During the past year I have had the privilege of traveling both to Ghana and Uganda. The trip to Uganda was for a summer service trip with students, while the trip to Ghana was to participate in an ecumenical gathering called the Global Christian Forum. In part, my participation in this event was connected to a lifetime of growing up around the ecumenical movement. My father has participated in various dialogues across denominational lines for more than forty years. At the age of fifteen, my older brother and I traveled with my parents to Europe for six weeks. My father spent these weeks in dialogue, while my brother and I wandered through Rome, Budapest, and both East and West Berlin. Mind you, this was the summer of 1989, just prior to the Berlin Wall coming down. During this trip we also traveled to Castel Gandolfo on Lake Albano, which is the summer house of the Pope. We met Pope John Paul II, and I spoke with him about his tennis shoes, he was wearing Nike Cortez if you can believe it.
Two years later I would spend another six weeks in Costa Rica, where I received a call to ministry. This was transformational, and launched me into a pursuit of God, and a lifetime in mission-oriented work focused primarily on Latin America. A year later I spent another month in Europe with the family, staying for two weeks in a Roman Catholic retreat center in Rome, and then again in Paris, France. These experiences have shaped me in more ways that I can explain and have led me to spend the past thirty-three years learning about the intersection of theology and culture, often getting to sit at the feet of astounding men and women of faith. They have also shaped me into being a listener, something that comes in handy when engaged in dialogue.
As a result, this past April I was invited to participate in the Global Christian Forum held in Accra, Ghana. There were a few hundred participants from all over the world and representing all four major streams of the Christian tradition. There were Roman Catholics, Orthodox, Coptic Christians, and Protestants of various denominations. We met each day for a time of worship and prayer, followed by small group sessions during which we shared our faith stories with one another. As part of our time together, we also dialogued around specific issues facing the Church today. This was an enriching time.
On one particular day we traveled by bus from Accra to the Cape Coast Castle, a UNESCO World Heritage Site a few hours from the capital city. Cape Coast was previously referred to as the Gold Coast and served as a major hub for the transatlantic slave trade in West Africa. The purpose of our visit was to lay wreaths in the cell blocks where women and men had been held prior to their exportation from the continent, leaving through what is referred to as the door of no return. This was followed by a service of repentance and lament for the Church’s roll in the atrocities of slavery and was held in the Wesley Methodist Cathedral one block from the Castle. It was an emotional event that I am honored to have been invited to participate in.
From my participation in this event, I have received invitations to the Pentecostal World Conference in Finland, in 2025, and something called the Lausanne Congress in Seoul, South Korea, in mid-September this year. I am thankful both for the way that God has shaped me throughout my life, and the way that He is using me now. I would never have imagined that I would be invited to present or dialogue on such a global scale.
