Contextualisation is big deal for those of us who live in another culture. I defined it here as the necessity and complication of putting off your own culture to live in another. I thought we might explore the idea by taking a case study: the small group Bible study. Let’s start […]
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
In June Arthur and I are taking our first trip further afield since we arrived in Dodoma. We are off to Songea for the baptism of our friend John’s little girl. Both Arthur and I have been invited to speak. Arthur will preach at the Sunday service and I will […]
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
Jamie the Very Worst Missionary has a knack for the brutally honest. Her recent post Deciphering Missions argues that a lack of accountability in missions results in some missionaries being able to sound spiritual while doing virtually nothing. In her experience, Every innocuous coffee date with a friend [turned] into ‘discipleship […]
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
Every language has unique idiosyncrasies. One thing about Swahili that seems odd to English speakers is the complexity and breadth you can use when talking about location. Grammatically, there isn’t a simple answer to the question ‘where?’ You use different words to talk about locations that are general (e.g. in […]
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
There are still a number of things that remain a mystery to me about Tanzanian parenting. For example, I see students on their way to class with a child on their back – what on earth do they do with the baby/toddler during lectures? During our intercultural training, we were […]
Estimated reading time: 1 minute
Last month, Wendy Alsup blogged about a new wave of complementarians and so ensued a great deal of discussion on the internet. (Catch up here.) People asked, who are the ‘old’ complementarians?; is it divisive to call this wave ‘new’, as if you’re setting yourself against others (maybe Mark Driscoll?); […]
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
In these final weeks of formal language learning with our tutor, we’re looking at theological language: reading the Bible, praying, giving our testimonies, etc. We got to choose 10 passages we were interested in writing a short talk about. We ended up with the following 13.
Estimated reading time: 1 minute