AWF ExCom Meets to Plan the Next Steps as World Faces Pandemic
From top to bottom, left to right: Roland Lumawag, Jura Yanagihara, Brem Frentz, Celestin Koffi, Ken Baldes, Munther Shahatit, David MuthreRelated News
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The AWF Executive Committee met last week in a videoconference in the midst of the greatest global health crisis of the century. The preparations for the AWF Quadrennial Convocation in October 2020 drew much of the attention. God continues to work by strengthening the Alliance identity and by forming many new cooperative missionary projects around the globe.
AWF Treasurer Ken Baldes agreed to wake up before 5 a.m. and Roland Lumawag, APAC’s Regional Coordinator, planned to go to bed after midnight so that the AWF ExCom could meet from March 24 to 28, five hours a day, using a videoconference system that operated smoothly, thank the Lord. The initial face-to-face meeting was scheduled to happen in Beirut, Lebanon, but had to be changed because of political instability in the Middle East at the end of last year. Later, the meeting was moved to Seoul, South Korea, and then to Madrid, Spain, due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Finally, the face-to-face meeting was cancelled when the illness became a pandemic.
The following recommendations will be presented to the General Assembly of the AWF Quadrennial Convocation that is scheduled for October this year. The membership applications from the Alliance Church of Korea and the Christian and Missionary Alliance of Nepal were accepted. And an amendment to the AWF Constitution concerning the nominating process will be presented.
The AWF regions will work in close cooperation with the International Commission of Theological Education to conduct seminars on Alliance History and Thought and Theological Symposiums.
The involvement of businessmen in missions was also discussed. Instead of being the provider of financial resources only, a model was proposed that the businessmen take a central role in the enterprise, envisioning, investing and establishing a long-term platform that will be used to do missions in “creative-access” countries, in close formal partnership with the national church.
Many missionary projects in partnership between two or more national churches were presented and discussed. These projects are related to nine unreached ethnic groups scattered in North Africa, Central Asia and Southeast Asia.
The next AWF ExCom meeting will take place by videoconference on June 22, 2020.