Theological Reflection

Theological Reflection is a transformational process for youth ministry and using group methods can capitalise on the community created and bring about deeper understanding than going solo. This article offers insights into the power of group Theological Reflection and seeks to encourage those within leadership to empower the volunteers they lead with the skills required.  It concludes by making recommendations to improve the effectiveness of Theological Reflection in our youth ministry teams.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect upon my experience of using the pastoral cycle with colleagues in the UK Headquarters of The Salvation Army.  I am attempting to hold myself to account for the aspirations I shared in my plenary presentation at last year’s BIAPT.  For new readers, I have been for the last 22 months the Head of Public Affairs for The Salvation Army.  That role involves promoting and defending the work of the organisation in the political and policy sphere in the interests of greater social justice for those we serve.  I come to this role from fifteen years working as an academic in practical theology.  I accepted the new role with a stated commitment to help The Salvation Army, which is both a denomination and a large service-providing charity sound genuinely faith-based in its public pronouncements.

This essay explores, explains and critically evaluates - from a theological perspective - the presentation, portrayal and performance of the conceptulization of love in Nicholas Roeg’s cult-classic-art-house film Walkabout - with specific reference to Terence Kennedy’s book, Doers of the Word, Vol. 2, Ch. 34 and to Pope Benedict XVI’s first papal encyclical Deus Caritas Est. I will use these two works to theologically critique Walkabout’s expression of love.

The Hammer of God is an interesting fictional theological book concerning three young Lutheran Pastors (two still curates, or ‘vicars’ to use Lutheran language) who all work in the same parish (Ödesjö) in Sweden, except each person arrives several generations apart. The common theme is that they all have their own personal and public issues within the Office of the Ministry, but the main idea is they all struggle with the theological concept of sola fide and/or sola gratia. They more or less all live by God’s Law and often times apply more legalism to a Christian’s application of practical living than what is considered helpful. Through a chain of events each story relates to the other and builds off the previous one and each pastor receives a revelation concerning the Gospel and how the Word comes in power to teach law and Gospel which are always together but always distinctive of one another.

What is theological reflection, as a modern concept?  Theological reflection is the process by which we come to understand reality as it truly is.  The goal ultimately is to see God, the universe, the inspired word, and ourselves, as God sees it.  This will naturally entail a limited status, for humanity cannot see as God sees, but we can see as God intends us to see. Therefore, theological reflection is the practice of seeing what is true about all aspects of reality, to the dimensions possible by the human mind.  Essentially this is to see reality from a purely Christian worldview, and to perceive in the dimension of time, how God is unfolding his sovereign plan in the world.

For twelve months I undertook an experiment whereby I consciously avoided reading any text that was written by a white male. The rules of the experiment were straightforward: texts written by heterosexual, cis-gendered, white males were out. It included areas of research and teaching practice, for example, guiding the determination of which conference presentations I would attend, what texts were set and included in course bibliographies, and reevaluating course content to include a broader range of source material. This autoethnographic theological reflection will consider some results from this experiment in the light of the theological partnership of Adrienne von Speyr and Hans Urs von Balthasar.
Presented at the University of Divinity Research Conference June 2020.

This case study exemplifies how clergy have recently been challenged (perhaps more so than ever before) even within their own congregations and chaplaincy settings to offer immediate answers to contemporary eschatological questions such as explaining links of the newly developed COVID-19 vaccines to the mark of the beast or end-time prophecies, as well as to speak for God regarding the meaning of sickness, suffering, divine healing, and protection in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. One pastor commented, "My inbox overflows with the same question from dozens of readers-Is the vaccine the mark of the Beast?" (Johnson, 2021)

Remaja diakui sebagai sebuah subgrup usia tertentu. Sebagai sebuah grup usia tersendiri tentu remaja memiliki tantangan dan kebutuhan perkembangannya sendiri. Menurut saya itu adalah pencarian jati diri. Apa pandangan psikologi mengenai masa remaja? Apa tantangan remaja (khususnya di Indonesia) masa kini? Metode refleksi teologis apa yang tepat untuk menunjang kebutuhan pencarian identitas diri remaja?

