Guam: Report #2
Sacred Saga Team
15 Comments
Professor and Theologian
Back from
The Far Side of the World
Report # 2
Back to the near side of the world! This has been a hectic but very rewarding two months – sixteen days in Bulgaria, seventeen days at home and seventeen days on the “far side of the world.” I have just gotten back from Guam (but my body clock can’t yet figure out where I am).
Reflections on the trip:
- This trip was very different than my previous trips overseas. I was speaking in English—this of course makes the communication process much easier in one sense. I didn’t have to go through a translator. But since two-thirds of my class were not native English speakers I was responsible for making what I said accessible to the students.
I was teaching grad students rather than undergrads. This too changes the experience significantly on both my end and on the student end of the process. The students all came in as college graduates with a basic awareness (although far from a mastery) of history, philosophy and of course biblical studies. It is one thing to teach theology (what is done on an undergrad level), it is quite another to train students to think theologically and to apply that thinking in their own cultural context (what is done with the same material on the graduate level). - In Bulgaria I have taught those who were in many senses culturally western in their perspectives and thinking (although Bulgaria is a former member of the Russian communist block of nations its cultural and intellectual heritage is European as opposed to Asian). In Guam, the students by and large come from fairly primitive tribal cultures to which many of the issues that face westerners are very foreign.
For example, the tribal cultures in the Chuuk islands (about 600 miles south of Guam where Pacific Islands Bible College was first founded in 1976) are still rife with tribal blood feuds. (This area is not administered by the USA. It is part of the Federated States of Micronesia.) There are constant reports of medical personnel treating machete wounds arising out of these contexts. The authority structure among the Chuukese tribes invests the eldest daughter in a family with all the power.
A week
ago Wednesday evening I had dinner with a missionary couple who spent 20+ years ministering in Chuuk. Much of the evening revolved around conversation regarding students and the social structure of the families in the tribes and how that was reproduced in the social relationships among the PIBC (Pacific Islands Bible College) students from Chuuk. The wife told of one incident in which she had been involved many years ago: she had come to Chuuk as a single missionary from Germany to minister. One day when she was out swimming in the lagoon adjacent to the PIBC campus in Chuuk she was accosted by a drunk Chuukese man (who was a member of a powerful family) in a canoe who tried to kidnap her. She was able to get to shore and back to the college. The Chuukese man followed her to the college yelling threats and waving a machete. She took refuge in one of the buildings. He chopped on the louvers of one of the windows trying to get to her. The dean of the college, himself a member of the Chuukese tribe tried to calm the drunk down and get him to leave, but he wouldn’t be deterred. Finally, because of the danger the drunk posed he picked up a large stick and hit the man to disable him. Shortly thereafter the man’s family came and took him home.
The part of this story that is crazy to my western ears was the outcome: the tribal elders held the dean responsible for the confrontation and assessed a heavy fine even though it was the drunken man who had provoked the incident and endangered those around him.
These are the kinds of cultural assumptions that the students from the surrounding islands bring with them to college. The issues of Christianity confronting culture are right on the surface and a constant struggle.
- As I shared in my last update, the students at the seminary are primarily from the Pacific Rim. The
placement of the seminary in Guam makes tremendous strategic sense. The seminary is geographically placed to draw students from many Pacific Rim countries, students who would not otherwise be able to attend a Bible school let alone an accredited seminary due to costs.
The willingness of the students to be stretched and to engage in the material was gratifying and exciting to me. One of the joys of my life is to see the lights go on in student’s minds, the “ah-ha” moments. I was able to experience several of these with my students in the two weeks of classes. A mutual acquaintance told me that one student confided that she saw the Bible through an entirely new perspective as a result of her class experience.
- My next trip to Guam is scheduled for the late March-early April time frame. Pray for the students—they have a lot of work yet to do to finish the class. I am available to them by email and teleconference for the next few weeks as they labor.
Pray too for the faculty and staff of PIBC, they are a dedicated group doing an amazing job in difficult circumstances laboring to advance the kingdom of God into areas where it has never deeply taken root before.
Blessings & Merry Christmas
Jim
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