Episode # 03

🎙️ Episode Overview

On this episode of For Context, Dr. Jon Massimi, another Canadian, joins Luke and Gino to discuss contextual theology. Jon is a graduate (second cohort!) of the Doctorate in Ministry in Contextual Theology program at Northern Seminary. They discuss how contextual theology works in every day life by changing our posture toward our neighborhood. Whether the conversation is focused on the Eucharist or AI and Pentecostal memory, this episode is worth your time. Listen in!

For Context is sponsored by Northern Seminary. To learn more about the Contextual Theology program (or any of the number MA, M.Div, and D.Min offerings), visit seminary.edu.

📚 Resources

* Gino Curcuruto: Following Jesus Into the Ordinary

* Luke Stehr: Faith In Situ

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Episode Transcript

Gino Curcuruto:

I am Gino Curcuruto.

Luke Stehr:

I’m Luke Stehr

Gino Curcuruto:

And you’re listening to For Context,

Luke Stehr:

A podcast about Northern Seminary’s Doctorate of Ministry in Contextual Theology. Today on For Context we have Jon Massimi. Jon Massimi is a professor, speaker, and experiential learning designer who helps leaders, educators, and the curious turn experiences into insight and connection. His work explores how faith community and the gifts of ordinary people can reshape how we face complex challenges.

Gino Curcuruto:

I loved having this conversation and I know you did too. Luke, this is a great episode and I hope that you all listening enjoy it as well.

Luke Stehr:

All right, Gino. Today we’ve got Jon Massimi who’s here with us. Jon, why don’t you just tell us a little bit about yourself, where you are and how long ago was it that you went to Northern? Because I’ve never met you. I don’t know that Gino’s ever met you, so I think it’s been a little bit since you graduated.

Jon Massimi:

Well, I find myself in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. Before that, I was in a town called Branford, Ontario. I’m mentioning that because it is the birthplace of Wayne Gretzky and since nice,

Luke Stehr:

Notable

Jon Massimi:

Hockey, it’s a Gretzky town there.

Luke Stehr:

Do you feel like being from the same town as Gretzky helped you with Fitch?

Jon Massimi:

Somewhat. Somewhat. I think navigating the hockey metaphors and Hauerwas was a skill.

Gino Curcuruto:

That’s great.

Jon Massimi:

So when did I start the program? I started in 2013 and then from there graduated 2017.

Luke Stehr:

That’s awesome. What made you want to go into a program focused on contextual theology?

Jon Massimi:

When it first started it was Missional Leadership and that was the buzz at the time.

So we all started Missional Leadership, my denomination, so I’m an Anglican priest, like that idea of leadership and wanting people to take charge. And then midway through the program it changed to” contextual theology, which I think is actually a better term to use. So what drew me into the program, it was very much relationships. I saw Fitch at a couple of gatherings in and around town here, so London, Ontario. So that’s about two hours where I am, and just found that he had similar connections and we knew similar people and I was just sharing my desire to continue my education and he goes, “Hey, I’m starting this new program.” And he goes, “come check it out.” So I missed joining the first cohort. I was the second cohort of the program. So before putting an application, I took a drive to Lombard and met with Fitch, brought my family, went to the old seminary, I guess Fitch comes out of his office with t-shirt and jeans and hey, he’s like, dude hugs me. And I said, I drove from Kitchener. This is about eight hour drive. You have any free books for me? He goes, “Hey, I’m not Scot McKnight.” And then I already know the dynamic there, but I already had his books that he had. So anyway.

Gino Curcuruto:

That’s great.

Gino Curcuruto:

Jon, what do you spend your time doing these days? You said Anglican priest, but also I believe you’re a professor as well.

Jon Massimi:

Yes. So the trajectory I was doing church planting when I first started the program and like all good Anglican diocese, they’re really great at that. No, they’re not. You got things started and it’s like, oh, there’s some traction going on here. Let’s create a regional ministry. That didn’t really work out. And I transitioned to working with United Way in neighborhoods, and

That shift occurred kind of I would say midway point of the program. So I had a particular topic in mind and it completely shifted because of that work with United Way I started off. It sounds a position that sounds a little bit more important than it was. It was at first a neighborhood development officer. There were no badges involved, so just there it was building relationships within the community. And then I moved to being a manager of community development and then from there started working with my municipality. So I became a supervisor of community centers. So I had five community centers and every community center had a church plant in it.

Gino Curcuruto:

Oh, wow.

Jon Massimi:

So I was meeting with more pastors than ever and I started just gathering at my house. I’m like, let’s talk about what’s happening in the neighborhood and maybe it’s put some theological framing around it. And one of the participants worked at Martin Luther University College, so that’s where I’m at as an adjunct and they needed someone to teach a course and she goes, “I know someone.” So that started the journey there. I think I’m up to eight courses. I don’t teach ‘em altogether. It’s like eight courses.

Luke Stehr:

That’d be a crazy load.

Jon Massimi:

Yeah, it would be most definitely. And then with that, I also do consultancy work, so I do work with neighbor associations, municipalities, I’ve worked with churches and from that I landed in, started a travel company too. I do educational travel and experiences. So there’s been situations where I’m working with a client and I’m like, that’s really a cool idea. Let me take you somewhere and that somewhere could be up the street, another city, or let’s go to another country and see what this is about. So that’s where I’m by myself and I’m currently in my home office with my kids barred in another room, so

Gino Curcuruto:

That’s great. I’m also curious about your experience in the program knowing that it was, you said the second cohort, so I’m sure some things have developed and maybe you’ve had a view of that on the way, but what were some of the seminars that were impactful for you?

Jon Massimi:

Well, I think right out of the gate, my first class with Fitch where we were talking about what are the essentials of the church. So framing that, and I think I came... so back up a bit. I’m not a cradle Anglican, so my family was Roman Catholic, grandpa became Pentecostal. So the emphasis growing up for me was Jesus in your heart, personal relationship. And I’m going to throw this out right now because Fitch is also known for his Hauerwas interpret or impressions. So I was at this Hauerwas event and someone asked, “Dr. Hauerwas, what’s your view on having a personal relationship with Jesus?” And I’m not going to do the impression. He’s like, “well, I don’t find having a personal relationship with Jesus that interesting.” And she, because Christianity is a mediated faith. So for me, that was one of the main learnings because I came in with this, yes, I was in the Anglican church, liturgical formation was big, but there was still this theological hangnail where it was, Hey, I need to have a personal relationship here. And in that it was this Christology that came first, but emphasizing, okay, ecclesiology first this appreciation of the church and that we have this mediated faith and we receive a story that we in turn pass on in our shape by. So that was one of the main learnings.

Gino Curcuruto:

That’s good.

Jon Massimi:

The second thing I appreciated was our after class hangouts with Fitch. So that’s where I found in the class we did listening and we had some discussions, but the heavy lifting I think happened around Fitch’s kitchen table or patio where we, and that would also be the opportunity. He would come out with his letter from Hauerwas show us that, and then later

This was a later edition, the autograph picture by Wayne Greg from Wayne Gretzky. So that was my connection to Branford. We hooked up that deal for him, but it is that, and I truly appreciated how he made time for all of us, and I think that also helped us forge relationships with one another. So we weren’t just relying on him, we were also bouncing ideas off of one another.

Gino Curcuruto:

Wow, Jon, that’s so good. That’s come up with in other discussions we’ve had with people. I’m glad to hear it. It’s a good reminder because the program in a lot of ways is promoted, if I can say it that way, as look at these amazing professors that you get to learn from. And that’s true and that’s good.

Luke Stehr:

Yeah, they’re amazing.

Gino Curcuruto:

They are amazing and I hope that draws people in. But at the same time, it seems like the people who have gone through this program emphasize yes, the professors and maybe even more so how they cultivate these relationships in the cohort. Luke, I don’t know if some questions come to mind for you, but I could go down that Hauerwas rabbit trail with Jon no problem. And might do that. But I’m going to give you this.

Luke Stehr:

I think before we get there, I think this is helpful because I know there are probably some people who are listening who are deeply familiar with contextual theology and the majority probably are not familiar with contextual theology as a concept. So you talked about this transition of the program being a missional leadership program to a contextual theology program and why you think that’s ultimately a good thing. So can you explain why that’s a good thing, why that transition makes sense? Why we would want to think about missional leadership and contextual theology in different ways?

Jon Massimi:

I think when we emphasize leadership, there’s an assumption at play that we’re entering into spaces with answers and authority and particular power postures. So when I say I’m the leader, I’m at the front of the room and other people follow me. So when I talk about missional leadership, it was that we as leaders were the primary guides into the community

And we set the terms of engagement and we were the paid professionals that others relied on. So the shift when we’re talking about contextual theology, so it’s that shift from being, having the answers to entering into spaces with questions. So when you’re a leader, I think there is the temptation to be helpful; when you’re entering in contextually it’s entering with as someone who’s curious, asking questions like, “what may God be up to here?” It’s also allows you or opens space for others to participate in it. So the other component I appreciate it is this wrestling with our context, the message that we received, and there’s also this idea of discernment of how does the message that we received apply to where we find ourselves and in turn, how is God speaking to us through our context? My thesis or dissertation topic was around asset-based community development. So that is a practice created by John McKnight, and in short, it’s entering into places and communities seeking abundance, not focusing on scarcity. So that transition or even the idea of leadership could lead you toward a model or an approach that seeks out needs and focuses on scarcity.

When I find with the contextual is God’s already active, God’s doing things, God’s not absent and God gives us the gifts and the resources we need to engage with that context.

Gino Curcuruto:

So do you ask different questions? I guess you ask different questions right from the beginning then when you’re thinking contextually what are the assets here versus what are the needs? But also do you think about how the idea of the context is shaped by the cultures that are there. And so we also have to take into account the self that comes in as the help is also shaped by a context or how we even view the self as well. I don’t know, did you engage with that in your work there?

Jon Massimi:

Yeah, we enter with baggage. So ethnography is a big part of the program. So you have participant observers, you’re entering into spaces, you are observing the space, but as you were mentioning, your presence shapes the space as well, being attentive to that. And it is uncovering stories and seeing how the stories draw us into God’s story. That’s how I understood it. And when I am listening to stories, I found that there were two impulses happening. So the first was this nostalgic impulse where people would look back on how things were and would grieve that and said, “if only we could go back to the good old days,” whatever that was. The other impulse or perspective is this utopic. So it’s like looking to a state of perfection or so Thomas Moore, utopian means no place so we can never actually attain it, but saying if only we can get there. And what I’ve learned is those two impulses both start with if only we, and that “if only”t invades the present with scarcity,

It’s saying that we don’t have what we need now. We had it then and it’s gone. That could be larger crowds, buses of kids coming to Sunday school, whatever. And we also look at the present and say, we don’t have enough to take us into the future. So I spent years as a youth pastor on 10 hour a week contracts because it was, we need young people in our church and we need someone who’s hip and young to get them in. So we’re going to hire you and we’re going to expect you to bring in young people. Mind you, the congregations that did hire me were predominantly seniors. So when I’m looking at this with the scarcity mindset, then bringing it into conversation, liturgically for me, the Eucharist is central. The Eucharist teaches us two different impulses. So how do we look to the past, not grieving it or with nostalgia, but with thanksgiving. And then again, the Eucharist is not just a remembering, it’s a, there’s some eschatology happening, it’s looking to the future. So it gives us and allows us to look to the future with hope. And it thoroughly grounds us in the present. And in the present. It teaches us that God gives us what we need in the bread and wine and that God is enough and that we are enough for the moment.

