“After every semester, I would take a retreat somewhere. I would review the entire semester and try to discern the presence of God in major meetings, in ordinary life events – and just ask him for direction as to how to move the college forward,” said Edwin Tay, principal of a Singapore theological school, in our most recent Karam Forum Global Session. “So I thought, why not extend that to the corporate setting of the seminary?”
“One of the questions that I asked the staff at the end of last year was: ‘How has your Christian faith made a difference to your understanding of work and responsibilities?’ And the reason I asked this question is really to help me discern where they are in their discipleship and work, because I could learn a thing or two as well from them, about how they see God at work in their lives.”
The Global Session at our Karam Forum 2021 live meeting in November – hosted by Kara Martin of Alphacrucis College in Australia, who also serves on the board of Karam Fellowship – featured:
- Edwin Tay, principal of Trinity Theological College (Singapore), on changing seminary culture to prepare whole-life disciples
- Havilah Dharamraj, South Asia Institute of Advanced Christian Studies (Bangalore, India), on teaching that breaks down the sacred–secular divide
- Ivor Poobalan, principal of Colombo Theological Seminary (Sri Lanka), on discipling Christian leaders to influence church and culture
- Sutrisna Harjanto, principal of Bandung Theological Seminary (Indonesia), on masters programs and mentoring focused on the marketplace, and transforming culture and society
Check out the full video of the session below, along with some choice samples of this fascinating glimpse into the Spirit’s work among our colleagues in Asia.
See also the video of our first Global Session, held a year ago as part of the “virtual meeting” of Karam Forum in January 2021, we held our first Karam Forum Global Session. Our longtime partners in Australia took center stage in that session, sharing the emerging work there on reconnecting theological education to whole-life discipleship.
And mark your calendars for Karam Forum 2022 on Nov. 17-18, which you can join either live in Denver or via Zoom; we will hold our next Global Session then, featuring colleagues from Africa and South America!
Kara Martin on mutual service as a way to bridge the relational divide:
A bit earlier in the year…I sat down as a theological educator with a pastor and with an entrepreneur, and we were having a conversation about what happens at the intersection of those three places. We were talking, and the pastor was lamenting the fact that, now that he focuses on the marketplace, it’s really hard to get people to help with his programs. And the theological educator was lamenting the fact that marketplace people aren’t flooding to our seminaries, necessarily. And the entrepreneur was lamenting the fact that he felt torn about the responsibility he felt to try and prop up both the church and the seminary. And how does he do that? So we had that sort of conversation, and we were being curated by some other people, and we were picking up cards to ask questions. And the last question we asked each other was: “What can I do for you?” And there was just this amazing shift that happened, as the pastor looked at me and said: “What can I do for you?” And I was like, “wow, that’s really challenging. But I’m really hoping that we can work together in being able to support our entrepreneur friend here to be able to live out his faith in every corner of his life.” And then the entrepreneur said: “What can I do for you?” And it was this beautiful moment of seeing the possibilities of his knowledge and his expertise being applied more equally. And this question of how we can serve each other actually changed the whole tone of the conversation. So we’re going to do that next year in a more concrete manner, we’re going to get 40 people representing those three sectors together.
Edwin Tay on living it out yourself as the best way to discover opportunities to make it influential in the organization:
I find that ideas on how whole-life discipleship can be practiced, where I am, come to me most readily when I’m not focusing on how to make it work in the organization, but when I’m actually focusing on how I am to practice it in the seminary….Recently we employed a communications manager. He is a Christian, and during his interview for the job, I shared my own perspective with him, that as far as the principal is concerned, the job of the communications manager is not simply an occupation, but a sacred calling. And I asked him if he’s ever thought of his occupation in this way. He was quite honest to share with me that he hadn’t. He looked pretty surprised, in fact! But he went on to share with me his conversion experience, that he became a Christian at a Billy Graham Crusade in Singapore in 1978. And he said that ever since his conversion, his goal in life is to tell the story of Jesus Christ. So I said to him, well, that’s something worth thinking about in relation to his role as a communications manager, because in communications you’re telling stories, whether in words or pictures or designs. So he thought for a while, and I asked if he would explore that particular perspective as he considered joining us on the same team. So, what I did after the interview was, I spoke with my managers, particularly one in human resources. And I said, why not do something different, you know? As we issue the offer letter to him, let’s insert after the summary of his job description the following sentence: “The above duties are to be informed and motivated by your vocational calling to tell the story of Jesus Christ.” So for the very first time, we issued an offer letter to an employee with that worked into his job description. So that’s just something that flowed from how I went about doing things, as I thought about how I am to live out whole-life discipleship in the sphere of my influence.
