“The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children.”

- D.Bonhoeffer

Amongst the many themes which emerged in Luther’s struggle during the Reformation period, what are the historical resources we can tap on as we confront the issues of our day as Christians and the Church in Malaysia? In what ways do we see similarities and differences, what could be ways forward?

What kind of “reformation” is needed for Christians and the Church in Malaysia today as we are faced with much uncertainties and challenges both internally and externally in all social, cultural, political, theological dimensions? How can we discern God’s will and know Him in the midst of our struggle to be faithful to the Gospel here and now?

When?
Friday, 31 October 2008 @ 8.00 pm

Where?
The Father’s House
Bangsar Lutheran Church
(see location map)

Who?
Rev Sivin Kit
Lutheran Church in Malaysia & Singapore

Rev Wolfgang Grieninger
Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria

Course Description

This survey course is designed to introduce you to the rich and diverse tapestry of Christianity from the dawn of the Reformation in Western Europe (early 1500s) to the close of the 20th century. While the primary focus will be on developments within Western Christianity, the course will incorporate expressions of the global history of Christianity.

Lectures, discussions, and readings are designed to introduce you to the key historical events, personages and movements that have shaped Christianity over the last five millennia. Through a lively interaction with this past, you should develop a clearer understanding of the roots and developments of your own particular tradition, to engage in ecumenical conversation with other traditions, and to historically situate your and other traditions within the global family of Christianity.

Course Objective

• Survey major events, theological trends, institutions, and movements in the church from Reformation to the present day
• Develop the faculty of reading and analyzing primary texts

Instructors

• Rev Wolfgang Grieninger
  MTh (Tubingen)
  Wolfgang is an ordained minister of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria (ELCB) and currently serves as a adjunct lecturer in Lutheranism in Seminari Theologi Malaysia. He is also seconded by the ELCB to the LCMS as a consultant in Lutheran theology. Apart from serving in various congregations in Bavaria, Wolfgang was Lutheran Chaplain of the University of Papua New Guinea from 1993 to 1996.
• Rev Sivin Kit
  BTh (STM, Malaysia); MTheo candidate (SEAGST)
  Sivin is an ordained minister of the Lutheran Church in Malaysia and Singapore (LCMS) and pastor of Bangsar Lutheran Church. Sivin is primarily concerned about ecclesiastical interactions with local social-political realities and desires to see the emergence of more contextual responses towards these realities. He brings with him a wealth of pastoral and missional perspectives in contribution to this conversation so as to ensure that our constructions are based on realistic observations.

Class Format & Participation

Students are required to attend and participate in all lectures. The class will begin with a short introduction to the topic followed by class discussion of the assigned primary and secondary texts. The class format requires all students to read the assigned readings and be prepared for class discussion. Class discussion will include answering questions and highlighting the main points in secondary readings.

Primary texts will be carefully analyzed since these texts are our primary window to the world of the Reformation and beyond Coming prepared to class is crucial for the success of your learning experience. Be prepared to be called on to participate in class discussion. Class discussions are a means to train students to read and analyze church texts on the historical and theological level.

Course Requirements

• An assignment of 1500 – 2000 words
• Short essay of 1000 words

Readings

Required Text

One of the following:

• Hill, Jonathan; Zondervan Handbook to the History of Christianity; Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing Company, 2007; ISBN: 978-0-31026-270-1
• Marty, Martin E.; A Short History of Christianity; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1987; ISBN: 978-0-80061-944-2
• Olson, Roger E.; The Story of Christian Theology; Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1999; ISBN: 978-0-83081-505-0
• Shelley, Bruce. Church History in Plain Language; Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1995; ISBN: 978-0-84993-861-0

Recommended Resources

• González, Justo L; The Story of Christianity: Volume Two – The Reformation to the Present Day; New York: HarperOne, 1985; ISBN: 978-0-06063-316-5
• Irvin, Dale & Sunquist, Scott; History of the World Christian Movement, Vol 1; Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2001; ISBN: 978-1-57075-396-1
• History of the World Christian Movement Companion Website; <http://www.hwcmweb.org/>

Schedule

Classes will be held weekly on Tuesday evenings from 21 October 2008:

Time
8.00pm – 10.00pm

Venue
The Father’s House
Bangsar Lutheran Church
(see location map)

Registration & Fees

LBTI Student Registration Fee
RM 10.00
(first time LBTI students only)

Credit Course Fee (3 Credit Hours)
RM 260.00

Audit Course Fee
RM 130.00

To register, download this registration form and submit the completed form according to the instructions therein.

preLUDE may be right for you if any of the following describe you and your current place in the journey of faith:

• I want to explore issues of faith, or a spiritual life, or relationship with God.
• I want to explore getting baptised.
• Although already baptised, I want to explore beyond the faith community in which I was baptised and am wondering about becoming part of BLC’s community life.
• I have been baptised and confirmed in another tradition, but want to explore becoming an Lutheran.
• I have always been a Lutheran, but at this point in my life I want to explore deepening my understanding of what it means to be a Lutheran.

