The Justice Conference Asia 2017 was held at the Vine Church, Hong Kong, last weekend, bringing together several hundred practitioners and activists from around the world including 18 Asian countries. 

“The work of justice is hard. It is painful, sacrificial, and often times solitary. It can feel like real tangible progress is a long way off, sustainable change a distant dream. When injustice is our ever-present reality, we could be forgiven for thinking that the future of our justice story is unknown, uncertain, and undefined. But it’s not. Our justice story is God’s story, and God is not overwhelmed. He is at work. Every single moment he is moving his creation towards his intended purposes to restore and renew. And because of that our justice journey is not a chasing after the wind. It is purposeful, intentional and prophetic.”

This year’s conference theme was ‘Love Thy Neighbour’ and there is no more relevant time in history than right now to take a fresh look at Jesus’ timeless truth. With social, political, racial, and economic issues at stake, we need to be reminded that Mark 12:30-31 is still our greatest call to Worship and Justice.

During the conference we heard from international justice voices and practitioners in Asia who explored practically what it might look like to love our neighbours as radically as Jesus did. Workshops addressed slavery, human trafficking, asylum seekers, refugees and ethnic minorities, children at risk, politics and peacemaking and extreme poverty.

I led a workshop on Christian Jihad, the Biblical Basis for Proactive Peacemaking.

Sami Awad of the Holy Land Trust and Peacemaker Mediators Board of Reference member spoke on “Practicing peace in hostile surroundings. Other speakers included Jackie Pullinger, Eugene Cho and Craig Greenfield.

Providentially we also met with Ray Bakke, another member of our Board of Reference,  who had just arrived from India with a group of graduate students from the Ray Bakke Centre for Urban Transformation in Hong Kong.

Download the smart app for the Justice Conference Asia here

View more photos of the  Justice Conference Asia, Hong Kong, the Walled City Kowloon and Nan Lan Gardens, Hong Kong.