WCC has Good News to share, say mission leaders
-20/05/05
Following the historic thirteenth Conference on World Mission and Evangelism (CWME), convened by the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Athens from 9-16 May, British and Irish participants are calling for ìan ecumenical recovery of the central Christian vocation to announce the Good News of Jesus Christî.
The request comes in a letter to the WCCís mission commission, which has been meeting this week in the aftermath of a gathering that drew together participants from 300 churches, confessions and Christian bodies across 105 countries. It was the most widely representative conference of its kind, involving Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Evangelical and Pentecostal delegates from six continents.
The letter to the WCC was coordinated by the Churchesí Commission on Mission (CCOM) of Churches Together in Britain and Ireland, and has been signed so far by the Bishop of Maidstone, the Rt Rev Graham Cray, the General Secretary of the Church Mission Society, the Rev Canon Tim Dakin, Fr Philip Knights of the Catholic Agency to Support Evangelization in England and Wales, the Rev Dr Jim Campbell of the Irish Council of Churches, Dr Kirsteen Kim, lecture in mission at the University of Birmingham, and Simon Barrow, Secretary of CCOM ñ which links the work of the global mission departments and agencies of the churches in England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales.
Welcoming the attention of the WCC world mission conference to the work of the Holy Spirit and the vocation of the church as a healing and reconciling community, the letter says that the next step for the ecumenical movement is to learn how to ìtalk the walkî better.
ìHolistic evangelismî is described as ìthe means through which the nature, identity and call of Jesus Christ ñ the one who breaks down the worldís dividing walls ñ is made known.î It combines word and deed, ìrenews the church, and grows its capacity for further witness and service.î
The growing list of signatories, from among the 30 CWME participants from Britain and Ireland, say that the WCC also needs to engage directly with new mission movements from the global South and with ìfresh expressions of churchî in the North.
ìThe ecumenical movement was birthed out of the Edinburgh 1910 world mission conference,î explains CCOM Secretary Simon Barrow, who is also an Ekklesia associate. ìSince then the demographic of world Christianity has shifted dramatically to the South, as reflected in the rainbow composition of the Athens gathering. Christians across the theological spectrum are now seeing the urgent need to re-communicate the liberating message of the Gospel in a divided world.î
Barrow continued: ìThis is not another fashionable criticism of the WCC, but an expression of deep partnership ñ one that lends fresh visibility to the prophetic and pastoral mission of healing and reconciliation for which the fellowship of the World Council of Churches is known.î
One of the concerns about evangelism is that the word (which means both ëgood newsí and ëambassadorí in New Testament Greek) has often been hijacked by fundamentalist churches with American-inspired imperial designs.
The writers of the letter to the WCC stress that what they are calling for is something quite different – a faithful articulation of the Gospel which shows that it is a source of justice, peace, healing and personal and social change.
Several plenary speakers at the Athens mission conference made cautionary references to the ìabuse of the Wordî and to proselytism, the manipulative targeting of one church by another in order to steal members. The latter is a concern especially to the Orthodox, and the WCC has spoken strongly against violations of ìcommon witnessî which misuse evagelism to justify such actions.
But contrary to the image it often has, the World Council of Churches is committed to proclaiming the message of Christís transforming love to the whole world says the Rev Dr Carlos Ham, the WCCís evangelism secretary. He was speaking at a seminar held as part of CWME last week.
In this sense the letter from the British and Irish church leaders is seen as congruent with steps many in the WCC wish to take.