Havilah Dharamraj on classroom strategies for connecting theology to life:
As a team, in our pedagogy – classroom teaching – we try to make constant references to cultural ethics. For example, just yesterday we were talking about the chapter in Genesis where Jacob gets tricked by his father-in-law Laban and ends up marrying a pair of sisters. And so we talked about patriarchal cultures in which this sort of thing might happen, including in India….So we talked about how in India, because we’re so pragmatic in our approach to life itself, we might even appreciate for someone for pull off something like that. So we keep making these constant correspondences with cultural ethics as we go through biblical text. Secondly, what I constantly strive to do is to bring cultural artifacts into the classroom. Now these can be pop-culture songs, they can be movies. India has a wonderfully vibrant movie industry, so we try to bring in movies with every module….Sometimes they can be talks by politicians; in our last module on Amos we had a screening of a very significant talk by the chief justice of India, who isn’t Christian, but it’s so useful to be able to listen to him….A third way we do it is through assignments. Invariably there will be one assignment in a course or module in which the student is asked to translate or transform learning from the classroom directly into his ministry audience. No use of jargon, can’t use Greek and Hebrew – but address an issue, write an email or something in daily conversation, proper to an assignment that helps you build a bridge, so that you get into the habit of building bridges between what you learn in the classroom and what you will take out into the context.
Ivor Poobalan on the secular-sacred divide as a global challenge:
As we think about whole-life discipleship, the first time we had this conversation in Singapore, we called it the sacred-secular divide – SSD. And it really has emerged out of dissatisfaction in Western Christianity, with this disconnect between the understanding of scripture and how we practice our Christian faith, and looking deep into the discovery that it really emerged out of our dependence on the philosophical background in which Christianity developed in those first few centuries. So the divide really doesn’t come out of the Bible, but it comes out of Greek philosophy and the division between the material and the spiritual. So when I thought about Sri Lanka, I asked myself: “What is it that causes us to have a similar kind of divide between what we consider ‘things of God’ and what we consider ‘things of the world’?” And I realized that we too have our own philosophical base. As you mentioned, Sri Lanka is predominantly Buddhist; but secondly, we have a large community of Hindus. And so we are informed by the philosophies of Buddhism and Hinduism which, together, view the transcendent as superior. That which is material, that which is tangible, is seen as inferior. And there is this constant sense that whatever is transcendent is what makes life worthy….And so that culture seeps into everything that happens within the church. We carry that culture into the church and we view the transcendent, or the heavenly, as superior to everything that goes on on earth.
Sutrisna Harjanto on whole-life discipleship as a “golden bridge” to neighborly love:
We mentioned about external challenges and international challenges. There is a growing intolerance among the Muslim neighbors in Indonesia, especially in the past 30 years, I guess, and even longer than that. But faith and work integration, economic integration, actually is a golden bridge to have a good relationship with our neighbors. Because verbal expression is limited and symbolic expression is limited. A dedication that is shown through daily life, work for the benefit of the society, gives credibility for Christians in many places to have meaningful and good conversation with their colleagues. So that’s another side. And also in the context of a growing intolerance, where Christian presence is suppressed in some parts of the area or workplaces, the payer meetings that the Christians have in offices in workplaces is a sign of that presence, a confirmation for them. So they can support each other to bring their faith and to still have their identity and mission in the workplace. That’s the external situation. But the internal challenges, I think, is bigger, because the dichotomic mindset among church leaders and seminar leaders is still very strong, especially within the evangelical circles. So it is something that’s still new, still need to grapple with.
Check out the full video above, and mark your calendars for our next Global Session at Karam Forum 2022 on Nov. 17-18, which you can join either live in Denver or via Zoom!
