One of our LOI participants from Ethiopia, Tekle Belachew, has drawn to our attention to the very interesting work of the Center for Early African Christianity. This Center is seeking to recover the important missional history of the African Church, a Church which provided some of the key theologians of the first centuries of the Christian history and mobilised mission movements which brought the faith to Europe and beyond.
The work of the Center is described in this video.
The second day of the Lausanne-Orthodox Initiative has been wrestling with ‘What is the Gospel?’. This is a particularly challenging question in the ‘hard places’ of our contemporary world. During the afternoon participants heard from Salim S. (name withheld) from Allepo, Syria, who joined the consultation by Skype because he had been unable to obtain a visa to…
As the Lausanne-Orthodox Initiative prepares for its next major consultation in Addis Ababa this coming October we recommend a very interesting book on the contextual reading and understanding of the Bible. In An Ethiopian Reading of the Bible: Biblical Interpretation of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahido Church Dr. Keon-Sang An argues that all interpretations of the…
Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, head of the Department of External Church Relations of the Russian Orthodox Church, recently delivered a lecture on “Christian Ecumenism: Does it have a future?” in Winchester and Cambridge, UK. In the introductory passages of his lecture Metropolitan Hilarion deals with the early mission of the church and specifically the role of…
There is much in the news about the revival at Asbury University in the US. The stories of students and staff being moved to repentance and worship are very moving. From the perspective of other Christian expressions these events may be viewed with some skepticism, and so we are grateful to Prof Paul Gavrilyuk, the…
Dr. Darrell Jackson, who gave the key note address on an evangelical understanding of mission at the 2013 LOI consultation, has just alerted us to a new book. He writes … I’ve recently ordered a copy of ‘After Nicholas: self-realisation in the Japanese Orthodox Church’ published late 2013, and I’m rather excited by it! You…
“We are seeing an extreme religious ideology that knows no limits in its persecution of those who are culturally or religiously different.” says a statement this week from church leaders in the UK. The meeting of leaders from Middle Eastern churches and many others was conveened at Lambeth palace by Anglican Archbishop, Rt. Rev. Justin…