THEOLOGICAL DIALOGUE n THEOLOGICAL DIALOGUE n THEOLOGICAL DIALOGUE n THEOLOGICAL DIALOGUE n TH

The BWA and World Methodist Council delegations that met in Singapore in February Baptists & Methodists T

he second session of the international theological dialogue between the Baptist World Alliance and the World Methodist Council (WMC) was held in Singapore from February 5-10. The overall theme of the dialogue is Faith Working Through

Love. The first session was held a year earlier, from January 30 until

February 5, 2014, at the Beeson Divinity School of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama, in the United States. While the 2014 session discussed presentations on the

history, theology and contemporary global situation of Baptists and Methodists, the 2015 meetings focused on core theological issues such as the nature of the church, the nature of authority, sanctification and justification. Co-chairs of the dialogue are Curtis Freeman, research professor and director of the Baptist House of Studies at Duke University Divinity School, Durham, North Carolina, in the US; and Tim Macquiban, director of the Methodist Ecumenical Office in Rome. BWA representatives

and presenters were Deji Isaac

Ayegboyin, professor of church history and African Christianity in the Department of Religious Studies, University of Ibadan, Nigeria; Valérie Duval-Poujol, professor of biblical exegesis

22 BAPTIST WORLD MAGAZINE Hold Theological Dialogue in Singapore

and co-director for the Institute for Bible and Orientalism at the Catholic Institute in Paris, France; Timothy George, dean of Beeson Divinity School of Samford University; R. L. Hnuni, principal of Calcutta Bible Seminary, Kolkata, India; and Stephen Holmes, senior lecturer in theology at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Fausto Vasconcelos, BWA director of Mission, Evangelism and Theological Reflection, and co- secretary to the dialogue, also attended and participated. The Methodist delegation included Robert Gribben, chair

of the Ecumenical Relations Committee of the WMC; Ulrike Schuler, professor for church history, Methodism and ecumenism at Reutlingen School of Theology in Germany; Malcolm Tan, pastor of Barker Road Methodist Church in Singapore; Lauren Matthew, district supervisor of studies for the General Committee of Education for Mission Methodist Church of Southern Africa; Paul Chilcote, academic dean and professor of historical theology and Wesleyan Studies at Ashland Theological Seminary in Ohio, in the United States; and Christine Gooden-Benguche, secretary of the Jamaica District Conference, Methodist Church of the Caribbean and the Americas. The 2016 meetings will be in Elstal, Germany, on the subtheme, Making Disciples.