February 23, 2010

GENEVA – When students and teachers of theology from around the world gathered in Geneva for an annual ecumenical study course, many of them emphasized the deep faith connections they discovered in interacting with others from situations significantly different from their own.

The 14 students from Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, Puerto Rico, Canada and the United States, were part of the sixth annual intensive course of "The Ecumenical Church in a Globalized World," held under the auspices of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) Department for Theology and Studies (DTS).

They met from 6 to 20 January at the Ecumenical Center, where the LWF and other church organizations are based. The Geneva-based staff offered perspectives related to their work, which formed bases for plenary interaction and small group deliberations among the students.

"The ecumenical family of churches is called into a mission of witness amid economic and climate change," said Prof. Toxcey Namok, who teaches at the Senior Flierl Seminary in Finschhafen, Papua New Guinea. He expressed his hope "to train future pastors to be fully vested with an ecumenical spirit and mind-set for pastoral ministry, and to help transform Lutherans in particular to be open to see beyond themselves as a church."

"When churches are silent and not prophetic, the land can be massively exploited, for example, by mining interests," said Namok, a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Papua New Guinea.

Invaluable Formation

During a discussion on diakonia, many of the students agreed that everyone has something to give and receive. In diakonia, the barriers come down, remarked one student. "You can give without loving, but you can't love without giving," said Matthias Titus Tola of Bronnum Lutheran Seminary in Nigeria.

The course began by considering the ecumenical dialogues and other relationships between churches, and later engaged with ecumenical students and professors at the Ecumenical Institute at Bossey, near Geneva. They discussed interfaith relationships, and visited a Geneva mosque.

"I have been awed and overwhelmed with all I have heard and all those I have met here at the Ecumenical Center," observed Kathryn Montira, a student from Wartburg Theological Seminary, Dubuque, Iowa, USA.

"I realized that the LWF is not just concerned with Lutherans, but is quite ecumenically engaged, which is a truth I will take back to my church in Kenya," noted Julie Habonaya Luku, studying theology at St Paul's University outside the capital, Nairobi.

Contextualized Theology

JoAnne Chung Yan Lam, a student at Toronto School of Theology in Canada, admitted that she had not realized previously the complexities involved in different churches being able to share in the Eucharist.

Susan Beck from the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, USA, noted, "Our theology has to be embodied." She added, "In being present with others, we bring flesh to the Word."

Students realized that theology must be dynamic, living, and contextualized if it is to communicate with people. "I have to make this sense of being interconnected more real in the Christian education I teach," remarked Erich von Marthin Elrapoma from Jakarta Theological Seminary in Indonesia.

Communal lament is crucial in the face of calamities such as the Haiti disaster, in which a classmate and friend of three of the students was killed while the class was meeting. "In my context, individuals may lament, but not the whole community, as we realized here," said Tamra Harder from the Wartburg seminary.

From experiencing worship in Geneva to a visit to the Taizé community in France, Prof. Erasto Yohana Mselela, teaching at Tumaini University in Iringa, Tanzania, said he was impressed by the ways in which worship and prayer can become more meaningful.

Rev. Dr Karen Bloomquist, DTS director, an organizer and member of the teaching team, noted that students became more aware of the importance of building multilateral relationships that go beyond categorizing some as donors and others as recipients, or being from the South or the North.

Learn more about DTS work at: http://www.lutheranworld.org/What_We_Do/Dts/DTS-Welcome.html.

Lutheran World Information