Preamble

We, the national youth leaders and workers of the various National Church Councils and Conferences from Aotearoa-New Zealand, Australia, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Japan, Kampuchea, Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Timor Lorosa’e, and Thailand, have convened for the Asian Youth Secretaries’ Meeting at the Student Christian Center, Bangkok, Thailand, from November 11 to 16, 2002, to once again deeply share, reflect and analyze our national and regional ecumenical youth work in Asia.

• We believe in God’s grace through the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, who revealed the embodiment of justice, peace, equality and fellowship of the whole creation.

• We believe in the sustaining Spirit, who enables ecumenical partnership and visible unity in God’s mission with compassion and love.

Today we are living in a world, which is governed by capitalism. We are compelled to adopt the market culture promoted and propagated by Globalization. Scarcity amidst plenty is the order of the day. Debt crisis has become a peculiar Asian phenomenon. This is further aggravating the exploitation of women and children. Indigenous people have been pushed to the periphery. They are compelled to live as refugees in their own homeland, due to the alienation process of Globalization. Homogenization of culture has created a severe identity crisis for the marginalized peoples. The economic crisis has compelled people to migrate to other countries in search of livelihood, making their life difficult and exploited in foreign countries as migrant workers.

Religious intolerance and extremism has led to the paranoia of fanaticism and religious intolerance. In the name of religion people have been killing each other. Christian fundamentalism has also become a growing concern, as exclusivism of doctrines and dogmas have diluted the ecumenical spirit.

On the one hand many countries in Asia are torn by civil war and ethnic clashes for the identity of ethnicity, land, and culture. On the other hand we have military repression to suppress the right to life and livelihood of the poor and marginalized. In the name of peace, the First-World countries have perpetrated violence over the Asian countries through militarization. The current War on Terrorism is a growing concern in this regard.

The realities of the Ecumenical Youth Movement call for more to be done. Some churches have become merely structural and are not adequately responding to the ecumenical concerns. Young people are not considered as an important part of the Church! On the other hand, the church youth have become more individualistic and complacent towards responding to the social realities. A group of young people are only dwelling in the ‘other world’, ignoring the world which is at hand, here and now! In this context, the young people of Asia, under the banner of CCA, are meeting to discuss and reflect on their ecumenical Agenda!

We are deeply concerned

• On the dangerous impact of Globalization on the marginalized sections of the society
• About the growing religious intolerance and extremism in the whole world, especially in the Asian countries
• On the militarization process in and the long-term implication of the war against terrorism in Asia
• About some churches affected by power struggle among their leaders that hampers our ecumenical work, in forging Christian unity

For the CCA and NCCs:

1. To work out and to build a more effective mechanism for networking, information dissemination and resource sharing for our ecumenical youth work.
2. For the CCA to serve as link and help facilitate support for programs that intend to strengthen the local grassroots initiatives of the church youth and students.
3. For the CCA to provide an orientation to church youth movements who do not yet have in-depth knowledge, exposure and experience of ecumenism and ecumenical youth work.
4. Production of practical resource materials and modules for leadership capacity building, and to help equip our ecumenical youth leaders in deepening their theological knowledge and grasp of ecumenism and ecumenical work.
5. To help facilitate the production and circulation of resource materials related to the issue of globalization and terrorism, and its apparent effect in our region and to the youth and students.
6. Strengthen the ecumenical e-group project to serve as an effective medium for better and faster sharing of information on our works.
7. Study the possibility to set-up a needed regional ecumenical youth center that will help train and develop ecumenical youth leaders in the region in the fields of theologizing, organizing and managing our ecumenical youth work and ministries.
8. We ask that member churches take these recommendations, as suggested for CCA youth, to consider how they will make them part of their work.

It was suggested that our youth secretaries consider providing updates and reports the soonest they could be made available or, more or less, within six months as others have suggested. This is in order to monitor how we were able to implement the recommendations that were made during this meeting.

Therefore, we firmly pledge before God and our people, that we will not cease nor rest to be the instruments of Jesus Christ to be witnesses, and to be peacemakers and peace-builders in the midst of broken-ness, despair and injustices in our homes, churches, and societies.

We will be restless partners of the larger ecumenical movement that is concerned with the church and to what Christ has died for. We will remain to be a growing movement of young people who are organized and will collectively pursue our ecumenical agenda of selflessly serving God and the people, which is our fundamental conviction.