Discerning the essence and mission of the church in the midst of COVID-19

This article reflects on how the COVID-19 pandemic gives the church an opportunity to reconsider what the centre of God’s mission is for the congregation. It will engage on the implications of its reflections for public practical theology and congregational development. Spurred by an electronic opinion poll carried out by the author on six focus groups on WhatsApp platforms, averaging 200 participants each, during the lockdown days in Ghana, the question was put, “What one thing do you miss about church during the lock down period?” Majority of respondents mentioned communal fellowship (Konoinia) as the most missed aspect of congregational life. This article reflects on suggestions engendered by this observation and how it helps congregations to discern what makes them relevant to their members. Thus, helping congregations to envision the future, invoke dreams of a new creation where a return to normality will birth a world in which the church would take a new shape, presenting a fresh sense of missional community able to bring God to the people of our day.

Love, the law and religion:

To the question “Are we as humans obliged to something because it is good, or because it is prescribed by God?”, the Christian Church father Tertullian answered: we obey because of God's will. Today, many are inclined to give the first answer, and even to distrust people who follow Tertullian. In this article, however, the author demonstrates the continuing relevance of Tertullian’s paradigm about reason/will in modern political philosophy: for example, in Thomas Hobbes’ “decisionist” maxim: not truth, but the will of formal authority establishes the law. Or in the democratic combination of rational discussion and decisive majority will. This gives modern democracy the character of a ritual instead of a rational machinery: a kind of secular divine judgement. Also another issue allows us to demonstrate the lasting actuality of Tertullian’s paired concepts: the issue that a political community not only needs democratic legitimacy, but also national unity. Here also the relationship with the question of violence becomes relevant. The author presents four “dangerous liaisons” between love and rational justice. The basic intuition here is that we “not only want to live in a world which we are able to consider just, but in a reality which we experience as valuable in and of itself” (Paul W. Kahn). Love can strengthen rational justice, and vice versa; love can get in conflict with justice; justice can try to expand itself at the expensive of love; and – the other way around – love can drive us to the universal and transcend legal boundaries. As a conclusion, we can distinguish clearly between nationalism and patriotism. And second, we must admit that, while love will always destabilize law, the opposite is also true: we have to make calculations, so that justice can also destabilize love.

Apathy in caregiving –

Over the years little attention has been given to a practical theology of compassion. Even in the discussion on theopaschitic theology, and the implication of a theology of the cross for theory formation in practical theology and the praxis of ministry, the emphasis was mainly on reconciliation, forgiveness, and the notion of restorative justice. Ethical and moral issues dominated the discourse. In the meantime, it seems that people in their quest for a humane society, social justice and human dignity are exposed to a gradual inflation of compassion. The migrant crisis has become a crisis of replacement and apathy; xenophobia represents and antipathy of local communities towards strangers. The emphasis on wealth and importance in affluent societies create carelessness, insensitivity and even antipathy against the demands of strangers and poor people. Zygmunt Bauman (2013) refers to “moral blindness and the loss of sensitivity in liquid modernity”. At the same time, disillusionment breeds a kind of antipathetic anger, captured in a very poignant and harsh expression: “F*ck you” (Manson 2016). This phenomenon of antipathy and indifferentism had already been identified as a huge stumbling block for ministry in medieval times and life in monasteries. Sloth had been earmarked as one of the seven deadly sins. How then should a theology of compassion and the praxis of pastoral caregiving respond to these very challenging phenomena of apathy, indifferentism, sloth, and life fatigue?

Kerkorde en erediens

A church order and church service – Article 48 of the Church Order of the Dutch Reformed Church investigatedFor the church order of the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC), article 48, the core of a church service is the fact that the Triune God is meeting his church and that this meeting should be determined by the core truths or lines of the relationship between God and his church or believers. This point of departure for a church service has been maintained in article 48 since 1962. It is accepted by many churches and creates the understanding that a church service is initiated by God who speaks and his church or the believers who answer. The rhythm of God who speaks and the church who answers should be the basic movements in each service.The content and changes of church order article 48 of the DRC from 1962–2017 are investigated. Some of the changes reveal some thought or beliefs in the DRC on these issues at that time.

function of the Magnificat in its narrative setting

In analyzing conspicuous poetry placed in narrative contexts of the Old Testament, James Watts states that authors used the inset poetry to achieve certain distinguishable effects. Generally, inset poetry in the Bible does not have an impact on the narrative plot, so they likely have other purposes. Watts contends that inset poetry serves to “actualize” accompanying stories, interpreting them, and making them more real by involving the audience in the emotional components of the story. Using Watts’s theory of actualization, this study will examine the Magnificat as inset poetry, demonstrating how the affective components function to actualize the preceding narrative (Luke 1:1 ̶ 45).