So that’s the framing over the years that was going on in my head. So again, starting in, Hey, I’m a leader. Let me be helpful. Let me show you the way. And then people start telling me their stories. Oh, do you remember when, let’s recreate this. Do you remember when we used to sing Shine Jesus shine or shelter the Lord? And how many people raised their hands? Okay, let’s forget about that. Let’s look on that at thanksgiving. Thank you God for what you’ve done and what is God doing now?

And when I would enter as a youth pastor in those contexts, I didn’t have that language even to make sense of it myself. And I found that this program gave me a language not only to help me understand what was happening, but also to share with others and frame the conversation in different ways.

Gino Curcuruto:

Jon, you just connected something for me that’s really feels very significant in your discussion of the Eucharist right there. And it’s the quote that you’ll know that because Fitch always says it as Hauerwas when someone says, where is this church that you are talking about? And Hauerwas will always say it’s right where you are. But I think you just gave some framing for that because this church exists where you actually are, not where you long to be in the past or hope to be in the future, but where you’re thankful for the past and the future is invading the present eschatologically in some way. Is that a connection that you’ve made to when you hear that quote or when you hear if it is poor impersonation of

Jon Massimi:

Yeah, I do. I do.

Gino Curcuruto:

That’s super helpful to me.

Jon Massimi:

Yeah. And again, it is that because if we start seeking, I know in Canada, especially for the mainline church, so I’m working with Lutherans and I’m working with Anglicans, and it is a difficult time because those that have come through seminary we’re told that if you give a bang up sermon, if you do an amazing children’s focus at the front of the church, if you have soup kitchens and maybe a contemporary band, a lot of people will come. And our context and the communities around us are changing. So the pocket in which I find myself in is there’s a new mosque that opened up the street. So what does that mean? What does that mean for Shrove or Fat Tuesday pancakes and sausage. Hey, you want to come and have some non-halal sausage and pancakes, or is there a way that we can reach out in different ways? So it’s also that idea, and I know this comes out in the course as well, this attractional model that we set up all these things and people come to us, but it’s actually us going out. And when I look at the Eucharist, one of the things pronounced at the Eucharist is taste and see that the Lord is good.

And I think when we gather around the table, it trains our palates so that we’re able to taste God in the neighborhood. What does God taste like?

Luke Stehr:

What a way to say that.

Gino Curcuruto:

Yeah,

Luke Stehr:

That’s beautiful.

Gino Curcuruto:

Yeah, that’s really good

Luke Stehr:

I mean, so, as you think about where you are now because of this program, what does life look like for you as a contextual theologian on the ground day to day?

Jon Massimi:

Well, first, I no longer have dreams of being a mega church pastor, so a little

Luke Stehr:

This program will cure you of that.

Jon Massimi:

Yes. In my day to day, what I find is I seek ways or I would say I try to be more attentive to what’s happening around me and to what God may be doing.

So when I’m interacting with my neighbors, when I’m out, and I even think using the practice of ethnography allowed me to take in everything. How is this space speaking to me, how people are interacting around me, what is that saying? And one of the practices that I also engage in because of ethnography is I’ll walk my neighborhood during garbage day because what people throw out say a lot about them. So if I’m seeing a house with a lot of toys on the lawn and loads of pizza boxes, I’m like, okay, and hockey net, oh, maybe this is a hockey family that they’re always on the go and pizza is their primary meal on the go, and they’re very networked if you want to say it. They’re doing a million different things. So that’s one thing. Or I dunno, maybe some people drive by or walk by my house and say, what’s with all the beer cans anyway? Sometimes they have parties in the back area. We have a fire pit,

Like I said, I grew up Pentecostal, but Italian Pentecostal. So you’re allowed to drink wine but don’t dance. Fair

Luke Stehr:

Fair enough. So I want to draw on something really interesting that I think this program does and has done for you. And I think it’s a really good counterpoint to what we talked about earlier is I think in the process you’ve actually encountered what truly is a personal relationship with Jesus, which is this attentive life versus I think that kind of personal relationship we receive maybe out of the frameworks of evangelicalism where it’s really more of an intellectual like me and God are good kind of thing. Whereas you are now basically talking about this program has made you attentive to Christ’s presence everywhere you go, which is truly what a personal relationship with Jesus is. And I would just love it if you would elaborate on that.

Jon Massimi:

Well, I would say when you’re talking about the personal relationship, it’s the recognition that Jesus comes to us through others. So that’s that ecclesiology piece, but also Christ is coming to us through the stranger That we’re interacting with. So it is that openness, but it’s also the recognition that I enter into spaces as a stranger as well. And when we look at strangers, one of the things that we teach our kids is don’t speak to strangers and it’s a hidden curriculum. They’re saying fear the other because the other can do you harm. But with this program it’s saying, well, the stranger could potentially be God speaking to us, and then in turn we can be the revelation of Christ to others.

Luke Stehr:

That’s what I was getting at with the personal relationship. That’s not that interesting, but that’s that intellectual evangelical ascent model, not what you’re describing.

Jon Massimi:

Yeah. So year two of the program, I was doing the church plant thing and some people in the congregation were musicians. So, they were like, “Hey Jon wanted to come to one of our gigs?” Well, the gig was on a Saturday night and they were on at one in the morning being a good Anglican priest. My next service was at 8:00 AM morning prayer. So I went and I didn’t wear the collar, I didn’t want to be identified. And the bar was called Two Doors Down. I went in, ordered my drink and I was off in the corner. Then some other people walked in and they were recognized by others in the bar and they yell out, “Hey Michelle, what are you doing here?” And then she yells, “I’m here with my priest,” and she points at me in the corner. Well, what ended up happening, this little group starts gathering around me and people started asking me God questions. And I made the joke that God was two doors down and it was already at work, it was already preparing things there. I wanted to hide, but I was called out and people shared their horror, their horror stories of the church. And one person was like, “well, if I come, will you accept me? I would like my daughter to be baptized. Will you accept her?” So that conversation, so I think we got out of the bar at four in the morning and I just went right to the church and slept in the office. I went right to doing morning prayer,

I don’t remember what I was speaking on. It was a little groggy, but just that, right. It was okay, this is happening to me. And I was learning not to push it. It was like, just listen. I didn’t need to be the Bible answer man, in that moment. Right. You share and it’s a yes. I hear you.

Luke Stehr:

Absolutely

Jon Massimi:

People. So the other thing that comes out of it is Fitch’s three circles. So that was the semicircle, right?

Gino Curcuruto:

Right.

Jon Massimi:

How are we received? How are we a guest? I said he needs to

Luke Stehr:

A bit of a pause because not everyone’s familiar with the three circles model. So one of you two, because you both have, Gino especially has really oriented his life around it. You can just brief explanation,

Jon Massimi:

Take it on.

Gino Curcuruto:

Yeah. Well, I would say that the way Fitch describes it, he has three circles. He says that the church exists not in just one space, time and place, but in all of life. So as you described, these three circles also have a shape that’s designed to be memorable. There’s a close circle, which is a full circle, close, not closed. And that would be where we would enter that space as the recipients of God’s presence. There’s a connecting circle is what we call it. I think he calls it the dotted circle.

Luke Stehr:

I think you’re right.

Gino Curcuruto:

Yeah. So that would just be a circle, like a dotted circle if you can visualize that as you’re listening. And that is the place where we go as hosts of the presence of God in some way. So we might be welcoming people around a table in our house or somewhere else. And then there’s also the half circle, the semicircle, the open circle where we go as guests of God’s presence, seeking to find where God is present and at work, and then name that to others. So it could be two doors down literally or figuratively.

Luke Stehr:

People are laughing and having a party. So with that in mind, you found yourself in that semicircle that night. I totally interrupted you and derailed, but I wanted to make sure.

Jon Massimi:

Oh yeah, yeah. No, no, it’s fine. It’s fine. That’s good. Giving people context, right? Yeah, I found that helpful. And it’s also a tool to share with congregations. So the close circle is important. It’s where you learn how to be good hosts within the community and in turn be guests. Because in that process, it’s this reciprocal relationship where Christ is both host and guest in the lives of the believers. In the Eucharistic moment, I joke with Fitch, I’m like, you got to update those circles. You need one more. And I’m like, you need a Trinitarian circle. Start with that, how the life of Trinity extends into, and then let’s move forward.

Gino Curcuruto:

That’s really good.

Luke Stehr:

Let’s write that book.

Jon Massimi:

That’s an update. Yeah. The fourth circle.

Gino Curcuruto:

The fourth circle. I like what you said earlier, that close circle, if I’m using some of your language, Jon, is where we learn to develop the palette for moving into the other circles in a sense around tables and tasting and seeing and sharing that the Lord is good.

Jon Massimi:

And entering into the Anglican church and liturgy has been very important for me and it grounds me as well. And the thing is, when we’re looking at even the program I entered as an Anglican and those around me, so one of the benefits I had was hearing from different traditions as well. I think there was another Pentecost, I knew how to speak the Christianese enough to understand what he was saying, right, because I grew up. But what I loved about Fitch and his approach is he also valued tradition and liturgy and saying that those are important elements of our faith that help shape our postures in the world today. So wasn’t this abandonment of, let’s just go back to tax chapter two, right? No, there’s a church history, right?

Gino Curcuruto:

Yeah. You’ve heard him say this, but he said this multiple times in our first seminar. You don’t make this stuff up, you don’t make this stuff up,

Luke Stehr:

You don’t,

Gino Curcuruto:

And he’s right.

Luke Stehr:

Gino, one more question for Jon.

Gino Curcuruto:

Yeah, Jon. And I think as we kind of come towards our time to close here, I was wondering, it sounds like you’ve mentioned this, but maybe is there one other takeaway from the program that you’d want to share with us?

Jon Massimi:

Well, I would say that the importance of building relationships with other pastors. So I found that many, again, I’ve worked with Baptist, Pentecostals, Presbyterians, Anglicans, et cetera, and we tend to, especially if you’re in crisis mode, you want to be so insular and saying, okay, let me just focus on the growth in my church and my experience of connecting with others in the class and seeing others’ experiences positioned me to say, well,

I can learn from other traditions as well. Let me build relationships and see what God is doing in and through other leaders and other congregations. So how can we encourage and work together? And I guess this is a good comedic thing, a callback. So going back when I was supervisor of community centers, seeing all those pastors together and saying, you need to come and talk and work with each other. Because it ended up, and it wasn’t happening as much, but it could have where it was like, let’s see who can set up their brand the best rather than how can we work together for God’s glory?

Gino Curcuruto:

That’s so good. That’s so good.

Luke Stehr:

Okay. Secret surprise question. What are you reading right now?

