Feature story
Rev. Nicole Ashwood (class of 2003-4), WCC programme executive for a Just Community of Women and Men, met with five other alumni, all from the Protestant Church in Maluku: Rev. Jenne Pieter (2017–18), Rev. Ruth Saiya (2019–20), Rev. Agnes Souisa (2021–22), Denis Pattinasarany (2022–23), and Rev. Vin Labetubun (2024–25). Over a shared meal of local Moluccan dishes, in the tradition of communal patita dining, each spoke of carrying home something different from their time at Bossey.
For Ashwood, it was a new sense of scale. “Bossey helped me see how far the voice of the church can reach, and how urgently it is needed in public life today,” she said. “It deepened my understanding of the church’s role, and made me more sensitive to human suffering, particularly in my work as programme executive for a Just Community of Women and Men at the WCC.”
That same shift took a more personal form for Pieter, who now teaches ecclesiology at Indonesian Christian University of Maluku. “Living alongside people from different traditions freed me from ever thinking my own was above the rest,” she said. “What I carried home was an ecumenical mindset, one I now apply to issues of social and climate justice, ecological sustainability, and the rights of Indigenous peoples.”
Saiya went a step further, framing that mindset as something that demands action. “Bossey gave me stronger international networks and deeper interfaith cooperation in my own congregation,” she said. “But it also left me with a duty to keep the ecumenical narrative alive wherever I am called to serve.”
Not everyone felt that duty had been fully met. Pattinasarany offered a critical reflection, pointing to a gap between what has been achieved at the institutional level and the realities on the ground. “This good spirit has already reached the institutional level,” he said, “but at the grassroots, it still falls far short of what we hope for; there are still many who argue over which church is better than another. As alumni, our task is to make sure the spirit of Bossey doesn’t stop at the institutional level, but reaches the grassroots too.”
Labetubun recognized that same gap, offering a hope for alumni everywhere. “May we carry home not only academic knowledge, but the ecumenical spirit formed at Bossey,” she said, “becoming bridges for dialogue, reconciliation, and cooperation across churches and traditions.” Closer to home, she added a further hope: that alumni from Protestant Church in Maluku in particular might build a stronger network of their own, drawing on Maluku’s long history of interfaith and inter-church relations.
Those hopes, voiced by each alumnus present, for Bossey as an institution and for the spirit it continues to form in alumni everywhere, particularly those in Maluku, were gathered together in a closing prayer led by Souisa, marking the institute’s 80th anniversary this year. The prayer was lifted up for the wider Bossey family, both the institute and its alumni, wherever they now serve.
