Exploring Higher Christian Education In Israel An

St Francis Magazine Vol 9, No 5 | October 2013

EXPLORING HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION IN ISRAEL AN INTERVIEW WITH DUANE ALEXANDER MILLER1 Stan Smith2 Stan Smith: Thank you for letting me barge in to your day, I know you have a lot to do. Why don’t you just start by telling us who you are, and a little about your background and your family. Duane Alexander Miller: Sure. My name is Duane Alexander Miller, I very quickly realized in the Middle East that the name Duane is an obscure Gaelic name, and it doesn’t connect with people. Plus I have this great Middle Eastern Greek name, Alexander, and since he conquered the whole region, every language has a way to say Alexander. So I realized I had to utilize my middle name. I am married and I have 3 kids: David, Amelia and Samantha. My wife and I have spent the last 7 going on 8 years here. We have also spent a good bit of time back in the [United] States and the UK with academic studies during that time. We live here in Nazareth, just down the street from the seminary, where I’m a lecturer in Church History and Theology. One of my favorite classes was on Christian Witness in a Pluralistic Society– it sounds a bit fancy but it’s basically asking, “What does it mean for Arab Christians, who are less than 2% of the population of Israel, to live in a pluralistic society?” We live here in Nazareth, which used to be a Christian-majority city and now it’s a Muslim-majority city and we live in the Galilee which used to have a very strong Christian presence, but now is less than ever before and we live in a country that is a Jewish majority country and we live in a region that is an Arab region but is also a Muslim majority region. So what does that mean to be a Christian in a society like this? Also we have students who live in Haifa which is a very cosmopolitan mixed city where daily language is going to be Hebrew, not Arabic. And then we have students who come from a majority Christian village like Eilabun where there Christians are still 70% of the population. So what does this mean– I loved that class– that was one of my favorites. SS: You also serve as Academic Dean? DAM: That’s right, Academic Dean. That normally is a very important and lofty title, but we are a small seminary. We have a number of programs. We have had to adapt programs in Arabic as well as English. We have an undergraduate program and graduate programs. We have different sorts of accreditation, including local and international accreditation. It is a very complicated and tedious aspect of my work but I actually enjoy it and I think I’m fairly good at doing it. SS: What drew you to NETS, because obviously with your background– I mean, you speak Arabic, so options for you would be numerous? DAM: Yes I do, I teach classes in Arabic as well as English. What drew me to NETS is very Arab– a personal connection. After studying Arabic we got to know the founding President of the seminary. He invited me to teach here and I said, “That’s great, I love teaching, I’m good at teaching, I love to use my Arabic and Nazareth and Jordan have a pretty similar dialect." Whereas this is all the greater Syrian dialect, we wouldn’t have to learn a different dialect. We liked the idea of being able to support and come alongside a small, and honestly, a struggling church, and not so

1 Miller teaches and serves as Academic Dean of Nazareth Evangelical Theological Seminary. His research interests are

religious conversion from Islam to Christianity and the history of Protestant mission in the Middle East. He holds a B.A. in Philosophy and an M.A. in Theology, and has recently defended his doctoral thesis in World Christianity at Edinburgh University. The title of the thesis is Living Among The Breakage: Contextual Theology-Making and Ex-Muslim Christians. He can be reached through his blog duanemiller.wordpress.com. 2 Dr. Stanley K Smith serves as the Associate Executive Director and State Director of Missions for the Baptist Convention

of Pennsylvania-South Jersey. He has served as a pastor, youth minister, collegiate minister and overseas worker. He and his wife have been involved in ministry service in Indonesia, Italy, Turkey, Philippines, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Israel. He is a graduate of Southwest Baptist University (B.A.), Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (M.Div.) and Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary (D.Min.) He has served in adjunct roles with Gordon-Conwell, Beeson, Southern, Golden Gate and Ukrainian Baptist Theological Seminaries. He is married to Lynda Elaine Smith and they have two married children and two grandchildren. They currently reside in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania USA. St Francis Magazine is published by Arab Vision and Interserve

