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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“God of life, lead us to justice and peace” will provide the theme for the 10th Assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC). The Assembly is to be convened in October 2013 at Busan, South Korea.

The theme was determined by the WCC Central Committee on Tuesday 22 February following periods of discussion spread over several days. A “theme” is not merely a slogan or motto for a WCC assembly but provides a focus for theological reflection, worship and meditation surrounding the assembly, as well as for planning of programmatic activities before, during and after the event.
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“Our theology is not the same,” said Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad bin Talal of Jordan, “but we are all in the same boat.” The prince was addressing an assembly of Christians and Muslims gathered in Geneva, Switzerland to mark the beginning on Monday of a four-day international consultation on Muslim-Christian dialogue.
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The head of the World Council of Churches has reached out to a global gathering of Evangelicals saying Christians of different traditions need to learn from each other to participate together in God’s mission.

“We are called to be one, to be reconciled, so that the world may believe that God reconciles the world to himself in Christ,” the WCC general secretary, the Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit, said in a 17 October address on the opening day of the 3rd Lausanne Congress for World Evangelization.
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Young Christians from around the world are invited to apply to the World Council of Churches (WCC) stewards programme for one of two hands-on learning experiences at major ecumenical meetings in 2011, the WCC Central Committee meeting, 8-24 February, and the International Ecumenical Peace Convocation, 12-26 May. Applicants must be between the age of 18-30 years.

During the meetings stewards will work in the areas of worship, conference room, documentation, press office, sound, and other administrative and support tasks.

The WCC Central Committee meets every 18 months in Geneva, Switzerland to monitor and set directions to the Council’s work. The meeting brings together about 150 church representatives, advisers and observers from WCC member churches and associated organizations worldwide. Twenty stewards will help to make this event happen.
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The World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit has welcomed the appointment of Bishop Kurt Koch as new president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. “We rejoice at the appointment of Bishop Kurt Koch as president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity,” said Tveit commenting the
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The hope that all Christians will be able to celebrate Easter on the same day in the future was reaffirmed by an international ecumenical seminar organized by the Institute of Ecumenical Studies at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, 15 May.

read the full story …
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In a letter congratulating Metropolitan Kyrill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad on his election as the new patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia expressed the appreciation of the worldwide ecumenical fellowship for this “outstanding Orthodox theologian, leader and hierarch.”
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Saints and martyrs: international ecumenical symposium

[WCC News] Can saints and martyrs – or for that matter, Christians who lived exemplary lives – help unite the churches into which they were born? An international group of experts will discuss this and other related questions at a symposium in an Italian monastery.
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Can women play a strong role in bringing reconciliation and tolerance to the communities in conflict? Can divisions and divides be resolved from a faith-based perspective, when religion often is considered a cause of violence?
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Violence within the family: Churches need to keep their ears open to calls for help

[WCC News] German churches’ experience with the issue of “domestic violence” will play an important role in a Peace Declaration of the World Council of Churches planned for 2011. “The churches have denied the existence of this issue for a long time”, said Georges Lemopoulos, deputy general secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC), speaking on Saturday 28 June in Frankfurt.

Frankfurt was the first stop for a WCC team of six people led by Archbishop Bernard Ntahoturi from Burundi. The visit of the WCC team in Germany is one of several such team visits planned throughout the world between now and 2010 to prepare for the International Ecumenical Peace Convocation in 2011. The convocation is the culmination of the WCC’s Decade to Overcome Violence 2001-2010, in which the German churches have been particularly active and committed from the outset. In Frankfurt, projects and experiences from south-western Germany were presented to the international team.

Rev. Helene Eichrodt-Kessel, from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Württemberg’s office for the Decade to Overcome Violence, told the WCC team that the protestant churches are pushing to have the issue of domestic violence included as part of the school syllabus in Baden-Württemberg and also to increase access to advice for victims. Domestic violence is an issue taken up both in theological training and in-service training. “In our jobs, we go into people’s homes and have the opportunity to speak with them,” she said. Congregations received calls for help from women and children. One in four women has been a victim of violence at least once.

