Monthly Archives: December 2007

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Taizé has started in Geneva

December 28, 2007 in Church, Ecumenism, Europe, Faith, Youth

It is an uncommon sight for this usually very quite city. Hundreds, no thousands of young people flood the trams and buses with sleeping bags on their shoulders. Today started the Prayer Meeting of the Taizé community in Geneva and 30,000 young people have come. You can here see some photos of the event so far. Most of them have found a sleeping place in a family.In my case, it is not really a family but just myself with two visitors from Portugal in my small apartment.  The schedules for the day is simple like everything Taizé is doing is supposed to be simple, yet meaningful. After breakfast in the host families the participants go to a local church and have a morning prayer there. They discuss in small groups relevant questions about a biblical text. After that, they go to Palexpo. That is the Geneva fair ground. Here a huge midday prayer is taking place.  After the midday prayer there is a – again simple – lunch and workshops on various topics are taking place. The day ends with a simple supper and the evening prayer. Then the participants head back to their host families. Today the official part of the meeting started with the evening prayer. This evening at the opening probably all 30,000 plus a few thousand Geneva residents were in the main hall together sitting on the floor and praying. Between the many beautiful songs, the prayers in multiple languages and the long silence, Brother Alois, the spiritual leader of Taizé preached a short sermon. It set off the theme for the meeting: Reconciliation. He said that real reconciliation can only be built upon trusting, long-term and personal relationships. That was true for the private life as well as for the  life of societies. He said: “Our commitment to reconciliation finds its source in the reconciliation that God offers us. God’s forgiveness can touch the depth of our being; it allows us to be born to a new life. Through the life of Christ, we see that God never tires of beginning all over again to walk alongside us. Yes, Jesus ran the risk of believing in human beings; he placed all his trust in us.”

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Youth, Church and Climate Change

December 20, 2007 in Church, Enviroment, Justice, Poverty, Poverty/Affluence, Youth, Youth Ministry, Youth participation

The conference in Bali is over and everybody is relieved that it did not end in a disaster. But as expected, the outcome was thin. The only result was that there is now a timetable until when the follow-up agreement after the Kyoto protocol shall be finalized.

Therefore, it is important to keep up the pressure. The youth delegations who were present in the Bali conference issued a strong reminder what is at stake in these processes. This is the statement by Anna Keenan from Australia, Karmila Parakkasi from Indonesia, and Whit Jones from the United States of America. You can read it in full here.

“We speak today as part of the global youth climate movement. Half the world’s population is under 30, and will live with the decisions you make today.

Just last week, a young woman from Kiribati told us about her plight. Her island is only 2 meters above sea level, and as the land gets washed away, so does her people’s livelihood and culture. I was filled with a deep sense of urgency, solidarity and perhaps most importantly, responsibility to speak and act. Her story moved me to tears and should move you to action.

How many stories do we need to hear before we wake up and take action? We have one climate, one future, and this is our last chance.

The science is clear. We call on you to acknowledge that climate change is not bounded by economics and politics, but by science. You can’t negotiate with the laws of physics and chemistry. The targets currently being discussed are not even close to protecting our future. ”

Yes, we have to push for more. If we don’t people will continue to suffer and are going to suffer even more.

Dr. Ishmael Noko, the General Secretary of the Lutheran World Federation, wrote a letter to the member churches to invite them to join the fight against human-made climate change. All churches are invited to observe 29 June 2008 as a “Sunday on Climate Change”. Climate Change is also an important topic at the meeting of the LWF council in Arusha, Tanzania, in June 2008. The theme is: - “Melting Snow on Mount Kilimanjaro: Christian Witness Amidst the Suffering Creation”

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Studying Luther – Dependent on God’s grace

December 18, 2007 in Church, Ecumenism, Faith, North America, Spirituality

Searching the Internet for a completly different thing I discovered a very interesting post. Peter Kline – a young theologian working in a Lutheran congregation in the USA without being Lutheran himself – speaks about why it still makes sense to study Martin Luther.

He is talking very much from within the US American culture. But since many of our communities are quite influenced by American culture it is still interesting to read if you are from a different part of the world.

His starting point is a quote by the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He wrote once that in the USA, there are Protestants but they have never gone through a Reformation. That seems paradox at first. Don’t we call those Christians Protestants who trace themselves back to the Reformation? But later it becomes clear: The US American Protestants are just doing church: They pray, they worship, they are having great social activities, they work for justice – but they have never gone through the depth of total dependence on God in Jesus Christ.

Exactly that is the experience Martin Luther keeps talking about: What do you do if you arrive at a point, where you cannot “do” anything anymore? What do you do when you cannot serve, believe, even hope anymore? Luther experienced this deep struggle, this feeling of despair. And in all this, he found God’s grace. He realized that God loves us and looks favorably on us is not dependent on what we do. It is not even dependent on what we are. It all flows out of God’s love to us. And we can experience God’s love by encountering Jesus Christ.

That is Martin Luther’s core message and it is the core message of the Reformation. It is highly relevant for me while I sit in my office at the end of the year and making plans for the year to come. The plans that we are making might work or might fail. But I can never fall deeper than into God’s hands.

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An Independent Kosovo?

December 13, 2007 in Europe, Justice, LWF, UN

The status of Kosovo, a Southern province of Serbia, has been in limbo for almost a decade.  After Serbia began committing crimes against humanity in Kosovo against ethnic Albanians, a brief war in 1999, led by NATO, knocked Serb forces out of Kosovo for good.  Since then, the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) has overseen the governance and security of the province. 

In July, as a volunteer with the Lutheran World Federation Department of World Service Program in the Balkans, I had the opportunity to visit Kosovo and see firsthand what is happening there.  The LWF has been working with both Serbs (who make up 10% of Kosovo’s population) and ethnic Albanians (who make up roughly 90% of the population).  Their focus has been to help rebuild houses for people who are living in ‘enclaves’ inside Kosovo, where they are ethnic minorities.  They also provide different agricultural resources, like greenhouses, livestock, seeds, and education, in order to help former refugees make a living.

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