Around Town: Bishop Niringiye at TWU, Chinese Evangelism, Harry Maier . . .

The three stories this week are local – but each reflects the increasingly transnational nature of the gospel. 

A bishop from Uganda delivered the commencement address to more than 1,000 Trinity Western University students April 27.

A report from the university stated:

TWU was privileged to welcome Bishop Dr. David Zac Niringiye at this year’s graduation as the commencement speaker and recipient of an honorary doctorate degree. . . .

Bishop Niringiye was one of the foremost HIV/AIDS faith-based prevention and care advocates in Uganda in the late 1980s through the 1990s. His work impacted HIV/AIDS prevention initiatives across Africa.

Over the last two decades, his passion and commitment to the gospel have spurred him to champion the cause of social justice and good governance.

Bishop Niringiye’s dedication and service has won him numerous awards, including the National Platform for Peace Building and Conflict Prevention’s Peace Award from the Office of the Prime Minister of Uganda.

Upon receiving his honorary doctorate, Bishop Niringiye delivered remarks to TWU graduands at both ceremonies. His speech, ‘The Cutting Edge,’ focused on pursing a life of true significance, with reflections on the Lord’s Prayer.

He exhorted graduands towards learning, pursuing and growing into the nature and character of God, and to spend their lives seeking, discerning, and living out God’s shalom (peace), love and justice.

I enjoyed a small coincidence, as I recently watched the first of two talks by Bishop Niringiye from the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies on ‘The Gospel and the Common Good: Bearing Witness in Public Life and the Public Square.’ The second part is coming up May 28. (I had the pleasure of speaking in person with OCMS Academic Dean Tom Harvey last fall, during our time in Britain – and wrote very briefly about that meeting at the end of this article.)

Chinese Evangelism

Billy Graham’s grandson was one of several people who spoke to a large gathering of Chinese Canadians last month at Evangelical Chinese Bible Church in Burnaby.

A report from the Billy Graham Evangelical Association of Canada stated:

Saturday morning in Burnaby opened with the voices of more than 700 Chinese believers praising God together. Some sang in Mandarin, some in Cantonese and others in English.

They came from churches across the province’s Lower Mainland to unite in worship, prayer and training to share the Good News of Jesus Christ.

“This meeting refreshes our passion . . . to share the Gospel with others,” said one attendee, Carol.

April 6 marked the first Chinese Evangelism Conference by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association of Canada. The event was interpreted into three languages.

Throughout the day, speakers, including Will Graham, encouraged believers to share their faith with their communities and the world. . . .

“To lead Canada in a great revival [Graham said] . . . to lead North America in a great revival. The way of evangelism is not always easy, but it’s a way that you’ll never regret.” . . .

“We need more people trained to know how to share the true Gospel,” said Mandy, who came to the conference with her husband.

“There are more and more Chinese immigrants coming to Canada – especially in British Columbia and the Greater Vancouver area,” she continued. “We need more Chinese speakers to share the Gospel with the new immigrants.”

Having arrived in Canada just over a year ago herself, Mandy sees the need and opportunity to reach Chinese Canadians – around five percent of Canada’s population – with the Gospel. She’s also witnessed what God can do through one believer who faithfully shares “that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son” (1 John 5:11).

“The first opportunity I know about Jesus was because [of] one of my family members, my aunt. She is a Christian and she gave me a Bible and shared the Gospel with me,” Mandy shared. “I wasn’t interested, but when I came to university, I just feel a call – I want to know more about Jesus. So, I found a church in my university.”

Go here for the full report.

You’ll have to read the comment itself – and it’s well worth it; he’s a strong thinker and writer. My brief comments don’t do it justice; I’m mainly interested in pointing out that he leaned heavily on a Vancouver School of Theology scholar in this article.

Leithart points out that “many . . . regard Augustine as a quintessentially anti-apocalyptic theologian, noting that even though he wrote his magisterial City of God “in the aftermath of the Visigoth sack of Rome,” he doesn’t over-dramatize the fall of Rome, nor does he exaggerate the role of Christianity in Rome’s plight.

Leithart writes:

But there’s another way to understand Augustine. As Harry Maier pointed out, the final books of City of God track, book-by-chapter, the closing visions of the book of Revelation, and the Apocalypse looms large throughout the treatise.

Augustine can’t write about the Edenic bliss of Adam, Cain’s assault on Abel, the accounts of the patriarchs and of Israel, without alluding to the closing scenes of the Bible. As Maier puts it, Augustine’s “is a narrative dominated by the future tense.”

Plus, City of God is thoroughly apocalyptic in an etymological sense: apocalypsis means ‘un-hiding,’ and apocalyptic literature is originally less concerned with special effects than with unmasking the occult reality operating behind historical events.

When Augustine traces the virtues of Roman heroes to their lust for glory, when he ferrets out the consuetudines  that led to Lucretia’s suicide, when he reduces Roman unity to common hatred of Carthage, when he isolates the fear lurking behind the bravado of the earthly city, Augustine is operating in an apocalyptic vein.

He’s no mere chronicler, but a reader of signs, whether scriptural or historical, or, better, historical through scriptural. Maier again: The Apocalypse gives Augustine a “grammar for understanding God’s language in events.”

Go here for the full comment.

Harry Maier received a Doctor of Philosophy degree from Oxford University. He has served two parishes of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada in Victoria and Delta before becoming a full-time member of VST’s faculty in 1994.

He has written and co-edited several volumes. It appears that The Oxford Handbook of New Testament Christianity in the Roman World – edited with Emiliano Urciuoli and Heidi Wendt – is due to be published this year.