Jon Massimi:

Oh my goodness. I’m really getting into spirituality and AI. I’m reading around that. So there’s a book here, Understanding Religion and Artificial Intelligence: Meaning Making in the Digital Age

Luke Stehr:

Gino was on a Panel about AI, and he’s totally an expert.

Gino Curcuruto:

I could have used that book four days ago. I was on a panel. Yeah, no, that’s fascinating. Who’s the author on that? I’m sorry. I don’t mean to put you on the spot if you have it in front. Randy Reed.

Luke Stehr:

Randall Reed

Jon Massimi:

And Tracy Rohan.

Gino Curcuruto:

Excellent.

Jon Massimi:

I I’ll show it too. It’s right here.

Gino Curcuruto:

There it is. Wow. Beautiful.

Jon Massimi:

I did listen to what Fitch was saying, I guess the first episode and how some students are going on to do other things academically. So for me, I’m in the process. I’ve applied to a program in Europe and I’m looking to write about this. So going back to my Pentecostal roots saying, how does AI shape Pentecostal memory? So we are a people of memory, and my worry is when we’re working in communities, we are no longer are able to hold memory and we’ve lost our sense of artifacts, everything’s own, right? So how are we passing on the faith in ways that are faithful and how are we accurately, or how are we holding memory? And when we’re looking at Pentecostals, eschatology is huge and they seek to interpret currently events well, if those events are already being curated through algorithms, there’s another layer of discernment that needs to occur as well.

Luke Stehr:

Man, that’s going to be good.

Gino Curcuruto:

Yeah. Wow. Keep going. Sorry, I don’t want to interrupt you. I was just going to say, Luke, I think we’re so new into this podcast and we already have someone that’s going to need to come on again already to talk about that whole thing.

Luke Stehr:

Yeah, there will be a part two, Jon, so stay tuned.

Jon Massimi:

Yeah, I could just upload my consciousness.

Luke Stehr:

I watched the show Upload and I think that’s a bad idea, but Well,

Jon Massimi:

And it is something for you both or whoever’s listening, I did do a class on the meaning of life in ai. So the three, I use movies to set out a framework. So the first movie is Lars and the Real Girl, the second is Her, and then the third is Ex Machina. And I brought that into conversation with Wendell Berry and he has three concepts that work there because of the draft tours package and the tractor package. And I’ll leave it at there. That’s little breadcrumbs for the next episode, man.

Luke Stehr:

Jon, I say this with zero sarcasm. I bet you are a lot of fun at parties,

Jon Massimi:

Let’s say there’s some cigars present. I refer to him as burnt offerings to make them sound like get under the radar with some people. But yeah, that’s good. We have fun. That’s so good. And the invitation to you both Luke and Gino? I do have, so I have a basement apartment, so my son lives there now, but anytime you want to stop in.

Gino Curcuruto:

Oh man,

Jon Massimi:

I invited Fitch. He came a year ago and we had a bonfire invited pastors in the area and we hung out, and then we did a Saturday night with him, and then he spoke at a church. So

Gino Curcuruto:

Nice.

Jon Massimi:

It’s slowly being referred to as the philosopher’s basement, so different people are coming and

Gino Curcuruto:

I’m there. I’m coming. Yeah,

Luke Stehr:

I make get to Canada like twice a year, so this may happen.

Jon Massimi:

Yeah, you’re more than welcome. And it’s in the summer. It’s a bonfire winter. We’ll figure it out.

Gino Curcuruto:

Well, I return the offering, but no one wants to come to the US right now. And I totally understand. But if you ever do, we’ve got a spot for you as well. Oh man.

Luke Stehr:

Thank you. We’re good. Well, Jon, thank you. And to everyone out there, thank you so much for listening.

Episode # 02

🎙️ Episode Overview

In this episode of For Context, Bernard Tam joins Luke and Gino to discuss contextual theology. Bernard had just turned in the first draft of his dissertation for the Doctorate in Ministry in Contextual Theology program at Northern Seminary. On this episode, they discuss a bit of the program’s impact on Bernard, life and ministry in Toronto, and Bernard’s dissertation. Listen in!

For Context is sponsored by Northern Seminary. To learn more about the Contextual Theology program (or any of the number MA, M.Div, and D.Min offerings), visit seminary.edu.

📚 Resources

* Bernard Tam: The Living Room Church

* Gino Curcuruto: Following Jesus Into the Ordinary

* Luke Stehr: Faith In Situ

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Episode Transcript

Gino Curcuruto:

I am Gino Curcuruto.

Luke Stehr:

I’m Luke Stehr.

Gino Curcuruto:

And you’re listening to For Context,

Luke Stehr:

A podcast about Northern Seminary’s Doctorate of Ministry in Contextual Theology.

Gino Curcuruto:

Welcome back to For Context. This episode we have as our guest, Bernard Tam. He’s a pastor and he’s finishing up the Contextual Theology program at Northern. He just, I believe he’s submitted his, a draft of his thesis. So he’s going to be, he lives in Toronto. I’m probably saying that wrong. They probably say Toronto, Canada, Ontario, Canada. And he’s a dear friend of mine. I’m excited to have this conversation with him and Luke. So listen in. We are Fitch really critiqued how we don’t have a radio dynamic. So I thought just a flat line silent introduction would be a really cool way to start this episode. Now welcome back to For Context. I’m Gino with Luke and

Luke Stehr:

I’m here.

Gino Curcuruto:

Yeah, good, good, good.

Luke Stehr:

Dave Fitch was right to critique our radio dynamic.

Gino Curcuruto:

He was, we’re more contextual theologians than performers. So that’s a little juke there. Got him,

Luke Stehr:

Got him. But today we’ve got Bernard Tam with us and I’m so glad Bernard could be here. Bernard, I think I’ve met you exactly once in real life.

Bernard Tam:

Yes.

Luke Stehr:

But it’s really great to be with you digitally again, so thanks for joining us.

Bernard Tam:

Yeah, thanks for having me. I’m excited to just chat and hang out.

Luke Stehr:

Yeah, well if you can’t tell from the accent. Bernard, where are you from?

Bernard Tam:

I’m from Toronto, Canada.

Luke Stehr:

Not Toronto.

Gino Curcuruto:

It’s not Toronto.

Bernard Tam:

Some people can call it that,

Luke Stehr:

Who? Who may call it Toronto,

Bernard Tam:

The un-Torontonians.

Gino Curcuruto:

Ah us.

Luke Stehr:

It’s a Shibboleth, so

Gino Curcuruto:

That’s good. That’s good. Well, I want to tell you, I want to say before we jump into the questions, Bernard and I have become friends because of this program. In some ways we were introduced through Fitch for something else. We’re both part of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, but then through our overlap in seminars when I was in the master’s program, we’d hang out and got to spend some time with him and then we’ve become friends. So I’m excited to see you though. I do talk to you regularly. I’m excited to see you. I am also excited for you to share about your experience in the Contextual Theology program. I understand you have just submitted your final thesis.

Bernard Tam:

First draft. Yes

Gino Curcuruto:

First draft. Okay.

Bernard Tam:

Waiting for all the critiques and the red marks.

Luke Stehr:

Well maybe you can talk some of it out now and those critiques and red marks won’t feel so bad when they come. You’ll think, oh, I should have done that maybe.

Bernard Tam:

Yeah, we’ll see how it goes.

Luke Stehr:

But why don’t you tell us just about your ministry context and your church structure?

Bernard Tam:

Yeah, totally. I’m part of a church called the Living Room Church. It’s in what is known as Midtown Toronto. So just imagine the city of Toronto and then you draw a giant circle around kind of the core. We’re kind almost dead set in the middle,

So we’re kind of straddling the urban center and what eventually becomes a suburbs. So we’re kind of like this unique space where interestingly in my research, it’s really hard for people to define. It’s almost like a little bit of a nebulous space that people are constantly trying to figure out the definition, but it’s just never a clear one, but in the midst of it. So I’ve been a part of this community for about 13 years and over the last 10 we’ve been kind of emerging into a network of house churches and part of which is just realizing where our points of connections with our neighborhood is that it’s actually not necessarily a Sunday service that people are looking for, but it’s the deep relationality in our living room that people have an openness and a willingness to kind of embrace and engage with one another. So we’ve been doing that for a little bit. We’re still learning. I feel like it’s never a simple, you don’t just do one thing and that’s it. There’s always learning, there’s always changes.

So we are kind of coming at it with humility as much as we can. What’s kind of unique about our neighborhood is often it used to be known, so the main intersection of our neighborhoods called Yonge and Eglington, and it was once known as the young and the eligible because it was actually where it was a little bit more affordable. The young urban professionals are able to move in and they’re all singles and they’re all trying to figure out life in this big city. But now over the last couple of years, it’s really has changed. The neighborhood is very diversified. It’s not young and eligible anymore. When we first moved in, we were worried I had a 2-year-old. Then we’re like, oh, is he going to have any friends young and eligible? There’s gonna be no kids? And then all of a sudden an explosion happened and there’s so many kids in our neighborhood to the point where some of the new developments in our community have signs that says, even though you are going to be living beside a school, your kids will not guarantee a spot in the school. Wow. That’s kind of how crazy it gets, but it’s been beautiful to see kind of the intermingling, the mixture of culture in our neighborhood.

When I go pick up my kids from school, English is not the common language for you to hear. There’s people from all over, from Europe, from Asia, from Latin America, and there’s this kind of become this eclectic mixture of culture in our community. And so it’s been a gift and a fascinating space to do ministry and learn.

Luke Stehr:

Yeah. What do you feel like as you’ve been in that neighborhood for quite some time now, what are some of the things that as you sit in that space that have emerged for you just as you’ve learned to listen to what’s happening there?

Bernard Tam:

I think one of the things that I’ve observed and learned, and maybe it’s been unearthed through many conversations, is the deep longing for relationships. Just the depth of loneliness living in the city is exposed through many conversations. So I remember when we first moved down into the neighborhood, I was really inspired by Caesar Kalinowski. There was a post that he put about how he was new to the city, I think it was New York, and he just threw himself a welcome to the Neighborhood party. He knows nobody. I’m like, that’s a brilliant idea, let me do that. And so we did. And with Fear and Trembling and my cute 2-year-old in my arm, I made up these little flyers and just passed around the neighborhood like, Hey, hosting this thing, I want to get to know the neighborhood and weren’t sure if anybody going to show up.

I remember it’s like we were doing it at six o’clock and by 5:55 nobody was there and 6:10, nobody was there like, oh man, maybe this is just like Susan and I and my son and that’s it. And then all of a sudden neighbors kind of start coming out. I think at the end we had about 30 or 40 people that had come by the row. So I live in this townhouse complex and in the midst of some of those conversations, one really resonated with me. There was a lady who came up to me later and said, I lived here for seven years, but I have not met so many neighbors tonight. And more and more in these kind of conversations, there’s just this realization that I think everybody’s longing for relationship, but there’s no catalyst for that. There’s nobody to set the table for people to be together to curate the spaces for conversations, to even just be the one to draw people together in the common space. And so I think that was probably one of the biggest learning amongst the hidden socioeconomic realities in urban centers. So there’s just a lot of complexities I find once you’re actually living in the neighborhood.

