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The Lutheran World Federation
Lutheran World Information |
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| 12.07.2003 |
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| LWF Youth Pre-Assembly Conference Begins in Guelph, Ontario |
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Main Themes: Economic Globalization, Justice, Healing for Families, Overcoming Violence
GENEVA, 12 July 2003 (LWI) – Over 100 youth delegates and stewards from 54 countries gather July 12-18 in Guelph near Toronto, Ontario, Canada for the last of seven preparatory conferences prior to the 2003 Tenth Assembly of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF).
Discussions in the week-long Pre-Assembly Youth Conference (PAYC) will focus on economic globalization, overcoming violence, justice and healing for families, as well as preparations for the July 21-31 LWF Tenth Assembly. The Assembly is hosted by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (ELCIC).
The purpose of the current conference is mainly to prepare the youth delegates for both the content and practical aspects of the Tenth Assembly program, said the conference coordinator, Rev. Teresita Valeriano, Secretary for the Youth in Church and Society (YICAS) desk, LWF Department for Mission and Development (DMD). The Youth meeting opens with a worship service on at the University Center in Guelph.
The PAYC will be preparing the Bible study for which the youth delegates will be responsible during the Assembly, and focus on specific contributions from the young people’s perspective for study in the ten so-called “village groups” in which the Assembly theme, “For the Healing of the World” will be discussed. Two keynote speeches, on “Healing in the Church” by Dr David Pfrimmer (ELCIC) and “Healing in Society - Healing the Creation” by Krystel Greene (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America), will introduce discussion of the Assembly theme in the youth delegates’ context.
Besides studies, the PAYC also has the goal of getting the youth delegates from the LWF member churches into conversations with one another, in which they can make friends and experience solidarity, said Valeriano. She said that the conference was the largest meeting held by LWF youth in recent years, in regard to both the number of participants and the scale of participation by young people from LWF member churches worldwide.
During the meeting in Guelph, Valeriano continued, the youth delegates will also have the opportunity to help plan the content of the work of YICAS in the next few years. She said she is convinced that the realities of young people’s lives have changed considerably since the Ninth Assembly was held in 1997 in Hong Kong, China. The youth delegates now, she points out, will have the job of defining anew the global and regional themes for the LWF’s youth work at the beginning of the 21st century.
The first of the conferences to prepare for the LWF Tenth Assembly was the Women’s Pre-Assembly Consultation, which was held 14-19 November 2002 in Montreux, Switzerland. The first in a series of five regional Pre-Assembly Consultations (PACs) was held January 23-26 for North America, in Denver, Colorado, USA, followed by the Europe PAC, February 23-26 in Vienna, Austria; Asia, March 2-6 in Medan, Indonesia; Africa, March 23-26 in Nairobi, Kenya; and Latin America and the Caribbean, April 6-9 in San Salvador, El Salvador.
At the Tenth Assembly in Winnipeg about 800 participants are expected, including over 430 delegates from the 136 LWF member churches. The Assembly is the LWF’s highest decision-making body and meets normally every six years.
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