Theological Education in the 21st Century

by Beth Grant

By the second half of the twentieth century, missiologists had recognized the inaccuracy of the colonialist assumption, “West is best” and replaced it with the culturally sensitive assumption that “Indigenous is best.” In a culturally complex and changing twenty-first century world, isn’t it time to challenge the simplicity of both?

By the second half of the twentieth century, missiologists had recognized the inaccuracy of the colonialist assumption, “West is best” and replaced it with the culturally sensitive assumption that “Indigenous is best.” In a culturally complex and changing twenty-first century world, isn’t it time to challenge the simplicity of both?

One by one, sixty-nine black-robed graduates marched to the platform to receive their theological degrees at Southern Asia Bible College in Bangalore, India. Following the stirring echoes of Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus,” the name of each student was announced: Babu, Varghese, Kumar, Jesudass, Lotha, Raj. The names reflected the immense ethnic and linguistic diversity of the Indian subcontinent itself.

After the American area director for the founding mission prayed fervently over the future church leaders in Southern Asia, the graduation was concluded for the first time in the college’s history by singing the Indian national anthem.

This impressive graduation ritual symbolically and unmistakably reflected three hundred years of English colonialism and two hundred years of Western missionary activity that have shaped education in India.¹ Simultaneously, it also revealed the sense of pride and national identity that increasingly characterize the nation’s churches and theological schools. These complex and seemingly divergent influences on Indian theological education raise a question relevant to much of the Two-thirds world where Western mission agencies have founded and defined much of theological education: Are theological schools in the non-Western world preparing leaders for their respective cultural contexts or inadvertently preparing leaders for the church in a Western cultural context?¹

As a long-time partner in theological education in Southern Asia, this concern became my impetus for doctoral research. However, it also led me to question some of the twentieth-century assumptions in missions that inadvertently framed my question.

BACKGROUND
Early in modern missions history, Western missionaries naturally and sincerely applied their Western approach to higher education to fulfilling the Great Commission. In particular, Western methods, curriculum and educational structures were carried to the ends of the earth, and most often became the models on which theological education was designed. In places like India, a good education was equated with a Western/British education. In short, “West is best” became the assumption.

By the second half of the twentieth century, the perspectives of Western missionaries and their sending agencies were informed by studies in cultural anthropology and missiology. The mission force came to appreciate the deep need to contextualize the gospel into the indigenous culture and develop culturally-appropriate methods and ministry structures. The mindset and approach of Western mission agencies were radically transformed in this important process. And yet, in the process of becoming more culturally sensitive and intentionally less ethnocentric, is it possible that we have adopted a new set of assumptions regarding the task of missions and culture that are now also less than viable in our twenty-first century world context?

Evidence suggests that we have abandoned one set of assumptions in missions for another set that no longer serves us well in clarifying our mission and methods in a complex, dramatically changing world.
The following assumptions are implicit in much of the missiological literature from the 1970s through the 1990s, definitively forming how we think about doing and evaluating missions:

1) Western and indigenous are mutually exclusive categories which can be identified.

2) Indigenous methods are inherently more effective in a non-Western missions context than Western ones.

3) Western methods are inherently less effective in a non-Western missions context than indigenous ones.

Are the assumptions which view missions in general and theological education in particular in terms of Western vs. non-Western or Western vs. indigenous valid in the twenty-first century? Or are there other more pertinent questions we should be asking in theological education that would more accurately help us design, implement and evaluate leadership training for the global church? Is it time to rethink some of our underlying missiological categories?

TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY REFLECTIONS
In today’s world, nations in which we seek to fulfill the Great Commission increasingly reflect a complex blend of cultural and historical influences. This is particularly true of nations like India which have been influenced by centuries of Western colonial rule and the British educational system. As a result, the lines of whether certain aspects of education are actually imported Western or indigenous can become blurred over time. For example, the heavy dependence on rote memorization in Indian education is frequently attributed to the British colonial system. Interestingly, the habit of memorizing word for word actually predates the British in India and can be traced partially to the traditional guru/disciple relationship (Kabir 1961, 181). So what has been categorized as Western has some pre-colonial, indigenous foundation, too. As our world becomes a global village where ideas and cultural influences are more easily exchanged, the more the categories of Western and indigenous become blurred, more difficult to identify and potentially less accurate predictors of relevancy and effectiveness.

Second, much of the world has embraced and is utilizing aspects of Western education very effectively. While the Western church deplores the way in which Western cultural systems were imposed upon non-Western peoples under colonialism, we cannot go back in history and ignore present realities. Many of those systems, including educational ones, were adopted long ago by non-Western nations and are now associated with a globally competitive education (Samuel 1995, 19-20).

Last, where a visible Western system, structure or educational curriculum has been adopted in a non-Western nation, we cannot assume that the larger education experience is Western in terms of non-visible transmitted values and the dynamics of leadership development. For much of the Two-thirds world, theological education is more than the total of its explicit curriculum and classroom parts. Rather it is the larger educative environment in which students are spiritually, emotionally, physically and intellectually challenged to Christian transformation and leadership development in the context of community and relationships. For those of us who have been educated in Western societies in which education is equated with the classroom, we may miss the point of how God is working in the larger theological education setting. An adopted, visible Western structure does not necessarily indicate that the broader theological education experience is Western or culturally inappropriate.

