WCC Assembly - Wednesday, October 30th - Things have started!

The "disciplined and diligent delegates at orientation 

It's been quite an amazing day... amazing people, amazing sounds, amazing words, amazing sharing, just amazing. The 10th Assembly of the WCC formally started it's meeting today and my goodness are there a lot of people here... it's a good thing that BEXCO (the convention center we are meeting in) is literally massive.

This is going to have to be a quick overview of the day because I am tired tonight and it's only day one of our ten day meeting. So, here are some pieces from the day:

5000 People gathered together for the Gathering Prayer

- I learned this morning as I sat in the orientation session that a) not many people decide to attend this session and b) I probably didn't need to be there... I'm glad I went but my experience was that I had received the information during the Youth Pre-Assembly already; read the materials in the information sent out before the Assembly; or that coming from my work back in Canada I already know how a number of the processes work (ie: consensus, nominations, etc...)

- There are 700 youth (people under the age of 30) present at this Assembly in many different capacities. The WCC General Secretary told us that this is the youngest Assembly yet!

- The Assembly delegates are made up of 52% women and 48% men.

Standing room only during Gathering Prayer

- Our time in the Gathering Prayer was probably one of the highlights for me... like really, when does one get to be part of worship with 5000+ people in the room? 5000 voices in many different languages all praying together prayers of lamentation and thanksgiving... 5000 people listening to the Word of God... 5000 people raising their voices in song.

- During the Gathering Prayer the room was so packed that there was only standing room at the back... how lovely would it be for this to be a problem we had on Sunday mornings?

- Our Opening Plenary session brought many greetings from all sorts of people including a letter from Pope Francis, greetings from the local community, thoughts from four young people and (the most powerful part in my opinion) a dramatic opera and dance presentation by local Koreans sharing the 5000 year history of Korea and the quest for justice and the hope for peace.

Full auditorium for the Opening Plenary

- We heard reports from the General Secretary and Moderator  and ended our "work" time for the day with our first Business Plenary which included matters that were referred to the policy reference committee and the public issues committee and the approval of our assembly committees and leaders. This plenary included consensus decision making, long line-ups at microphones and between the hearing of the above mentioned reports and this session we managed to get 45 minutes behind schedule!

Korean dramatic opera presentation 

- Evening Prayer tonight was Anglican Evensong... nice and familiar!