THE World Council of Churches, which represents a quarter of all the world’s Christians, celebrated its 60th birthday this month with an eight-day meeting in Geneva, which ended on Wednesday. It reaffirmed its commitment to unity, peace, and democracy.
The WCC’s central committee paid particular attention to the workings of democracy, calling on Tuesday for more attention to be paid to “pre- and post-electoral mechanisms” in the light of this year’s “numerous significant elections”, among them the crisis in Kenya. The object of an election was to “truly reflect the will of the people”.
The central committee offered “solidarity with the suffering people of Pakistan”, and it called on churches around the world to continue to pray for peace and reconciliation in that nation.
It has also announced that the WCC’s Decade to Overcome Violence would end an international peace convention in Kingston, Jamaica, in 2011.
The WCC has been wondering how to remodel itself since its global assembly in Porto Alegre in 2006, when it called for a “new style of WCC-led assembly that will gather churches and ecumenical partners to celebrate fellowship in Jesus Christ”.
On Thursday of last week, Christiana Biere, a member of the central committee from Germany, spoke of the new assembly being like “an ecumenical river” that would not be held between walls but would “expand and flow”.
The Revd John Thomas, from the United Church of Christ in the US, said he wanted “a more holistic understanding of the ecumenical movement” rather than one bound up in confessionalism. None of the ideas put forward so far had met all the needs for the envisioned assembly, said Doug Chial, the WCC’s executive for the coordination of church and ecumenical relations.
The WCC executive committee had asked for a 28-member “discernment committee”, which would also include Roman Catholics and Pentecostal Churches not on the WCC and other ecumenical organisations, to propose ideas for the next world assembly in 2013.
The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church Patriarch, his Holiness Abune Paulos, one of the WCC presidents, warned that more time was needed to study this “very serious subject”.
The WCC’s finances had received an unexpected boost after currency fluctuations between the euro and the Swiss frank, the moderator of the finance committee, the Revd Anders Gadegaard, said last week.
In addition, unfilled posts and under-expenditure on programmes had left it with a surplus of SF2.87 million (£1.34 million) instead of a budgeted deficit of SF69,000 (£32,300). |
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