ANNUAL GATHERING OVERVIEW continued

Sanna Msiza presents BWA

plaque of

appreciation to Former METR

Director Fausto

Vasconcelos

“The person elected to succeed the current occupant of the METR director’s position will lead the Division on Mission, Evangelism and Justice (MEJ),” BWA General Secretary Neville Callam told the General Council. METR Director Fausto Vasconcelos retired at the end of August after holding the position for a little more than 10 years. The F&J director’s position has been vacant since 2014 after Raimundo Barreto resigned to take up a professorship at Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey in the United States. F&J was the newest BWA division after it was formally created in 2008.

Both divisions are being merged for primarily financial reasons

The BWA is telling the United Nations it needs to raise the designated threat level for Nigeria and the Lake Chad Region. Declaring that the area is rife with conflict and dislocation, the BWA asserts that “violence, murder and kidnapping [have] directly impacted more than 14 million people with between three and five million being internally displaced.” This has resulted “in rampant malnutrition, leaving thousands of persons on the verge of starvation.”

The threat level, the BWA says, must be raised to Level 3, the “most severe large scale humanitarian crisis.” It notes that “people of faith and houses of worship have been intentionally targeted, including the damage or destruction of thousands of churches and numerous mosques.” In addition, the BWA invites Baptists everywhere “to stand in solidarity with Nigeria and the Lake Chad Region, to pray for the development of transformative peace throughout the country and region and to actively work to build a context of justice, human rights, rule of law and religious freedom for all people.”

New Members Received

Three organizations were granted membership in the BWA by the General Council. One new country has been added to the BWA roster. Founded in 1984, the Grenada Baptist Association has six churches and 400 members. Grenada is the newest country in the Caribbean to join the BWA family. The Arunachal Baptist Church Council in Arunachal Pradesh

State in Northeast India, established in 2008, comprises 95,000 members in more than 1,000 churches. It grew out of a merger of two Baptist groups in the state, one in the north and the other in the south, and becomes the 21st

BWA member from India.

The Faith Evangelical Baptist Church in South Sudan has 7,000 members in 74 churches in both South Sudan and Kenya. It was stablished in 2007 and is the second group from South Sudan to hold BWA membership. The BWA now has 235 member organizations in 122 countries and territories.

Divisional Portfolios Combined The divisions of Mission, Evangelism and Theological

Reflection (METR) and Freedom and Justice (F&J) are to be combined. This was affirmed by the General Council after it was first approved by the Executive Committee in March.

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when pledged donor funds failed to materialize after the global financial crisis that emerged in 2008. “Both the BWA Budget and Finance and the BWA Human Resources Committees concurred on the fact that funds were not available to enable BWA to call a successor to the first F&J director,” Callam informed the General Council.

Theological Dialogue A third round of theological dialogue is to begin with the

Catholic Church in 2017. “On the basis of discussions between BWA and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity (PCPCU), a third round of Baptist-Catholic dialogue

will

commence soon,” Callam wrote in his BWA report to the General Council.

In May, preparatory meetings were held between Baptist representatives Frank Rees of Australia, Paul Fiddes from the United Kingdom, and Timothy George of the United States, “with a team from the Catholic Church to consider the focus and methodology for the upcoming phase of the Baptist-Catholic dialogue,” Callam stated.

The next phase [of the Baptist-Catholic dialogue] should focus on the subject of common witness to Jesus Christ.

“This joint preparatory meeting decided that the next phase

of dialogue, which could commence in June 2017, should have clear continuity with the first two phases and should focus on the subject of common witness to Jesus Christ,” Callam elaborated. “A final statement on the purpose and plan for the upcoming dialogue is to be concluded in the near future.” The first round of Baptist-Catholic dialogue occurred from 1984-1988 and the second round from 2006-2010. “We would be pleased to build on these two previous dialogues and explore new areas of discussion,” Cardinal Koch, president of the PCPCU, said in a letter to Callam in February. “These official dialogues were cause for great celebration and gratitude to God,” Koch declared. A four-year dialogue between the BWA and the World Methodist Council is currently underway, which runs 2014-2017.

Clarifying Relationships

The formation of the Baptist Relief and Development Network, (BReaD), came in for intense discussion by the General Council after the general secretary presented an extensive report on the emergence of that organization.