Two into one does go!

Now the two blog postings from Asia coincide for a little while. I have been joined in China by Steve Pearce, Partnership Coordinator for Asia Pacific in the Connexional Team. He is on route from Myanmar to Nepal via China - dont try and work out the route!!

Today, and for the rest of the week I am engaged in teaching some theology at the headquarters of the Amity Foundation in Nanjing. Today I was working with some sernior ministers from some of the churches across China and we were thinking about the nature of mission and service - diakonia as they like to express it. The ministers told me that whilst they do engage with the society in acts of service they do not often integrate this work with their thinking about church things. They often see themselves as engaging in mission and ministry, works of diakonia, because they are the traditional things that churches do - without really having any understanding of how that tradition has come about. So, today we did some thinking about mission and discovered some theology which helps us to link the spiritual things that we do in church with the service and mission things that we do in the world.

The continued theological education of the ministers is something with which the Methodist Church in Britain can help with through our Scholarship and Leadership Training (SALT) programme. It is notjust about bringing people to Britain and Ireland to study - we can also support short training programmes in the home countries of our partner churches.

Tomorrow I continue to work with the ministers. We shall be thinking of some specifically Methodist expressions of theology and mission - they have especially asked to be told about the traditional Methodist expression of social holiness.

Adrian Burdon