Gino Curcuruto:

Speak more to that, Bernard. When you look at the changes in your neighborhood, and as you have just explored your context over the years, has that affected the way that you organize as a church or what you do as a church?

Bernard Tam:

Yeah, I think that’s a good question. I think in some ways it has kind of drawn us to think about where and who are the population that God might be opening spaces and doors for us as a church to connect and engage with. One of which I think it’s the doors that open for the marginalized seniors in our community. As I mentioned before, this neighborhood was known as the young ineligible urban professionals. They are lively now. We have a lot of young families. But at the same time, being in this community, we also gotten to know there are hidden communities within a community. So we have actually found out that there’s seven subsidized housing, city subsidized housing complexes. And actually of the seven, there’s actually a couple that are mainly for seniors. And so we’ve, through the years, started building relationship with some of these buildings and some of the seniors and through which I think we realized that, oh, God might be inviting us into these spaces to be ones who are bearing the good news to be Christ as we are entering these buildings. So that was actually quite a big shift at our church to see not just doing church with our kind of younger, we do have an intergenerational group, a group of 40 people, so it’s as intergenerational as you can get with 40 people.

But the beauty is, I think when we have these relationships and then conversations begin and through one conversation, it kind of opens up like a door. And then the next thing you know, we are invited in to be a part of the Christmas celebration at the senior care homes, by the care groups itself, which is run by the government. Usually churches and religious organizations are kind of kept at a distance, but because of the relationship we’ve built and some of the seniors kind of becoming a part of our church community, there’s a trust and there’s an openness.

And that’s kind of been what we’ve been learning to respond and to engage with. And I can tell another story about what we’ve been learning. As I mentioned earlier, there’s a lot of youth in a lot of kids in our community because the population here has changed so much to young families. The rapidity of growth is just incredible. I was looking at my oldest son, he was 12. He is part of a middle school. So here in the city of Toronto, there’s a primary school and it is a junior school. And then this high school, so junior school is kids from grade six to eight. So in our neighborhood currently there’s a one middle school or junior school, and their population is 600 kids. So imagine 600 grades, six to grade eights in one school. I can’t even imagine one which I have, but it’s just so many kids. And then also hearing that after the redevelopment of the school, the capacity of that school is going to be 900 kids. So I’m blown away. I would be petrified walking through those doors.

Gino Curcuruto:

Can I just tell you that I guess taught a class of 18, maybe 17 sixth graders for my daughter who’s an English teacher, I needed a sabbatical after one hour.

Luke Stehr:

Yeah, you’re still alive. You made it.

Bernard Tam:

It’s a gift, man. Teaching kids is such a gift. And I’m setting the context a little bit about the junior high kids because it was something that our church and a couple other churches begin to recognize. There’s so many kids in our neighborhood, but why isn’t there more spaces for youth to experience Christ, but also just a safe space for kids to be, we live in an urban center. There is not a ton of space, a common space and third space. And so out of that came a conversation with a friend of mine who is starting Young Life Toronto, which is a ministry with kids. And together, out of that conversation, we just started saying, what would it look like for us to just explore starting something? I remember him telling me, oh, we need about 20 families. Then I told him, well, I have one me. And then I was like, well, can we start with that? And out of that conversation began a dream of like, oh, let’s invite other churches. Let’s see what we can do with other people. And so we started reaching out churches from different theological backgrounds, traditions, and began a conversation of dreaming of what would it look like for us to collaborate.

And so out of that, actually we launched our first youth group. I think it’s been over a year. And it’s just been a very humbling journey of learning and working with different partners and seeing how to work with different groups of kids from neighboring midtown communities. But the beauty of seeing what collaboration and partnership emerges out of a recognition of an opportunity in a dream that is so much bigger than one single local church. And recognizing that we are co-laborers and sojourners in the work of God here in our local contexts. And so that’s been a lot of fun and kind of crazy at the same time.

Luke Stehr:

So if I can ask, we’ve talked about some of the ways you’ve seen your church just move into the community. What does an average, because you’ve also talked about you’re not a Sunday centric model, and so for some people that’s a really new concept for the other two people I’m on this call with. It’s very familiar to them. But what is an average week in the life of Living Room Church look like?

Bernard Tam:

That’s such a hard question, man. I don’t know if there’s an average week.

Luke Stehr:

What did last week look like?

Bernard Tam:

I’ll explain a little bit. We kind of operate a little bit of an alternating week schedules. So on the first, third and fifth, we gather all the house churches together for a service that’s a little bit more traditional, this preaching, there’s prayers, worship, musical worship and communion together. And then on the second and fourth, we invite people to be a part of house communities where they’re now, so typically meeting on Sundays, but our encouragement is that you don’t have to meet on Sundays, find a day that works for everybody, be intentional in coming together and be around a table that you can share life and just the stories together. And then in between, we don’t really have a ton of stuff. We do have a bible study that a couple of people who are really keen on kind of theology. We have a lot of people who are inclined to theology. So we were kind of a weird church, people who actually read a heck of a lot. And so there are different groups that people kind of form and build throughout the week, but nothing really particular. I think we are still working that out, if I’m really honest. And Gino would probably have heard a lot of my sharing. It’s about we’ve been doing this for 10 years, but we’re still trying to figure it out.

Luke Stehr:

I think any institutional Sunday centric church would also say they’re still trying to figure it out.

Gino Curcuruto:

We’re all trying to figure it out.

Bernard Tam:

We’re all trying to figure it out.

Luke Stehr:

That’s so great.

Gino Curcuruto:

Yeah, thinking about trying to figure it out. I mean, you’ve already touched on some of what I would say is some of your brilliance with contextual theology and practice and would love to dive more into that. But specifically in the program, the contextual Theology program, you probably learned some of this somewhere, maybe some of it’s intuitive for you, but in the course of your studies at Northern, was there a seminar that was more important to you? I mean, I’d hate to say favorite, how do you choose? But also, I don’t know if our listeners even know the structure of it. So maybe you could talk a little bit about that since you’re at the tail end of it. And we’re kind of in the beginning. Maybe you could talk a little bit about what the sequencing was like for you and why that might’ve been important, and was there a class that really stands out to you?

Bernard Tam:

It’s funny you talk about sequencing. So I have another friend who actually was the one who brought us into this program. By us, I mean, there’s three of us from Toronto that have been friends already. And then we were thinking about doing more studies, and as we were talking, we were like, oh, maybe we can check out Northern. And then eventually we became kind of the Canadian contingent of our cohort, which was kind of cool. We have five now. And my friend who introduced us kept talking about this dialogue box. He’s like, once you get the dialogue box, you understand what you’re doing. And we were like, what are you talking about? We’ve never heard of this dialogue box. Fitch has never told us about this until we did thesis design, which is the very last course

Luke Stehr:

You say, I haven’t heard of this. So we’re not there yet.

Bernard Tam:

And then we were learning about, oh, this is the space where culture and theology and all of that kind of collide, and you begin to learn how to dialogue between it. And then we’re like, oh, that totally makes sense.

And so I think when we talk about sequence, although I understand why thesis design needs to be last, so many building blocks of learning about contextual theology, understanding incarnating, the gospel, the scriptural background, the physiological leadership, all of those are kind of building blocks towards the end. But I think even having a little bit more on the concept of how do you put all of this together is kind of that dialogue box. So I think for me, that was very helpful at the very end, but I had wished that it was also explained to us earlier so that we are already mapping out how these pieces come together. So I think that’s the only thing about sequence.

Gino Curcuruto:

Yeah. Yeah. I think we’re getting some of that. I think maybe we’re getting these little intros. This is probably really in the weeds now information, but we’re getting like, okay, this class fits into this part of your thesis design in seminar three, so maybe he’s listening,

Luke Stehr:

Which for these people who are not part of Northern’s program, I get asked all the time, oh, what’s your thesis about? I’m like, I’ve been told not to even think about that. You’re really discouraged from even beginning to approach thinking about what your thesis will be until the end of this program.

Gino Curcuruto:

Yes,

Luke Stehr:

I’ve learned, I have no idea what it’s about.

Gino Curcuruto:

I tell you that the one time when I got to have coffee with Stanley Howard was, and he asked me what my thesis was about, it was very embarrassing to say, I’ve been told not to think about that right now. And he’s like, “What’s Fitch doing?!”

Luke Stehr:

Straight from the lips of Stanley himself?

Gino Curcuruto:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bernard Tam:

Should have recorded that.

Gino Curcuruto:

I wish I had. I wish I had. Well, was there one of the seminars that has been impactful maybe in some of the things that you’re doing right on the ground right away? Was there one more than others or how would you describe that? I mean, maybe that’s a better question.

Bernard Tam:

I think I’ll say it from this way first. I think more than the seminars, I think the gift of studying in cohorts has been an incredible gift to have the same people journeying together and keeping in touch with each other, even though we meet each other six months at a time every six months. But in between the still conversations and the week long seminars has been just very generative and been a part of the development and the formation journey. So I think I’m a big supporter of cohort learning because there is something about being through it together that is just very special.

Luke Stehr:

In terms of the question, well, maybe to riff on Gino’s question. Oh, sorry.

Bernard Tam:

Maybe

Luke Stehr:

To riff on Gino’s question, are there moments with your cohort that have stood out to you?

Bernard Tam:

I’ll say a fun one, and then I’ll say it kind of a real one. I think the cool thing about our cohort is that there’s foodie in our mist. And so people who are really into food and they’ll Google the best restaurants in our neighborhood or try things. I think one of the coolest experience we had was to go to a Chinese hot pot and where Jonathan Tran was also with us, and we were there as a whole cohort and people who’ve never had hot pot before, they’re like, what is this? Why are we boiling our meat? And then it’s like, what is this a baby octopus? We’re going to eat that. And it’s like, yeah, Chinese, we eat everything. And just the ability to share a meal and share live and share experiences together. I think that’s been such a great gift. But in terms of the seminars itself, I think as a cohort, I know a couple of the people have shared the same sentiment when we were with Al Roxburgh to not just focus on the lecture and his wisdom, what was most captivating for us, I think it’s the slowing down in the practice of dwelling in the word.

Because every day we had the practice, I think you guys just finished taking the course. I don’t know if he did the same thing, but

Gino Curcuruto:

He did.

Bernard Tam:

He had us every morning start with dwelling the word, I think in the afternoon too. And at a doctoral level to experience something like that has been so disruptive in a healthy way because I think we often think we need to come in here, we need to take as much knowledge as possible, but then we are reminded the point of this is not just to incur knowledge or wisdom, but it’s to actually encounter and experience the disruption of Jesus, even in this week with your cohort together. And so I think that was in terms of very transformative and influential, I think that was one of them, one of the experiences that comes to mind immediately.

Luke Stehr:

Yeah. I know that was really profound for our cohort too. I think we’re still all processing all the things that Roxburgh did to us that week.

Bernard Tam:

I’m sure there’s a lot going on,

Luke Stehr:

But it was good. I want to hear you two talk about Bernard’s thesis.

