SALVADOR AS AN ECUMENICAL CLASSROOM:A MISSIOLOGICAL COURSE WITHIN THE SALVADOR CONFERENCE

Abstract

Twenty seminary students from the USA and Canada went to Salvador, Bahia, to participate in the World Council of Churches' (WCC) Conference on World Mission and Evangelism and in a course: Gospel in Diverse Cultures: Missiological Interaction with the Conference on World Mission and Evangelism. The content of the course was provided through the preparatory materials and programme of the conference as well as in special briefings, times of reflection, and cultural outings planned for the group. It was a time of cultural immersion and intense interaction with a relational and dialogical pedagogy at work, a truly transformational experience. The course was designed and conducted by two missiologists, both faculty members of Presbyterian seminaries in the USA (and the authors of this article), in coordination with the US Office of the WCC. The students came from eight different theological institutions, representing a broad spectrum of Protestant denominations, including some with no formal ties to the WCC. Their own diversity and interaction was a part of the learning experience. They attended the plenaries, worked in sections and sub-sections, participated in worship, and mixed with the entire conference community in coffee breaks and special events. Their learning was especially enhanced by the opportunity to have intensive briefings with ecumenical leaders such as Emilio Castro, Christopher Duraisingh, Ana Langerak, Lesslie Newbigin, Konrad Raiser, and Aureo Bispos dos Santos from one of the host churches. These briefings helped the students clarify the themes and analyze the fascinating process they were observing. Our experience was also enhanced by our involvement in the Brazilian context. We were lodged about twenty-five minutes by public bus from the conference venue. Our evening meals together in the hotel, as we processed every day's events, were missiological delights. The travel back and forth, and the daily life in the hotel neighborhood, brought us a little closer to the fascinating and challenging cultures that Brazil represents. However, it was our involvement with a Brazilian theologian and educator, a woman deeply involved in the crises of poverty and racism in Brazil, that put the conference theme in high relief and raised many questions. Dr Gerusa Santil dos Santos, whose leadership in a protest event during the opening worship made her a controversial figure in the conference, was the third faculty person for the course! On Sunday, the entire group took a bus 100 kilometers away from Salvador to visit her home for children, located in her own home in a small compound in the centre of a very poor district of the city of Feira de Santana. A small congregation worshipped there that morning, and then they shared their life, their faith, their struggles, their hospitality and food, and their memorable Samba music with the group. It was perhaps the most profoundly moving encounter of the entire course! It was, after all, a seminary course, and so the students had to write papers about their experience. Out of these papers, read and assessed by the two faculty, emerge some themes and observations that put the conference in a somewhat distinctive perspective. (The quotations that follow are taken from the students' papers, with their permission.) Although many of the students had read about the history of the ecumenical movement and had some missiological orientation, the conference experience in Salvador was clearly a powerful learning experience that has had a strong impact on their faith and their way of doing theology. Gradually they began to grasp the significance of attending a unique conference whose lineage may be traced back to 1910 in Edinburgh. The distinctive dynamic of missiological theology, traced through the mission conferences of this century, and heightened by the preparatory process leading to Salvador, began to capture their imaginations -- and raise many questions. …