Is our "high-quality" Theological Education relevant?

MARK LAING wrote in his article, The Changing Face of Mission: Implications for the Southern Shift in Christianity (Missiology: An International Review, Vol. XXXIV, no. 2, April 2006):

However, at the level of theological education, Western theological influence lives on through Western resources and the Western training at doctorate level of the brightest from the South.

For instance in Japan, Shenk comments that this has contributed to the "Germanic captivity" of Japanese theology, as Japanese Protestant theologians have returned home with their PhDs in say Barth, Bültmann, or Tillich and then proceeded to base their theological teaching upon German methodology and content.

This has resulted in training theological thinkers to provide excellent answers to irrelevant questions, and making them blind to the pertinent questions arising from their own context. As a consequence "Japanese theology has not yet begun to address the Japanese situation effectively" (Shenk: 2003b:2).

The southern church is predominately a church of the poor. In contrast "a developed world in which Christians become less prominent will seek to protect its position against the rest" (Walls 2002:81). We would anticipate an increase prominence being given to the theological themes of justice and economic fairness.