Christ Our Center – Dr. Hans Boersma

When twenty-five Catholic and evangelical Protestant Christians gathered for the first ever “Lausanne Catholic-Evangelical Conversation” at Mundelein Seminary on April 18 we held an evening session on the first day that was open to the public. Our desire was to have a Catholic theologian present a paper on the centrality of Christ to true faith and life. Last Monday, May 20, I posted the first of three parts of the video we made of this event. Fr. Edward T. Oakes’ presentation on “Christ Our Center” can be seen if you go back to last Monday’s blog or to our ACT3 Network website.

Today I present part two of the three videos that we made from this event. In part two you will see Dr. Hans Boersma, J. I. Packer Professor of Theology at Regent College, Vancouver, British Columbia. Dr. Boersma read the paper by Fr. Oakes in advance of our meeting but he agreed with Fr. Oakes so profoundly, as you will clearly see at the beginning, that he took a different direction from a response and dealt with two papal encyclicals in his comments. The irony of this should not be lost as you see and listen. The Catholic presenter gave a paper that would fly in the lead place at any serious evangelical theology conference and the Protestant gave a response based upon two Catholic documents. This unplanned convergence revealed just what our meeting was all about–discovering our deeper unity in Christ and pursuing what this means for global mission and Christian unity.

ACT3 Network is pleased to work with the Lausanne Movement. I serve as the Liaison for the Catholic-Evangelical Conversation. Soon our Lausanne committee will convene again by conference call so that we can plan for another event in 2014. I ask for your prayers for me and this mission as we invest a great deal of our effort into building alliances that will lead to deeper collaboration among all Christians.