The land is mine

The parables told by Jesus the Galilean, when read from a realistic perspective, can be seen as a window to the exploitative socio-economic, political and religious situation of the peasantry in first-century Roman Palestine. The Galilean’s parables picture this exploitative world, and also speak of ways to address the societal ills of his day. In an agrarian world, land meant life. For most of the peasantry, however, this was not the case anymore. In reaction to this situation, Jesus proclaimed the possibility of a world in which the land, especially its produce, belongs to everyone. This world he called the kingdom of God, a different kind of world, a world ruled by God’s generosity and goodness. In this world, everybody has enough.

Between cathedral and monastery: Creating balance between a pastor’s personal faith and public role

The journey to ordination begins with justification, in which the disciple experiences faith, hope and love in the midst of the Triune God. What follows is a process by which the Christian disciple learns what it means to be conformed to the likeness of Christ, who is prophet, priest, and king. Christ’s on-going ministry has relevance to the church because in Christ’s exaltation and Christ’s spiritual presence in the church, Christ continues to lead the church as king priest and prophet. The church is called to live out the real presence of Christ in its midst and the ordained leader has a significant role to play in helping the church to do this.

Access to land in sub-Saharan Africa: the church as an unnoticed accomplice

Access to land is still ideal for the majority of sub-Saharan Africans. The colonisers of Africa created the problem of access to land that indigenous Africans are still at pains with. The post-colonial African elite is still perpetuating this problem. The church benefited from the creation of this problem and sit at the table of privileged owners of vast pieces of land. This article is written from the perspective of someone who lives and serves in a sub-Saharan community of poverty. He is been observing local churches with vast pieces of land, limiting access to members only. In the meantime, the population around the church is confined in small spaces of land as family units. This article uses a biblical interpretive framework of Jerimiah 29:7 to stress about the role of the church as a peace agent that creates a shalom community around it. Such as community will be a hybrid between a Eurocentric view on land which value ownership with a title deed, and an Afrocentric view which values access of land to all without the need for individual ownership.

Volkskerk van Afrika en eerwaarde J.J.H. Forbes se teologie van antidiskriminasie, selfhelp en opvoeding

The Volkskerk van Afrika and Reverend J.J.H. Forbes' theology of anti-discrimination, self-help, and educationThis article wishes to analyse the key elements in the theology of the founder and first minister of the Volkskerk van Afrika, especially as regards anti-discrimination, self-help, and education. In order to understand the theology of Forbes, it is necessary to portray the historical rise of the Volkskerk van Afrika as a Christian Church with special reference to the circumstances surrounding the establishment of the Church in 1922. Thirdly, it is intended to discuss the relevance of the Volkskerk van Afrika for today.

African Biblical Interpretation of Matthew 20:1-15 in relation to social justice for workers in Cameroon

After the colonial era in the early sixties, the practice of employing and paying workers in Cameroon both in the civil service and in the private sector became very crucial, considering the fact that the situation of unemployment is so endemic to Cameroon as a paradigm for Africa’s unemployment. From an economic perspective, Cameroon has a booming labour force, but this robust manpower has been underutilized due to the provocative unemployment that is experienced in all sectors in the country. As an agrarian economy, the weakness of industrialization in Cameroon does not offer mass employment alternatives. Those who have the privilege to be employed are not satisfied with their remunerations to the extent that they try to use unorthodox means to add to their pay through corruption. This article highlights the desperate nature of Cameroonian workers through the lenses of Matthew 20:1-15. It is a society of unfair distribution of resources and this creates an imbalanced society between the privileged and non-privileged peasantry.