The opening of the World Methodist Council... Being inspired; meeting old friends!
Thursday, July 20, 2006 at 2:30PM 
What an amazing experience! After a very short night's sleep (about 3 hours) I awoke at 6am (Korean time) to get our group together and on the Underground railway. We arrived yesterday only to find that something had gone wrong with our transport bookings. It would cost us approximately US$140 (about R1000) to make use of the official bus service to the Kumnan Methodist Church.
We found that for only US$1 (about 1000Won, or R7) we could get to Mandu station and catch a shuttle bus to the station.
The Council is being held in the World's largest Methodist Church. Kumnan Methodist Church has over 100 000 members (yup, that's how many belong to this single Church). It seats 10 000 people at a time. It is incredible. Here's picture of the inside of the 3 storey auditorium (it is inside a 16 story building - bigger than any Church I have ever seen)! Chris, we have a bit of growing to do yet!
The World Methodist Council this year is attended by over 135 countries and more than 80 different Methodist Denominations from across the world. Our own Bishop Ivan Abrahams participated in the opening communion service and was appointed as a co-chair of the executive committee of the WMC. As an aside, it is wonderful to see how prominently that Methodist Church of Southern Africa features on this program. Dr Mvume Dandala and the Revd. Trevor Hudson are both keynote speakers - we are the only country to have more than one person on the program in the keynote slots. I am doing a presentation in the Theological Education stream together with Bishop Paul Verryn, Dr Angela Shier-Jones and Dr JC Park.
The theme of the Conference is "God reconciling the world unto himself in Christ'. The real business of the sessions will start tomorrow. I hope to be able to report more as it unfolds.
In the meantime here is a picture of me with Dr Mvume Dandala (President of the All Africa Council of Churches), and the Revd Trevor Hudson.
By the way for those in South Africa, I am sharing a room with Bishop Paul Verryn. As you can imagine I am not sleeping much. Paul gets phone calls at all hours of the morning, goes to bed very late and wakes up very early... So, I may need to get home just to sleep!
Reader Comments (2)
I hope he doesn't steal the blanket in the night.
LOL about Paul not sleeping. What's new?
This post brings back memories of a World Methodist Council I attended in Nairobi in July 1985 as a youth delegate.