Week 10: Paper Outline

Again, my paper outline looks similar.  I hope to turn it into Wess today so that I can get some feedback.  I particularly need some help in considering how to use the anthropological model.  I ran into difficulties learning how to discover God in another culture while trying to evangelize to them.  This is foreign to all the ministry and evangelism I have ever been taught to do.  So, I am trying to add the kingdom perspectives into the middle portion of my paper because I think they will do a much better job at evangelizing than I could ever develop on my own.  In this portion of the paper I do not know if picking a particular group (such as African Americans) was helpful or not.  I am so far removed from African Americans and I do not know if their culture is much different from mine.

The first part of the paper discussed race and how I see it alive in culture today.  A difficulty I had with this part of the paper was I used Barker’s term “black” to refer to someone who is African American.  However, not all “blacks” are African American.  So, I’m not sure what to write in the rest of my paper—especially because Bevans used “African American.”

In the last portion of the paper I wrote about how I see race addressed in the church and my local community.  I think my church works hard to not discriminate due to race and they are actively working within a community that is multi-racial.  I was not sure if it was ok to write about what I would like to do to end racism.  I ended up saying what I would do in my church to address racism.

I hope I am on the right track.

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Week 10: Response to Joe

I agree that it is important to understand historical and contemporary culture when trying to understand individuals.  What a great point!  Under those categories I think religion would be important to take into consideration.  I especially think this because many teens have parents or grandparents who were probably ultra-conservative and this affects they way teens grow up and live their lives.  It is not just what is contemporary that forms people, but people are formed by generations.  Thus, humans need to stop being individualistic and focus on the future generations.

Week 10: Wednesday

Today we talked more about the study of fans.  I found the work done on women magazines particularly interesting.  I also enjoyed the discussion about fan culture and how fans take a text and make it their own.  Some evidences of this would be people who dress up for Star Wars.  I think it is great that people take a text and recreate it with a Christian message (e.g., the Christian Star Wars youtube video).

Week 10: Monday

Today we watched two more videos about teen culture and discussed whether the production creates everyday life or if everyday life creates the production.  I tend to agree with the show that the production is creating everyday life for teens.  The narrator asked if kids have anything of their own-that they create anything new.  I would say no.  They see what is produced and they copy it.

Week 9: Response to Annie: Wednesday

While I agree that junior highers probably do not (fully) understand their sexuality, I think that they probably understand it a lot better than we did when we were in Junior High.  I think it is unfortunate that they know so much about sex and that our television shows, songs, ads, and clothing  (EVERYTHING really) encourage kids to become sexual or at least make it appear that they are.  I guess this is where the church needs to do its job to address these issues.  Churches need to talk about sex and clothing and lifestyles and hope that they can get the message across that being sexy isn’t the most important thing in life.  How to do this, I do not know.  I suppose it starts with the parents and role models.

Week 9: Bevans Ch. 9

The countercultural model uses many sources of literature, not only the Bible, to create insight.  The great thing about this model is it is a tool for evangelism that presents the gospel in a refreshing and engaging way.  I think I often use the countercultural model as I try to challenge and find the truth in the gospels, and I do this most by learning about the culture in which the gospels were first written.  I hope that I can begin reforming my thinking and accept the gospel as a message from a “journalist” and not a “salesperson.”

Week 9: Cobb Ch. 9

Once again, I was simply amazed at the influence that Disney has on the culture.  I never thought about his movies sharing a similar theme, that there are no mothers and a focus on death.  It was interesting to me to hear that his movies have taught us how to mourn the dead.  I also found it interesting how nature became a tourist site in the 1800’s and thus we have many paintings of nature that reflect God’s creation and the desire for a perfect world.  These paintings allow people to think of the good life to come, heaven.