The basic texts that we use are the Bible and Luther’s Small Catechism but we are intentional in making the experience open ended and interactive.

Individuals who participate in preLUDE will find that it can lead to a number of different possible next steps in their journey of faith: further questioning and exploration, baptism, affirmation of baptism vows, or membership into the Lutheran community via BLC. preLUDE is also useful to take for personal enrichment and spiritual nourishment.

Starting Date
Sunday, 12 October 2008

Class Times
12.00 pm – 1.00 pm

Venue
The Father’s House
(location map)

To register or to find out more, fill in the form below:

[contact-form 2 "Catechism Registration"]

On October 10 – 11, a group of friends and fellow pilgrims on the journey have decided to bring our minds and hearts into a common focus. You are invited to join us along the way.

Spend 1 ½ days with a team of cutting-edge theological thinkers and social scientific thinkers like Tricia Yeoh, Rev Dr Jojo Fung, Dr Helen Ting, Dr Sherman Kuek, Rev Sivin Kit, Veronica Ann Retnam, Alwyn Lau, and P. Sakthivel as they describe, interpret and analyse the current state of our nation from a Christian perspective. Together, we will then try to work out a concrete plan for a restoration of hope for Malaysia.

There is a certain open ended-ness (or “open source”-ness) in the agenda more so because we cannot orchestrate end results prematurely in times like today. But what we can do is to converge our individual efforts, cross-fertilize ideas, cultivate new networks, and work out baby steps forward together.

We worked out a basic framework we can all explore together … this is a chance also to affirm existing efforts as well as forge new ones. Shall we the Church in all it’s shapes and sizes, forms and functions … emerge from our slumber or sense of inadequacy … and converge towards a future together with all our unique gifts and contributions?

Dates
10 October 2008, 1.00 pm – 5.30 pm
11 October 2008, 9.00 am – 5.30 pm

Venue
Bangsar Lutheran Church
23, Jalan Abdullah
off Jalan Bangsar
53000 Kuala Lumpur

Registration Fees
RM 10.00
(for materials, refreshments and lunch on 11 October)

Closing Date
8 October 2008

For enquiries or registration, please contact roh.malaysia@gmail.com

Download the flyer here to pass the word around, have a look at what’s planned and also get a brief profile of the panelists.

You may download a pdf from LBTI Church History Course Details and Enrolment form

I’ve included something to encourage you to consider the value of Church History.

Top Ten Reasons to Read Christian History

War’s reports deluge us every hour. Why should we read the “old news” of Christian history?
by Chris Armstrong

In a time of war, everything seems to hinge on The Now. But more than ever, it is really a time when we must be in touch with our history—especially, our sacred history.

But why?

These are our “Top ten reasons to read Christian history.”

No, this is not a plug for our magazine. You can read Christian history in many other places: Biographies. Histories of Western Civilization (e.g. Jacques Barzun’s From Dawn to Decadence). Novels (e.g. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin). You can even “read” Christian history on the walls of museums, like the Art Institute of Chicago.

And this, in fact, is …

Reason #1

Because Christian history is everywhere in our culture. No matter what your religious background (or lack thereof), you just can’t understand the modern, Western world—including its wars—unless you know your Christian history!

I was interviewing for an academic position at a small midwestern college, and the committee asked me this: How would you convince our undergraduates to take a course in Christian history? I answered: I would suggest they look around them. So many aspects of American culture come from Christian sources:

Biblical expressions embedded in our language. Christian ethical positions—though dimly remembered and now honored most often in the breach. Assumptions about who human beings are and what we’re doing on this planet—although again, fragmented and unmoored from the theology that once anchored them. Musical styles—even rock’n’roll owes much to slave spirituals and gospel “shouts.”