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much as to come here and say, “This is how you should do things.” But on the other hand we need to evaluate our own spirituality and our approach to Christian life and witness. So I enjoy us being here and coming alongside the students and doing theology with students, helping them to ask questions and then seeing how they answer those questions. SS: You used an interesting phrase, I’d like you to unpack it – you used the phrase, “Doing theology with”. That’s a little different from “studying” theology. DAM: There is a difference between “studying” theology and “making” theology. I’m not going to use the word “theologizing” because it kind of adds a negative connotation like philosophizing but theology and philosophy are wonderful and profitable fields of study for Christians of all backgrounds. So, you have to study theology before you can make theology. So I would say that the beginning part of our curriculum here is focused on studying theology, studying the source of theology, which for Christians is primarily the revelation we find in the incarnation of Jesus Christ and Holy Scripture which witnesses to Him. But we also have to study church history, which is the record of that community, that body of Christ throughout the ages and across different continents, and how they read and applied that scripture. It also includes looking at the strengths and weaknesses of what they did. I love the parable that is only found in Matthew, where Jesus said the scribe who is instructed in the ways of the Kingdom of God is like the owner of a household that brings out of his storage treasures old and new. So I kind of view my task here as helping our students to draw on those treasures, the old treasures and the new treasures so that they can really own their church, to be a thinking church that makes their own theology, which means asking their own questions, but it also means posing their own answers. So learning theology is a prerequisite, a first step if you don’t know some basics about scripture, church history and foundational Christian doctrines, that’s pretty dangerous for a person to go off and make their own set of beliefs. So, I believe that making theology “with” is a kind of strength and I love what we are doing here in Israel. SS: From your perspective now both as a lecturer and certainly as a resident in the Middle East for a number of years, what are some of the challenges that you see particularly facing an institution like NETS going forward? DAM: Well there are a lot of challenges. I’m just going to answer your question honestly, and you can decide to what extent you want to share this or not. Israelis love money and they like Christians to come over and spend money but then leave. The Israeli government usually doesn’t have a great amount of affection for the actual Christian Israeli. So, I’m not saying you will run into overt persecution, but you’re not going to find any favors or help from the government. So we are in a situation where we are a minority, we are not a particularly powerful nor wealthy minority, just Christians and of course evangelicals are an even smaller minority within a minority. So I think that is going to be a challenge in terms of relating to the government for accreditation, though we have accreditation from institutions in the States and UK. I think another of the challenges, or more of a better challenge, which I am more vocal about, is helping to craft out what it means to be an Evangelical Arab Christian, a Palestinian Israeli, you know. These are all powerful words, they all have powerful connotations attached to them. And again, I don’t presume to come here and say, well first of all you should be evangelical and then you should be Israeli and then you should be Arab. I don’t do that, but I like to ask the question. I think that question of identity, what does it mean for these students, who are leaders and they are students and they are leaders, these people are already teaching and preaching– some of them are responsible for churches and they are pastors some of them, and others will soon be in that position. SS: My observation in that, and I really like the way you framed that, the identity piece, I don’t sense there are many other places in Israel for that kind of opportunity or conversations taking place, that NETS is kind of unique in that regard. Is that a fair analysis, do you think? DAM: Yes, I would say that NETS is indeed unique in that and I feel I guess, I don’t want to say I’ve had to fight or struggle over that– but in my own experience where I come from, I’m an Evangelical Christian but I come from the Anglican background which is very broad. I mean if you go to an Anglican college you’re going to find people on the left and right, you’re going to find

