Bob Munson’s Random Areas of Interest June 2023
This website is not generally my conversation with the world. For the most part if I want to talk to people, I talk to them face-to-face or through direct emails or messaging. I put up my “musings” on topics of Christian missions, theology, and ministry and people can read them or not. At the same time, this website. http://www.munsonmissions.org does serve as a log (not a diary) of my personal/professional/intellectual/spiritual journey. As such, I occasionally put stuff that is a bit more about me. However, none of my posts here, including this one, will be about my personal pains, or dreams or aspirations. I am not convinced that blogs are the best place for that.
I have been working on quite a few things lately. The fact that the school year in the Philippines has shifted by a couple of months has given me a couple of months to move forward learning or projects for later this year. Here are a lot of them:
#1. I am co-editing a book on Grief and Loss in the theological milieu of the Philippines. This is a project of several members of our seminary (Philippine Baptist Theological Seminary). Editing a book comprised of different chapters by different writers is new for me. I am trying get comfortable with how gentle or vicious I should be with it. Evangelical Christianity in the Philippines very commonly mimics that of the United States (thankfully with a somewhat less toxic political theology). Ultimately, I am glad to see a more serious attempt in recent years for theologians here to find their voice. The book is bilingual (English and Tagalog). That is an interesting challenge in itself.
#2. I am working on cleaning up my old book on Cultural Anthropology. I have had a love/hate relationship with my book “Ministry in Diversity.” I pulled it down from being available online a year or two ago, but I still use it for the classes I teach. I have decided to fix a few problems I have with it… especially in adding a chapter on the History of Cultural Anthropology. This is an area in which my own education was weak, so I am studying up to finish the chapter. I am still not sure if I will put it up on online book stores or just make it an e-book freely available on this website. I also have the option of submitting it to a local publisher for schools in the Philippines. I am just not sure.
#3. I am working with my wife on a couple of projects. One of these is a webinar that she is doing with some church leaders on Leadership Principles. We are focusing on Servant Leadership (and related types such as Democratic Leadership and Transformational Leadership). Additionally, we are SLOWLY working on an online class that will hopefully start at Faith Bible College in the United States. The topic is on forms of Christian Counseling.
#4. I am taking a class on Ministry to Orality Cultures. This is an online Masterclass, led by Tom Steffen (a missiologist and former missionary to the Philippines). It has been good so far and forces me to think more on the role of storying and narrative theology.
#5. I am working on developing a Bachelor level course, “Foundations of Holistic Ministry.” This is one of my favorite topics and hope that it will be done in time to offer it at PBTS this coming semester. We shall see.
#6. I was working on editing a journal for our pastoral counseling center. I had even written an article for it. But with some reflection, I decided to that we put it out next year (2024) and so I put the article I already wrote (on the history of CPE in the Philippines) online, and so will have to come up with another topic in the next few months. CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education) will celebrate its 100 year anniversary in 2025. It will also celebrate its 60 year anniversary in the Philippines that year.
#7. A couple of my students at ABGTS are almost finished with their papers (one a thesis and the other a dissertation). It is gratifying to be so close to the end of this journey.
I think this pretty much is it for now. If you are reading this, thank you for your time. If not… no worries. I just wanted to document this snapshot in where I am right now.
