Together Towards Life: An Ongoing Conversation
This October 20-23, I had the opportunity to travel to Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, to participate in a consultation organized by the Commission on World Mission and Evangelism (CWME) of the World Council of Churches (WCC). The consultation explored developing curricula for missionaries, pastors, and laity designed around Together towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes, the WCC’s new affirmation on mission and evangelism.
The content of Together towards Life has been summarized and critiqued elsewhere, so I will not do so here. Readers interested in seeing the document themselves may visit http://www.oikoumene.org/en/resources/documents/commissions/mission-and-evangelism/together-towards-life-mission-and-evangelism-in-changing-landscapes
Participants in the consultation came from all around the world, including the Americas (US, Argentina, Jamaica); Europe (UK, Switzerland, Norway, Italy, Romania, Hungary, Italy); Asia and Oceania (Sri Lanka, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Korea); and, of course, Africa (South Africa, Rwanda). One of the richest parts of the event for me was meeting these scholars and practitioners and learning from them.
The consultation was an intensive period of study, reflection, and discussion. We spent Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday in discussion, both plenary and small groups. We spent Tuesday visiting sites near Durban associated with mission: an AIDS resource center started by a congregation of the Methodist Church in South Africa, a charismatic healing preacher, and the school started by John Dube, an indigenous South African leader and missionary protégée.
The discussions about the document were rich. Several items rose to the top as considerations in preparing Together towards Life curricula. The importance of contextualizing the document was tantamount. Questions of access, distribution, and translation were raised. The group also noted the distinction between a WCC-driven process of curriculum development and a grassroots process.
In the end, it seems like both processes will proceed. The WCC will continue to assemble working groups to develop curricula, but other groups will also do their own work on the document. Among those efforts is one that I facilitate. UM & Global (umglobal.org), a blog sponsored by the United Methodist Professors of Mission, is currently in the midst of a discussion of the potentials and pitfalls for using this document in teaching.
David W. Scott, ’13