The Rosenstrasse 76 exhibition by the development agency Brot für die Welt (Bread for the World) helps local congregations talk about the issue and is used both nationally and internationally – this year by the Evangelical Church of Westphalia. Janette Bächtold-Ludwig, director of the National Council of Christian Churches of Brazil (CONIC), praised the way the exhibition had been conceived and the accompanying events that rural and urban parishes organized around it.

“Domestic violence takes place behind closed doors. When we learn about it, it’s already too late,” said Archbishop Ntahoturi. In his home country Burundi it was seen as one of the results of war. Through its “focus on the family” project, his church had also found out about cases of sexual abuse, he added.

Answering a question from the delegation about the extent to which culture and religion influence “domestic violence”, the Rev. Eli Wolf, director of the Protestant women’s centre in Frankfurt, said that at the moment most of the women seeking protection had a migration background, although domestic violence affected all parts of society. She also talked about working with Muslim women who are working on changing male role models in their environment.

Through its international ecumenical network, the Association of Churches and Missions in South Western Germany, (EMS), has been getting people to read biblical peace texts together with partners abroad. “Everything had to be translated and that demanded a bit of patience”, said the Rev. Dorothea Frank, about the exchange with a student group from Cameroon. “We learnt that we have the Bible as our common treasure and that no one has the right to insist on just one way of interpreting it.”

The organizers of the meeting in Frankfurt have great hopes for the ecumenical declaration on just peace that will be issued by the peace convocation in 2011, said the Rev. Ulrike Schmidt-Hesse, deputy director of the EMS. She hoped that clear positions on current challenges would be taken up alongside more general reflections.

The day in Frankfurt was prepared by the Evangelical Church in Hessen and Nassau, the Evangelical Church in Baden, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Württemberg, the Württemberg ecumenical network and the EMS.

• Further information on the Decade to Overcome Violence
• Living Letters team visit to Germany
• Travel blog by two members of the WCC’s Living Letters team
• Association of Protestant Churches and Mission in South Western Germany (EMS)
• WCC Member Churches in Germany
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Orthodox women: church participation improved but concerns remain

[WCC News] Over the last decade, Orthodox women reached significant milestones regarding their participation in church life, but many of their concerns have not yet been fully addressed, an international gathering of Orthodox women stated.

A long decade has passed since the last inter-Orthodox women’s consultation took place in Istanbul, Turkey in 1997. In the intervening years, the participation of Orthodox women in the life of the church has improved. Significant milestones range from the recognition of women’s issues by church structures to women’s participation in some church ministries and decision-making processes.

Many of the concerns of women, however, have not yet been fully addressed within the life of the church. A list of them includes: access to and funding for theological studies and subsequent employment opportunities within the church; supporting and equipping women for pastoral care and other church ministries; broader participation in church decision-making processes; taking a new look at prayers and practices associated with women’s biology.

These were amongst the main findings of a five-day long consultation, which brought together some 45 women from Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Churches in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Australia and North America. Meeting from 8-12 June in Volos, Greece, they discussed the participation, ministry and concerns of Orthodox women in the church and in the ecumenical movement.

Participants at the consultation recommended undertaking a full assessment of the current situation and needs of Orthodox women, given the many changes that have taken place over the last decade, as well as the development of a framework for future action. “We see the need to identify, together with our church leadership, the ways and instruments to implement decisions and recommendations of women’s consultations in our churches”, the participants stated in a report on the deliberations.

The consultation took place at the Volos Academy for Theological Studies and was sponsored by the World Council of Churches Programme for Women in Church and Society and hosted by the Diocese of Dimitrias.

