“Water is life” is a statement that is heard frequently throughout Africa as many people cannot take water for granted. This is particularly true in Niger, a country that is mostly within the Sahara Desert, with the remainder lying within the Sahel, a dry ecosystem that transitions between desert and savannah lands.
To think about peace, about the blessing of peacemakers in the midst of war and constant threats, is very difficult. War is absolutely evil — it brings only suffering, pain, grief and injustice.
I still can see clearly in my mind’s eye the writing printed on the spine of a book that was on the shelf of my family’s bookcase in our humble rented house in Los Angeles. In Korean script, it read: “Why We Can’t Wait,” written by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
The Indonesian Consortium for Religious Studies is a consortium of three universities — the Universitas Gadjah Mada (a non-confessional state-owned university), Universitas Islam Negeri Sunan Kalijaga (a state-owned Islamic university) and Universitas Kristen Duta Wacana (a private Christian university) — all located in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.
A group of us representing the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) were present at the World Council of Churches (WCC) Assembly in Karlsruhe, Germany, in September, where “Christ’s Love Moves the World to Reconciliation and Unity” was the theme.
This year the Presbyterian Church of Trinidad and Tobago (PCTT) had one of the youngest delegations to the World Council of Churches assembly. The PCTT also afforded me the opportunity to attend the 225th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), making both assemblies an attempt at returning to fellowship in person.
When Covid struck in the spring of 2020 in the Czech Republic, it meant, above all, a radical reduction in contacts. This reduction was a reasonable response from the authorities to the pandemic, which was spreading through physical encounters between people.
One of the churches I visit every few years is Grace Taiwanese American Presbyterian Church outside of Trenton, New Jersey. I was briefly its youth director during seminary, and it was part of my call to ministry in Taiwan.
Al-Hassakeh is a major town in northeast Syria that has existed for almost 1,000 years as part of the historic Silk Road. This part of the world has been Christian from around the time Paul encountered Jesus on the road to Damascus. The Rev. Mathilde Sabbagh ministers there with her congregation, the National Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Al-Hassakeh, to support her community without regard to religious affiliation.
There are still so many wonderings about what the church would look like, to face the current state of affairs in the world. What does it take to transform entire generations into disciples of Christ on their journey witnessing that a better world is possible?
Here is the story of an initiative called REET (the Ecumenical Network of Theological Education):
