The Kazakhs of post-Soviet Central Asia have been in the process of re-discovering their cultural heritage and establishing their own national identity. Profoundly affecting this process is that they live in a world that is becoming more and more globalized, with increasing degrees of interaction with other cultures. During Soviet times there was a large degree of isolation from cultures outside of the Soviet Union and their lives were mostly impacted by a Russian dominated system. After the collapse of the Soviet system they were suddenly exposed to a world of ideas, influences, and opportunities. Part of re-establishing their cultural roots involved consideration of their Islamic heritage. They were caught between trying to discover this for themselves and in doing so include cultural beliefs and practices that are blended into an orthodox expression of Islam, or allowing themselves to be told by outside practitioners of Islam how they should believe and act. Seventy plus years of communism had weakened the commitment and expression of Islam, and this as well as the forces of globalization has made them cautious and even suspicious of any radical expressions of religion. With the post-Soviet openness and exposure to other cultures came the opportunity for Christianity to present itself as a valid system of belief for Kazakhs. This began as an expatriate dominated exercise as individual Kazakhs embraced Christianity and the first churches were started. As the years progressed Kazakh church planting faced the challenge of having a foreign image and as a result needed to consider how to contextualize Christianity so that it could develop a Kazakh identity. At the same time church planting as with the Kazakh culture as a whole, was confronted with the impact of globalization. This meant that church planting had to not only consider Kazakh cultural factors but also what changes globalization would bring that impacted how church planting would be done. This study seeks to examine this church planting context that finds itself caught between the effects of contextualization and globalization, and by means of the principles of Grounded Theory discover principles for effective church planting. / Christian Spirituality, Church History & Missiology / D. Th. (Missiology)

This thesis examines the relationship between professional practice and professional training of Christian ministers in post-Communist Central Asia. It responds to the call for study of the phenomenon of Protestant theological education in the post-Soviet bloc. Theological education in Central Asia has been developed without any research-led evaluation and is often found unsatisfactory by the emerging church, which calls for a more relevant, field-driven and contextualised training of its leaders. This study also responds to the gap in the literature on attitude development of ministerial students. This is a qualitative inquiry. Its primary emphasis is on in-depth semi-structured interviews of forty graduates of four major theological colleges in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, who had spent several years in pastoral ministry after graduation. This research seeks to identify the most common problems they face in professional practice; to identify the attitudes and capabilities underlying their problem-solving processes; and to analyse how their training enabled or failed to enable them to develop those qualities. This thesis argues that theological education can be viewed as a special case of professional training, with a unique cluster of spiritual qualities that are of paramount importance for the success of ministers. It also argues that, despite the graduates’ generally positive appraisal of their training, there was little connection between the training and the capabilities that the graduates needed to succeed in their current practice. It therefore argues that the institutions in Central Asia have inherited the flaws of the "schooling" paradigm of theological education. A more integrated, context-specific and missional model is needed. By developing a model for investigating the practical knowledge of ministers, this study attempts to provide the training institutions in question with a framework of capabilities and attitudes. This will allow those institutions to have a useful starting point in the reformulation of their curricula.

The Kazakhs of post-Soviet Central Asia have been in the process of re-discovering their cultural heritage and establishing their own national identity. Profoundly affecting this process is that they live in a world that is becoming more and more globalized, with increasing degrees of interaction with other cultures. During Soviet times there was a large degree of isolation from cultures outside of the Soviet Union and their lives were mostly impacted by a Russian dominated system. After the collapse of the Soviet system they were suddenly exposed to a world of ideas, influences, and opportunities. Part of re-establishing their cultural roots involved consideration of their Islamic heritage. They were caught between trying to discover this for themselves and in doing so include cultural beliefs and practices that are blended into an orthodox expression of Islam, or allowing themselves to be told by outside practitioners of Islam how they should believe and act. Seventy plus years of communism had weakened the commitment and expression of Islam, and this as well as the forces of globalization has made them cautious and even suspicious of any radical expressions of religion. With the post-Soviet openness and exposure to other cultures came the opportunity for Christianity to present itself as a valid system of belief for Kazakhs. This began as an expatriate dominated exercise as individual Kazakhs embraced Christianity and the first churches were started. As the years progressed Kazakh church planting faced the challenge of having a foreign image and as a result needed to consider how to contextualize Christianity so that it could develop a Kazakh identity. At the same time church planting as with the Kazakh culture as a whole, was confronted with the impact of globalization. This meant that church planting had to not only consider Kazakh cultural factors but also what changes globalization would bring that impacted how church planting would be done. This study seeks to examine this church planting context that finds itself caught between the effects of contextualization and globalization, and by means of the principles of Grounded Theory discover principles for effective church planting. / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / D. Th. (Missiology)