Gino Curcuruto:

Yeah, let’s talk about it. Why don’t you start, obviously Bernard, it’s your thesis. I’m curious if some of the learning from the young life and other networking with other churches was influential in your thesis design or what you did, but maybe you should describe what it is and then you can answer some of that.

Bernard Tam:

How technical do you want me to go?

Luke Stehr:

Let’s go super technical

Gino Curcuruto:

Do it. We’ve got two listeners.

Luke Stehr:

It’s for the nerds.

Gino Curcuruto:

Yes, do it.

Bernard Tam:

So I think genuine you’re saying that how does the young life and kind of a collaborative spirit and some of the stuff that we’ve been doing in the neighborhood kind of inspire the thesis? I think that is kind of the heartbeat of it. It was really funny, just kind of taking a step back. I was talking to my wife about preparation for thesis, and you guys have said, we’re not supposed to really know what we were writing on until till the very end. And so she always thought that I was going to write my thesis on house churches and that I would resolve all the unclarity of house churches through this thesis. And then I told her, no, I’m actually writing on how churches can collaborate. She’s like, what? I was waiting for you to solve all our issues.

But I think I’ve always kind of wrestled with why is our witnesses as church so poor because we can’t collaborate and connect with one another? And that has always been kind of a driving question with me. I remember when I was a youth pastor, just this deep conviction from God to get to know our neighboring churches because I’m in our kind of one kilometer block this seven churches, and I’m like, why aren’t we even having some sort of a dialogue? It was kind of funny. I remember just cold calling everyone and just showing up at the door. And then usually the first question that they asked is, well, what are you selling? And then I’m like, I have nothing to sell. I just want to get to know you. I just want to have a relationship just down the road. And I think all of that transpired to this research on exploring, well, what does that look like? So my research question, which kind of changed a little bit at the very end, and I’ll explain a little bit more. So I began with this question of what does the mission imagination of five Midtown churches move them towards kingdom collaboration? So I do focus on mission because I still believe that that is a big part of the ecclesial identity of the church.

But as we are thinking and wrestling with mission, what does that kingdom relationship look like? But through the process of the interviews, it kind of became clear that everyone kind of has a clear missional identity. But the problem with that missional identity is that it is hyper individualized. It’s kind of my preferred mission. It is compiled and define and discern just by us. There’s no an extended discernment together. And also there is this aspect of being in the urban center and what Hartmut Rosa would describe as social acceleration, the pace of our lives, the influence of technology we’re always chasing and trying to accomplish. And these become the factor of how we view our understanding of mission, our view on church, how we relate with other people, and even the purpose of seeing other local churches beside us. And so out of that, I kind of started to dig a little bit deeper into these secular theories and trying to unpack what are these cultural forces that are at work?

And out of which I had kind of used two other theories to describe the kind of experiences in these cultural climates to which I had defined it as facelessness and this experience of this embodiment. And so in the thesis, I was trying to unpack a little bit more on how in our relationship with one another, the other actually becomes an idea. They’re distance. They do not have a face, they do not have a story. They’re just a concept. But our call as the church is not to conceptualize the other, but actually to incarnate and to enter with the other. So a lot of my kind of theological work was surrounded in Miroslav Volf’s work on Exclusion and Embrace and this kind of theology of embrace, which I really appreciate, even though it was a really hard read, and it took a long time to try to figure out how does this help unpack a little bit. But I’ll share a little bit about what I’ve also found in a theology.

Gino Curcuruto:

Can I jump in? Jump in right before you do that because No, that’s good. Because there’s so many questions that are in the background of this. You’ve mentioned even on this, in this time together about how do we even define Midtown Toronto? And I wonder mean we could talk about that, what your research found. That’s not the most compelling thing. The other thing is how do we relate to each other as churches theologically with our differences? And how does that contribute to othering or the facelessness? I think that you’re kind of getting to,

If I’m tracking with this correctly, but I mean then all of that contributes to a social witness. It’s not a positive one so far. And so you’re going to talk about moving towards embrace of the other, I believe the faceless ones

Or how do you, and so that’s not even the goal, though. The goal is not just simply to see the other, it’s actually a shared mission, if I remember your question. So yeah, with that little recap or my interjection to make sure I’m tracking, please continue. This is great.

Bernard Tam:

No, thanks Gino. Sometimes when I get rolling, I feel like, oh my gosh, there’s so much going on and how do I unpack it? How do I bring it all into a simpler understanding? But I think thanks for reminding about the social witness part, because part of my wrestling in this thesis is that churches in the community is not just defined by what we do, but is how and who we are doing it together. This social witness idea, it is I think, very significant in a time where antagonism and the kind of violence that we are experiencing with the other and where the church needs to be, then now a different space that operates in a way that reflects a form of humility, of love, of patience, of mutuality. Because if the church is not embodying that kind of love, the message of love is almost untenable. Right. Well,

Luke Stehr:

I love that, even in what you’ve just said, I think for anyone with a theological ear, but if you don’t, what you’ve done is you’ve already in what you’ve said, that’s you putting Hartmut Rosa and Miroslav Volf both into conversation, this technological acceleration, the facelessness really pairing that with the idea of exclusion, this the way we say no to the other, and moving that more towards a theology of Embrace. It’s really well done. I think, way of putting those two thinkers into conversation with one another towards a missional end, which is I just love it.

Bernard Tam:

Thanks.

Luke Stehr:

But keep going.

Bernard Tam:

I hope Fitch loves it too, because

Luke Stehr:

He has to grade you.

Bernard Tam:

Yeah, no, I think thanks for that. I think that’s encouraging. I’ll share this side note, since we’re talking about the program as a whole. I find at this very last leg of the program where I’m writing a thesis where our class is talking, we have a cohort chat, the feeling of imposter syndrome is so real. There’s always kind of this uncertainty of like, am I on the right track? Is this even meaningful? Is this even purposeful? But at the same time, recognizing that this is part of the humbling process, this is actually the way that I think we should all approach academia, is that it isn’t that we become experts, but we become more curious and we become more open to the way that we are approaching learning. And so that’s been kind of a helpful kind of wrestling with the approach of learning. So yeah,

Gino Curcuruto:

That’s really good. That’s really good. So you’ve done a lot of analysis. You’ve done some interviews, keep going, share. What are some of your findings along, or I don’t want to jump to the conclusions or your way forward where you always propose further research needs to be done or something like that. But I

Luke Stehr:

Think this is also a good aside for people who aren’t going through Northern’s program but are curious about it. This is, I’m guessing you’re getting to ethnographic research methods. So that’s part of the training we receive as students is in conducting ethnography. So field work, semi-structured interviews, the whole thing. So I’m curious to how you’re forming this bridge from your theological work and your theological analysis to what you’re actually discovering on the ground as you’re talking to people. And I think that’s where Gino’s going too, but for, again, the non northern crowd, we’re really trying to make this theological ethnographic bridge. I haven’t seen the dialogue box, so I guess that’s where we’re going.

Bernard Tam:

I think actually the, what’s interesting is we have an idea, we have a proposal. We have set up these concepts that we are going to try to explore and focus on. But I think the beauty of this practice is that a lot of these cultural engagement and theological reflection actually comes out of the ethnographic research. So doing the ethnographic research, doing the interviews, doing the observations, all of that becomes that which informs back or informs first into how you approach culturally, because I could have a certain idea of where I want to go, but if the research is actually not about that, then this doesn’t really make sense. And so there’s got to be this openness. And I believe that’s kind of part of the dialogue is that we begin somewhere, but in these different pieces that are coming at it, learning to listen and see kind of the threads and the connections that are beginning to form and then kind of leaning in into those pieces.

The research is going to be wide. There’s going to be a lot, but there will be particular things that maybe the Holy Spirit will be revealing and prompting and emphasizing and showing that lean into this space. And so I think that’s what I had experienced. I think in this process, I actually started off focusing on two other social theorists like Levinas, Emmanuel Levinas, and in Maurice Merleau-Ponty, which I still used in the thesis, but I had to realize that this part needed a bigger and better framework because of the ethnographic research, because what I’ve seen, I’ve heard. And then they began to inform back into how do I approach it culturally? Well, these boundaries and these settings are needed in order for me to dive deeper into these people, which actually fits well in engaging with the dialogues.

Gino Curcuruto:

So you didn’t just come up with a, yeah, you up with a question imposed your theological imperatives on your context, and then write your paper to say what happened. I’m obviously joking, but I think you had a question. You did some ethnographic research. It maybe reframed your question, or at least some of the social theorists and theological questions that you’d have around that, which is kind of like a dialogue.

Bernard Tam:

Yeah, a hundred percent. And even my research question in the end, I had to share a little bit about how that’s kind of shifted, not shifted, but I think part of the finding is that maybe the question had, it’s not wrong, but it’s through the research, the reflection, the learning. It’s not actually the mission imagination of churches that leads to kingdom collaboration, but it’s an imagination of kingdom collaboration that is a missional imagination in our community community. So that’s been kind of interesting to approach. I remember talking to my supervisor, he’s like, did I do this wrong? That’s not my question. And then he’s like, no, no, this is good. This is meant for what it’s supposed to do. And I was like, oh, okay. Alright.

Gino Curcuruto:

And that’s the social witness that you’re talking about, correct. Yeah. Yeah.

Bernard Tam:

Correct.

Gino Curcuruto:

That’s Great. That’s great. Wow, Bernard, thank you for that.

Luke Stehr:

Oh, that’s going to be good. I’m excited. I hope I get to read it one day. I’m excited to see.

Bernard Tam:

Yeah, happy to share it. Yeah.

Gino Curcuruto:

Well, maybe I’m

Luke Stehr:

At the end.

Gino Curcuruto:

Go ahead. I’m sorry, Luke. I was just going to say that I think we have a little delay, but I was just going to say that that summary statement seems like a huge learning for us, but also maybe for you as well in the process of just what mission is or what that missional witness is. Are there any other things, maybe as my last question to you, any other things that stand out to you as learning that’s really significant in this whole process throughout this whole process of the cohort?

Bernard Tam:

Any other like?

Gino Curcuruto:

Yeah, in your thesis writing that you would say, yeah, I think this, it’s going to help me embody something different than I may have. When I started

Bernard Tam:

The thesis process or the thesis project,

Gino Curcuruto:

I’d say the project or the entire time in the program,

Bernard Tam:

I think the entire program definitely had pushed a, I would say us, because I believe our whole cohort experienced that a much deeper wrestling with culture, especially the underlying narratives that actually has informed our thinking and our practices. Flipping back to what you guys had asked me earlier, are there seminars that has really influenced and shaped us? The “Incarnating the Gospel” seminar with Jonathan Tran was very challenging, both because it’s in a context that I’ve never really studied a ton. It ended up focusing a lot on racial capitalism, which is I think his specialty that helped us begin to really unravel the cultural new that has informed this trajectory of where culture was moving towards. But we needed to break that back into that point. And so I think this whole process has been very helpful and challenging for us to not just see culture as it is, but even seeing what’s behind the culture, the formation of the culture that’s around us, but yet still having the hope and recognizing that God’s still at work and God’s still doing something new.

