Bethel Seminary

Kent Eaton

Mark Harden

Justin Irving

Jeanine Brown

David Howard

Ben Lim

Doug Magnusan

Sam Rima

Glen Scorgie

Mark Strauss

Keith Olson

John Lillis

Bethel Seminary’s mission to “advance the gospel of Jesus Christ among all people in culturally sensitive ways” is richly evident in the summer choices of faculty. In June, July, and August, just when professors could take a well-deserved break from all-day speaking and late-night class preparation, many continue doing just that-sometimes through jet lag and adjustments to another culture.

Faculty involvement in global ministry is just one way the stage was set for Bethel Seminary’s new Global and Contextual Studies degree long before it took shape as a formal program. Through these trips, seminary faculty share their academic and spiritual experience with overseas Christians and gain a firsthand look at what is happening in missions around the world-observations that benefit the ministries they visit as well as the seminary students they teach “back home.”

Each year, the Cross-Cultural Faculty Grant program supports selected faculty with financial help ranging from $500 to $2,000 each to study abroad and/or help with indigenous leader training in other cultures. Following is a summary of this year’s Cross-Cultural Faculty Grant recipients:

Kent Eaton, Professor of Pastoral Ministry; Associate Dean • Manipur
Eaton traveled for two weeks to Manipur, a politically tense region of India, where he ministered in a leadership camp for 11 Christian men and women engaged in full-time ministry. His teaching focused on vision and leadership. A colleague, Ben Lim, emphasized marriage and parenting in the minister’s family. The two were honored to sign certificates of rededication in a marriage recommitment ceremony. He and Lim stayed at a Catholic retreat center and enjoyed fellowship with the resident priests who insisted on hosting them for meals. “I gained a renewed passion for my call to engage all the beautiful manifestations of the church of Jesus Christ in the world,” Eaton said.

Mark Harden, Assistant Professor of Community Development; Director of Outreach and Community Development • Croatia
Harden saw the ravages of the 1990s Balkan war--bullet-pocked walls, human blood stains--in many places across Croatia's capital city of Zagreb. He also witnessed a populace suffering from post-traumatic stress in the form of apathy, high alcohol and drug use, and broken families. Rather than reaching out to this society in a spirit of community and ministry, however, the Christian church in Croatia, Harden observed, still reflects lingering antipathy between Serbians and Croations, and acts suppressed, as if still under government rule. With those assessments in hand, Harden plans to return this fall to help the local Croation churches begin reconciliation efforts empowered by the love and empathy of Christ.

Justin Irving, Instructor of Ministry Leadership • Peru
Irving spoke on servant leadership and team leadership to a training conference for Peruvian church leaders. The event was co-sponsored by the Evangelical Free Church and the Evangelical Seminary of Lima. While the Bible clearly teaches that leaders must be servants-a teaching the national pastors embraced-Irving said Peru’s cultural norm is to hold church leaders on a pedestal, making it difficult for the biblical model to occur. Irving is researching and sending resource materials to support local pastors in overcoming this cultural obstacle to healthy leadership. A highlight of the trip, Irving said, was participating in a dedication service for Peruvian elders of a church plant being turned over to nationals.

Jeannine Brown, Associate Professor of New Testament • England
Brown was on a spring and early summer sabbatical in Cambridge, England, studying at Tyndale House. She was preparing to write a new text on biblical hermeneutics, a task she finished shortly before fall semester resumed at Bethel Seminary. Though the time of concentrated thought and writing was productive, it was also challenging personally to be separated from her husband and children for an extended period of time, Brown shared. Despite loneliness, she needed to exercise discipline in declining social invitations in order to finish her solitary work. Aside from the fresh contribution her study and writing will make to the field of hermeneutics, Brown said she appreciated the opportunity to reflect on the ultimate kingdom meaning of her life of scholarship.

David Howard, Professor of Old Testament; Dean, Center for Biblical and Theological Foundations • Romania
Howard has traveled to Romania annually since 1998 (and biannually for many previous years) to teach at Immanuel University, the only evangelical institution of higher education in Romania that has state accreditation. With 500 students enrolled in many fields including biblical and theological studies, Howard says Immanuel’s students truly “penetrate society” in the formerly Soviet state. His goal has been to support the growth of the biblical and theological studies program, which has made great strides in the past year with the hiring of a Ph.D.-level faculty member. Howard intends to prepare a Bethel Seminary student to work at Immanuel during part of the 2005-2006 school year.

Ben Lim, Associate Professor of Marital and Family Therapy • Malaysia
Lim ministered with his colleague, Kent Eaton, in Manipur, India, “the heartland of Hinduism” and later went on to Malaysia. There he taught pastoral counseling to Malaysians who have been in the pastorate for some time, but needed training in how to help their congregations with widespread domestic and personal issues. Another leg of Lim’s trip took him to Mongolia, where he preached to some of the country’s poorest citizens. In one site, he visited tent-dwelling Christians who had erected a church on a trash dump. “It came to me that I should preach on the text, ‘He was rich but became poor for our sake, so we who are poor might become rich,’” Lim shared. “The joy with which the tent people sang-to me, that was riches.”

Sam Rima, Director, Doctor of Ministry and Leadership Enrichment • Cameroon
Rima’s trip, scheduled for last spring and summer, was postponed until January 2006 due to a conflict. He will be traveling to this African nation for two weeks to teach leadership in a Cameroon seminary. Meanwhile, this fall Rima plans to travel to Amman, Jordan, to explore the secular leadership training program of the University of Buckingham. Rima hopes that discussions with the university will open doors for Doug Magnuson, associate professor of intercultural programs and director of Muslim studies, to teach in the Buckingham program. Magnuson recently relocated to the Middle East for a time of observation and study.

Glen Scorgie, Professor of Theology • Malaysia, Brunei, China
Scorgie says one of Bethel’s “draws” for him nine years ago was its vision for being a home base for missions to Asia. Scorgie taught Introduction to a Christian Worldview and Christians in a Pluralistic Society at the Malaysian Baptist Theology Seminary in Penang. Students came from Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, India, Nepal, China, and other Asian countries. He later taught in a large Christian house church in the tiny Muslim kingdom of Brunei. Finally, he flew to Beijing, where he stayed with Bethel Seminary San Diego graduates, met 25 house church leaders, and explored the potential for guest-teaching Christian studies in Chinese universities in the coming year. “Maybe we’re witnessing God’s work of His Spirit to prepare China” for its predicted place of leadership in the world, says Scorgie. “I feel at best like Moses on Mount Nebo, increasingly seeing our students running with the ball [of Christian witness] in their own countries. It is a lasting joy.”

Other Bethel Seminary faculty members served overseas last summer through means outside the official Cross-Cultural Faculty Grant program. Those individuals include:

Mark Strauss, Professor of New Testament • Malawi
Strauss was accompanied by his son Daniel and a team from Flood Church of San Diego to train Christian leaders at two conferences in this African nation, one for pastors and one at a university.

Keith Olson, Professor, Marital and Family Therapy; Administrator of the MFT program • Taiwan
Olson spent a week teaching at the Methodist Graduate School of Theology.

John Lillis, Dean, Executive Officer, San Diego • Russia
Lillis conducted a leadership seminar in Saransk in June.