Academic Centers in the BTI Schools

• The Center for Global Christianity and Mission at Boston University School of Theology

• The Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell

• The Center for the Study of World Religion at Harvard Divinity School and University

Theological Schools Global Directories

General:

The Association of Theological Schools (US & Canada)

Confessional

Orthodox: The Syndesmos Theological Schools Directory

Catholic:
•(please return)

Protestant:
•Anglican Theological Schools
•Consortium of European Baptist Theological Schools (CEBTS)
•(please return)
•(please return)
•(please return)

At the end of each school year the BTI works with a cluster of churches and other institutions in a given region of the world, asking what it means to be church in that region. To date, these trips have been organized thematically around “The Challenge of Ecumenism,” “Mission as Reconciliation,” and “Building Cultures of Reconciliation.” Available for academic credit through the BTI schools, each of these seminar-workshops is preceded by a course in “Comparative Christianity” in order to prepare participants for the experience of the workshop.

Several of the seminar-workshops in the following list have pictures and/or reports attached to them which can be explored and printed out. These seminar-workshops, or other short-term mission projects, are seen as integral to those pursuing the BTI Certificate in International Mission and Ecumenism.

The Challenge of Ecumenism

• 1991-1992 Protestantism and the Ecumenical Movement (Switzerland)
• 1992-1993 Roman Catholicism and Ecumenism (The Vatican, Italy and Switzerland)
• 1993-1994 Orthodoxy and the Ecumenical Movement (Greece and Turkey)
• 1994-1995 Ecclesiology from a Non-Western Perspective (India)
• 1995-1996 The Struggle for Protestant Identity (Switzerland, Germany, and the Czech Republic)

Mission as Reconciliation

• 1996-1997 Reconciliation: Roman Catholic and Ecumenical Witness (Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland)
• 1997-1998 Reconciliation: Orthodox and Ecumenical Witness (Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Greece and Turkey)
• 1998-1999 Reconciliation: South Africa, Ghana and Racial Reconciliation in Western Culture (South Africa and Ghana)
• 1999-2000 Reconciliation: Identity, Instrumentality, and Inter-Faith Relations (Israel, Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza)
• 2000-2001 Reconciliation: Culture, Identity and Religion in the Caribbean (Jamaica and Cuba)

Documentaries on the topic of “Religion and Conflict” have been made by Étoile Productions based on the seminar-workshop experiences of these workshops. They have appeared on various PBS stations and are available for classroom use.

Building Cultures of Reconciliation

• 2001-2002 The Transformation of Russia: Issues of History, Religion and Identity in Russian Orthodoxy (Russia)

• 2002-2003 Restorative Justice for Community (USA)

• 2003-2004 Religion and Modernity in Egypt: Coptic Revival, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Complexities of Religious Practice (Egypt)

• 2004-2005 “Lebanon: A Test of Multicultural Pluralism – Religious Identity and National Recovery” (Download report from Lebanon's "The Daily Star" newspaper of June 7, 2005!)

Great Commandment: “You shall love the Lord you God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And the second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the law and prophets.” Matt 22:37-40

Great Commission: 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.” Matthew 28:19-20

Ecumenical Imperative: 20 “I do not pray for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou has sent me.” John 17:20-21

“It is surely a fact of inexhaustible significance that what our Lord left behind Him was not a book, not a creed, nor a system of thought, nor a rule of life, but a visible community…. He committed the entire work of salvation to that community. It was not that a community gathered around an idea, so that the idea was primary and the community secondary. It was that a community called together by the deliberate choice of the Lord Himself, and re-created in Him, gradually sought – and is seeking – to make explicit who He is and what He has done. The actual community is primary; the understanding of what it is comes second.”

Lesslie Newbigin, The Household of God, 1954 (Kerr Lectures)