This note is a response to the proposed use of the four voices in teaching a module on Futurism and Theology at the University of Divinity, Melbourne, Australia.  The module has been written and taught by Professor Glen O’Brien and Dr Arseny Ermakov of Eva Burrows College.  They sent me the module outline for comment and then interviewed me as part of the module resources.

This note is my feedback to them

Ogden defines theology as the “the fully reflective understanding of the Christian witness of faith as decisive for human existence.” Krisak states this more concretely, defining theology as the “challenging and thoughtful reflection on God with us.” In this paper, I will reflect on God-with-us in the poverty, oppression, and loss of their children by the Lakota tribes of South Dakota. Neafsey cites the Lakota as an example of people whose dreams are not only crushed but they themselves are obliterated. Black Elk was an Oglala Lakota Wichasha Wakan  (Holy Man) who later converted to Catholicism and became a catechist and prayer leader drawing from both of his religious traditions.

This paper tackles the previous "Lakbay-Aral" (Learning Journey), an annual Church cultural heritage exposure held by the Graduate School of Theology of the Immaculate Conception Major Seminary, Guiguinto, Bulacan to various local churches in the Philippines. In 2015, the ICMAS-GST community went to the Archdiocese of Davao for its "Lakbay-Aral" and this served as this author's official entry for the theological reflections made in requirement for the exposure course published in Rowers: A Journal of the Graduate School of Theology - Immaculate Conception Major Seminary in the same year.

This paper identifies themes of Power within a management relationship between a youth worker and Clergy, and uses Vanhoozers concept of Theodrama to theologically reflect on the situation and provide suitable ministerial outcomes for the situation.

This paper seeks insight and wisdom from colleagues at the conference on the perplexing issue of food poverty.  It is a reflection on an issue that is prominent in my day job as Head of Public Affairs for The Salvation Army although the views I will express are mine rather than those of the organisation.  I first set the scene for those new to this issue and then reflect upon four concerns in dialogue with the parable of the two sons.

Sport chaplains naturally take on the role of practical theologians since they help others theologically reflect on their sporting lives and thus imagine how faith can be integrated for coaches and athletes.  This article presents how chaplains can engage practical theology to bring theological reflection more adequately to the complexity of contemporary sport.  Based on understanding practical theology as a dialectic between sport and faith, this paper begins by reflecting on two root problems in the world of sport: its commercialization and spectacle-ization. These problems diminish sport, making it into merely a form of entertainment, and thus require a faithful alternative.  This response requires promoting sport as a common good in society and, for genuine integration of sport and faith, experiencing sport ‘as a celebrative and worshipful act’. These two counterpoints challenge the two root issues in sport while revealing the importance of theological reflection for taking back sport.

This book was written as a product of the author’s theological reflection of Pentecostal social engagement among the poor. This book is comprised of four chapters that were originally presented as papers during the General Assembly of the Asia Pacific Theological Association (APTA) in Changmai, Thailand in 2011. Ivan Satyavrata is qualified as an author to write this book because of the author's ministry immersion in the “flesh and blood” struggle of Indian people and his long theological journey as a Pentecostal scholar. As a Pentecostal scholar, he wrestled with two important questions in the area of social engagement: the interplay of evangelism and social concern that is both faithful to the biblical tradition and mission engagement, and Satyavrata interrogates whether there is distinctive element in Pentecostal leadership training that impact leadership development (vii). Byron Klaus, in the foreword of the book, positively summarizes the content of the book by saying that it has “a missiological focus, it is contextually dynamic, it exhibits contemporary awareness, it demonstrates biblical and theological rootedness and it affirms the vitality of Pentecostal life” (x).