And actually this one moment in that class with Jonathan Tran was so encouraging. I think he was probably one of the, okay, that might be too harsh, I would say. He is one of the professors that we have engaged with that has so much hope in the church. And he was unabashed to say that. And in one of the lectures he ended up, I think he just went on and just started preaching to us about the hope of the church and how we need to be a part of that. And I think that’s kind of the tension that was really healthy through the process. And that’s part of what we were learning because I think when we go back to our context, when we go back to our areas of ministries and the places that we are serving, we will struggle with the heaviness of the cultural brokenness that is around us, but also the hopefulness of how God is at work. And we kind of tend to that tension. And I think this program has been really helpful in walking through these tensions.

Gino Curcuruto:

That’s great.

Luke Stehr:

Well said. Here at the tail end of your time with Northern, what are some things you just want to celebrate about the doctorate of ministry in contextual theology?

Bernard Tam:

Oh, there’s a lot to celebrate. I think this has been, everyone that I’ve known has gone through the program has really been challenge and changed through it. I think the rigor of the readings, the reflections, the dialogues, really, it’s not just like you’re doing another degree, but the purpose behind it is to really take some of the learning and seeing how it actually directly intersect in the spaces of our ministry. I think that is actually what every seminary education is meant to do. But this one was, I think for many of us, it’s been a very sharpening space and a place that we are learning how to articulate some of the things that maybe we’ve been wrestling with too, because sometimes we have all these thoughts and ideas, but we don’t know how to frame it. We don’t know how to put it into a way that makes sense culturally, makes sense, theologically makes sense practically. And this last four years I think has been part of not putting the words, but giving an environment where these vocabularies are not just words, but they’re meaningful way of framing and shaping how culture meets church meets mission and God being at work in our neighborhoods.

Gino Curcuruto:

Wow. That’s so good. Bernard, thank you so much. It’s always good to talk to you. It’s always good to listen to you talk as well, and just appreciate your time. And Luke, I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty excited about what the next couple of years have for us.

Luke Stehr:

It’s going to be good.

Bernard Tam:

Yeah, you guys will have a blast, I’m sure. Thanks for having me.

Luke Stehr:

Well, thanks for being here. Good luck on getting feedback on here for draft.

Episode # 01

🎙️ Episode Overview

In this inaugural episode of For Context, Luke and Gino interview David Fitch. Fitch is the founder and director of the Doctorate in Ministry in Contextual Theology program at Northern Seminary. On this episode, they discuss a bit of the program’s origin story as well as why and how contextual theology works as a discipline. Give it a listen!

For Context is sponsored by Northern Seminary. To learn more about the Contextual Theology program (or any of the number MA, M.Div, and D.Min offerings), visit seminary.edu.

📚 Resources

* David Fitch: Fitch’s Provocations

* Gino Curcuruto: Following Jesus Into the Ordinary

* Luke Stehr: Faith In Situ

🤝 Join the For Context Community

If you enjoyed this deep dive, consider becoming a paid subscriber to help us keep providing the context behind the news.

* Subscribe to the Newsletter: forcontextpod.substack.com

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Episode Transcript

Gino Curcuruto:

I’m Gino Curcuruto

Luke Stehr:

And I’m Luke Stehr

Gino Curcuruto:

And you’re listening to For Context

Luke Stehr:

A podcast about Northern Seminary’s Doctorate of Ministry in Contextual Theology. So today on For Context we have Dr. David Fitch, who heads up the Contextual Theology program at Northern. He’s a ton of fun, we hope you enjoy the episode. Gino, do you want to say anything more to introduce Fitch?

Gino Curcuruto:

Well I think it’s good we were able to start this podcast with an interview with Fitch, so he can kind of give us a history of the program, what the intent back in the day was, and where it’s heading in the future.

Luke Stehr:

So it’s a great episode, we had a ton of making it, and we hope you enjoy it, and it’s enough that you wanna stick around. It’s our first For Context ever, and we hope it is enough you wanna keep sticking around. If you’re on Substack, go ahead and hit that “Subscribe” button that way you can make sure you know when new episodes release.

Gino Curcuruto:

For our first episode of For Context, we are happy and pleased to have as our guest Dr. David Fitch. We are, both Luke and I are both as those who have listened to our intro, know that we’re students in the Contextual Theology D.Min. program at Northern Seminary, of which Fitch is the director, the founder, the chief instigator, and all of those other things that people will call him. So we wanted to get him on the podcast from the beginning and ask him a little bit about the history of this, where the idea for this program started. What was the inspiration, why the need you go ahead and riff on those ideas for us please.

David Fitch:

First of all, I’m honored to be on the first podcast of this podcast.

Luke Stehr:

It’s an honor.

David Fitch:

I’m feeling very, very honored. But you guys need to work on your radio vibe. We call it in the business, we call it the radio vibe. Gotta have a vibe.

Luke Stehr:

We did almost call this “Fitch’s Old Time Radio Show.”

Gino Curcuruto:

Yeah, we were thinking about that as the name, “The Old Time Fitch Radio Show.”

David Fitch:

Definitely by choice on name don’t go that direction. It’s going to,

Luke Stehr:

It would’ve been a tribute to someone we’ll keep nameless.

David Fitch:

You’re going to go from, we now have three listeners, all three of us being ourselves, and we’re going to go down to two if you do that.

Luke Stehr:

We are,

David Fitch:

We just, ladies and gentlemen, it’s just great to be on this podcast. What’s it called again, Luke?

Luke Stehr:

For Context.

David Fitch:

I dunno.

Luke Stehr:

He’s not sure about this.

Gino Curcuruto:

Wow. Wow. We didn’t know we were doing critique. We thought we just going to get a little bit of a,

David Fitch:

Can I just give you two words? Radio vibe. You got to have a radio. I know. It’s a podcast. Radio vibe. Alright, this is amazing ladies, gentlemen, great to be on For Context here, live in whatever studio this is. I have no idea where we are. And let’s get going with the show. Yeah, do Luke, let’s get going with the show. I know you have some questions.

Gino Curcuruto:

Yeah,

David Fitch:

Tell us Luke, by the way, Luke actually sent me the questions. I did not have time to actually read the questions.

Luke Stehr:

You don’t need them. You don’t need them. We’re off the cuff. It’s even better.

David Fitch:

It’s even better.

Luke Stehr:

So live radio feeling that you just so desperately crave.

David Fitch:

Yes.

Luke Stehr:

So this program started several years ago. What was the inspiration for starting a contextual theology program? And maybe there are some people out there, like the many people I talk to week in and week out who go, what the heck is contextual theology? So what’s the inspiration for it? And maybe define some terms in there.

David Fitch:

There’s a little bit of history here. We started, started by calling it, I don’t know, D.Min. in missional theology or missional, I can’t remember. And then the name didn’t thoroughly capture what we were trying to do. We were trying to give pastors a theological frame to engage the cultures that they’re surrounded in for the gospel. And the missional thing kind of got lost in a bunch of the whole missional movement. This is like 20 years ago when I was Gino’s age 20 years ago actually. I would be possibly slightly younger than you. But anyways, all that to say, all that to say that, yeah, there are issues all around us in the culture that we operate. Pastors, churches, theologians operate out of a mindset of a Christendom, the mindset we’re in charge. We get to tell people where they’re wrong. We get to go out and give them the gospel on our terms.

And all of this is no longer functioning well in the places it still functions in maybe Southern Baptist worlds and where Luke lives. But that was a beneath, that was a little surprising turn there. But doesn’t,

Luke Stehr:

Not a Southern Baptist, just for the record,

David Fitch:

but doesn’t work in places where Christendom and Christianity and the culture have split. And so we wanted to give people tools, understandings, ways of thinking, how to engage a local culture for the gospel. And there are issues out there. There’s racism, there’s sexuality, gender, there’s economics, there’s politics. It’s all become very divisive. How do we engage it for the gospel? We believe God’s at work in these spaces to bring not only healing transformation to these spaces, but bring people to himself in Jesus Christ as Lord. So that’s my opening salvo, the D.Min. in Contextual Theology. But for you two guys who are still in the middle of your program, what do you think, I mean, where is the touch point that is of importance for you in this program? Give me a touch point.

Gino Curcuruto:

Yeah, well, you mentioned it there of what does it look like to take the gospel into the many cultures that we live around among. And oftentimes one of the things that attracted me to this program is oftentimes we give lip service to that and we try to contextualize the gospel without learning the context in which we live. So the heavy emphasis on knowing the cultures on learning and reading broadly and studying these concepts is really helpful. That I’m not just giving lip service to this idea, but actually engaging my neighbors and understanding things. Sometimes actually understanding why they live the way they do more clearly than they do.

Luke Stehr:

And I think for me, I had a pretty good robust foundation coming out of my master’s studying missiology, culture, all these things. And so I was already very used to thinking kind of along those terms, particularly from a more world Christianity perspective, but increasingly found myself in more secularized spaces and western contexts and wanted to go more specifically into the issues that present in those western contexts and environments, which Northern’s program is not exclusively talking about those things, but there’s a strong focus on the North American, European post-Christian context that I wanted to expand my knowledge and my ability to be a good practitioner in those spaces.

David Fitch:

Yeah, yeah, very helpful. The complexity here is often missed by the context that I’ve come out of, which is mainly white evangelicalism. Although I come out of a brand that is more like holiness Pentecostal. And that in and of itself is a different, it’s got a different theo-vibe than say most reformed theologies. But having all that, there’s still a problem here. I like to use the example of sexuality. I like to go right there to the most conflictual issue of our...

Luke Stehr:

Nice and easy.

David Fitch:

And I like to say, okay, we as a church like to make pronouncements. We affirm LGBTQIA+ used to be just LGBT or we do not affirm. And these are postures and policies which we think address the cultural issue of sexuality, but written into this approach is a posture of A.) power over, and B.), not listening to our surrounding cultures and even understanding what it might mean to say I’m gay. We assume because we are caught in these Christendom postures that we know what it means to say I’m gay. We do not. And this of course is now a most recent book that was published last year, the end of last year by Yarhouse and his co-author, who I can’t remember her name right now, I think it was 72 different sexual identities.

If you think you know what your, the struggling students, let’s just say the 10 year olds, the 15 year olds they’re going through and you just assume, we do not affirm or affirm you’ve missed the whole engagement process. Likewise, if you just assume that the average person who’s going through these identity locations or struggles or whatever you want to call it, that you understand their histories and what brought them there and where the issue is, you will never connect. And all you will do is reinforce the existing ideological things that are going on in sexuality as well as the very ways culture is shaping sexual identity, much of which even Judith Butler would say is caught up in the sins of the world. I’m talking about misogyny, patriarchy, et cetera, et cetera, other objectification of bodies, commodification of attraction, all this stuff. Now you just see, we just riffed on that for like three, five minutes and there’s multiple layers. And so now can just, so the first thing maybe you want to learn if you’re going to be a contextual theologian is just stop yourself. Stop yourself and go listen to people and what’s going on so that the gospel can be proclaimed and people can be invited into this reconciliatory presence of Jesus Christ to save the world. Okay. That’s my little speech comments on that, Gino, or

Gino Curcuruto:

Yeah, I want to say something Luke, but you go ahead first,

Luke Stehr:

I think too, as I think about how do you explain this, we’re both serving in ministry, in churches. How do you explain this stuff? Someone in your church is like, what are you studying? What are you talking about? And so Gino and I are in the middle of our program, which we’ve talked about, and I think we both just finished a book by Bo Lim a Contextual Theological Interpretation. But basically the idea is how do you get from there to here?