The educational environment at Southern Asia Bible College (SABC), an Assemblies of God theological school in Bangalore, India, aptly demonstrates this. With some ongoing adaptation, the college has maintained the Western structure and theological education curriculum which were adopted by the Western mission when founding the school fifty years ago. However, in-depth interviews with faculty and students, participant observation and other forms of qualitative research conducted over a year revealed that the values and leadership model being passed on at SABC are traditionally Indian and highly consistent with those of the national church that the school is seeking to serve. In short, while the explicit curriculum is largely Western, the “hidden” curriculum is decidedly indigenous, and the two have been integrated creatively by the school’s leadership for God’s glory.

One of the most significant examples of this hidden curriculum at Southern Asia Bible College relates to the traditional Indian value of collectivism vs. individualism. As in the larger traditional culture, the Assemblies of God church in India values leadership which operates through networks of relationships, consensus building and negotiation rather than autonomously and individually. Although SABC has adopted a largely Western curriculum and administrative structure which are frequently associated with individualism, the college leadership is consistently and effectively cultivating the contrasting Indian value of community.

To illustrate, student representatives are selected from each class level at the Indian theological school. If a student has a physical, relational or spiritual need, his or her first contact is with the student class representative. It is the student representatives’ responsibility to find a way to deal with their classmates needs, including the negotiation of disputes between fellow students. As students work together to problem-solve, the valued skills of negotiation, compromise and consensus building, viewed as critical to effective leadership in the Indian church, are being developed in a practical way in the college community.

Relational skills are also refined by organizing SABC students into designated groups for mentoring, prayer, social interaction and ministry. The community dynamic is considered so important that graduation requirements include a positive evaluation of the student as a functioning part of his ministry team by both his faculty leader and fellow team members. In this way, the future success of the student as a minister in the body of Christ is associated with more than individual academic success. Students are being trained for the relational realities of leadership in their highly relational Southern Asian cultural context. The classroom at Southern Asia Bible College is a microcosm of the larger education environment, reflecting the mix of both Indian and Western cultural influences. However, a third cultural influence (perhaps most significant and exciting) also emerges: values that are decidedly associated with New Testament Christianity. The table below provides indicators of a blending of the three.

Upon visiting this Southern Asian school, the visible evidences of Western education could be misleading. Because education forms have been borrowed from the West, it would be easy to assume that graduates are being prepared inadvertently to minister in the West. But the values under the surface, which are shaping the theological education experience and by which leadership is being defined and modeled, are largely Indian and culturally appropriate. More importantly, all values and perspectives, whether Asian or Western, are being held up to the dynamic light of God’s Word and the Holy Spirit’s transforming work.

Here are some additional pertinent questions for doing and evaluating theological education:

• Are the kinds of spiritual and cultural leadership qualities valued for effective leadership in the national church and larger culture being intentionally nurtured in the educational experience?
• Is the theological education experience designed to lead students to know and love God as whole persons with their bodies, emotions and spirits as well as their minds? Is the theological education environment a dynamic faith community in which biblical truths are introduced and nurtured in the context of life and relationships?
• Most importantly, is the spiritual environment of theological education such that students’ values and beliefs, whether traditionally Western or non-Western, are being challenged in the light of biblical truth by the Holy Spirit’s transforming work?

CONCLUSION
As missionary educators partnering with national leaders to train and equip leaders for the church around the world, we have a responsibility to contextualize both our message and methodology. In designing, implementing and evaluating effective leadership development it is pertinent to know what educational methods, values and structures are culturally indigenous. However, in the twenty-first century world of broadly-shared cultural influences, an informed and creative integration of the best and most appropriate of Western and indigenous methods may be most effective to prepare Christian leaders for a global church. At this time, that may be the most culturally sensitive and contextualized approach after all.

End Notes
1. See Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments 1993; P. D. Devanandan, Christian Issues in Southern Asia 1963; Jacob S.Dharmaraj’, Colonialism and Christian Mission: Postcolonial Reflections 1993; Gerald Studdert-Kennedy, British Christians, Indian Nationalists and the Raj, 1991.

2. Grant, Alice E. 1999. Theological Education in India: Leadership Development for the Indian or Western Church? Ph.D. Dissertation for Biola University.

Resources
Kabir, Humayun. 1961. Indian Philosophy of Education. 18.1.
Samuel, Vinay. 1995. “A Historical Perspective on Theological Education.” Transformation: An International Evangelical Dialogue on Mission and Ethics 12(4).

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Traditional Indian

• Teacher as unquestioned authority: students respectfully submit
• Methodology: rote memorization of teacher’s notes
• Hierarchy of statuses, roles: teacher-student, male-female, married-single
• Collectivist: respond as group, class identification by cohort group, not subject
• Questions: to clarify teacher communication, not to posit individual analysis or thought

Western/British English-medium

• Western curriculum with exceptions
• Physical structures: separate classrooms
• Progress measured by exams
• Schedule organized by designated time categories
• Predominantly Western texts, research resources

New Testament Christian

• Emphasis on Christian disciplines: prayer, fasting, faith
• Global perspective on missions
• Teachers challenging traditional cultural values and norms which conflict with Christian ones
• Recognition of women as well as men called of God to ministry: priesthood of all believers
• Focus on unifying identity in body of Christ over linguistic, ethnic identities

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Beth Grant has served as an Assemblies of God missionary/educator to Southern Asia for twenty-seven years. She graduated with a Ph.D. from Biola University in Intercultural Education.

EMQ, Vol. 40, No. 2, pp. 184-189. Copyright © 2004 Evangelism and Missions Information Service (EMIS). All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced or copied in any form without written permission from EMIS.

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