Getting ready for Busan

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Tomorrow I shall set off for Hong Kong on the way to Busan.  Michael Jagessar and I will be visiting the Hong Kong Council of the Church of Christ in China, one of the URC's partner churches in the Council for World Mission.  We have been asked, among other things, to speak about the mission challenges facing us in the UK and it will obviously be interesting to see how the challenges we face compare with and differ from the challenges in Hong Kong.  This will prove to be a useful preparation for the WCC assembly at which I will be the ecumenical adviser to the URC delegation which consists of Michael Jagessar and Sarah Moore.

The challenge with all of these experiences is to see how they can be related to the everyday life of churches and individuals across our Island nation.  At the time of the last Assembly in Porto Alegri there was almost no awareness of it or interest in the UK.  This time, perhaps its location in the high profile country of Korea will help but at the end of the day it is the quality of what happens that really matters.  We can only pray that the quality will be of the highest and free from much of the international power politics that characterises so many other meetings.  The theme is 'God of life, lead us to justice and peace', let us pray that God will do just that and that we will allow God to and not interject our own selfish agendas.


Location: Cambridge Cambridge

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