The Baptist World Alliance (BWA) and the World Methodist Council (WMC) will engage in the fourth session of the international theological dialogue between the two Christian World Communions in Runaway Bay on Jamaica’s north coast, from February 1-8.
The 2017 theme is, “The Call to Discipleship: Faith Working through Love.” Special attention will be given to global Baptist and Methodist practices and beliefs.
Presenters and discussants will explore the relationship between grace and faith; worship and preaching; and the spiritual disciplines of prayer, reading, fellowship, service, hospitality, witness and mercy.
Worship conducted at the meetings will include reflections on stories related to the theme and topics.
The BWA delegation comprises dialogue Co-chair Curtis Freeman, research professor of theology and director of the Baptist House of Studies at Duke University Divinity School in the United States; Deji Isaac Ayegboyin, professor of Church History and African Christianity at the Department of Religious Studies, University of Ibadan in Nigeria; Valérie Duval-Poujol, professor of biblical exegesis at the Catholic Institute, Paris, France, and director for its Institute for Bible and Orientalism; Timothy George, dean of Beeson Divinity School of Samford University in the US; Stephen Holmes, senior lecturer in theology at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland; and R. L. Hnuni, principal of Calcutta Bible Seminary in Kolkata, India.
Methodist representatives are dialogue Co-chair Tim Macquiban, minister of Wesley Church and superintendent minister in the United Kingdom; Paul W. Chilcote, academic dean and professor of historical theology and Wesleyan Studies at Ashland Theological Seminary in the US; Christine Gooden-Benguche, secretary, Jamaica District Conference, Methodist Church of the Caribbean and the Americas; Lauren Claire Matthew, minister in the Umngeni Circuit, Natal Coastal District in South Africa, district supervisor of studies of the General Committee of Education for Mission and president of the Youth and Young Adult Committee of the WMC; Ulrike Schuler, professor for Church History, Methodism and Ecumenism at Reutlingen School of Theology in Germany; and Malcolm Tan, pastor, Barker Road Methodist Church in Singapore.
BWA coordinator for the Division on Mission, Evangelism and Justice, Trisha Miller Manarin, serves as BWA staff liaison at the meeting.
Previous sessions of the BWA-WMC dialogue were held in the United States in 2014, Singapore in 2015 and Germany in 2016. The final session will take place in February 2018.
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© February 1, 2016