youth gathering in Montana - ecumenical gathering in Africa

I just spent the weekend with my Youth Group in Lewistown, MT. A great time.

I want to key in on our final speaker Jessica Crist, the Bishop of the Montana ELCA synod. In particular her recent voyage to Africa.

She attended the Global Christian Forum, at Limuru, near Nairobi. This is said to be the most diverse gathering of Christian faith groups since NEVER.

Jessica got home on Saturday and then hustled to Lewistown to speak to the state wide gathering of Montana ELCA Lutheran youth.

She explained that at the African gathering there were 70 countries represented.

I'll input that it is crucial to have more world and local gatherings that are in communication with one another.

Below are a few quotes that I took from articles on this site...
http://www.oikoumene.org/en/events-sections/global-christian-forum.html


Global Christian Forum taking place on 6-9 November in Limuru, near Nairobi, Kenya.

The Christian traditions represented at the Global Christian Forum are: African Instituted, Anglican, Baptist, Evangelical, Disciples (Churches of Christ), Friends, Holiness, Lutheran, Mennonite, Methodist, Moravian, Old Catholic, Eastern and Oriental Orthodox, Pentecostal, Reformed, Roman Catholic, Salvation Army, Seventh-day Adventist, United and Uniting Churches.

1.
Dr. Wonsuk Ma, a Pentecostal missiologist and director of the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies.
In a keynote address delivered on the second day of the forum, Ma analyzed Christian developments in unity and mission over the last century. He affirmed that in Christian mission, the seemingly contradictory emphases on "life before death" and on "life after death" - which have separated "mainline" and "evangelical" Christians for decades - are actually complementary and in need of each other.

2.
Bishop Brian Farrell, secretary of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, addressing a 6-9 November meeting of the forum near Nairobi.

The WCC has said the Kenya forum has brought together the broadest range of Christian traditions ever gathered at a global meeting.

"The experience of all of us in these days, is that we have been able to talk to each other in honesty," said Farrell. "If we can know each other better, then we can deal with our questions."

He said, "We believe this table brings greater understanding and breaks stereotypes."
-Rev. Geoff Tunnicliffe, international director of the World Evangelical Alliance

3.
Bridges-Johns, a professor at the Theological Seminary of the Church of God in Cleveland (Tennessee)

"any new form of ecumenism must take into account the new faces, the different worldviews and new voices of non-Western Christianity". But the so-called "new ecumenism" fails to understand the reality of the "indigenous, multi-faceted forms of Christianity" outside the Western context. "Western conservatives look to the South for support, but fail to understand the worldview of Southern Christianity."