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Christian Conference of Asia
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About CCA
Program Clusters: Special Programs: Congress of Asian
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Challenges and Issues for Indochina Mission WorkPart of the concern of CCA-FMU is the growing mission expansion in Asia that is carried out not only by Western mission organizations but also by various Asian mission bodies. In order to situate mission work in the overall ecumenical movement in Asia, CCA-FMU staff has tried to make linkages with CCA member churches that are now among the "mission-sending bodies" in Asia and elsewhere. In response to this, the Presbyterian Church of the Republic of Korea (PROK), through the office of Rev. Shin Seung Mi who is in charge of ecumenical relations of the PROK General Assembly, invited the CCA-FMU staff to provide a keynote presentation at a retreat of the PROK mission co-workers in Indochina in Pattaya, Thailand, on August 1, 2006. Rev. Jeong Jin-Woo from the PROK headquarters was also there to give the opening message. Rev. Kim Hyung Ki, an ecumenical church pastor now based in Phnom Penh, served as coordinator of the meeting. The title of the keynote presentation made by Hope Antone was "Challenges and Issues for Indo-china Mission Works in the Wider Asian Context." She began by recalling the rich legacy of the PROK in its involvements as a church in human rights advocacy, minjung theology, care for migrants, and empowerment of women, among other things. She then reminded the group of the perennial challenges and issues in mission in Asia which are the context of Asian plurality and the context of Asian suffering and struggle for life. With these, Asian churches and their mission agencies face ecumenical challenges. Borrowing the shifts in mission thinking from Wesley Ariarajah, these are ecumenical challenges are: (a) from an exclusive to an inclusive understanding of God's mission; (b) from conversion to healing as our objective of mission; (c) from desiring to be majority to contentment with being minority in the community; and (d) from mere doctrinal issues to deep spiritual concerns. Hope went on to share four more shifts needed for Asian churches to be in tune with Asian plurality: a) shift from competition to cooperation among denominations; (b) from condemnation to dialogue with other religions; (c) from isolation to collaboration (working with) with civil society or ideology-based groups; and (d) from disintegration to integrity of creation. She challenged the PROK missioners that "the type of mission we do in Asia should not simply repeat the mission orientation that we inherited from the past. Our context in Asia has its own peculiar issues and challenges and we need to address them accordingly as people and churches of Asia. We need to guard against the conquest approach and to be open to the possibility of the dialogical approach." posted by hope on Tuesday, August 15, 2006 A Word on the Relocation to Chiang MaiMy apologies for the long silence. The relocation to Chiang Mai in early July kept all the executive staff and support staff very busy -- e.g. setting up our temporary office at Payap University, renovating the office, unpacking our boxes of books and files, settling down as families, getting the team work going with a new set of administrative assistants (support staff), etc. Even while we were yet getting online and connected with the rest of the world, both in the office and at our homes, work on programs and other activities already planned still continued. And so from August onwards, we have had various activities held, as scheduled and as planned. Following will be some short repors on some of the activities carried out by FMU. posted by hope on Thursday, August 10, 2006 |
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