Fourteen (14) theological college students from different countries are making their way to India to participate in the Face to Face (F2F), India programme. It is dubbed: Building Life-Affirming Communities: Face To Face with the many poor and the many faiths in Asia. It will begin on 2 September and end on 15 October 2016.
The Council for World Mission (CWM) is inspired by its engagement in God’s mission through its vision of: ‘fullness of life through Christ for all creation.’ That vision undergirds the Face to Face programme as it provides an opportunity for the participants, individually and collectively, to understand and to engage with the realities on how a large majority of the world’s population are denied fullness because of skewed global and local power structures.
Through this programme, the participants will come face to face with the issues of poverty and pluralism. South Asian has many religions and many poor and is an ideal context for students to encounter and reflect on these issues.
Face to Face will take place on two campuses, namely, Henry Martin Institute in Hyderabad and Bishop’s College in Kolkata. The programme will unfold as three separate but integrated segments of immersion, reflection and seminars. Exposure to, and reflection on the context will be tied together. Exposure to the context will include live-in experiences, visits to organizations that work among the poor and to relevant religious centres.
The programme will avail participants the opportunity to engage in theol
ogical dialogue from a global perspective on spirituality, mission and intercultural exchange. The immersion programmes, Bible studies and seminars will form the basis for reflection on mission in the context of Empire.