(Here under is a report which I gave to Bishop Tom about “the 2nd Global Christian Forum”<br/><br/>

Dear Bishop Tong,<br/><br/>

It may be a bit late to report to you the meeting of the 2nd Global Christian Forum held at Indonesia on October 4th to7th as during the end of October I participated and hosted a retreat for the local Cantonese community in Singapore.<br/><br/>

First of all, it is a blessing that I could attend the meeting on your behalf and be able to experience how anxious the global Christian representatives are looking forward to achieving unity in the near future.<br/><br/>

In the past, no form of interflow existed between the mainstream Christian Church, the Evangelical and the Charismatic Movement. This year the convener of the Forum is the Director of the World Council of Churches Mr. Hubert van Beek. He hosted the activity under the title of the Secretary of the Christian Forum because the Evangelical and the Charismatic Movement are not the members of WCC.<br/><br/>

The first session of the Forum was held at Kenya, East Africa in November 2007, the event opened a prelude to different religious sects towards greater unity.<br/><br/>

The theme of this year is “Life Together in Jesus Christ, empowered by the Holy Spirit”. There were about one third of the participants in this Forum who also attended the first session. The Catholic Church has actively supported this Forum. The Federation of Asian Bishops had also sent five representatives while the China Christian Council planned to send two representatives to attend. Unfortunately one of them could not attend due to his own accord. Pastor Kim Kwong Chan and I represented Hong Kong.<br/><br/>

Pastor Chan has been studying the Sino-Vatican relationship at Catholic Pontifical University in Canada, when he first introduced the history about the missionary work of Christianity in China. He deliberately pointed out that the Virgin Mary is not just a person respected by Catholics but also a woman who goes deep into the heart of the Chinese people. When Pastor Chan projected a picture of the Virgin Mary, he invited me to sing out respectfully the composition of Jiang Wen Ye’s “Hail Mary”.<br/><br/>

This time the number of attendances was around four hundred people spread out from 65 different countries. Eleven of them were representatives for the World Students Christian Federation. They will be considered as the new blood for future ecumenical movements.<br/><br/>

Over two days we were divided into 20 groups and shared about how the gospel word and its relationship with us. I served as team leader for one of the groups. The sharing groups managed to break through the lack of interflow between missionary co-workers over the years.<br/><br/>

In addition, the Taize Community was also invited to send a representative to lead the daily prayers.<br/><br/>

In general, the co-workers of the Protestant are full of enthusiasm and were heading off towards the path of unity. There are no certain plans yet for any future activities. However, a new Secretary has been elected to follow up the work ahead.<br/><br/>

Postscript: Bishop Rod D. Brown from the U.S. Conference sends his special greetings to you.