Re-Thinking Theological Education in Africa Towards Doing Theology for Livingness

A thorough examination of theological education in Africa, today, a look at the Theme of this all-important Conference and the topic of this paper quickly bring to mind the idea of something that has occurred before and needs to be re-visited in a special way. This occurrence could be in reference to how theological education was done “yesterday” and how it is being done “today” (i.e., in the past few years and currently). For theological education not to be too general or too broad, the topic delimits the occurrence of theological education specifically to Africa. Not only is there a major concern about the training in theological education in Africa, today, but also there appears to be a major concern about how theological education could be remodelled to make it relevant for “livingness” in Africa. This means, there is the need for a conscious effort in the re-examination of the theory of theological education and the need for a conscious effort at reformulating it to make it more practicable in Africa. This paper, in conversation with a few scholars, makes an attempt to reconsider ways in which theological education in the past could be enhanced to make it more useful in contemporary traditional, social, cultural and other contexts in Africa. The demands of theological education and the need to make it more practicable could apply to any context in any part of Africa with only slight variations in the details as they pertain to the particular “user” community and perhaps, to other non-African contexts too.