One Lord, one faith, one baptism (Eph. 4) — God calls us to join hands with one another, regardless of the continent or country or context in which we live.
Ecumenical collaboration is the core of my service as a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) mission co-worker. That collaboration includes partnering with Churches Witnessing with Migrants (CWWM), a grassroots network of migrants, migrant-serving groups and faith-based institutions. Through ecumenical collaboration, CWWM’s mission is to claim the God-given dignity of migrants in a framework of human rights, sustainability and development justice.
In early October 2018, two dozen members of the Congo Mission Network (CMN) converged on Washington, D.C., to advocate for U.S. support for democracy in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The gathering, which preceded the annual CMN meeting, sought to raise the DRC’s profile prior to presidential elections in that country on Dec. 30. The CMN members sought U.S. assistance to strengthen democratic institutions in the Congo and to avert a humanitarian disaster by mobilizing resources to assist parts of the DRC that have been affected by corruption, conflict and natural disasters.
I took Elias and Gilbert, Kenyan doctors, to the medical library of Yonsei University Health System in Seoul, South Korea. They came to Korea to be trained in the hospital’s urology department. They walked around in the library and stopped at the urology section, picking up a few books and flipping through the pages. They took out “Campbell-Walsh Urology,” a textbook regarded as the bible in the field. I could see their sparkling eyes, which seemed like children’s eyes that wanted a toy so much but could not possess it. I told them that they could borrow books from the library, but they politely declined. I felt sorry to see them turn back from the bookshelves.
Several years ago I was sitting in a room full of religious and community leaders from across middle Tennessee. It resembled a typical clergy meeting, but what made that gathering distinct for me was that half of the leaders were Muslim.
During Presbyterian World Mission’s recent global partner consultation for Asia and the Pacific in Thailand, more than 50 representatives came together for two days to discuss the effectiveness of current partner relationships, what it means to be partners in God’s mission today, where God is calling us to put our energy and what resources are needed to move forward.
The church in Davydovo, Russia, was a thriving community of 1,000 members from five surrounding villages before the revolution. It was abruptly closed by the Communist authorities in 1936. People pulled down the cupolas and crosses with a tractor. The building was used for storage and then as a club but was neglected for 70 years. The roof collapsed around 1960, and there was nothing left but the shell of a building — only walls.
