The Henry Center is pleased to announce that Alistair Begg’s recent Scripture & Ministry lecture and interview sessions are now posted free of charge for the viewing of the general public.

October 26, 2011 | Alistair Begg | Parkside Church, Cleveland, Ohio

“Inadequacy: The Surprising Secret to Being Useful to God”

The NBA champions this year was a team made up of fewer stars and less glitz than their opponents.  We might say that humility triumphed over hubris.  There are lessons-a-plenty in this for an evangelical church that routinely produces all-stars.  Such an approach endangers the recipients of such adulation and discourages those who are by-passed in the process.  In this lecture, Alistair Begg will consider God’s pattern of using unlikely and ordinary characters and address the possibility that what we regard as a hindrance may be the key to usefulness in God’s service.

Lecture: Audio | Video

Interview: Audio | Video

Alistair Begg is the senior pastor of Parkside Church in Cleveland, OH, and he can also be heard regularly on the radio program Truth for Life. On October 26, he will be the speaker for the Scripture and Ministry lecture series sponsored by the Carl F. H. Henry Center for Theological Understanding.

The lecture will be held in TEDS chapel. This event is free and open to the public.

Refreshments will begin at 12:45 pm, followed by the lecture at 1:00 pm (with Q&A to follow).

The topic of the lecture …

“Inadequacy: The Surprising Secret to Being Useful to God”

The NBA champions this year was a team made up of fewer stars and less glitz than their opponents. We might say that humility triumphed over hubris. There are lessons-a-plenty in this for an evangelical church that routinely produces all-stars. Such an approach endangers the recipients of such adulation and discourages those who are by-passed in the process. In this lecture, Alistair Begg will consider God’s pattern of using unlikely and ordinary characters and address the possibility that what we regard as a hindrance may be the key to usefulness in God’s service.

The Henry Center is pleased to announce that Timothy Laniak’s recent Scripture & Ministry lecture and interview sessions are now posted free of charge for the viewing of the general public.

September  14, 2011 | Timothy Laniak | Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Charlotte, North Carolina

“Shepherds After My Own Heart: The Enduring Challenge of Pastoral Identity”

The most consistent biblical metaphor for leaders among the people of God is the shepherd. But what, really, is a spiritual shepherd? Beyond the specific job descriptions and role expectations of others, what does God expect of us? How does God see us? In this illustrated presentation, Dr. Laniak will take us into the world of Bedouin shepherds for unique perspectives on Scripture’s challenge to shepherd God’s flock. Come renew your pastoral calling with images and insights designed to keep you on course as you serve the Chief Shepherd. Let God reset your identity as his shepherd.

Lecture: Audio | Video

Interview: Audio | Video

The Henry Center is pleased to announce that Michael Glerup’s recent Scripture & Ministry lecture and interview sessions are now posted free of charge for the viewing of the general public.

Moses, a pivotal figure in the story of salvation, was a friend of God, who God spoke to “face to face, clearly and not in riddles.”  He was the most humble man on earth and a powerful intercessor for Israel yet was rejected and maligned by his community. The early church-apostles and later interpreters– steeped in scripture, encouraged by Jesus words “If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me” mined Moses’ life for insight into the Christian life and faith. In this lecture we will investigate with the early exegetes, particularly those from the African continent, the key events of Moses’ life and explore their implications for pastoral ministry, Christian formation, and the mission of the church.

Lecture: Audio | Video

Interview: Audio | Video

By Rob Moll

Our world is one in which people, ideas, and products travel from everywhere on the globe to anywhere else. As a result, every place is a mission field, a home to people in need of the gospel. Yet bringing the gospel to them can be a serious challenge.

Typically, missionaries find ways to contextualize the gospel, to make it understandable and meaningful in a particular culture. In the U.S., where the gospel has to a large degree shaped the culture, the problem is not contextualization but over-contextualization, says Casely Essamuah. How do you make the gospel understood where it is such a familiar presence as to be unremarkable? This is the challenge of missionaries who come to the U.S.

Casely Essamuah is global missions pastor or Bay Area Community Church in Annapolis, Maryland. Originally from Ghana, Essamuah and his wife met while they were students in Boston. Angela Wakhweya-Essamuah, after receiving an MA in Economics at the London School of Economics, is now deputy director of infectious health for the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. The couple works with short term mission trips from Maryland to Africa as well as with immigrant communities planting churches in the U.S. The couple spoke at the Henry Center Scripture and Ministry Series (Lecture: Audio | Video; Interview: Audio | Video).

Around the world, the gospel has not been evenly contextualized. “In 1900,” Casely said, “33 percent of the world identified itself as Christian. That is the same as in the year 2000. The Christian market share has remained the same, but the real issue is where the growth took place.” In Africa and Latin America, growth of the church as been feverish, he said. “This is a testament to the successful contextualization of the gospel. God worked through southern church.”

However, Casely said, despite some success in South Korea and a few other countries, efforts at church planting in Asia have not gone far enough. In the West, the picture is ambiguous. “The church is alive and thriving,” he said. “Churches are active in relief among the global poor. The church seems to be meeting the challenge of the 21^st century, but there are clouds. The Western church suffers from an over-contextualizing of cultural forms.”

Reverse missions

Missionaries coming to the U.S. have so far only recognized the problem. These missionaries are not sent by their home churches specifically to share the good news on U.S. soil. Instead, they come to America as economic migrants and slowly their identity shifts toward that of a missionary.

