WCC Assembly - Friday, November 1

Business Plenary seating....

I can't believe it's November 1st... before I know it we'll be at Christmas and if I blink the WCC Assembly will be over. As I've accepted every day will be, today was another very full day. I'm not saying it was bad or too much just full of richness in many different ways.

This morning in our Theme Plenary session we heard greetings from the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby. I met him briefly yesterday, he is a very nice and humble man - what a gift he is to the Anglican Communion. You can listen to or read his remarks here. Here is one of the pieces that resonated with me:

Archbishop of Canterbury shares greetings

"When we look to God our eyes are turned outwards to His world, and we hear again the command, as Pope Francis said, to be a poor church for the poor. The children of Christ act instinctively to love those who suffer, as He loves us. If justice faints, hope fades. But when justice is loved, and lived, the poor have hope and the whole world begins to sing. Our vision has to be of God and God’s world and the Church made sense of in that perspective."

Rev Nicholas Pang reads the Gospel during our Eucharist
of all the Saints service

There is lots from the Theme Plenary session on Asia today that I'd like to reflect on but I'm afraid that will have to wait until tomorrow (or somewhere thereafter!). This evening we gathered for Confessional Meetings... so all the delegates from the Anglican Communion from around the globe met together at a nearby hotel. Our evening was a lovely one together filled with sharing and listening, receiving many greetings, celebrating the Eucharist of All Saints together (I'm loving worship at the Assembly but there was something absolutely lovely and relaxing about the familiar Anglican service), and enjoying dinner together. I had great conversations with fellow Anglicans which were encouraging and filled with laughter and joy... common connections and experiences alongside unique stories. Our program went late which means that dinner was served at 9:15pm and I didn't get back to my room until just before 11pm. I'm taking note that if I'm every planning an event where there is translation taking place (everything we did tonight was in English and Korean) to make sure to add extra time... everything takes double time. In terms of the sermon though, it add lots of extra reflecting time on each and ever sentence which wasn't a bad thing at all (maybe a method to adopt?!)

And incase you were wondering... overnight Christmas
arrived at Starbucks here in Busan! 

Like I said... it was all very wonderful and inspiring but it's now time for bed as there is no sleeping in tomorrow! Canada friends: Enjoy November 1st - it was wonderful here, I hope it's the same for you!