Spirituality – Page 55

Category: Spirituality

Diary of a pastor in part time studies 4

30 September 2012 blogpastor Leave a comment

Church of the Open Air

What do pastors and seminary lecturers on course do on Sundays? We gathered to be the church at the cement front yard of the multiplex where all of us were staying. We christened it the Church of the Open Air, a church without walls and doors. Being so interdenominational in our mix, we did a rojak service. We sang a contemporary worship song, Above all powers, acapella. We had a time of silence for contemplation. The scripture from Exodus 11 was from the Revised Common Lectionary for this Sunday after Pentecost. It was read three times with intervals of silence. After which we shared honestly about where our lives connected with the illumined texts. It was holy ground. God was palpably present though there were no pyrotechnics, strobe lights nor professional musicians. We felt close to God, close to one another -all welded in a strange mix that defies definition but which St John hints of when he speaks of koinonia.

Consumption and expenditure

Dr Rosalind Lim-Tan who heads the Holistic Child Development center showed us warm Malaysian hospitality and brought us to the New World Park hawker center for us to dig into local Penang cuisine. We had a walloping time! Penang laksa, char kway teow, ba-long-long juice with plum, etc. It’s my opinion that the best food is in the north and as you travel down to Ipoh and Kuala Lumpur, farther to Malacca and Johor Baru, and finally down to Singapore, the food somehow loses its explosive bang and becomes as tepid as Newater. After food we went off to window shop at a too “atas” shopping mall next to a marina, and then to Tesco to buy provisions. We had our service at 9am in the morning and by the time we were back it was 2pm.After some discussions for a presentation on Tuesday, it was time to exercise and we trekked up and down and around the seminary for an hour and winded down with 15 minutes of stretching. Its been a wonderful Sunday. (Photo credits – Lau Ying Kheng)

Diary of a pastor in part time studies 3

29 September 2012 blogpastor 2 Comments

Orientations to curriculum development

We were looking at different orientations towards curriculum development. In an article, Orientations to Curriculum Development for Church Education, Burt Branius listed 3 orientations: the preservative, productive and the participative approach. The preservative is focused of transmission of a highly valued content. The productive is oriented towards developing a curriculum that produces a certain kind of disciple or worker or community. The participative is centered on the learner and his needs and what he is most in need of at that life stage or situation. It is participative in the sense that the learner is more involved in the development of the curriculum. The conclusion of the discussion was that the ideal would be for most Christian faith communities to have some combination of all three. As a church we do have a faith to transmit(preservative); we do have growth outcomes we want to see in our members and in the community; and we do want to minister to the learners’ needs, both felt, hidden or developmental.

Meeting interesting people

Two persons that I was surprised to meet were Cheng Eng Hwa, pastor of Praise Evangelical Church, and Lau King Lang. In the course of conversation I found out that Pastor Cheng Eng Hwa was a brother of two committed lay leaders I knew from Church of True Light, Dr Samuel Cheng and Catherine Cheng. Small world. It was even more surprising when during lesson I heard a familiar name of a fellow blogger, Dr. Anthony Loke, affectionately called the “reb” as in rabbi, by his seminary students. He was mentioned by his wife King Lang during discussions in class! He blogs at Old Testament passion but I must add that Facebook has left quite a number of blogs like the walls of Jerusalem during the exile. Anthony also inherited my Arsenal jersey, when I almost gave up on Arsenal last year. 🙂

Diary of a pastor in part time studies 2

27 September 2012 blogpastor Leave a comment

It was the first day of AGST Alliance MTh(Ed)/EdD 4-3 module with all the introductory rituals of explanation of course requirements and assignments and allotment of on course projects. The physical weariness is present and I need to sleep early tonight. Lunch was great: beef stew, spinach, mixed vegetables and soup. We ate with the Bible school students. This was their last week and in the evening they would celebrate the Moon Cake Festival with a barbecue. Our dean signed us all in. It was to be held at the beach house (what kind of a bible school is so privileged to have a beach house? Ans: a Malaysian one!).

Curriculum is often regarded as that packet of materials that is part of a systematic way of covering biblical or theological content. They are often regarded as God’s gift to layman and most churches get their stuff from the USA. We are learning that it is much more. That’s like calling the wheels the car. Those are just the curriculum schooling materials. Curriculum is much more: it is “all the planned learning opportunities offered by the organization to learners and the experiences learners encounter when the curriculum is implemented.” It could even be enlarged to include all the informal, spontaneous experiences and learning that takes place in the community and even the “hidden curriculum”. I will stop this rambling, as my assignments are calling me by name to attend to their demands. Some pictures of barbecue: