Scot McKnight and his wife Kris are currently in South Africa and for the last three days I’ve had the privilege to listen to them on various topics.  It started with a public lecture at the University of Pretoria on conversion theory (Cobus blogged on it here)and for those who can read Afrikaans there is an article in the paper here. 

On Wednesday and Thursday some of my friends from the Dutch Reformed Church invited me to join them as they merged a conversation about the book of Acts in our South African context with Scot presenting various topics. 

I took a recorder with me and will link to the mp3’s in the next few posts.

In the first session Scot unpacked his book “The blue Parakeet”.  I don’t want to rehash a lot of what he said in this session, you can get the mp3 here (I have high quality versions for those living in the Gauteng area).

What I do want to highlight is a soapbox Scot went unto.  He blasted the trickle down theory of education.  According to Scot discoveries made in academia are not getting to people in churches because academics are not writing for the church. They only publish journal articles suited for their own guild.

This in my opinion is what makes Scot’s ministry so accessible and useful – he takes complex ideas and explains it to normal people. 

Scot challenged the group to engage in scholarship to the church.  This got me thinking about an educational presupposition we have to rethink in South Africa: that South Africans would learn through reading … I wonder if my friends in the squatter camps won’t respond better to an oral/visual educational educational style (Gerald West has done some excellent work on this in SA).
I’ve been bothered for a long time that the rich people still have the educational tools and the poor people don’t  – so I wonder how I can become more involved in using some of my privileged education to help those who don’t have it.