There’s more. Holidays—Easter, Christmas, even Halloween may all include “pagan” elements, but their frame of reference was always thoroughly Christian. Oh, and let’s not forget St. Patrick’s Day! Art—stroll through almost any Western art exhibit and just try to avoid Christian references, explicit and implicit. Science—I won’t repeat the list of “Christian fathers of the scientific revolution”—see the archive of articles from our issue 76, online. …

If you live in America, or anywhere in the West, your whole environment is soaked in “leftover Christianity.”

Reason #2

Because it liberates you from the tyranny of the present—and of the recent past. The ever-quotable C. S. Lewis put it like this:

“I don’t think we need fear that the study of a day and period, however prolonged, however sympathetic, need be an indulgence in nostalgia or an enslavement to the past. In the individual life as the psychologists have taught us, it’s not the remembered past, it’s the forgotten past that enslaves us. And I think that’s true of society. … I think no class of men are less enslaved to the past than historians. It is the unhistorical who are usually without knowing it enslaved to a very recent past.” (From a radio adaptation of Lewis’s inaugural lecture as Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature given at Cambridge on Nov. 29, 1954; see issue 7: C. S. Lewis.)

During wartime, Lewis sharpened the point. He compared the reader of history to the man who has lived in many places. This man “is not likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village; the scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age.” (”Learning in War-Time,” in The Weight of Glory.)

Reason #3

Because life is too short to learn by experience. To echo Lewis’s words that we’ve just heard, “the scholar has lived in many times.” What a rich way to grow in wisdom! Though experience can be the best teacher for some things, for others it does not take us far at all.

Job’s friend, Bildad the Shuhite, had it right (for once): “Ask the former generations and find out what their fathers learned, for we were born only yesterday and know nothing, and our days on earth are but a shadow. Will they not instruct you and tell you? Will they not bring forth words from their understanding?” (Job 8:8-10).

Reason #4

Because whatever question is on your mind, someone smarter than you has already seen it clearer, thought about it longer, and expressed it better. Why reinvent the wheel? Also falling under this heading: There are no new heresies—only old ones in new clothes. And again, they’ve all been answered with more wisdom and erudition than we’ll ever be able to muster.

Reason #5

Because the deeper our roots, the higher we grow. Believers are all part of a “Dead Christians Society.” We have far more brothers and sisters in the faith who are no longer around than we do contemporary saints. Lets get to know them. And while we slog it out on earth as members of the Church Militant, the Church Triumphant is pulling for us from heaven.

What a shame to lose a sense of the communion of saints—the “cloud of witnesses” urging us to go on. The heroism, tears, toil, and triumphs of “Dead Christians” can inspire the living.

“Exhibit A” is surely the Martyrs. Blaise Pascal put it like this: “The example of the deaths of Christian martyrs move us, for they are our members, having a common bond with them, so that their devotion inspires us not only by their example, but because we should have the same [qualities].”

Reason #6

Because reading Christian history is a great way to meet fascinating people and hear dramatic, colorful stories. History is all about people. Memorable people. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once put it, “There is properly no history, only biography.” And Thomas Carlyle added, “Biography is the most universally pleasant and profitable of all reading.” Those Victorians had it right—and nothing sizzles like the stories of the saints!

Reason #7

Because reading Christian history helps root out prejudice and foster sympathy and humility. It’s so easy to think “The Church ‘R’ Us.” It ain’t. Most Christian believers look—and have looked, in past centuries—very different than we do. They’ve had different questions, different assumptions, different “lifestyles,” different approaches to the Christian life, different strategies for evangelism, teaching, preaching, sacramental life, social action. …

From the little we may have heard about some of those differences, we’ve probably already put some of our brothers and sisters in a box marked: “Weird.” But in the words of historian Jacques Barzun, reading history “tempers absolute partisanship by showing how few monsters of error there have been.” The more we read about other Christians, the more we get to walk in their shoes and gain respect for their approaches to the faith.

That’s a good thing, because the church today is a body with a wide (and sometimes wild!) variety of members. Knowing more about the past, we gain insight into the practices and problems of other Christians in the present. We may become less critical of others—and even more aware of our own shortcomings and limited perspectives.

Reason #8

Because reading Christian history shows us how we got where we are today. Where did all those denominations come from? How did the distinctive beliefs and practices of my own church develop? What’s the big deal over Calvinism and Arminianism?

