciples in the church, trained workers in mission, and competent leaders across the leadership spectrum. Traditional seminaries in their scholarly pattern claim to train well, but they can afford to train only a few students. When graduates from conventional seminary education fail to have specific ministry skills in the real world, nonformal initiatives offer help with their flexible patterns of training, yet often without an explicit perception of needs in the real world that are seeking the knowledge base for faith.

The lament over the church-seminary disconnect resounds alarmingly in countries that are relatively new in their Christian tradition and history of theological education, as well as in those with a reasonably lengthy tradition of Christianity, like India. This disconnect develops and solidifies over a period of time and reverberates both ways, as a theological educator remarked:

Even when churches maintain high