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CLOSING REMARK BY MODERATOR

Harry Daniel

Before we go into our closing service, I would like to say very briefly something about my feelings in accepting this responsibility of being here in the chair.

More than anything in my life, the SCM and the WSCF is something without which I think even faith and commitment would never have been fully realized. There are many cases when our understanding of faith was not acquired in theological colleges but very much within the context of the SCM. For me and for many others it is a debt that we can never repay in terms of what the SCM has meant for us, in our perception both of understanding of the faith and understanding of the world in which we live, and of much greater value to me was that, this is not just a matter of the head, but also meant a commitment. So often one feels that one has not lived up to all that the SCM has given us in our own student days and also when one had the privilege of working at the staff level. That is a gratitude that would go with me all my life. And though I am scared sitting here and speaking from the chair, I accept this assignment out of gratitude, even though I have been out of contact with the SCM for some time.

Secondly, I would like to say that our regional fellowships, be it the CCA or WSCF regional office, is again something very precious to me. I know many weakness that exist in the regional church fellowship of the CCA. But yet it is the only vehicle by which we are able to meet with each other within the setting of Asia, where in some ways our historical destinies are very much tied up with one another. Time there was when we went to international meetings, and Filipinos probably felt more at home with their friends from the United States, Indians and others felt more at home with their

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friends in Britain etc, and we never really knew each other, though we lived in the same continent. And to me again, the regional structures are something very precious. There are difficulties, there are tensions, but this is something, which I would fight for and even die. I remember the time where we even pleaded as general secretaries of Asian national SCM's to the WSCF to get some kind of regional meeting. There was tremendous opposition to that. During the 1950's, as general secretary of SCM of India without any money, seeing the need to meet together before we went to the WSCF General Committee, we went as workers in a work camp in Bangkok, doing manual labor in building a basketball field in the heat of the sun, and every night we met, just to have the opportunity as general secretaries of Asian SCM's to share our experiences and concerns, and not to go to town to find other adventures!

The third thing which I think I have learnt and cherished more, both in the SCM, the CCA, and specially in the URM network, is that the priority is not the resolutions, the beauty of documents, but what happens at the local level. That is the place in which commitment is made, and there is a price that is paid. I sense in this meeting, as one who has been in the two structures but being away from it, we are at the beginning of a new opportunity, of greater collaboration, not just at the consultation level, but also at the local and national level.

On the whole, my own feeling is that we have come to a new beginning, and for that I would like to thank each of you.