Staff and wire reports

The Rev. Ray Bonoan, the diocese’s canon missioner for Asian ministries, says he had a revelation during a conference in Taiwan this June:

Evangelism can be a really simple thing.

Attending the Episcopal Asiamerica Ministries Consultation, June 6-10 in Kaoshiung, Taiwan, he had a conversation with a youth missioner who had recently returned from a mission trip to the Philippines. During that trip, several Buddhists had accepted Christ.

Bonoan asked him how he was able to convince a Buddhist to become a Christian. “Well, just be Christ to them,” the missioner replied. “Just reflect the teaching of Jesus Christ to these people. Be hospitable. That’s it.”

“I think we need get back to the basics,” Bonoan told The Southern Cross. “That’s what I learned over there.

“We have all of these programs in evangelism, but sometimes if the mission is not Christ-centered, it’s not going to happen,” he said.
“Sometimes, ‘the Episcopal Church welcomes you’ if you look like us, if you act the way we act,” he observed. “But over there, it’s so simple. They get one another. They’re hospitable.”

Participants at the consultation were challenged to “go in peace to love and serve the Lord” in the context of cities of the United States and throughout the whole globalized world and become ministers of reconciliation in a broken world and a broken church.

The consultation featured keynote speakers Canon Soh Chye Ann of the Church Mission Society and Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, who addressed the 160 Asian American leaders, representing Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, South Asian, Southeast Asian convocations, diocesan representatives and their guests from the Philippines, Korea, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Canada and the United Kingdom.

The consultation opened with a welcome from the Rev. Dr. Fran Toy and thanksgiving to the host Diocese of Taiwan, led by diocesan Bishop David Lai. The EAM ministries extend to all Episcopal Asian churches in the United States including Micronesia (Guam and Saipan) and Taiwan, which is part of the Episcopal Church’s Province VIII. The decision to hold the EAM consultation outside the mainland U.S. was made upon the invitation from Lai and in order for Asian American Episcopalians to reconnect with their roots in Asia.

In a powerful presentation, Soh painted the canvass of globalization as the context of mission, Jesus as the content of mission and the Church as the conduit of mission.

Citing the works of futurist Alvin Toffler (Future Shock) and Thomas Friedman (The World is Flat), Soh regaled the audience with fascinating facts about the speed of globalization and the challenge of pax globala, a highly interconnected global village, which will usher in religious revival and reawakening. Soh presented a “Christology of mission” under three headings.

“First of all, Jesus must be the heart and head of mission,” Soh said. “You can change systems, you can restructure, you can set goals and frame vision statements, but if Jesus is not the heart and head of mission, they will be vanities and a striving after the wind.” There have been many so-called “decades of evangelism programs” in the past but they missed the point because Christ was not the center.

Episcopal Asiamerica Ministries is among the growing edges of the Episcopal Church and is considered the most diverse culturally, linguistically and ethnically. Participants gathered in plenary and subdivided into ethnic convocations where they shared common issues in ministry.

After viewing an invitation via video from Bishop Dabney Smith, the Diocese of Southwest Florida was selected to host the 2009 consultation next summer.

--Information from Southern Cross Editor Jim DeLa and Episcopal News Service was used in this story.