This conference is part of the ongoing Lausanne/WEA Global Campaign for Creation Care and the Gospel. The description below is from the conference information page. This description is available in all regional languages on that website.
After half a century of industrialization and rapid economic growth, East Asia regions, including Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and in the last twenty years, mainland China, have seen unprecedented material prosperity, owing almost entirely to their export-oriented manufacturing economies producing many of the consumer goods demanded around the globe. However, in large parts of these regions the heavy human and environmental costs of such prosperity are evident in increasing disease, decreasing life-expectancy, excessive waste, severe air and water pollution, soil and watershed degradation, food insecurity, risk of nuclear disasters, and devastating loss of wildlife habitats, not to mention the increasing extreme weather phenomena caused by global climate change. People in these regions feel the impacts of the out-sourcing of manufacturing by Western economies, yet at the same time, add to these impacts through their own over-consumption as their wealth increases. Imitating their Western predecessors, the wealthy and corporations from these regions also have long been exporting the problematic production and processes to impoverished parts of the world adding further to the human and environmental costs.
While Christians are always a minority within the larger population of these regions, they constitute a significant proportion of those with power and wealth. Therefore, it is crucial that East Asian Christians understand and act upon biblical teaching on our calling and responsibility for God’s good earth. Creation care is a gospel issue, and vital for the credibility of biblical Christian witness in East Asia and beyond.
To this end, we would like to invite you to an important conference to be held in July 2017, convened by The Lausanne Movement and World Evangelical Alliance (WEA). The conference will be held at Presbyterian Bible College, Hsinchu City, Taiwan.
Why?
This conference is part of a global campaign by Lausanne and the WEA to help encourage, strengthen and start creation care movements in many countries and regions around the world. The conference is initiated by the international partnership of Lausanne, WEA, OMF International, A Rocha International and other organisations, while the local hosting organisations are Taiwan Ecological Stewardship Association (臺灣生態關懷者協會) and the Chinese Christian Professionals‘ Faith Hope Love Association (中華基督徒專業人員信望愛社). The Campus Evangelical Fellowship of Taiwan (臺灣校園福音團契) is the local associating and networking partner.
Who should come?
Conference participants are being invited from East Asian regions such as Japan, Korea, mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau, with a few spaces reserved for others, such as participants from regions not represented at the 2014 Southeast Asia Regional Conference in Manila. We will be looking for people who are:
- Leaders of churches and Christian institutions,
- Theologians and biblical scholars,
- Scientists,
- Creation care practitioners and environmental professionals (in education, sustainable farming, etc.), and
- Anyone who would like to raise a voice to care for creation.
We would particularly like to see viable groups from each country and region, and have kept costs as low as possible while providing multilingual interpretation in order to enable participants from all over East Asia to attend.
What will we do?
The conference will be a mix of plenary sessions (to be conducted in the native tongues of the speakers, with simultaneous interpretation into Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, and English) and workshops (mainly in speakers’ native tongues with English interpretation) organized around three themes:
- God’s Word (what the Bible has to tell us about creation care),
- God’s World (what is happening in creation), and
- God’s Work (what we as God’s people are doing, and should be doing).
When and where?
24-28 July 2017. The conference will be at Presbyterian Bible College, Hsinchu City, Taiwan. The participants are expected to arrive in the morning of 24 July and leave in the afternoon of 28 July. Accommodation will be provided onsite at the College, which is within a 15-minute walking distance to the city’s main train station (within 5 minute drive), and an hour and 15 minute ride to Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport