From April 1 to 3, the executive councils of the Anglican Church of Canada (ACC) and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (ELCIC) will hold their first joint meeting in Mississauga, Ont. This meeting of the ACC’s Council of General Synod and the ELCIC’s National Church Council marks an important step in deepening the full communion relationship between the two churches.
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The accepted axiom is, as the climate changes so the world, too, will change in dramatic and sometimes undesirable ways. What does this often rapid change mean to Christians whose faith is intertwined with the glory and beauty of God’s creation, but challenged when that creation is corrupted and irreversibly altered?
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Pope Benedict XVI has intervened personally to demand more time for ecumenical talks with the Protestant Churches when he visits Germany in September. In a highly unusual move he has written directly to the leader of the Protestant Churches, Chairman Nikolaus Schneider, expressing dissatisfaction with the brevity of the session allotted for their meeting. Barely
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The Synod of Bishops of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church has elected the Most Rev. Sviatoslav Shevchuk as Major Archbishop
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Evangelical and Catholic Christians recently gathered to pray and to celebrate their common faith in Jesus Christ at a joyful gathering at St. Paul’s Cathedral in Saskatoon.

Sharing song, scripture and prayer, some 300 people attended the groundbreaking gathering March 22, 2011. Pastor Harry Strauss of Forest Grove Community Church, representing the Saskatoon Evangelical Ministers Fellowship, and Bishop Donald Bolen of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Saskatoon presided together at the service. Welcoming all those attending from many denominations and local churches, Bolen described the origins of the event, which he traced back to the prayer and friendship experienced when three Catholic women joined those in the Evangelical community gathering regularly to pray for local Alliance Church Pastor Ken Rutherford, who was ill with cancer and who died in September 2010.

“It was Ken’s request that those who gathered would also pray for the wounded body of Christ in the city of Saskatoon,” said Bolen, who attended one of the prayer services, where he first met Ken’s wife Lenna. “Eventually I got to meet Pastor Ken as well, and I was stirred by his profound desire for unity and reconciliation.”

In a sermon shared with Bolen and Strauss, Lenna Rutherford recalled her husband’s experience of joy when he introduced two of his beloved friends to each other – something that also reflected his experience of connecting to other friends through a mutual love of Jesus Christ.

Christ had introduced Ken to many other dear friends. Ken found them in many shapes and presentations, they came from many pastoral and priestly places, in various denominations across the city and Ken found that he was called to see not from a worldly, or religious, or denominational point of view, but from Christ’s point of view, which was: “let me introduce you to someone I love so much that I died for them too.’”
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Diptychs, an arcane liturgical term that describes the order in which Orthodox churches commemorate each other at their services, is one of the tangled issues blocking plans for what could be the first great church council in 1,200 years.

Some Orthodox leaders say the churches need to get together to discuss common issues and speak with one voice on such important topics as bioethics, sexuality and the environment, but differences over arcane church issues such as diptychs and autocephaly (the independent status of Orthodox churches) run deep.
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Statement issued by the participants of an ecumenical Theological Consultation on Tourism organised by the Ecumenical Coalition On Tourism (ECOT), Thailand, and the National Council of Churches in India (NCCI), in Chennai, India, from 19-21 March 2011.
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Together as people of faith, informed by our respective traditions, and compelled by our sincerely held beliefs to care for those in need within our communities and across this nation, we recognize this time to be a unique moment and opportunity in Canada for cooperative action to eradicate persistent poverty in our wealthy and wonderful land. It is a time when Canadians of all faiths, from all walks of life, from all parts of this great country are awakening to the unacceptable levels of poverty, inequity and homelessness, and acknowledging that this injustice must change.

But we cannot do this in isolation. Committed to doing all we can, we call upon our government to partner with us in ending poverty.

We acknowledge with gratitude the many positive government initiatives that continue to benefit the poor. In particular, it is gratifying to acknowledge that a majority of Canadians now live in provinces and territories that have developed and are implementing poverty reduction plans. But it is time for comprehensive, coordinated and collaborative action, with national leadership working in partnership with other jurisdictions.
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“Without any doubt, ecclesiology remains in our times the crucial issue for Christian theology in ecumenical perspective.” This was one of the conclusions drawn by a week-long consultation in Cyprus at which forty Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox representatives provided a common response to The Nature and Mission of the Church, a 2005 ecumenical text published by the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches (WCC).
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A joint declaration of the twenty-first International Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee Meeting was published at midday today. The meeting was held in Paris, France from 27 February to 2 March.
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The Christian Reformed Church in North America and the Presbyterian Church in Canada are celebrating an “Affirmation of Relationship” approved and endorsed by the CRC Synod of 2010 and the General Assembly of the PCC.

Under this affirmation, the PCC becomes one of only a few “Churches in Dialogue” with the CRCNA. With the agreement, the denominations pledge to work even more closely together in the future than they have in the past. “The Christian Reformed Church and the Presbyterian Church in Canada have been neighbors and friends for many years,” says Rev. Bruce Adema, director of the CRC in Canada.

“The ‘Affirmation of the Relationship’ document outlines how our churches can demonstrate Christian affection and work together to reveal the Kingdom of God. We want to celebrate our unity as brothers and sisters in Christ.”

For several years the Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations Committee of the CRCNA has had a subcommittee that met with representatives of the PCC. “The Affirmation of the Relationship is the fruit of that,” said Adema.
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