six week

INTERNATITIONAL TRAINING INSTITUTE

for

ASIAN CHURCHMEN

Trinity College Mt. Sophia Road Singapore

August 3 through September 14, 1969

1. THE PRESENT DEMAND

1. Universal Renewal. The total globe is experiencing cultural upheaval. The future of mankind turns on the intentional shaping of these forces of change which are erupting. The global activity of the great nineteenth century church was a mayor force In occasioning this eruption. The universal church of today has a clear obligation to participate in providing creative form for these trends which it has helped to release. Particularly the church must be concerned with the human aspect of current world development. Though the church cannot do this alone, she cannot simply leave It to others. And the massiveness of her role requires every manifestation of the global church working corporately together toward this end. The first step is to awaken and equip ourselves on a world­wide bests for this world­wide task.

2. Local Emphasis. Such shaping of historical forces takes place finally at the level of local community. The basic dynamic in the Church for undertaking thus task has always been and continues to be the local church. It is here that the practical aspects of social change are forced out. The need is for passive, Intensive training programs geared to the preparation of the local church for its response to the historical situation. The present apathy, powerlessness, and seeming Irrelevance of the local church across the world Is due to inadequate Intellectual and practical tools and methods out of which people can grasp afresh the meaning of their lives in initiating the action necessary for altering the structures for human community in the 20th century.

3. Leadership Training. The fifty years of church renewal already passed have set the theoretical context for the missional role of the church. Now the task is the creation of the constructs whereby this vision may be manifested in the life and action of the local church across the planet. Depth retraining of the leaders of the local congregation Is the foundation of the new missional thrust. Such training must be practical, offering methodologies of social change, methodologies for new and effective forms of Imaginal education, and methodologies In the religious life out of which issues the capacity to stand In the midst of the demands of the times. The leadership required cannot be realized by half hearted efforts or compromising superficial training programs. This education must be radical. It must deal both In scope and In depth with the human Issues underlying the present day world­wide social change. It must produce a sensitive, Informed, dedicated and disciplined leadership on the local level that is relevant to our actual world and prepared to serve in it.

4. Action Proposal. As an effort to meet this need, the Ecumenical Institute, at the request of awakened Asian churchmen and under the sponsorship of key leadership within the various denominations of the historic church in Asia, is conducting a six­week International Training Institute for Asian Churchmen in Singapore, August 3 through September 14 of this year. The School is designed to recruit and train local leadership, both lay and clergy from over eighteen countries in Asia.



II. BASIC OBJECTIVES

5. Broad Intent. The Training Institute in Singapore is designed to bridge the gap between the vision of a renewed church in mission, and the concrete spelling out of that vision In the life of local congregations for the sake of the humanization of mankind. It intends to serve the established church through the development of local leadership adequate to meet today's complex challenge to the universal church. The Ecumenical Institute, whether in the United States or abroad intends to be catalytic In the sense that local churchmen are equipped to do the work of renewal of the church In their sphere of action. The aim of the Training Institute is to provide them with baste tools which they can adapt to their own unique situations in being the church as mission, to mankind.

6. Tactical Aims. The broad intents of the Training Institute will issue forth concretely in the following tactical aims:

a. The participants must become a group of colleagues grounded in their local situations across Asia who, by virtue of their work together In the Institute, have a Life­long basis for sharing their developing wisdom and being a leavening force for renewal In the church and the society.

b. Each participant must become highly skilled In effective methods of social change. He must return to his local situation fully trained In social analysis, model­building, and strategic planning for action.

c. The participants must be equipped to plan and execute programs of mass education. They must be able to plan seminars and training projects and systematically recruit participants from their local churches, their denominations, their regions and their nations.

d. Each participant must be able to follow up mass education with the formation of guilds of awakened churchmen who are prepared to participate in church renewal and nation­building at every level of society.

e. The participants must become a part of an international team of teachers who are able to train others within any culture in the world, thereby sharing insights and wisdom from their unique situations. Each participant must become a teacher of teachers.

