Hope and Healing for the World
CWM Youth Pre-Assembly Statement 2016 – Summary
The Youth Pre-Assembly was made up of the youth delegates to Assembly (one per member church) as well as the thirteen (13) volunteer stewards. In response to the theme and as a statement to Assembly, the Youth Pre-Assembly group spoke of equality, stewardship and evangelism and church growth, as well as of the challenge to the church to be active in the pursuit of God’s Kingdom on earth.
The group chose to respond in three ways: through a written statement, visual art and music and drama.
“Christ is able to sustain His people as we attempt to heal His world”
The written statement was circulated in full and was presented to the CWM Assembly on the 22nd June 2016. The statement begins by placing the context of their response as a cry to God and a call to all who identify as followers of Christ to ‘follow His radical example’: ‘Our faith in Christ should lead to good works and urgent action to heal our broken world’ (p1). It then places the emphasis of the response into three areas: Equality, Stewardship and Evangelism and Church Growth.
Equality is considered through the lenses of gender, age and race; Stewardship recognises not only the reality of climate change but also the role of the economy in shaping the way we interact with the earth; and Evangelism and Church Growth is the Youth Pre-Assembly’s call for fresh, creative and faithful approaches to empowering Christians to share the love and word of God with all of humanity.
The statement closes with a rallying cry for unity in the face of Empire:
‘To act effectively we need to strengthen our church institutions by co-operating with each other so we can do more outreach and spread Jesus’ Gospel. The worldwide community of CWM is amazing; it is an umbrella of hope. An umbrella protects all our regions, from sun or from rain and CWM has the ability to protect everyone from injustice, discrimination and most importantly hopelessness. The bigger the umbrella the more protection it can give and the more hope it can provide so let’s act together, as one church, to reduce suffering and restore hope’.
For the full document download here – Final_CWMYouthAssemblyStatement2016