13th Assembly: Kuala Lumpur, 2010

“Called to Prophesy, Reconcile, and Heal” was the theme for the 13th General Assembly of the CCA.

The encouragement and call throughout the assembly were for humanity to grieve on the actions of the past that were filled with bitterness and hatred against each other. Christians in Asia, before being prophetic, must ask God first for the gift of tears that cleanses the eyes to be able to see the suffering and pain in the world which God has created.

The call to prophecy, reconcile and heal is addressed to the Church in the letter to the Corinthians by St. Paul. He reminds the various factions and groups in the church that they are called to be a community growing in reconciliation. In the assembly, this call was deemed relevant to the churches 2000 years apart.

In the first session of the D.T. Niles memorial lecture, it was highlighted that costly discipleship was the consequence of prophetic ministry and a component of it. The second session encouraged the idea that reconciliation and healing were not a “welfarist model of work” of the churches, but was a political engagement with people, ideologies, politics and identities.

The biblical reflections enriched the theme of the assembly with deep and relevant insights. The need to look back to the first-century church was highlighted as to how they lived up to a prophetic counter vision. The first church was sensitive to the needs of others and practised the ‘economy of sharing’. This praxis entailed an alternative economic vision which stood as a contrast to the dominant economic norm of the present era. Furthermore, the biblical reflections also focused on the Trinitarian state of being - of a perfect relationship between God, humanity and the entire creation. The bible studies proposed that reconciliation was more than a mere ‘conciliation’, it is a cosmo-theandric vision.