This article assesses the shortcomings and the disconnectedness of the current academic theological education in South Africa. It offers a brief history to provide a guiding principle for academic theology. It then proceeds to show the current disconnect and challenges between academic theology and the church, with its primary focus on academic theology. Drawing on original research and reflection on these responses, commodification, euro-centricity and rankings are seen as three traps of modern academics. These three areas have distorted the true (...) content of theological reflection. This article thus clearly highlights the current problem and motivates the need for academic theology and the local church to reconnect with each other. With this article focussing on academic institutions, it calls for the academy to change not in nature but in content, and to draw its content for the local context. (shrink)

This research engaged a realist paradigm to triangulate existing literature with data that emerged from a PhD study on ministerial formation within the context of being a missional church in the Uniting Presbyterian Church in Southern Africa (UPCSA). The study identified the need for theological training and ministerial formation to be relevant, contextual and responsive to the realities of the African communities. We concluded that current theological training module is dominated by Eurocentric expressions and narratives, which highlight an urgent need (...) for a theological and ministerial formation model that will equip leaders with relevant and contextual missional strategies necessary for rapidly transforming African communities. There is a need for decolonisation and contextualisation of academic studies in order to align theological training and leadership development with the emerging challenges within the African context. CONTRIBUTION: This article contributes to systematic, contextual and postcolonial reflections on theological education and ministerial formation in Africa. (shrink)

This article explores the concept of hybrid epistemology in relation with the author's theological teaching of his neighbours from the northern townships of Pretoria and the students of the University of Pretoria. It is written from the perspective of a black African mission practitioner who values with equal footing the diverse ways human beings can acquire knowledge. He longs to see a symbiotic relationship between different epistemologies and be prioritised in the theological training of Africans. He stresses that the value (...) in authenticity would allow the diversity of epistemologies to weave together in a symbiotic way. This article is a case study that reflects on the symbiotic relationship between different epistemologies using the five human senses as a multi-sensory approach to knowing. It discusses the experiences with students from InnerCHANGE and the University of Pretoria. (shrink)

African Pentecostalism continues to be a growing part of Christianity both in Africa and the rest of the world. Pentecostal churches in Africa are on the rise at a very high rate. However, theological education in South African universities does not reflect this reality, but continues to be of a western orientation. Therefore, there is an urgent need and demand for a theological education that will be relevant to Africa. It is an urgent need for African Pentecostalism to be integrated (...) into the theological education of South African universities. This can be achieved by integrating African Pentecostalism into the curriculum, by decolonising Pentecostal research and by the emergence of critical African scholars that can address cutting-edge issues in a South African context. Thus, theological education in South African universities shall be a contextual and relevant one. (shrink)