Wednesday, January 28, 2009

COMPS1: blogging my Comprehensive Assignment

If all goes to "plan" (thanks for the reality-check Nt&Ct!), Jessica and I will be finishing up our Master of Christian Studies (MCS) degrees in April. For me, that involves completing a comprehensive assignment (“Comps” as it is known under Regent’s green roof), within my program concentration of Marketplace Theology. With my supervising professor, Paul Williams, we have worked out a reading list of 3341 pages (or 14 books). My task is to read it all, which is a challenge as I am not the highest capacity reader, and then bring the material into a synthesis in the form of a 10,000 word paper.

Several people advised that after reading each book, that I put together a 1-2 page summary of what the book is about, so that when I get to the writing stage of this task I don’t have to re-read everything – good advice! But, instead, I thought I would blog these summaries and give some short thoughts on how all this reading is fitting together and the significance it has.

My aims in making this public are several:
  • It allows me to get my thoughts on what each book is about clear enough to post now & articulate to people outside of Regent’s academic environment on an ongoing basis
  • I think this assignment is significant for how God’s people live, so my readers may learn something or do something
  • This may inspire you to read a book or think through something that you otherwise would not
  • It allows my readers to throw their 2 cents into my thoughts on each book and the direction this assignment is leading, especially some of the take-aways – so please post some comments!

I wont elaborate too much on where I think this assignment is going now, rather simply list the books I will be engaging with under 3 reading areas that Paul & I have clumped the books into (although there will of course be over-laps):

Living in light of God's Kingdom Rule & the coming Kingdom:

Reading the bible well in regards to God's mission & how the Marketplace fits in:

Living in Babylon, the complexities of being a Christian in a broken world:
It is going to be a full-on twelve weeks... please pray me for me...

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