6/17/98: TEAM staff member Sydney gave me a ride over to Harare Theological College (HTC) this morning. I took photos of the campus and students in classroom settings…
6/18/98: No work assignment today, so we went to see another movie: Titanic. Enjoyable fluff…
6/19/98: Spent time shooting the TEAM Harare Business Office this morning…
NOTE: The photo above is from the website of Harare Theological College.
6/19/23: By the 19th of June, 1998, we had been in Zimbabwe for 31 days, and except for our short trip west to visit some “friends of friends,” we had spent quite a bit of time working closely with great people of TEAM. We had also experienced our first bout of homesickness in this country, so, it was hard to believe that our time in Zimbabwe was almost over. We had grown quite fond of the place and the people, and our sense of homesickness took on a sense of dread of moving on from these new friends. But we also realized, with many work projects lying ahead, in new locations with new friends yet unmet, that we would be experiencing this pang again before we returned to Chicago. We also knew that it would all be well worth it.
My course of study at Moody Bible Institute had actually been a Bachelor of Arts in International Ministries. I had anticipated going abroad from the US to serve as a missionary, and had considered work as a Bible translator or church planter in unreached areas of the globe. The Lord directed me otherwise, which is a story for another post someday. But I thoroughly enjoyed the class work in cultural anthropology and ethnography, linguistics and language acquisition, cross-cultural engagement, history of the Christian world movement, trans-cultural theological and ethics studies, and so much more.
For these reasons, besides working with the missionaries of TEAM, it was particularly interesting for me to get to visit Harare Theological College during that period in Harare. I had always relished the experience of broadening my worldview by studying at MBI, and here I got to see a similar school in a different part of the world. The college was founded in 1953 by missionaries from The Evangelical Alliance Mission and local Zimbabweans. Today it is “an independent, interracial, and interdenominational college and reflects this in its selection of students, faculty, staff, and Board of Governors.” They are committed “to assist pastors, evangelists, or lay leaders in local churches; to support para-church ministries and strengthen local churches; to encourage Bible teaching in local schools and in government-related ministries; and to help Christians in society become more effective at being salt and light in the world.”
All these years later, I am glad to know the school is flourishing and still emphasizing the multi-cultural tapestry of the global Christian movement, engaged in ministry, theological education and equipping of the saints for the ministry of the Gospel.