St Francis Magazine is published by Arab Vision and Interserve

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people who are very sacramental, and you are going to find people who are happy-clappy, speaking in tongues. But I feel comfortable with that, I’ve been living in that milieu for years and years and it doesn’t bother me because I know who I am. I know my theology, so I like having that diversity. I like having that breadth, even though it leaves problems sometimes, but I think that can be healthy. In the context like this I think that NETS is special like that, that you can have different points of view being mentioned, for example about the question of Israel and the church. This is a huge question. This is not a theoretical question. Does the church inherit the promises given to Israel? Or is 1948, which was the reestablishment of a secular Jewish state by non-religious secular, some of them atheistic Jews, is that actually the fulfillment of prophecy, or is it not? I mean, these are real life questions and I think that we should have a space where we can discuss these things. And I like that about NETS, I think that it is healthy, I think it’s good, I think that having students that are maybe not from the evangelical churches is good, and we have a couple. I would like to see more. All of our staff in fact, they come from different evangelical backgrounds, I think that’s good. But in terms of the student body, I’d love to see students from different backgrounds here, and talking with each other and it’s healthy and it’s good. So, I think that’s one of the main contributions of NETS to the life of the church here. SS: It would be unfair to ask you the question of what would be the highlight for you in terms of your tenure here, but is there an example, a story or an experience that might capture in a snapshot what you see as the contribution NETS has made to you but also to the greater Christian community here? DAM: Yeah, yeah, I think it’s seeing the students appropriate and create these questions for themselves. One of our students, we were not even talking about this, said, “Sometimes I go into our church and I feel like I’m stepping into America.” This was unsolicited, it was not like, “OK, today we are talking about enculturation and what it means. But this was like an observation that he made, and I thought, that’s very interesting. And I said, “Why is that?” And then another one of our students, also a Baptist incidentally, and his church, which is in a different town, they celebrated communion every week– OK, now that is definitely not common in Baptist churches in the States. I don’t know a single one in the States who does that, most of them here don’t do that. But eastern Christianity, whether Orthodox or Maronite, communion is something that is celebrated every week. So I think that is fascinating that here this church has said that, “this is who we are.” This is Biblical, this is edifying, it’s good and we’re going to celebrate it every time we meet because that’s who we are. And no outsider came by and said, “Oh, you guys have to do this, you have to do this every week”, in fact it went the other way around– so, I like that, I like seeing the local students taking up their leadership and growing into who they are. You see the church here is indigenous, that means that the leaders are from here, by and large. But there is another step beyond being an indigenous church and that’s being a church that asks its own questions and then tries to work out its own answers based on those theological resources I mentioned earlier– Holy Scripture, foundational doctrines, and church history. SS: One final word, as you think about NETS and its future, what are some things that would help NETS rise to the next level, in terms of not just the program but its impact, its effectiveness in serving the Christian community in Israel? DAM: That is a really great question. As Academic Dean I tend to focus mostly on the academic part of it but, on the other hand, as someone who has a great love for having great spiritual conversations with people, you know in Nazareth that will be mostly Muslims. I don’t just hang out and spend all my time with fellow evangelicals Christians, I don’t like that, I don’t think that’s what we are called to. Off the top of my head, I think that going to churches would be really good. So I like that, I think that going out to different churches and doing two or three weeks there at the local church, maybe if it is in a different city or town, because transportation can be difficult, I think that could be something that is really good. I think that what we really need to do, and I guess this comes from my theology of what a seminary is– what is the goal of the seminary? If you don’t ask that question then you can’t really answer the question– are we doing what a seminary is supposed to do? The purpose of the seminary is to help the church, at the end of the day that is why seminaries exist. If seminaries are not helping


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the church then they are not necessary. The church has a theological and foundational reality that a seminary or a Bible study or a campus ministry will never have, because the church is the Bride of Christ, which gives it an eternal fellowship with the Trinity, or something strange like this, that a seminary or college will never have. So, insofar as we are helping the local church to do what the local church needs to do, we are doing what a seminary is supposed to do. In some cases though, some local churches don’t even know what they are supposed to be doing. So that’s when I think, what we need to do is we need to go and talk to the Pastors and talk to the leaders and talk to the people and say, “What are you doing, why are you here? Why is such-‘n-such Baptist churches or Assemblies of God congregation or fill in the blank, why are you here? What is your purpose?” And I think that asking these questions can help create– not to create– but help churches to mature, to own their sense of mission. So I think that’s the contribution that our seminary can make and needs to make and I think we are, we are making it. I think my vision would be to see that expanded beyond the really tiny evangelical community to the other churches. I mean, I know that a lot of my fellow evangelicals don’t think those dead bones can live, but I know they can. SS: Well, thank you very much Alex.


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