One of the difficulties of biblical studies as it’s been done is it keeps the text isolated in its historic context. And so how do we make this bridge between the text of scripture and the context of where we live today? And so contextual theology for me, if I was going to steal a line from Mark Glanville, it’s the through line of how you get from the text to the context. So learning to understand the current context and connect it back to that context. And that’s not always a one for one equal translation, which we talk about all the linguistics behind that, but it’s really how do you get from there to here and how do you help people here understand there?

David Fitch:

Yeah. And in a minute, I thought you were going to go this direction with your comment, Luke. I thought you were going to say something like how do we explain this to the people we’re ministering to?

The first thing, I’ve been in many of these conversations about the sexuality discussion. By the way, it’s not just sexuality, it’s not just gender, it’s racism, it’s economics. It’s the way we think about our jobs. It’s the way we think about money. It’s the way we think about the poor. It’s the way we think about salvation. Everything. In order to enter the world and proclaim the gospel, you have to listen to what God’s saying, doing and discern what is of God and what is of savior, if I can put it, what is of the world, what is of destruction. And so I thought you were going to say, how do I explain this to our people? I can’t imagine trying to, one of our co-classmates, Greg Armstrong talked to me the other day and he said, I’m just blowing my leader’s mind with the stuff they have no idea. When I go, I go, what are you crazy? Are you trying to make them to contextual doctorates? This is not what your goal is to do with this program is turn all your leaders into doctorates in contextual theology. No, this gives you the tools to lead through and open conversations, deepen the conversations, and then illumine the Holy Spirit’s work so as to cooperate and proclaim the gospel. I thought you were going to go that direction, Luke. I’m very thankful. Surprised. I’m thankful you did not by the way.

Gino Curcuruto:

Well, I was thinking as you were using the example of sexuality that we get caught up often, and maybe I’m oversimplifying this, but we get caught up in binaries in just saying that there’s a binary, there’s a right and a wrong or there’s a this way or that way, whether it’s sexuality or it’s politics, anything we could talk about and say, we don’t even know what we’re saying, we just say it’s this or that. And then we argue from that perspective. And so one of the things that I do say to people in our congregation when they ask about this is that I’m learning to complexify things so that they meet what actually humans are like to actually get that there isn’t just one simple answer that we’re engaging. We need to understand people, we need to understand more of the complexity and not just get caught up in ideological arguments.

David Fitch:

That reminds me of something our pal Greg Boyd once said to me, we refuse at this church to make people into policy statements.

Luke Stehr:

Yes.

David Fitch:

Because really a lot’s going on. I don’t appreciate being made into a policy statement. It happens to me all the time. By the way, I need grace and mercy to give people grace and mercy when they make me into a policy statement. I’m going to go off on a rant here in a minute, but I am a white, an old white dude. People want to caricature me based on that, what do you call it? Category. And they have no clue as to my history, my life, what I’ve lived. I’ve lived through the suffering, the pain parts of my life. Anyways, so all this to just reiterate folks, can the church please stop itself and can it go be among and with people and listen, learn to ask good questions, and then out of that discern what God is doing. I think of the average gay or lesbian person.

I know for a fact this might get me in trouble, but I know for a fact that a lot of what is going on in their interrelational connections is goodness. There is a lot of goodness there. And matter of fact, I would say that maybe the average, the several gay men I have met have better ways to make friendships with other men than what we call straight male, our pathetic ability to have good relationships with men or women for that matter. Do you think that that’s not where God’s working? And then do you think that that’s also not that the structures of sexuality and gender have been so screwed up in our culture that maybe some of what’s going on here in LGBTQIA is a response to the sinful, the corrupt things going on in culture with that? We often respond to sin by going deeper into sin, and we can’t just give everything a blanket right up, oh, it’s all good, it’s all of God. That’s another blanket overstatement, caricature policy statement, movement of power over. You are now exerting your power over. Can we please stop doing that? Did that that make sense? It does.

Luke Stehr:

It absolutely makes sense. Yeah. And so I think it’s a willingness to question and not take the base assumptions of culture, but it’s an interrogation or a curiosity and it’s a call to a curiosity of the local as opposed to trying to make universal proclamations that may not fit everywhere. And if you want to, I could go off on so many side tangents on that that I just don’t need to get into. But yeah, I think at its core that’s what this program, at least for me has been about. I haven’t finished. We’re going to interview some grads and see if I’m on the right track there, but yeah. Yeah.

Gino Curcuruto:

I’m wondering if you would share Fitch, some of the influences on you for seeing a need for a type of program like this. Where did that come from? Who have you learned from that influences this?

David Fitch:

Can you still hear me? I just got a notice. Okay. Before I do that, Gino, something is pressing in upon me by the Holy Spirit that I feel the need to talk about.

Gino Curcuruto:

Great.

David Fitch:

A lot of people, a lot of people hear me when I’m talking like this. Let’s just say about the hot topic of sexuality or racism or a lot of people hear me as somewhat of a relativist that I’m going to change the doctrines of scripture, history, tradition, Christianity, historic Christianity to fit in with a context because after all fits, you’re complexifying gay sexuality here and you’re making it fit into scripture. First of all, I just want to ask, how do you two answer that question and then I just want to blow that up because I refuse to be a relativist when it comes to contextual theology. How do you two?

Gino Curcuruto:

Well, when people ask me, isn’t Fitch just relativizing scripture? Because people ask me that, they don’t necessarily ask me the question directly as far as what was the way you said it, including gay sexuality into my theology. Was that or scriptural or scriptural understanding? I mean, I get called a lot of things and that would be one of them. I think that I’m asking them how they interpret what is in the scriptures directly to something that isn’t mentioned in the scriptures.

David Fitch:

Alright, well that was kind of boring, but anyways.

Okay, just kidding. Luke, what would you do?

Luke Stehr:

I think I work in a Baptist setting, so it’s always good for me to kind of make these appeals to scripture as a good place to start. And I think most people are just unaware of just the complexity of scripture itself. You start peeling back the layers of the Bible and even just the translation of scripture into English or other languages. And it’s just so much more complicated than I think we can come away thinking when we just hold an English Bible in our hands going like, well, this is it. This is what I’ve got. And so one of the things that came to mind as we’re talking is we even forget just how complicated of a decision it is to contextualize the name of God into a local language.

And so if you’ve only ever read the English Bible, then one of the things you don’t realize is one of the biggest debates in translation is how do you translate the name of God into Chinese? And you have different approaches advocated by different Bible societies, but they effectively make really strong theological statements just by how they name God in a local language. And so again, for me, contextual theology is about how do we get there to here. So when we think about scripture, when it talks about sexuality, well, A, we’ve got to be good contextual theologians of the past. I think that’s where we lean on good methodology of historical critical interpretation, which does a good job of analyzing the social, cultural, political, historical factors of the past, but then recognizing that it’s not a one for one to the present. And so specifically on issues of gender and sexuality.

Well, Gino, you’ve said there’s no direct conversation about that from there to here Greco-Roman and Hebrew views of sexuality, in some ways they’re just so radically different than the way we think about sexuality here today, that we can’t make one for one, but we can try to do some good theology of how people relate to one another on the basis of gender, on the basis of sex. I’m still thinking we’re getting ready for our New Testament and context class this summer just finished reading Paul and Gender by Cynthia Westfall. Super excited to have her, but I once again come away realizing that Paul in writing about gender is just a brilliant human being who subverts the categories of his time

Is effectively a contextual theologian of his own time, taking the categories of gender, of sexuality, of power, and really tweaking them, subverting them, reworking them towards the ends of the kingdom. And that’s what we have to do here today. So what are the categories? So to do that we actually have to have a conversation about what is happening in contemporary sexuality and gender studies. What is the cultural belief about gender and about sexuality? Because if Paul was going to use the metaphors and images of gender and sexuality in his time, well, we have to do that here too. We have to analyze what those categories mean in order to subvert them and put them under the lordship of Christ.

David Fitch:

Yeah. So I’ll take it one more step than the two or three steps you just talked about. And I’ll just say we don’t get to make things up. We didn’t just land out of the, I don’t know, off of the planet Saturn and became a Christian. There is a long history here, both in the west and the east. We are part of the west. We live where we live. And so there is some wisdom in there. There’s some wisdom in understanding what scriptures did. What Paul did was basically Jesus upended and overturned the patriarchies and the hierarchies within the sexual gender space, but he did so by entering into those household codes.

So he went in and talked and said, but here’s how Jesus takes what is and transforms what is into something so much more, so much different. I want us to be able to do that with the current sexual paradigms we have, find ourselves in not just accommodate, endorse blanketly affirm, give our approval, which is a Christendom posture, not just say no to it all and give our disapproval, which is a Christendom posture, but enter in and how does Jesus and his transforming power overturn and reveal and heal the brokenness between genders. But we don’t give up that for centuries that we’ve understood marriage is now monogamy, not polygamy, not not polyamory, not no. For some reason, and lemme just be very specific for the way that Jesus comes to redeem and restore male and female and the two shall not be put asunder from which. So when Jesus said there is no more divorce, and the disciple said, I think it’s Matthew 18 somewhere, are you kidding me?

Why anybody get married if there’s no more divorce? Okay, he’s overturning and transforming the ways that people think about being male and female to restore it to, and this is only possible in Jesus Christ. So anyways, all that to say, we don’t give any of that up. When we enter into what’s going on in the sexuality crisis or confusion or multiplicities and alternatives in our culture, we enter in and do discipleship. And I think that’s so important. So if anyone’s hearing me always a relativist far from it, I’m a contextualist. I know we’ve gone on too long on this.

I found that post evangelicals often go into the text and say, well, they we’re not talking about the frame of homosexuality. We don’t call it gay or lesbian sexuality. That was not this.

So they disarm the scripture and what it’s saying about past current day sodomy and so forth. But at the same point then they go, but we bless this because of certain principles like covenant monogamous principle. But all I’m trying to say is you can’t just leave the one behind and not extend into the present what Jesus has been doing and what he continues to do in terms of the healing and transformation of sexual identity, gender constructs the brokenness between genders, et cetera, et cetera. And that’s what, if we get anywhere in contextual theology, that’s what we need to understand. Those two dynamics. We go into the context, but we don’t just enter with nothing. We extend what God has done in Christ through the scripture, through the church, into these realities.

Gino Curcuruto:

Are there times and places where going into the context does change how we understand what we’re extending in there?

David Fitch:

Change. Change I don’t like.

Gino Curcuruto:

I’m intentionally vague

David Fitch:

Change.

Gino Curcuruto:

I’m Intentionally vague there.

David Fitch:

I get worried about the word change. We’re going to change the gospel. No, we’re not. We’re going to extend

The gospel. So I’m currently trying to write a book. I’m not too far into it and the deadline is looming, but I’m writing the book about the many gospels and I talk about the various entry points to the gospels. And I got into an argument on Facebook recently about,

Luke Stehr:

it’s a great place for an argument.

