Trip To Chuuk

I just returned from a trip to two of our PIU sites in Chuuk and Pohnpei. I spent Monday to Wednesday in Chuuk and then finished out the week in Pohnpei. In Chuuk we were working on completing the Memorandum of Understanding we have with our partners at Berea Christian School and revising the MOU we have with Faithwalk Christian College on Tol island in Faichuuk. I am happy to report that the agreements were completed. We have been operating with 17 students on the FCC campus for almost one school year now, with one full-time PIU teacher, Jered Hunter, employed there and two local adjunct teachers. We are hoping to grow that partnership with more students and local teachers. At Berea, led by PIU full-time faculty Iotaka Choram, we have re-established the the PIU teaching facility and distance education center. We share use of a library and computer lab with Berea Christian School and are working on an agreement with Chuuk High School as well. We would ask you to pray that these centers would grow and PIU would be able to play a part in training young people to serve their communities with a biblical worldview, provide degree completion programs for teachers and continuing education for church workers.

More Stuff We Do on Guam

We do love living on Guam. Of course we enjoy our ministry at PIU but we also enjoy island life in general. I can’t think of another place I would rather live. The picture above was taken on our driveway. This bush (it is really two bushes, but they have become intertwined) blooms with both bougainvillea (pictured here) and night-blooming jasmine. We do a lot of the same things that people do on the Mainland (we do miss some mainland events like autumn) and we also get to live on a tropical island.

We enjoy our church family, Grace fellowship, where we get to fellowship with family and friends. I like the welcoming friendly atmosphere and open discussion format.

We like the improving roads. This is the newly completed intersection at the bottom of Macheche and Alegata

We go to exciting PIU volleyball games on Saturday mornings

We get to see our grandchildren get their achievement awards at Adacao Elementary

“FOCUS” on 2017

Last Thursday night the April FOCUS night was a preview of opportunities for the next school year. After a short talk by me on how we can do a better job of living out the gospel with our neighbors and with each other, followed by a talk from Provost, Juan Flores, about how island cultures work together with PIU culture and gospel culture, the meeting centered on ministry, scholarship and program opportunities PIU students will have in the 2016-17 school year.

Juan also explained the new emphasis in international business within our Liberal and Biblical Studies bachelor’s degree programs. Students can take 6 classes that focus on Christian ethics in business, developing professionals with a biblical worldview and supporting graduates’ roles as effective business leaders in Micronesia and the rest of the world.

The students also had the opportunity to get help from PIU staff and faculty to complete scholarship applications (PIU students are eligible to receive Title IV grants, state and national scholarships and various private foundation scholarships.) An important objective of our “Accessibility” goal is that no qualified student is denied a Christian higher education because of financial limitations.

Paul and the Faithfulness of God Chapter 8

With this post we come to the end of Book One of Paul and the Faithfulness of God, vol. 4, Christian Origins and the Question of God, by N. T. Wright. I continue to make a post on each chapter as I read them. Previous posts are here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. Each chapter is very long so what you are getting here is a very brief summary of this very important book. I welcome comments and discussion on my Facebook page. I am using the Logos version of the book.

Chapter 8 concludes book 1 and forms a bridge to a discussion of Paul’s theology in Book 2. In this chapter he shows how he thinks Paul would have answered the 5 big questions that form the basis of one’s worldview. The first question is “Who are we?” We are the one family of God, the people of the promised seed of Abraham.

Paul’s central answer to the question, ‘Who are we?’, is: ‘We are the Messiah’s people, defined by our membership “in” him, marked out by our sharing of his pistis, celebrating our status as having died and been raised “with” him, living in the “age to come” which he has inaugurated. 544–545

By defining himself and his communities in terms of the crucified and risen Messiah, Paul has not ceased to be profoundly Jewish. But in the Messiah, he might have said, he has discovered a new way, or perhaps we should say the new way, to be Jewish. This, he would certainly have said, is what it means to be ‘Jewish’ in the ‘age to come’, which is already present. 545

The second question is “Where are we?” We live in God’s good creation in the process of being remade. Jesus already rules as LORD and we live, work and enjoy his world as citizens of his kingdom.

Jesus’ followers do not live in the created world as aliens, however much it may feel like that when surrounded by the murky muddle of so much street-level paganism and the arrogance of power. They live there as the rightful citizens of the coming kingdom, the subjects of the king who has already been enthroned and will one day complete his work of restorative justice. 547

The next two questions are “What’s Wrong, and What’s the Solution?” The problem is that the kingdom has not yet been fully established. The solution is the return of King Jesus to set things right. In the meantime we live in the power of the resurrection, through the Spirit, as we confront evil through prayer, suffering persecution and faithfulness to Jesus’ mission to make disciples.

