MOVING SCHOOL MALAYSIA 2023
- November 18th-23rd, 2023
- Pilgrimage of the Holy Family Centre, Nulu Sosopon, Diocese of Keningau, Sabah.
- Theme: "Synodality and Intercultural Spirituality for Protecting Nature and People in Malaysia and Asia"
I. Purposes of ALL Forum & Its Methodology
Despite young lay leaders working for “social ministries” have played an important role in bridging Church to societies in Asia, encouraging and empowering them through accessible education or training has not been hardly provided by any formal education institutes in the local churches except some lay organizations. But their supports have often stopped at a short term or an event-based occasion. Recognizing it deeply, Asian Lay Leaders (ALL) Forum is to provide them with a solid and systematic formation program for them.
ALL Forum is committed to training and educating young Church workers about urgent matters in Asia today such as youth, women and girl children, ecology, migrants, Indigenous peoples (IPs) and other marginalized whom Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences (FABC) has designated as the subjects of “special pastoral concerns” by harnessing the Catholic Social Teachings (CSTs) and “Pastoral Spiral” methodology of FABC. Especially ALL Forum is to provide young lay leaders with a combined program like Asian Youth Academy (AYA)/ Asian Theology Forum (ATF), “Moving School” for those who cannot afford to join AYA/ATF which has been holding on a national or regional level, and online courses on CSTs, basic theology and lay spirituality especially thrived during the covid19 much affected in Asia.
As an effective and relevant spiritual formation project for young activists, the AYA/ATF places much emphasis on their religious identity amid the all-things-mixed global world. It also aims to make them what Pope Francis calls “missionary disciples” armed well with strong Christian identity with socio-political awareness, socio-cultural analysis and spiritualties from various religions. Combination of AYA with ATF is to be an intensive and effective tool for “witnessing the Gospel” by developing and strengthening the youth’s Christian identity and deepening their critical idea and knowledge on the society in Asia including the matters of interreligious dialogue, peacebuilding and working together for common good knowing Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism and IP religious traditions predominating the largest continent in the world. ALL Forum has done the AYA/ATF for the last 10 years so far. All the three programs are based on theo-spiritual approach as a contextual doing theology, or “theology of relevance” to Asian peoples and cultures.
Following Pope Francis’ teachings, ALL Forum as a Non-Formal Education (NFE) platform promotes the church of “going out to” the poor and the marginalized. In this, three elements are distinguished: 1) Collaborations among diverse-oriented organizations, 2) providing on-going and holistic programs for youth formation on pan-Asian level and 3) promoting “wider ecumenism”. Put it more closely, ALL Forum is based on concretized and praxis-centered collaborations among seven partners as of 2023: lay-centered theological research institute of Woori Theology Institute under which there is the Center for Asian Peace and Solidarity (CAPS, Korea); spirituality-centered Fondacio Asia, Philippines; Indigenous Peoples (IPs) & ecology-focused Jesuit Companion for Indigenous Ministry (JCIM, Philippines) & Research and Training Center for Religio-cultural Community (RTRC, Thailand); a lay-centered training and formation for lay missionary (LAMIN, Myanmar) & a lay-centered Theology Institute for Laity(TIL, Pakistan); and IMCS-AP (International Movement of Catholic Students) as a major Catholic student movement in Asia located in the Philippines.
This year EAEC or East Asia Evangelization Center in Korea and ASW or Asian School of Wisdom in Malaysia will join as new partner organization of ALL Forum which were presented in 2022 and will be confirmed by its board meeting in December 2023. Secondly, from its close collaborations of the groups, ALL Forum could provide on-going and holistic formation programs for young lay leaders in the whole Asia. Lastly, ALL Forum focuses on Catholics but is not limited to them. It promotes a wider ecumenical, inter-religious and inter-cultural encounter and learning for mutual growth.
II. Puposes of Moving School
Since 2017, ALL Forum has conducted the “Moving school” for Youth in many countries in Asia such as Bangladesh, Indonesia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. In Asian context, it is natural that the ALL Forum’s programs put more stress on religious plurality and dialogue among religions and cultures in the continent. Asian Christian youth are living in a complex situation, being part of a minority religion and having such diverse religious traditions including those from Indigenous Peoples’ (IPs) communities and various local cultures including those from Sabah, Malaysia, where the 2023 Moving School is planned to be held in the coming November, 2023. They have experienced and even suffered from denying their own cultures. Sometimes, they feel a sense of guilt because some of their families are a tribe’s leaders or shamans and related to IPs’ traditional religions prescribed as ‘superstitions’ which is not in uncommon.
For this reason, ALL Forum needs to ensure and inspire young people that their religious and cultural traditions are a special gift as a relevant and profound source to make Catholicism in general relevant and renewed and Asian Catholicism in particular an emerging church based on its intercultural spirituality and interculturality. Laypeople are the ones who live their daily lives specifically, so in this sense lay spirituality is of everyday spirituality. Everything revealed in our daily lives is God’s presence, and it does not ask for discrimination among religions. Cultural diversity is something we must care for, preserve, and accept as gift, so that we can be enriched by them as experiences of the Great Spirit of God among all of us. Not religious dualism nor discrimination, but the abundance of various religious traditions in Asia, is what Catholicism means to be and what should be significant feature of universal church. Such diversity flowing throughout Asia is a main source that can provide rich theological ideas and spiritual inspiration to the world churches. These terminologies of religio-cultural diversity not from theory but people’s lives themselves, lay spirituality based on daily life, and intercultural citizenship which embraces Western citizenship or civility culminated in modernity for the betterment of the world including the church, and adult-faith development through which Christians are to be flourishing or blooming not only being survived are the keywords needed to be put as overarching ideas for all the programs of ALL Forum.
