Nature and Structure of The Theological College of Lanka
Lectures at the Theological College are held in Sinhala, Tamil and English. Sinhala and Tamil students are required to write in their own languages. Tamil students study Practical Sinhala and Sinhala students study practical Tamil, giving all students a practical knowledge of each other's language.
Apart from classroom work, field education is taken seriously as an integral part of the students' tuition. The field education programme is divided into three main areas - weekend field education; long-vacation field placement and a research-and-an-extended essay on a subject chosen by the student.
The chapel is decorated with Sri Lankan woodcarvings. The congregation remove their footwear and sit on the floor. Indigenous musical instruments such as tabla, violin and sitar mainly accompany worship. Guitars are used where appropriate, without displacing the indigenous atmosphere of worship.
Sinhala students study Buddhism under a scholarly monk while Tamil students study Hinduism from an experienced tutor.
The Theological College of Pilimatalawa has effectively shown that Sinhala and Tamil students can study together in the same classes in their own languages. It is important to note that the importance of English is as a link language and not as the language of the elite.
When Sinhala lecturers teach in Sinhala and English, Tamil students depend on their knowledge of English and other students to understand what is being taught. Similarly, when Tamil lecturers each in Tamil and English, Tamil students depend on their knowledge of English and other students.
Sinhala and Tamil lecturers always try to give a summary in another language to make students from other ethnic groups feel comfortable. Although this way of teaching is not easy it has brought Sinhala and Tamil students together without abandoning their mother tongue.
Located in a predominately Buddhist village, the College has served Sri Lankan society for forty years, training Christian ministers who will work in the community with a sound understanding of Sri Lankan realities and make bridges between various socio-cultural and religious groups.
The theologising process has helped the students to identify the needs, aspirations and anxieties of the people in a given area and to respond theologically, to know the involvement of the churches and their relationship with one another and with other faiths, in an attempt to discern the work of God through people of other faiths, ideologies and other organisations, to learn from the experiences of different individuals and organisations, already involved in the community and to be challenged for a creative and a fruitful contextual ministry in the areas, where they will be placed in the future.
Read more about this topic: Theological College Of Lanka
Famous quotes containing the words nature and, nature, structure, theological and/or college:
“The trees that have it in their pent-up buds
To darken nature and be summer woods—”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“Two well-assorted travellers use
The highway, Eros and the muse.
From the twins is nothing hidden,
To the pair is naught forbidden;
Hand in hand the comrades go
Every nook of nature through:
Each for the other they were born,
Each can other best adorn.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“... the structure of a page of good prose is, analyzed logically, not something frozen but the vibrating of a bridge, which changes with every step one takes on it.”
—Robert Musil (1880–1942)
“Do you see this egg? With this you can topple every theological theory, every church or temple in the world.”
—Denis Diderot (1713–1784)
“Thirty-five years ago, when I was a college student, people wrote letters. The businessman who read, the lawyer who traveled; the dressmaker in evening school, my unhappy mother, our expectant neighbor: all conducted an often large and varied correspondence. It was the accustomed way of ordinarily educated people to occupy the world beyond their own small and immediate lives.”
—Vivian Gornick (b. 1935)