English Teaching as Christian Mission: An Applied Theology

by Donald B. Snow

Recent decades have seen an ever-increasing number of Western Christians going abroad as English teachers. Many of these teachers are going to countries that are not very receptive to other forms of Western Christian mission. Some Western Christians view English teaching primarily as a means to gain access to "closed" countries for the purpose of evangelistic outreach. Other Western Christians see it mainly as a form of social service. Snows well-thought-out details of how to bear witness, engage in ministry, serve the poor, contribute to peace, and build bridges of understanding between churches clearly show the special role of Christian mission that Christian English teachers can have.

Genres: Teaching, Education

192 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2001

Reviews

[Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the book's conclusion(page 176):

"I hope I have convinced readers that Christian English Teachers do indeed have a special role to play in Christian mission, a role in reconciliation between churches of different cultures and traditions, between peoples of different nations and cultures, between God and humankind, and that there are good reasons for Western churches to support mission efforts of this type."

The preceding encapsulates quite well, to my mind, the main thrust not only of this book, but of my own developing perspective toward humanitarian efforts of any kind. The well-developed and amply referenced focus here was on reconciliation and teacher-as-genuine-and-respectful-learner. An enjoyable read. I found myself skimming passages somewhat when I got to sections addressing the dangers of ethnocentrism, but over all this was not the case.

Informative, well researched, and followed up by a 6 page bibliography. (No wonder this didn't feel like an opinion piece in spite of being almost precisely that!)

[Joel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kind of a mixed bag. As several people have pointed out, there's not a lot in here that suggests there's something specially, uniquely Christian about certain values Snow espouses (hospitality, humility, peacemaking, intercultural understanding, empathy, etc), but still I came away from this book with my (Christian) humanist motivation for being a language teacher intact and even strengthened. I'm sure the more critical scholars (like some of my professors!) would take Snow to task for the relatively "unpolitical" positions he takes, but then again I don't think compassion is unpolitical.

I'm glad I read this book and I'd reccommend it to any North American Christian planning to teach English overseas.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very helpful book for Christian ESL teachers going abroad. The initial 6 chapters were the most helpful.