Conflict, Healing, and Mission in Global Contexts

Emmanuel Katongole 

Duke Center for Reconciliation Summer Institute 2009

 

Description:

The seminar is especially designed for Christian leaders who find themselves in the midst of conflict, war or poverty and those whose organizations, congregations and ministries are seeking to respond to these global challenges. The seminar will explore prevailing models of mission and reconciliation in global contexts. Drawing from stories and lessons from around the world: Uganda, Burundi, Sudan, the Middle East, South Africa, Haiti, the seminar will point to fresh experiments and develop alternative models of mission and reconciliation, which reflects the gift of God’s new creation. Alternative models to be considered will include: pilgrimage, relocation; intervention, and interruption. In developing and exploring these models, special attention will be paid to the sets of skills and gifts that sustain the alternative models: lament and hope; courage and compassion; resistance and imagination; description and dreaming. 

 

Objectives:

1. Confirm the urgency and need for Christian leadership around the challenges of conflict, war and poverty within a global context.
2. Deepen awareness of the existing models of engaging these realities: their opportunities but also limitations.
3. develop and learn models to engage the global challenges in a manner that reflects the full potential of Gods’s gift of new creation within the particularities of history and geography
4. Strengthen the vision and capacity for Christian leadership around the practices of lament, hope, courage, resistance, imagination and 
5. Encourage each participant to design a model that is most suited for their ministry/organization  - and to share the dreams about the ‘next chapter’ of their leadership.

 

Resources:

• Emmanuel Katongole, Mirror to the Church http://www.zondervan.com/Cultures/en-US/Product/ProductDetail.htm?ProdID=com.zondervan.9780310284895&QueryStringSite=Zondervan

 

• Violence and Christian Social Reconstruction in Africa: On the Resurrection of the Body (Politic): - http://www.theotherjournal.com/article.php?id=115

 

• Christianity Today interview, “From Tower Dwellers to Travelers,” http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/july/9.34.html

 

 

Outline (tentative)

Monday:

• Introductions: who is who?
• Seminar objectives: why did you come? What are you hoping for?
• Describing the global situation: Christianity, poverty, conflict, war:
• Dealing with the why question: why bother? Why should the Christian care about these realities? Why do you care?
• Introducing the ‘toward what” question:  What’s the telos, the end – the goal of Christian social involvement.
• The starting point: Lament: when the foundations are destroyed, what can the just do?

Activity: A film (clips) on Rwanda

 

Tuesday:

• Mission within a global context: prevailing models
• But who is my neighbor?
• Pilgrimage, relocation

Activity/Story/Film/Discussion: Paride Taban and the Kuron Peace Village

 

Wednesday:

• Resistance and imagination: Daring to invent the future
• The courage to say No.
• Saying “Yes” – yes to what?

Activity: Maggy Barankitse and Maison Shalom

 

Thursday:

• Interruption and the need for alternatives
• The anointing at Bethany
• Learning to read the powers

Activity: Angelina Atyam and the Concerned Parents Association