Guam: Report #1
Sacred Saga Team
12 Comments
Professor and Theologian
On The Far Side of the World:
Report # 1
It really is the “Far Side of the World.” If you look on a map of the Pacific Ocean, you will see the tiny island of Guam— motto: “Where American begins its day.” (If you ever wonder if the world will end today, relax. Since Guam is across the International Date Line it is already tomorrow here! ) It is the largest and southernmost island of the Marianas. Despite what we 
all learned in school about Mt. Everest being the tallest mountain in the world, the island of Guam actually has that honor. It rises from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean in the Mariana Trench which is over seven miles deep. Although not volcanically active, it is in an earthquake zone (we experienced a 5.4 earthquake on the first day I was here. But as a Californian I didn’t even feel it!). It also regularly falls victim to devastating typhoons.
Despite the fact that it is rainy season, the weather here has been beautiful. It has rained every day, but only briefly. It is hot and humid the days are normally 85 degrees + with humidity to match, the breeze has come up daily to moderate the heat. (Kay would feel right at home--the weather is like that in the Amazon jungle where she grew up.)
Pacific Islands Bible College (where I am teaching) was founded in 1976 as the Micronesian Institute for Biblical Studies on the Island group of Chuuk (about 500 miles SE of Guam) serving students on the Chuuk Islands (the culture there is tribal and primitive even compared to the tribal cultures of the other Micronesian Islands). Its mission is to train native Micronesians for pastoral ministry so they would not need to send students across the ocean for their education. Eventually several campuses were established: two on the Chuuk Islands, one on Palau (an Island nation of about 30,000 people closely connected to the USA) about 1000 miles west of Chuuk, a campus on Pohnapei about 400 miles east of Chuuk. In 1997 a new central campus was established on Guam for strategic reasons and since that time the student enrollment has increased nearly two and one half times to about 225 students.
This year PIBC inaugurated a new Seminary (tentatively named Pacific Islands Bible Seminary) to offer Master’s Degrees (they have attained accreditation from the accrediting association). Its vision goes beyond the school’s original mission and looks toward becoming an educational hub for training pastors all over the Pacific Rim. The initial seminary class of 10 has drawn students from Korea, China, and the Philippines(2), from the Micronesian country of Palau as well as from the territories of Chuuk (thePacific Island chain where Truuk Lagoon, the site of a huge navy battle between the US & Japan in WWII is located) andtwo from the USA!
I have been in class a week now. I am finding that the students though few, are thoroughly engaged and even more eager to work and learn than many students I have taught in the states. They are eager to see how theology can connect to their own culture and how what we as Christians can penetrate their cultures in a vital way.
Hedrick, one of the students in my Introduction to Theology class who, after graduating from PIBC, went back to his home country, the tiny island nation of Palau, to work in his church. The experience produced great frustration. Although he had been grounded in the Bible and learned doctrine, he could not figure out how to relate what he had learned to his culture. He has come to seminary with a burning desire to learn how to communicate and relate the liberating truths of the gospel to a Christian culture that has become rigid and legalistic. The church in Palau has and taken on nineteenth-century American cultural mores left over from the days of American missionaries as defining what it means and looks like to be a Christian, and in the process has become estranged from the rest of Palau’s culture. (They are entrenched in American sensibilities e.g. in the tropical heat, the church even insists that their pastors wear ties when preaching. Note: this is in an environment that causes heat stroke to new-comers [no air-conditioning there!]. Hedrick has become the class leader consistently asking probing questions about the contextualization of the gospel in culture without compromising God’s eternal truth. He also has been on mission trips to New Guinea, has a real burden for the indigenous people there as well, and hopes to spend time ministering the gospel on the front line helping establish churches there in a context that is hostile to Christianity.
As they say in Guam, “Hafa Adai!” (roughly equivalent to the Hawaiian Aloha!)
& Blessings
Jim
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