Catalyst, the graduate and post-graduate ministry of TSCF , have recently affirmed the following Seminar that you should check out and then check in, with your registration.

Here some initial details about this event…

A one day seminar

An interactive day taken by Bev Norsworthy, one of New Zealand’s leading educators.

We’ll be exploring three crucial questions:

What is the gospel and how does it impact our post-graduate study?

In what ways can the gospel be applied to post graduate study, research and teaching?

Research for the glory of God: How can you honor God in and through your postgraduate study?

Such are indeed important questions to think through, finding biblical answers that… Soli Deo Gloria!

What about the damage?  After all, this is for students we are talking about…

Cost: $20

A delicious morning and afternoon tea will provided but you’ll need to bring your own lunch.

Who is Bev Norsworthy?

Dr Bev Norsworthy is the Dean of Teacher Education at Bethlehem Tertiary Institute in Tauranga. She is passionate about the role education has in shaping a nation and has been involved as teacher, principal, and teacher educator across primary and secondary schools in New Zealand and South Australia as well as with teacher education in New Zealand. Her research is in the field of assessment, curriculum design, reflective practice and its role in effective adult learning and transformation. She has presented papers in New Zealand, Australia and USA and has publications in a number of journals.

Locations around New Zealand, are as follows…

Dunedin	Canterbury	Palmerston North	Auckland
Saturday 17th April 9am-5pm Register Evision Lounge Clubs and Societies Centre 84 Albany Street Dunedin Contact: Dave Baab TSCF Otago staff worker daveb[at]tscf.org.nz	Saturday 1st May 9am-5pm Register Laidlaw College 70 Condell Avenue Bryndwr Christchurch Contact: Mark Santich TSCF Canterbury Team Leader marks[at]tscf.org.nz	Saturday 8th May 9am-5pm Register Massey University Chaplaincy “The Centre” Colombo Rd Massey University Contact: Mark Grace TSCF Palmerston North Team Leader markg[at]tscf.org.nz	Saturday 29th May 9am-5pm Register Carey College (Not Carey Baptist College) 21 Domain Road Panmure, Auckland Contact: Jeff Pelz TSCF Auckland Team Leader jeffp[at]tscf.org.nz

So what are you waiting for?

If you would like to REGISTER NOW, you can do so through this page… HERE!

However, if you would like more material on this seminar, more can be given, and here it is…

What is the gospel and how does it impact our post-graduate study?

For many the gospel is limited to a one off experience of faith when one is ‘saved’. The gospel is seen to relate to ensuring one’s eternal destiny with little implication for living in the 21st century. However, it is much more than this. The Gospel provides the framework within which we can make meaning of life and our place in God’s plan. In this session we will explore the parameters of the gospel in terms of an invitation to live in a “God-centred universe” (Gould, 2007, p. 18), exploring the ramifications of the fact that ‘God is here and he is not silent’ (Schaeffer’s, 1976). The gospel opens to us the reality that God is near and has spoken to us through the Bible, Jesus and Creation. The story of the gospel starts and finishes with the Biblical God who “. . .reveals himself to all people at all times and in all places and through various means” (Allison, 2009, p. 75). The gospel is confronting, restorative and comprehensive and has significant implications for understanding how our postgraduate activity is an inherent part of our witness, embodying the gospel in visible lives (Greene, 1998).

For many the gospel is limited to a one off experience of faith when one is ‘saved’. The gospel is seen to relate to ensuring one’s eternal destiny with little implication for living in the 21st century. However, it is much more than this. The Gospel provides the framework within which we can make meaning of life and our place in God’s plan. In this session we will explore the parameters of the gospel in terms of an invitation to live in a “God-centred universe” (Gould, 2007, p. 18), exploring the ramifications of the fact that ‘God is here and he is not silent’ Schaeffer’s (1976). The gospel opens to us the reality that God is near and has spoken to us through the Bible, Jesus and Creation. The story of the gospel starts and finishes with the Biblical God who “. . .reveals himself to all people at all times and in all places and through various means” (Allison, 2009, p. 75). The gospel is confronting, restorative and comprehensive and has significant implications for understanding how our postgraduate activity is an inherent part of our witness, embodying the gospel in visible lives (Greene, 1998).

The gospel begins with an invitation to know God – something which the Bible demonstrates to be intensely practical. As Watkins (2008, p. 58) suggests:

Our society is ‘secular’ in that the religious is generally rejected as a part of public, societal discourse, on the basis that such belief must be seen as non-rational (if not irrational) and so merely a matter of private coping. It is not so much that ‘God is dead’ more that he has been privatised.

