Singarich or Singapore?

Yes, I do have a special talent with words, don't I? Still, I couldn't resist such an atrocity of language to start my post about the advanced city of Singapore (a place so rife with the latest "trends" that mustaches are almost as common as PSPs...). Anyway, spending a week in Singapore felt a lot like going to NYC, with so many schools to visit, but also cultural things to do in a big city with great public transport etc. (Slightly different from our recent stay in Dakar, Senegal).

This meant that I had a lot of different types of discussions at the various seminaries I visited. Here, some of the hot topics were how to relate theological education to such a technologically based society, or how to provide skills for lay leaders in the performing arts and such. There was also a lot of discussion about "Asian" learning styles and the need to stimulate independent thinkers, which got into educational theory a lot more than any of the other places I've visited.

But the roots of Singapore society are still based in the traditional "asian" ways of thinking, so there is still a lot of relevance to attempting to relate asian thought styles to Christian ideas. I hope to see more of this at our final stop: Malaysia's Sarawak region on the island of Borneo...