Casely said that most Americans today don’t recognize what the rest of the world saw as a momentous decision when, in 1965, the government overturned the system of country quotas that preferred immigration from European countries. “That set the U.S. on a course that was different than past 300 years,” he said. “Today we have a president called Barak Obama.”

This allowed migrants from very different cultures to arrive on these shores, and they brought with them their religion, often Christianity. However, they are often shocked at the degree to which their faith is absent from American culture.

“One of the things we encounter around the world is the shock when Westerners are introduced to poverty,” Casely said. Immigrants to the U.S. don’t experience the same type of shock. They know what the U.S. looks like. They’ve seen television shows or movies, and they know what to expect. But what does shock these immigrants is the degree of secularization of American culture, Casely said, “especially when people come from where Christianity is strong. They see the U.S. as a place of dry bones.”

This is the start of their transition from economic migrants to missionaries, and these reverse missionaries are having incredible success, first with fellow immigrants and slowly with the rest of American society. “The church of Pentecost is 50 yrs old in Ghana,” Casely said, “and they have established 200 churches in the U.S. in 25 years.”

As a Ghanaian Methodist minister in Annapolis, Maryland, he said, “There are six Ghanaian Methodist churches within an hours’ drive.” They were formed to provide refuge for immigrants looking to worship in their language and a familiar culture. Now, however, “They are renegotiating their identity as Ghanaians in the U.S.”

The effect of their missionary efforts remains to be seen. Can reverse missionaries change American culture? Time will tell. We do know, however, that there is no need to wait for experts to travel around the world to find out. Americans can visit their local store-front church or neighborhood recreation center on a Sunday morning and see the whole world in worship.

The Henry Center is pleased to announce that the Essamuahs’ recent Scripture & Ministry lecture and interview sessions are now posted free of charge for the viewing of the general public.

An African evangelical family with almost two decades of experience in American church leadership reflects on the missions work of immigrants in light of the current state of Christianity in the world. Examples of global outreach and evangelism efforts through short term missions will be discussed, as well as the impact such experiences have on the participants. Highlights will be drawn from Uganda and Ghana short term missions trips by American Christians and what they learned from their experiences.

Lecture: Audio | Video

Interview: Audio | Video

The Henry Center is pleased to announce that Dallas Willard’s recent Scripture & Ministry lecture and interview sessions are now posted free of charge for the viewing of the general public.

The Apostle Paul tells us to “not be conformed to the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” (Rom. 12:2) But how are we to go about renewing our mind? We will explain the role of scripture in the renewing of the mind, and the role of the pastor and the congregation in this process. We will also discuss the ways in which use of scripture fails to renew the mind-as often seems to be the case in our “Bible based” churches. What can be done about that? The larger picture of Christian “spiritual formation” will be discussed. How does it relate to “growth in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ”? Does being saved have anything to do with transformation of character?

Lecture| Audio | Video

Interview| Audio | Video

The Henry Center is pleased to announce that Ajith Fernando’s recent Scripture & Ministry lecture and interview sessions are now posted free of charge for the viewing of the general public.

This lecture describes the story of how one ministry (Youth for Christ/Sri Lanka) attempted to have all its ministry spring from the Bible. It will demonstrate how Scripture can guide in the developing of strategy, in the choosing of methods in ministry, at team meetings, when deciding what to speak or teach on, when developing the priorities of a ministry, and in the developing of the principles to govern community life and leadership.

Lecture| Audio | Video

Interview| Audio | Video

The Henry Center is pleased to cosponsor the Jonathan Edwards and the Church lecture series with the Jonathan Edwards Center at TEDS. This series will feature the best Christian Edwards scholars in the world in conversation with clergy who are interested in Edwards and his legacies to the church.

George Marsden, Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History Emeritus at University of Notre Dame, will be giving the opening lecture on Edwards and beauty.

The lecture will be on November 3, 2010 at 1pm at the ATO chapel on the campus of TEDS; it is free and all are welcome.

Pastor Colin Smith of the Orchard Evangelical Free Church (Arlington Heights, IL) will be responding to Dr. Marsden’s lecture.

This lecture series is co-sponsored with the Henry Center for Theological Understanding.

The title of Dr. Marsden’s talk is “Jonathan Edwards for the Twenty-first Century.” What are the most helpful insights that we can gain from Jonathan Edwards’s theology today? This lecture uses the contrast between Benjamin Franklin and Jonathan Edwards in the eighteenth century to reflect on some of the most characteristic traits of later American culture to which Edwards’s “theology of active beauty” provides particularly helpful alternatives.

The Henry Center is pleased to announce its next Scripture and Ministry lecture — Dallas Willard is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and has taught there since 1965.

Dr. Willard will give a talk titled “Transformed by the Renewing of your Mind: the Use of Scripture in ‘Spiritual Formation.’” The Apostle Paul tells us to ‘not be conformed to the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind’ (Rom 12:2). But how are we to go about renewing our mind? This lecture will consider the role of Scripture, the pastor, and the congregation in the process of the renewing of the mind. Special consideration will be given to why current uses of Scripture often fail in ‘Bible-based’ churches and how this can be changed, how ‘spiritual formation’ relates to ‘growth in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,’ and what ‘being saved’ has to do with transformation of character.

Come and join us for a stimulating and instructive time together, with Q&A to follow. The lecture is free to all and will take place in the ATO Chapel on Wednesday, October 27, 2010 at 1pm.