During this session, Bev will draw on the work of N. T. Wright, Craig Bartholomew and Michael Goheen in understanding the gospel as a drama, a six act play – which both provides the framework for interpretation of life and living but also invites us to participate as faithful actors.

The gospel implies that the final state of humanity is based on the original unfinished work and in this regard, the work given to Adam was a work of inquiry, research and development – the original creation wasn’t the final product. And yet, there was Shalom in the garden – a Shalom to which we are called. Jesus’ model prayer in Matthew 6 clearly indicates our role to do what we can to bring the Shalom of the kingdom – on earth as it is in heaven. The insights we learn through research can enable us to do this – across all fields of endeavour. The Christian scholar, shaped by the gospel, seeks and sees God’s presence at work in the ‘ordinariness’ of life.

In what ways can the gospel be applied to post graduate study, research and teaching?

This session will consider how the three Gospel mandates (Creation Mandate, Great Commission, and Great Commandment) with their very practical themes of stewardship, discipleship and fellowship together with Biblical themes of justice, love and shalom shape the purposes and processes of our postgraduate activity – whether that be research, scholarship or teaching. In fact, identifying facets of the gospel story enables us to be faithful influential participants within that story.

This session will consider how the three Gospel mandates (Creation Mandate, Great Commission, and Great Commandment) with their very practical themes of stewardship, discipleship and fellowship together with Biblical themes of justice, love and shalom shape the purposes and processes of our postgraduate activity – whether that be research, scholarship or teaching. Identifying facets of the gospel story enables us to be faithful, influential and intentional participants within that story.

Within the created order research foci include aspects of its beauty and complexity, its ‘way of working’ as a basis for further development – both technological and social; the inherent moral law which is written on our hearts, and the fact that, despite our desire to ignore or refute the fact, people are hardwired to seek God. With the challenges of ecological sustainability, societal issues and species extinction the Christian postgraduate scholar has many opportunities to contribute to culture formation as a response to the Creation Mandate. The Great Commission which typically is restricted to personal discipleship calls us to nation forming – working together rather than in isolation; focusing on redeeming institutional structures and their cultures such as governmental, family, educational, commercial and aesthetics, and calling them back to their God-ordained roles. Finally, in this session consideration of the Great Commandment guides the postgraduate scholar to work with issues of justice and love in practical ways to “do good to all” (Galatians 6).

Research for the glory of God: How can you honor God in and through your postgraduate study?

In this session which builds on the previous two, Bev will draw specific examples from her own and others’ research and scholarship to illustrate how we can honour God when our postgraduate activity is viewed as: a calling, expression of care, avenue for communication of God’s principles and ways in secular language, opportunity to critique the ‘status quo’ and offer an alternative voice into the university in the hope of contributing to change. Doing all to the glory of God.

In this session which builds on the previous two, Bev will draw specific examples from her own and others’ research and scholarship across a range of disciplines to illustrate how we can honour God when postgraduate activity is viewed as: a calling, expression of care, avenue for communication of God’s principles and ways in secular language, opportunity to critique the ‘status quo’ and offer an alternative voice into the university in the hope of contributing to change. Doing all to the glory of God.

Postgraduate scholarship and its foundational research provides the opportunity to discover the principles which God has embedded within human living – principles which he faithfully follows, and to work with how these principles can bring Shalom to our broken world. Understanding the gospel as the framework for one’s work leads to understanding that, in fact, postgraduate activity is an integral part of our daily worship (Romans 12), an expression of who God has designed us to be and, should, as Hamilton (2002) notes, emerge from a faith-based identity and journey with God. Importantly, viewing research and postgraduate activity as listening to and interpreting God’s world and his ways, positions it as “central to the task of learning to live theologically” lives that “incarnate the Christian worldview of creation, fall and redemption. When we love God with our whole hearts and our neighbors as ourselves, we clothe the biblical worldview with visible lives. We seek God’s kingdom and His righteousness“ (Greene, 1998, p. 275). It is imperative that Christian postgraduate scholars grasp the importance of their work as contributing components of the redeeming work of God on earth.

You’ll come away from the day with:

>New friends.

>Deeper convictions about the centrality of God in Tertiary education.

>Better skills to integrate your faith in Christ into the heart of your scholarship.

>Renewed confidence in God’s purposes for you as a post graduate student.

>A set of materials enabling you to put what you’ve learnt into practice.

>An overview of key books written from a Christian worldview in your area of research, available through the Catalyst books online store.

Book of the Seminar

The Two Tasks of the Christian Scholar

You can find all these details of this Seminar… HERE

Always Informing, For the Always Reforming, From the Land of the Long White Cloud

Man of Spin