Above all, then, the ‘solution’ is the full establishment of the Messiah’s rule over the whole world, reaching its goal when he ‘hands over the kingly rule to God the father … so that God may be all in all’. It is vital that we understand the parousia, the ‘royal appearing’ of Jesus the Messiah, in Paul’s own way, which involves the establishment of the Messiah’s rule over the whole world, rather than in the modernist ways which involve the obliteration or the abandonment of the world. 550

The final question is “When?” or “What time is it?” We live in the “present evil age” in which evil’s power to enslave and dominate is over, but it has not been eradicated. We have not yet reached maturity and neither has the whole creation. The present age has “overlapped” with the age to come. We are called to live the life of the age to come in the present age.

In the deep places of Paul’s worldview, here revealed but everywhere assumed, the ‘expectation’ of the return of the lord from his present life in heaven, to join heaven to earth and thereby to transform the present world and the bodies of his people, means already in the present a totally different kind of life from those whose horizon is bounded by ‘what is on the earth’. 554

Paul has stated about as emphatically as he could that the present time, the time of the Messiah and of the strange apostolate through which God’s covenant faithfulness in the Messiah is embodied before the world, is the new, special time for which the whole creation had been waiting. 558

Maturity lies in the celebration of messianic time within the muddle and misery of the present age. Such a stance leaves behind both the gloomy pessimist who sees nothing but continuing corruption and decay and the grinning optimist who supposes that the resurrection is past already. The mature mixture of times is foundational to Paul’s entire worldview. 562

For Paul, the worldview of 2nd Temple Judaism has been transformed by the coming, death, resurrection of the Messiah and the sending of the Spirit. In Jesus, the promises of the covenant have been fulfilled and he was responsible to be part of the fulfillment of the “blessing of all the families of the earth” as the “apostle to the Gentiles.”

Where Saul the Pharisee hoped and prayed for Israel’s God to come back at last, to unveil his sovereignty, his righteousness and his faithfulness before the watching world, Paul the apostle believed that the one God had already done all this in and as Jesus the Messiah and in and through the spirit. 566–567

The more time we spend in the careful reading of Paul, and in the study of his worldview, his theology and his aims and intentions, the more he emerges as a deeply coherent thinker. His main themes may well not fit the boxes constructed by later Christian dogmatics of whatever type. They generate their own categories, precisely as they are transforming the ancient Jewish ones, which are often sadly neglected in later Christian dogmatics. 568

Friday Chapel at PIU

Friday’s chapel at PIU featured the ladies’ worship team and Pastor Daniel from the Lutheran Church of Guam. The ladies led us in several songs, including a couple action songs, to get us moving, and a reading of Colossians 3. Pastor Daniel led us in a “post-resurrection” meditation on what Jesus was trying to get across to his disciples before he ascended. His text was the last section of John 20. He focused on the fact that Jesus has empowered us for our mission to continue the work of Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. Because Jesus is really alive, we need to have no fear that we will be inadequate for the task.

I enjoy listening to a preacher who preaches with energy and passion. Pastor Daniel’s energy drew us into the message. Besides being encouraging, it was a good example of how to preach the Word of God.

Grace Chapel (and other stuff at PIU)

We are moving quickly toward the end of the semester at PIU. Just 4 weeks to go and then we will launch right into summer semester in May. That’s why it is so important to stop a couple times per week for chapel and think through why we do what we do. Tuesday’s chapel was especially good for that. Bible professor Ken Dixon led us in a meditation on, “what is Grace?” It is such a huge subject that goes beyond the simple theological definitions we use (which are still very helpful though). He used the opening scene from Les Miserables as a practical example of what grace is and how it is lived out. It was a very good reminder that everything we have and are is a gift of God for which we should be grateful. Thanks Ken.

Speaking of God’s good gifts… Mike and His Christian Literature class enjoy the gift God has given us of our beautiful campus to have class outside.

Late Family Easter Celebration

No, this is not a delayed past. Joyce did not arrive back on Guam until a couple days after Easter Sunday, so we had our family Easter celebration last Saturday afternoon and evening. The kids did not mind that we stretched out the holiday and they enjoyed the gifts that grandma brought back from her trip. Here are few pictures of our celebration.

All 4 kids took a swim in the little pool. Arete enjoyed the water very much.

The kids lined up for the Easter Egg Hunt. They look ready don’t they?

We hid 45 eggs in our backyard. They found every one, with a little help.

Then it was time to pose with their treasures…

…Or maybe eat the treasures and take a rest

We took dozens of pictures of Mike, Sam and family. Maybe we got one or two where everyone is looking at the camera.

We are enjoying the family time here while we have have it…

…and the baby time