Reason #9

Because … well, if #8 depresses you by reminding you of the disunity and dysfunction of the church, then consider this reason, too: We need to read Christian history to remind us of our mission. Although we live in “the world” (Augustine called it the City of Man), we are “citizens of another place” (the City of God). We have a mission strange to many of those around us, a mandate to be “in this world but not of it.”

We all are members of local church bodies (or, as my friend Allan Poole likes to say, “outposts of the Kingdom”). Wherever we worship, when we step out of the church doors we still need to “be the church”—salt, light, Different. A powerful way to prepare ourselves for that mission is to read how Christians of the past have sowed the Gospel into their cultures.

Lutheran theologian Joseph Sittler puts it like this. The church, through studying its history, “looks inside herself,” into her own “nature and mission.” When she does this, “she is less likely to take her cues from the business community, the corporation, or the market place” (see Reason #2).

Reason #10

Like the wine at the Cana wedding feast, the best reason has been saved for last: We should read Christian history because Christianity is a historical religion, based on a historical person and the words of two “Testaments” full of historical accounts.

Nineteenth-century liberal theologians liked to talk about the “essence of Christianity”—usually little more than “the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man”—that needed to be extricated from the centuries of errant doctrines and practices of a church that never seemed to get it right. (The problem with this approach, as a wit once observed, is that those nineteenth-century liberals, when they read Christian history, looked down the well of 19 centuries and saw their own faces at the bottom.) But there is no “essence” that is not clothed in history. Christianity is all about the Incarnation of God’s second person as a first-century Jew from Nazareth.

And naturally, then, the New Testament is no philosophical book of abstract teachings. It is a narrative of a life, a sacrifice, a resurrection—played out on the stage of history. And the Book of Acts and the Letters, following the model of the Old Testament’s “historic” books, just picks up the story from Easter. When you read Christian history, you’re paging through the 29th chapter of Acts.

So next time you’re tempted to tune in for the 200th update on the war in Iraq, think about a few of these reasons, or fill in your own. Then start reading Christian history—or should I say, biography? The “cloud of witnesses” awaits.

Questions Addressed:

• How does God speak to us?
• What does it mean to feel called by God?
• What has God communicated to us through Jesus?
• What is prayer?

Where:
Bangsar Lutheran Church

When:
Wednesday, 27 June 2007 @ 8.00pm

Who:
Rev. Sivin Kit

This will be one of the important questions we hope to deal with for this session.

Where:
Bangsar Lutheran Church

When:
Wednesday, 13 June 2007 @ 8.00pm

Who:
Rev. Sivin Kit

This seminar aims at presenting effective parenting from biblical perspective and will give a balance view of parenting with respect to the physical, emotional and spiritual aspects of the growth of the child.

It grows out of my experience as a consultant paediatrician and my concern for the current emphasis on parenting for performance and achievement at the expense of a balanced growth of the child. It is our responsibility as parents to grow a GENIUS child.

What Is A GENIUS Child?

GROWING NORMALLY
EMOTIONAL QUOTIENT
NUTRITION
INTELLIGENCE QUOTIENT
UTMOST POTENTIAL
SPIRITUAL QUOTIENT

Seminar Topics

• Session 1 : June 30
  Growing a GENIUS Child
• Session 2 : July 1
  Empowering a GENIUS Child

Language: English

Seminar Fees

RM 30.00 per person
RM 50.00 for both spouses attending together

Childcare will be provided for toddlers and older kids with a concurrent programme in an adjacent room.

There is a room for nursing mothers as well for breastfeeding and changing.

Date, Time & Location

June 30 – July 1, 2007
2.30 pm – 6.30 pm

Bangsar Lutheran Church
23, Jalan Abdullah,
off Jalan Bangsar
59000 Kuala Lumpur

About The Speaker

Dr. Alex Tang is a senior consultant paediatrician at the Johor Specialist Hospital, Johor Bahru and is part of the teaching faculty of Monash University School of Medicine in Malaysia. He earned his medical and theological degrees from Malaysia, the United Kingdom and the United States. He is the chairman of the Johor Branch of the Malaysian Paediatric Association.

Alex and his family worships at Holy Light Church (English) in Johor Bahru, Malaysia where he also serves as a deacon and is the director of the Spiritual Formation Institute.

For more information about Alex, visit www.kairos2.com.

Registration & Enquiries

Download the brochure here (PDF) and send in your registration by post, fax or e-mail.

For further details, please feel free to get in touch with us:

Phone / Fax : 03.2284.5928 (Adeline)