Date/Time
Date(s) - July 19, 2013
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Location
Regent College Chapel
Categories No Categories
MARK NOLL, TERRY LEBLANC, SOONG-CHAN RAH, RUTH PADILLA-DEBORST, AND ANDREW WALLS (IN ABSENTIA)
HOSTED BY DIANE STINTON AND JEFFREY GREENMAN
What do a 25-year-old Kenyan father of twins, a 35-year-old woman from small-town North Carolina, and a 49-year-old single mom from Thailand all have in common? They love ice cream; they work for the same multinational organization; and they profess the Living God and faith in Jesus Christ as an African Pentecostal, a Southern Baptist-turned-non-denominational, and a Buddhist-turned-Catholic. Three different continents, three very different stories, all encountering the same Jesus, now encountering one another in their workplace. Centuries of cultural, political, and economic phenomena lead to their meeting. What might they learn from one another?
The Christian faith has always been geographically widespread and culturally diverse in its expression. However, after centuries of being largely bound up with Western civilization, 20th-century Christianity has experienced unprecedented growth in regions of the Global South and East. Now, as believers from the Majority World seek to understand and live out the universal Christian faith in their respective local contexts, they offer new insights and perspectives to the ongoing development of our Christian tradition.
In today’s globalized world, the local context for the Majority World may be at our very door—in our pews, our classrooms, our offices. We can encounter other Christians who do not look, talk, think, or experience the gospel as we do in all these places. What has contributed to the truly global reach of Christianity today? What can a believer from a totally different background reveal to us about our own faith? Is the Global South the best hope to re-evangelize the ailing West? If so, how can we embrace the face of World Christianity in the church, marketplace, academy, and our personal lives so that the kingdom will increase?
Join renowned scholars and practitioners as they explore answers to these questions and more. Together, we will consider the implications of this new global Christianity for our own theological and spiritual formation, for our church communities, and for our witness to Christ both locally and globally.
http://www.regent-college.edu/lifelong-learning/conferences/world-christianity-2013#schedule