Asian Ecumenical Course 2008 

The above mentioned program (AEC) was held from the 6th to the 18th of October in a town called Salatiga which is located in Central Jawa, Indonesia. It was attended by 27 participants from 11 countries from all major denominations including one catholic participant from Australia. Two pastors from Malaysia, Rev. Steven Velloo (Lutheran, ELCM) and Rev. Dennis Raj (Methodist, TAC) had the opportunity to participate in the program this year.

AEC is organized (almost yearly) by the CCA to train / expose participants to ecumenism and ecumenism related themes, focussing on ecumenical leadership formation in the light of CCA General Assembly theme for 2005- 2010: Building of communities of peace for all. 

The specific theme chosen for this year was “Challenges and Opportunities for Ecumenical Formation in Christian/ Religious Education.” The theme arises out of a recognized felt need. The CCA recognizes that Christian/religious educators (religious education teachers, pastors, seminary lecturers, professors) have a very crucial role in the ecumenical formation of congregations, seminarians as ‘would-be pastors’ and other church educators. By training the “trainers” it is hoped that the ecumenical spirit would be passed on to the next generation through the relevant channels. Part of the concept paper that was sent earlier read, 

“In the wake of resurgence in denominationalism and the tendency towards church parochialism prevalent today, there is a great need for inculcating ecumenical perspective in the Christian education of congregations and theological education institutions. Ecumenical formation in Asia means not only the formation towards the unity of churches but the wider ecumenism that includes the unity of peoples regardless of denomination or religion – transcending all the divides of sex, class, caste and race – and also the wider unity or interconnectedness of humanity with the rest of creation.” 

In the light of the above, the two main objectives of the program were:

1. To expose graduate students in and practitioners of Christian Education/Religious Education to wider ecumenism, with the goal of integrating this in their field or ministry; 
2. To equip participants with tools for doing ecumenical formation through the various aspects of Christian Education / Religious Education, enriched with the perspective of wider ecumenism; 

We were housed in a place called ‘Pondok Remaja” with Mount Merapi, an active volcano in the backdrop. We were served Indonesian food and placed with another person from another country as our room mate for better ecumenical interaction. Firstly there was a general introduction to Ecumenism and its relevance to each of the individual participants. Secondly, the participants were exposed to Asian religious/ spiritual realities with the Indonesian reality as the immediate environment that was visibly tangible for all the participants. Some of the interesting individual topics that were presented and discussed were:

Each of the sessions was presented by different resource persons who were lecturers of universities and seminaries from different countries. After every presentation, the participants were given time in small groups to discuss its implications in their own context. Towards the end, each participant presented their own action-plan for ecumenical education in their own context. It was a good time of learning from the resource persons as well as each another. 

Apart from daily, regular ‘class- sessions’, we were also taken to different locations for exposure. On a particular Sunday we were taken to worship with a local Christian congregation to worship in Bahasa Indonesia. On another day we visited the Sathya Wachana Christian University in Salatiga and also had the opportunity to attend their weekly chapel service. We were also taken to a local ‘pesantren’, which is one of the many Islamic boarding schools in Indonesia. We were able to talk to the male and female boarders and to the host/warden who was actually a landowner who owns the whole pesantren. This particular owner used to be a classmate of “Gus Dur” one of the former Indonesian presidents. They both happened to study in Egypt when they were much younger. We were also taken to see the ‘Chandi Borobudur’ which was a historical Buddhist monument. In the same day we were also taken to Jogjakarta for souvenir shopping.

As Salatiga has a large Christian population it was interesting to see churches and mosques placed side by side. There was even a mosque which shared its parking lot with their neighbour church on Sundays and the same church shared their parking lot with the mosque on Fridays. As it was still the Aidil Fitri season, we saw almost all the churches displaying banners in their front yards wishing “Selamat Aidul-Fitri, Maaf Zahir Batin” to their muslim neighbours in the community, something I have not seen here in Malaysia. One disappointment though was our inability to find any “Christian Dang Dut” to bring back home. Those and many other interesting observations made our stay there an exciting and fruitful one.

Rev. Dennis Raj & Rev. Steven Veloo