III. THE PRACTICAL CONSTRUCT

7. Participants. The participants for the Institute are young awakened churchmen, who are committed to the role of the historic church in society, and who have participated in previous courses of the Ecumenical Institute or other significant efforts in church renewal. The participants are both laymen and clergy, both men and women. Participation is geographically comprehensive. Delegates are coming from every major area of Asia. North East Asia including Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong; from Pacific Asia including the Pacific island groups of Melanesia, Polynesia, and Micronesia, Australia, and New Zealand; South East Asia including the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand, and South Asia including every major region of India, Ceylon, and Pakistan. All come representing their churches, and were selected with great care by the churches in their regions (see the attached construct of regional participation).

8. Auspices. Sponsorship for the Training Institute has been obtained from church leaders throughout Asia. The list of sponsors includes both laymen and clergy, Protestant and Roman Catholics. To name but a few: The Right Rev. Gilbert Baker, Bishop of Hong Kong (Anglican), David S.C. Chen, Principal, Taiwan Theological College, His Excellency, Most Rev. Stanislaus Lokuang, Archbishop of Taipei (Roman Catholic), The Rev. Stephen Tong­Hwan Moon, Professor of Christian Education, Hankuk Theological Seminary, Seoul Korea (Presbyterian), The Rev, Alexander John, St. Mark's Cathedral, Bangalore (Church of South India), The Rev. R.D. Joshi, Bishop of Bombay (Methodist), Dr. D.T. Niles, President of the South East Asia Conference, The Rev. Takeshi Takasaki, President of Tokyo Union Theological Seminary, and the Rev. Yap Kim Hao, Bishop of Singapore­Malaysia (Methodist) and the host sponsor to the group of participants.

9. Faculty. The staff of this initial Training Institute will be drawn from the faculty of the Ecumenical Institute. All members of the Training Institute staff will have had overseas experience as well as extensive experience in developing the comprehensive curricula of the Ecumenical Institute. During the past two years, thirty­four Ecumenical institute staff members have conducted 10; International courses plus many consultations in the theoretical and practical aspects of church renewal,

10. Curriculum. Though the emphasis of the entire curriculum is intensely practical, the six­week program will include a comprehensive theological and practical mastering of the wisdom which is part of the 20th Century revolution in humanness. Each of the ten theoretical courses (six sociological and four theological) will concentrate on key Images and models and will be integrated into a total image of the human adventure. Ten methods courses will move toward grounding this theoretical gestalt in terms of personal and corporate dedication to the process of social building, and in terms of viable techniques of effecting social change. Further, both the theoretical and practical studies will be tested and implemented through workshops, labs, tutorials, and service projects in which each participant will begin the process of application and adaptation of the images and tools which will be mastered in the formal courses. The attached curriculum chart shows the interrelationships of these various aspects of the curriculum.

11. Procedure. The entire six­week program of the Training Institute will be an exercise in corporateness. The participants' life­together will be under a common discipline. They will experiment with organizing themselves into a mission task force. They will operate as small cadres In carrying out the variety of activities that define the school. A common symbolic life will be emphasized. Meals will be held in common so that skills in serious group conversation can be developed. The total program will be a laboratory in which the participants will be discovering in new depth what it means to be accountable to and for one another for the sake of common service to the world.

12. Finances. The International Training Institute for Asian Churchmen can serve as a critical experiment in the future enabling of the leadership of the church across the globe. Like programs are needed in Africa, Latin America, and Europe. For this reason, the costs of the International Training institute have been kept to a minimum, seeking to show how inexpensively this kind of comprehensive training can be. The per student cost will be about $650 for the six­week period. This will include round­trip travel, room and board, and tuition costs. The attached budget delineates the operating costs involving administration, basic educational materials, books, documents, visual aids, laboratory, cultural trips and the like. All of these are included in the tuition fee. It is important to note that the governments of several of the participants do not allow funds to be taken from the country, and further, many of the participants are on subsistence incomes. Here is an effort in which both religious bodies and secular agencies concerned with the human aspect of world development can join hands in providing the necessary economic enablement