Introduction This is the fourth and final (and longest – sorry…) of my posts interacting with the observations Geoff Folland , national director of Power To Change Australia, made earlier this year about the opportunities and challenges facing the Australian evangelical Christian higher education sector. My first post introduced the series and summarised the four institutional approaches to ministry formation which Geoff has observed within the Australian Christian higher education sector. My second post reflected on how I think post-Christendom has affected the broad cultural context in which Christian leadership formation takes place. My third post showed how I think Geoff describes three different patterns of theological and ministerial formation which reflect different assumptions about who possesses the authority to define effective Christian leadership therefore form Christian leaders. I’m now going to try to apply all the above to my particular p...
This is the third of four posts interacting with Geoff Folland’s observations about the opportunities and challenges facing the Australian evangelical Christian higher education sector. My first post introduced the series and summarised the four institutional approaches to ministry formation which Geoff has observed within the Australian Christian higher education sector. My second post reflected on how I think post-Christendom has affected the broad cultural context in which Christian leadership formation takes place. In this third (and so far longest – sorry…) post I’m going to show how Geoff ends up describing three different patterns of theological and ministerial formation which reflect different assumptions about the nature of responsible Christian ministry. I’m not convinced that “[t]he decisive divide is not primarily theological [but] economic” [1] and that “similar theological commitments can [therefore] produce very different institutional strategies.” [2] ...