September 14, 2017
Baptist Talk
On Sunday afternoon, July 2nd at the 2017 Portland Biennial, more than 30 people attended the inaugural session of Baptist Talk. Led by commission members and staffed by Jeff Woods, our time featured a role-play by Wesley Sun and Zina Jacque, instructions from Cecelia Dachtler and Judy Fackenthal, distribution of a back-home resource prepared by Jeff Woods, and greetings from Don Ng. Commission members unable to be present were: Raimundo Barreto, Vivan Martindale, and Jonathan Malone. The primary purpose of Baptist Talk to allow and invite issues and concerns to be discussed was achieved. Most people expressed appreciation for the open forum. Two takeaways for future actions:
- How to ensure Baptist Talk to continue to be a place for open discussion without reservations to reflect our Baptist distinctive of freedom of thought?
- In the planning of future BMS Table Conversations, could Baptist Talk serve as a place to identify new topics for conversations?
Northeast Christian University (NECU)
Serving as vice-chair for Friends of NECU, the US-based group to support NECU in Dimapur/Kohima, Nagaland, we will be hosting Rev. Solomon Rongpi, the General Secretary of CBC-NEI later in September. FYI, CBC-NEI has over 7500 churches with 1.2 million members. He will be traveling to the Dakotas, Great Rivers, Central, Rocky Mountains, and the Bay Area to promote NECU as well as to build prayer support. I will be hosting Solomon on Sept. 24-26 in Berkeley as well as to travel with him to Denver to meet American Baptists.
When I was in Educational Ministries, we were able to support PAACCE (Pacific Asian American/Canadian Christian Education) with restricted funds for Sunday school curriculum in China. Since churches in China had no need for this type of ministry, funds were then used for ecumenical projects such as PAACCE. At a recent meeting, the PAACCE board decided to distribute the existing funds to viable projects consistent with PAACCE’s historic mission. I have submitted NECU as the ABC project and expect that a grant would be made by the end of November.
I am planning to lead an ABC group to NE India to support NECU in February 2018. When NECU sponsored a breakfast at the biennial, we identified a few people interested in joining this trip. Our group would also be a part of a larger group led by Ben Chan in IM to attend the anniversary of the Garo Baptists. If you are interested, please see me.
Creation Justice Network
At the Portland biennial, the CJN held a workshop and sponsored an exhibit. There was strong interest by many to participate in the network for eco-justice. We now have a website and will sponsor webinars on creation justice issues. The steering committee’s annual face-to-face meeting on November 9-11 will be at Rolling Ridge, North Andover, MA where Larry Jay, an ABC minister is now the director. On Friday, we’ll be having a training event with Margaret Billitt-Jonas for the committee and on Saturday, there will be a public meeting for training and networking. The CJN is thankful for a second year of funding from the ABC Budget Review Committee.
Don Ng
ABC Past President (2016-17)