Posts

Showing posts from July, 2009

Praise for Students!

If I were making a list of “Top Ten Most Distressing/Depressing Events to Study in the World” – Genocide would be on the list. (I wonder what else I would include in my Top Ten List. How about you? What are the Top Ten Most Distressing/Depressing Events in World Today?) That being said, in our commitment to eupan, if I were to list a “Top Ten Most Encouraging/Exciting Events in the World” – Student Involvement and Student Initiative would be on the list! Really! As a University Professor who has worked with college students for over a decade, I can testify to the incredible power of students who get motivated to act. Students – sometimes out of sheer determination and strength of will – apart from having money, resources, capital or even “all the information” – do more than those of us with more money, more resources, more capital and more information. Hooray for student led initiatives!! Here are a couple of links for student led initiatives that have effected and continue to eff

Four is better than one.

I have had opportunity to travel to a few different states over the last few months – spending time at a variety of locations from campgrounds to conference centers. The past three weeks, in particular, I have had the opportunity to be on the campus of Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Every place I visit has trash receptacles, waste baskets, dumpsters, refuse containers. Human persons generate “trash” – a large volume of it from a variety of sources. Of course this is true. Every place has containers to deal with this human reality. But, only a few of the places I have visited have clear containers and prepared intentional plans for some form of recycling. Where I have been for the past three weeks, at Calvin College – my observation is that in every campus hallway – in all campus buildings – they offer – side-by-side, not one, but four options for disbursing of one’s trash. At each location where a receptacle is offered – there is the option for me to disburse my tras

Eupan meals.

I had the privilege of reading Contagious Holiness, Jesus Meals with Sinners this morning. The text is authored by Craig L. Blomberg in the series published by InterVarsity Press entitled New Studies in Biblical Theology. The book probes and in-depth discussion of what it means to understand meals and fellowship in the old testament and new testament. The book takes into consideration the Greco-Roman context for when the text of the Bible came together, and more importantly, how Jesus was himself a participant in the culture of the Greco-Roman society, though Jesus himself was clearly Jewish alongside many of those who followed him. It is not the intention of this simple blog entry to parse out all of the various dynamics that Blomberg achieves in his full text, but instead I want to pick up on a simple aspect of Jesus as table fellowship. In my immediate situation, as part of my professional work, I have been participating in a seminar dealing with issues of genocide in the modern

Churches & Christianity guarantee nothing . . . ?

Is it possible that Christianity as a way of life in the world means nothing? While the efforts of the Eupan Global Initiative are not exclusively Christian - and while members of our effort to advance eupan do not need to advocate any specific religious perspective - it is true that I am Christian. And I want to believe that being Christian and being a part of a group of people in the the church matters. But, sometimes, it does not matter. And that pains me - and it pains David P. Gushee. In the text Genocide in Rwanda: Complicity of the Churches? - Gushee has an essay entitled: 'Why the Churches were Complicit: Confessions of a Broken-Hearted Christian." Among other things he writes: Rwanda was the most heavily Christianized country in Africa. Christian churches, seminaries, schools, and other instituations were sprinkled throughout the land. [L]ong study of the Holocaust, and now fresh study of the Rwandan genocide, has led me to the heartbroken realization that t