INCHE Europe conference: Building Community in Fractured Societies

Next week the EU conference of INCHE (International Network for Christian Higher Education) will be held in Budapest (Hungary). This conference of INCHE Europe aims to support European institutions of Christian higher education in their present situation where the value of community has been degraded, and only community building may have the potential to reinforce social groups and Christian presence in society. Viaa will attend this conference.

INCHE Europe conference

Conference

This conference will bring together outstanding academic research and consideration of current training practices. Throughout, there will be opportunities for hands-on work and personal reflection, allowing participants to share their insights and develop their portfolios.

Theme

This year’s theme is ‘Building Community in Fractured Societies’. The INCHE Europe conference aims to provide the possibility of bridging some gaps between Christians working and studying in the different fragments of European society. They will offer insights into different levels of our Christian being and working in this fragmented situation and find ways to think about and work together on community building. It is only the building of new communities and the rebuilding of old ones that will enable us to restore and strengthen the network of European Christianity.

Community building

During the conference, the INCHE will focus on three different levels of community building. At the MACRO level, they will discuss the general situation of Christianity in Europe. At the MESO level, they will consider what this situation means in our universities/institutes. And at the MICRO level they will investigate how individuals and communities share good personal practices, mostly but not exclusively in teaching through a university or institute.

Focus

Building communities from a Christian perspective requires a special inner attitude that is strongly community-oriented and service-minded. This is our focus on the message of God and the application of this message to our current situation.  Furthermore, the spiritual aspect of what we are doing, since the very coining of the conference idea, is based on 1 Corinthians 12:12-14: “Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.”

Source: INCHE

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