Contrast and Companionship: The Way of the Church With the World

Houston Graduate School of Theology will host Dr. George Hunsberger on Thursday, March 3, 2011. Dr. Hunsberger’s lecture is titled Contrast and Companionship: The Way of the Church With the World. Book signing will begin at 6:00 pm and the lecture at 7:00 pm. Houston Graduate School of Theology, in partnership with Mission Houston and churches in the Houston metropolitan area, is dedicated to advancing the missional movement in our city. For this reason, HGST has invited Dr. Hunsberger, a leading scholar of the missional church, to present its annual spring lecture. The public is invited.

Born in Pennsylvania, Hunsberger lived most of his early years in Miami, Florida. He received the B.A. degree from Belhaven College in 1966 and the M.Div. degree from Reformed Theological Seminary in 1970. In 1987, he received the Ph.D. degree from Princeton Theological Seminary in the field of Ecumenics, Missiology, and the History of Religions. His doctoral work focused on Lesslie Newbigin’s theology of cultural plurality.

He is Professor of Missiology and Director of the Doctor of Ministry program at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan, where he has taught since 1989. He is a member of the American Society of Missiology, serving as its Secretary-Treasurer from 1988-1997 and its President from 2004-2005. Since its inception in 1987, he has coordinated The Gospel and Our Culture Network in North America (GOCN). George is the author of Bearing the Witness of the Spirit and co-author of Missional Church and Treasure in Clay Jars. He is co-editor of The Church Between Gospel and Culture, A Scandalous Prophet, and Christian Ethics in Ecumenical Context.

Houston Graduate School of Theology is located at 2501 Central Parkway, Suite A19, in Houston. For more information about HGST go to: www.hgst.edu

Transformation is possible: don’t despise the day of small beginnings!

God is doing something amazing at the University of Texas! The Body of Christ, comprised of more than 60 campus ministries and churches, is working together as one united Church to reach all 50,000 students with the Gospel of Jesus. Campus ministries are working together, treating UT like one common mission field. They have broken the university population into 500-700 people groups and are equipping and sending students for impacting the group they are part of as missionaries. Already their influence is being felt broadly. As a result, for the past few years, an average of 500 students per school year have chosen to follow Christ. That’s 1% of UT’s population each year! Over the last 10 years the percentage of students actively participating in campus ministries has doubled, from 5% of the total UT student population to 10%. Mission Houston celebrates this unfolding story and gladly shares it as a current example of what God can do and wants to do through the Body of Christ working together. Here is a short excerpt from one of the college pastors involved in the movement.

It’s been said that 2 percent of an organization, if completely sold out to a particular vision, can change the entire organization. While I am not sure of the veracity of that fact, I can say from experience that just a few college pastors working together on a project (e.g., a mission trip or a campus event), attending a retreat, or uniting in prayer can have a marked effect on the direction of your entire campus movement.