David Fitch:

Reform theology and reform theology kind of lifted up the idea of substitutionary, view of the atonement and justification by faith alone. And what it did was it individualized salvation. And it also changed the terms from a Roman Catholic church that at that time was corrupt and you had to go through these processes and if you disobeyed this, you were going to hell, blah, blah, blah. Okay. So in that context, that understanding of salvation and atonement really, really changed Europe and really, really brought a lot of people into the fold of Jesus Christ in a way they hadn’t been before,

But go across the ocean and go into the present time. Is that the view on salvation atonement, soteriology the way we need to understand what Christ is doing, or is there another part of the story that Christus Victor emphasizes his victory over the powers and the principalities? That to me is where I find most people struggling with the overwhelming powers and principalities of addiction or the powers and principalities of government and evil. And how do I live my life in victory over that Jesus has already accomplished a victory over that. Now let’s live into that and let him be Lord of our lives and bring Satan down. Okay. Anyways, all that to say, did I change the gospel? No, the gospel is this one long story. I just emphasized one part over another because of the contextual implications of our time that are no longer the same as 15th century Reformation Europe. Is there an amen in the congregation?

Luke Stehr:

Amen. Oh, there’s amen here. And I think that’s again, we’re going to borrow from Bo Lim, but just other people who talk about the translatability of the text, every time we translate the text of scripture into a new language, the theological vocabulary just expands. And it’s not that we’ve changed the text per se, but we’ve added just a new range of richness, a new depth to what we can actually talk about theologically because we learn as we translate and as we contextualize. But does it change the text?

Gino Curcuruto:

Well, I think that I’m asking the question from the perspective of the person saying that Fitch is a relativist and seeing, I wanted to hear a clear articulation of this isn’t a change, this is contextualization, this is a bringing forth of something into a new context, maybe in a way that hasn’t had to be described this way because this context is new and that’s helpful. People might see that simplistically as change and that’s not what it is.

Luke Stehr:

And I think for those people, I would just say go look at the history of translation. Go look at the history of the gospel spreading into new cultures around the world. Now how that’s happened over time and the concepts that get just used to explain what’s happening.

David Fitch:

Absolutely, absolutely.

Now, there are some people that would disagree with what we’ve said in relation to the gospel Horton’s view of the gospel, this classic justification by faith and the ordo salute us, the order of salvation comes, then comes sanctification, comes glorification. Anyways, he claims in that book on the gospels four views of the gospels, he claims that that was always there. That’s always been the gospel from the first day on. It just got lost or it got somehow obscured and it was the Reformation. And Dr. Horton, if I’m misrepresenting you, I apologize, but I read that I think pretty carefully. And then I read another one of your books on justification. It appeared that you were doing the same thing. We have a minor, maybe it’s not minor disagreement. Okay. Because I think that the reformation found this like Luther was actually on the toilet when he was reading Romans.

And he found justification by faith alone. And this made so much sense in the struggle that he was going through in his own life with the Roman Catholic Church. And it by the way, God used them to save hundreds of thousands, maybe millions who were wandering aimlessly discouraged by their future through what had become a corrupt Roman Catholicism. So all I’m saying is there are people that are disagree with us. Yes, let’s just talk amongst ourselves and see, I think we need to contextualize the gospel all the time, especially when now we’ve become a multi-ethnic multicultural world, multiple cultures. Let us not think, if you don’t believe in the penal substitutionary view of the atonement, you’re going to hell. That might not be the entry point. We need to reach people with the gospel. Maybe we’ll get there eventually. Maybe people will find the, I prefer the representational view, which kind of encapsulates that substitutionary view of Jesus. But we don’t need to start at the same place every single time.

Gino Curcuruto:

Wouldn’t you be more comfortable with calling Horton’s view? Maybe not his saying we lost it and now we found it again. But if this was just a view from the reformation that is a contextual theology, if he could see it as a contextual theology and say that is for a time and place helpful. I mean, I know that we have to talk about language and we have to talk about so many things to do that, but it seems like we kind of get stuck in and maybe ossify our theology in a context and then make it that for all time and argue against it.

Luke Stehr:

I think this is the challenge of contextual theology to systematic or historic approaches is that we recognize that every theology is a contextual theology and that’s actually advantageous. That’s by design. I think that’s how God has wired the Kingdom, the Church, scripture. It’s meant to be contextual. Things that come to mind as we make an argument if we have to make an argument for contextual theology. Lamin Sanneh talks about how in Africa when translating the Bible, again, translation is just such a good test case to prove the validity of contextual theology. So in African translations, when a foreign word was chosen for the name of God, those people who ended up converting to Christianity were actually significantly more likely to then convert to Islam because the imposition of a foreign notion of God felt un-African but Islam felt more African than the foreign Christianity which they had converted from their tribal religions. But when an indigenous word was chosen for God, like a local linguistic name for the high God was used in the translation for God’s name, those people were actually significantly more likely to stay Christian because it felt natural, contextualized to them. Contextual theology is necessary for us to effectively be God’s people in a place and at a time and to demonstrate and live out the good news where we are.

That’s good.

David Fitch:

Yeah. That’s so huge. And there’s complexity there. So a lot of people are listening to this going, oh my goodness, this is relativism. They just changed the name of God. Now this foreign country that we’re bringing the gospel to now thinks of God in terms of their God. We’ve just done a shift there is Lamin Sanneh, I think he said Christianity is the most translated contextual faith in the world. A hundred thousand different tribes. Peoples have learned the gospel through their own languages, but it’s not a unilateral thing, which is what Lamin Sanneh is saying. I don’t translate my ideas into their language holding onto my ideas. I got to be in the language long enough to understand what’s going on to even have a cross. Oh, that’s what that means and makes sense in relation to who Jesus is. But we don’t give up Jesus and we don’t give up what God has done in Jesus and God is still God. But we need to find ways to communicate. And so often translation, this is what Willie Jennings does in that one chapter of that guy, I can’t remember now where he talks about how the guy landed in Peru and just basically translated Euro-Christianity into Peruvian terms,

Thereby enforcing his worldview on them. And what ended up doing was creating a white Christianity among a non-white peoples.

Luke Stehr:

And that’s a huge risk. Missions history is full of those stories,

David Fitch:

Right? But also missions history is full of a lot of good stories too. But it is, I happen to be on a call, a theology circle, Jesus collective, and my African brother Edam goes, look, look, I know you white people want to insist you colonized us all here in Africa. We see on the call he’s speaking from Africa. But look, you did a lot of good things. Let me tell you three or four things that have changed my life because some person missionary from North America came here a hundred years ago and proclaimed Jesus. But at the same time, there’s a lot of bad things, cultural things. So I just want to say this is the navigation. It is that we’re all in and we’re in hit now here in North America. Can we be true to the call, the challenge to engage our new culturals, which are by and large post-Christian except for Southern Baptist, where Luke lives there to declining. Can’t we engage these populations for the gospel of Jesus Christ and see what God’s up to? Amen. I think we can engage the Southern Baptist for the gospel of Jesus Christ as well.

Okay, I hope no one’s in trouble after this podcast. They’re going to come for me.

Luke Stehr:

So they’re not paying attention. But what’s different about this program as opposed to other programs? What’s unique about Northern’s Contextual Theology D.Min. that you can only really get here and by here, I mean there because I’m in Texas and you’re in Chicago.

David Fitch:

Well, let me try to be diplomatic for a change. I do believe that most doctorate of ministry programs have turned into some sort of pastoral self-help programs. Is that diplomatic? It’s diplomatic enough. There’s a lot of programs out there that, and rightfully so, pastors need spiritual formation and building up of their own formation in Christ and they’re out on an island somewhere and they’re getting slaughtered by the, I mean being pastors very, very difficult, especially in the environment that we’re in today.

So I don’t want to take anything away from those programs, but this program’s, not that you get a lot of that here in our program, but we are really building a ability or a wherewithal to navigate the cultural challenges that we’re facing really for the first time. Last 25 years have just presented unbelievable new challenges to being a pastor. If you’re going to engage the culture for Christ and people are lost, I don’t mean lost going to hell lost. I mean pastors are just going swimming in this, what am I going to do? Responding to this conflict into my church over sexuality? How do I navigate racism in my context? It seems like we’re divided and fighting each other. How do we understand what’s going on ideologically? It’s everywhere. It’s taking over my church. And so this is going to give you a breath of theological understanding where you can take a deep breath, trust Lord, and navigate with good questions and leadership and probably help a whole lot of other pastors as well as well. I think a good half of the program graduates are teaching in either a seminary or in a denominational processes helping people understand these issues.

We have people going to do their doctorate PhD from this program because it gives you such a good foundation. You can go to a Euro doctorate where you really don’t get the classwork foundation to go with a few, three or 4,000 euros. Not that that’s nothing. And develop yourself if you want to go that route. It’s a different kind of program and we’re very proud of it because we really have been, I don’t know of another program that quite does what we do and puts it all together in one place. We got some of the premier teachers in their fields teaching in all these various, we just talked about scriptural interpretation for context.

We got Cindy Westfall coming. We talk about how to engage cultural issues like racism, economics. We’ve got Jonathan Tran, we’ve had Mark Mulder teach ethnography for the last 10, 15 years. He’s a sociologist from Calvin that just does a great job. Al Roxburgh has been a part of this program since its beginning. He’s kind of thinking about leadership and how do we lead churches into context and he’s dealing with all the frameworks. I don’t know anyone who else who does that. So we have just figures guiding and teaching in the program and I don’t know anybody else who quite puts it together like this.

Gino Curcuruto:

Yeah, that’s really helpful.

David Fitch:

Course I’m bragging like crazy right now.

Gino Curcuruto:

Well, no,

Luke Stehr:

I think’s well deserved. Let another lips praise the

David Fitch:

I know Proverbs 27

Gino Curcuruto:

I do think because of time we probably want to wrap this up. It’s been super helpful to hear from you on this Fitch. I mean, I think we probably do have a couple of listeners, maybe not tons of people, so don’t worry about boasting a little bit about the program. We’re asking you to do it

Luke Stehr:

It’s probably just people in our cohort at this point.

Gino Curcuruto:

So you’re good. Chances of Michael Horton listening to this podcast, absolutely zero. So if you do,

David Fitch:

Michael, I love you and we have a disagreement. Let’s do a podcast on this one. Let’s get Michael Horton on this podcast. That’s great context and soteriology.

Gino Curcuruto:

That sounds great. We’re going to do that. So we’re going to wrap up for now, but thank you for being with us Fitch. Luke, always good to talk to you. We’re not going to say over and out because that’s like a radio thing that some other guy does, but we’ll just say we’ll catch you next time.

David Fitch:

Love you guys!

Luke Stehr:

Thanks.

Gino Curcuruto:

Thank you.

We’ll interview faculty, graduates, and current students from the Contextual Theology program at Northern. Northern Seminary’s Contextual Theology program has already been so helpful for us.

And we thought it would be great to dive into all of the amazing things that Northern’s graduates and students learn as they become contextual theologians.

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