On Sunday we went to Budapest where the 240 participants worshipped among 50 different congregations, Protestant and Catholic, followed by a tour of the city. On Tuesday, over 250 persons participated in eight different exposure visits around Hungary and even into Slovakia. Thursday evening we had a boat trip on the lake, serenaded by gipsy music.
The real joy and usefulness of the Conference was the conversation and networking with colleagues from such a broad spectrum of international and ecumenical perspectives regarding mission studies and practices today.
The SVD has been intimately associated with IAMS from the beginning. For many years the association's journal, Mission Studies, was edited from Sankt Agustin, and later by Steve Bevans from Chicago. We have had at least a dozen SVD participants at previous Conferences. This time just eight confreres took part.
It was good to see Steve Bevans so full of life after his major operation (brain tumour), in a “former life” Steve was Dom Flores’ rector in Vigan, northern Philippines; Roger Schoeder was his delightful and insightful self, Roger has taught in YTU as a visiting lecturer; Jon Kirby, who has just made a "paradigm shift" from Tamale, Ghana, to Washington, was as incisive as ever; it was great to meet Augustine Jianghua Li from Beijing, first because he is from mainland China but also because he is not (yet) one of the SVD IAMS "veterans"; Stanis Lazar came although he has now become Provincial of INM, he gave greetings from the recently formed International Association of Catholic Missiologists; Christian Tauchner and Franz Helm from St. Gabriel in neighbouring Austria were gracious "hosts". And Bill Burrows of Orbis B
ooks is still very much part of the "SVD Contingent." As you can see from the photo (right), we got together late one evening for “bible sharing” in the traditional SVD manner.
Three SVD seminarians studying in Budapest, Lawrence Kponor and Sebastian Tengan (Ghana) and Hủgor Sándor (Romania), served as stewards during the conference. Bishop Ladislav Nemet, who had been part of the local committee with Frans Magung, led the final worship. It would be good to see a new generation of SVD Mission scholars attending the next IAMS Conference, due in 2012 (possibly in Toronto, Canada). If SVD participation were to reflect SVD teaching and research, then more confreres from Asia and Africa would take part.
I was coordinator for the BISAM (Bible Studies and Mission) Study Group which had around 30 participants for the six parallel group meetings during the Conference. For its next project (2008-2012) the Study Group will be taking up the theme of "Mission, Nation and Empire: The use of the bible by biblical and mission scholars and by the grassroots and congregations".
After the Conference I spent a few days in our SVD communities in Budapest and Koszeg. Joszef Werner remembers Dom Flores from his Philippine days (back in the last century); Marsel, Modes, Frans and Eli from Indonesia and Sebastian from India are part of the young, vibrant international Hungarian Province, rising like a phoenix from decades first under fascist and then communist rule. ~
John Prior, SVD
