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A wife of one and mother of many, theologian, missiologist, educator, and story-teller, Ruth Padilla DeBorst has been involved in theological formation for integral mission in her native Latin America and beyond for several decades. She serves with Resonate Global Mission, leading the Comunidad de Estudios Teológicos Interdisciplinarios (CETI), the International Fellowship for Mission as Transformation and leadership development initiatives of the Christian Reformed Church. Along with her husband, James, she lives in Costa Rica as a member of Casa Adobe, an intentional Christian Community with deep concern for right living in relation to the whole of creation. Her studies include a Bachelors in Education (Argentina), an MA in Interdisciplinary Studies (Wheaton College), and a PhD in Theology (Boston University).

30th June 2020 | Ruth Padilla DeBorst | 8 comments

Community and just conviviality

The love of stuff justifies consuming people in the name of production, progress, and the maintenance of privilege. It also justifies the voracious plunder of our planet with no regard for the delicately balanced web of life, its most vulnerable members, or for the living conditions of future generations. And it eats away at our very soul.

Categories: Reflections
4th May 2020 | Miriam Yeo | 2 comments

Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) and Kiasu

There’s a phrase in Singapore, where I grew up, which has come to describe an aspect of our national psyche – kiasu. The word has come to mean a fear of losing out. Being kiasu is rooted in a deep insecurity, a state of being which isn’t unique to Singapore. We are deceived by a heart-breaking lie: that God has not given us all we need to thrive.

Categories: Facing the Future
Tags: consumerism
30th October 2015 | Dave Bookless | 2 comments

Three weeks last summer…

Last summer, events conspired to give me three totally different experiences: Week 1 at a Christian festival, part of Week 2 with my family at Disneyland Paris, and Week 3 at the Taizé Community in France. The question I found myself asking was, ‘What is the spirituality of this gathering? What are its “gods” – its underlying, unwritten values and assumptions about what really matters?’

Categories: Reflections
15th January 2014 | Will & Pip Campbell-Clause | 4 comments

Mission Impossible?

I long for a transformed, honest food system in which there will be an end to economics characterized by ‘skimping the measure, boosting the price and cheating with dishonest scales’… Yet the supermarket mantra of ‘get big or get out’ certainly seems to be winning the war right now, and our mission here appears to be ‘impossible’. But is it?

Categories: Questions
31st December 2013 | Dave Bookless | 4 comments

Out with the old, in with the new?

Today’s consumer culture takes a love of new starts to extremes. Fed up with your clothing, computer, phone or furniture? Chuck them out and buy something new. The New Testament is full of ‘new heaven’, ‘new earth’, ‘new Jerusalem’, ‘new creation’. As I grew up I assumed ‘new’ meant exactly what it means in the culture I’m surrounded by.

Categories: Reflections