Resources

• Full text of the Report of the Inter-Orthodox Consultation
• WCC Programme for Women in Church and Society
• Diocese of Dimitrias, Church of Greece (in Greek)
• Volos Academy for Theological Studies (partially in Greek)
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Bossey totem pole returned to the earth
[WCC News] After 25 years standing vigil at the Ecumenical Institute at Bossey, a totem pole was returned to the soils of the earth Sunday at a ceremony attended by many of those taking part in this week’s Central Committee meetings.

The totem was presented as a gift of the churches of Canada at the WCC’s Sixth Assembly, held in Vancouver, as a way to raise the profile of indigenous people. Time and weather took its toll on the nearly 50 foot-tall totem since its placement at Bossey, and it had become unstable.

Following advice from the First Nations of Canada, the WCC decided to hold a respectful ceremony to remember the gift and the work of those who carved it. Rev. Carmen Lansdowne, a Central Committee member from the United Church of Canada and member of the indigenous people of western Canada, was asked to lead the ceremony. A small, permanent display will continue to tell the totem’s story.
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[WCC News] A number of major international Christian youth movements and organizations called for stronger efforts towards unity in a joint statement issued on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. Addressed to the heads of the Roman Catholic Church, the World Council of Churches, Christian World Communions and Regional Ecumenical Organizations, the statement asks them to “share ecumenical dialogue with young people” and expresses the commitment of the signatories to “raise awareness of the importance of Christian unity among young people”.
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Although prayer is certainly at the heart of Christian life, praying together is not an easy exercise for churches within worldwide Christendom. Even today, common prayers are exceptional events rather than part of the daily life of the churches. But at least once a year it has become “normal” for many churches and congregations to pray together during the annual celebration of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. In 2008, the 100th anniversary of this most meaningful ecumenical initiative is being celebrated around the globe.
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Designer babies, nanotechnology, and genetically modified crops were a few of the topics covered at a Dec. 2-5 consultation in Johannesburg, SA. The Global Consultation for Genetics, New Biotechnologies, and the Ministry of the Church gathered 45 church representatives, scientists, young people, indigenous people, disabled people, and theologians to talk about biotechnology, defined as the industrial use of microorganisms or biological substances.
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Pentecostal theologian and scholar Cheryl Bridges-Johns proposed a radical reinvention of the ecumenical movement in a keynote address delivered on the third day of the Global Christian Forum which takes place 6-9 November in Limuru, near Nairobi, Kenya.

Bridges-Johns, a professor at the Theological Seminary of the Church of God in Cleveland (Tennessee), US, sparked a vivid discussion with her lecture, which elaborated on a statement from the 1961 New Delhi assembly of the World Council of Churches: “the achievement of unity will involve nothing less than a death and rebirth of many forms of church life as we have known them”.
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“Church unity is like riding a bicycle. We will fall unless we go forward.” This affirmation was posed as a challenge by Korean missiologist Wonsuk Ma to participants at the Global Christian Forum taking place on 6-9 November in Limuru, near Nairobi, Kenya.

In a keynote address delivered on the second day of the forum, Ma analyzed Christian developments in unity and mission over the last century. He affirmed that in Christian mission, the seemingly contradictory emphases on “life before death” and on “life after death” – which have separated “mainline” and “evangelical” Christians for decades – are actually complementary and in need of each other.

Read the complete article on Dr. Ma’s address to the Global Christian Forum on our website.
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A unique gathering of high level church leaders to start Tuesday, 6 November near Nairobi, Kenya, features the broadest range of Christian traditions ever represented at a global meeting, allowing for a discussion of unprecedented ecumenical breadth on what Christians are called to do – together if possible – in the world today.

The 6-9 November gathering, called the Global Christian Forum, brings together about 250 high level representatives of all the main Christian traditions and of their global organizations at the Jumuia Conference Centre in Limuru, near Nairobi.

The Forum’s stated purpose is to create a new, open space in which a broad range of Christian churches and interchurch organizations can gather in a multilateral setting to foster mutual respect and explore and address together common challenges. It aims to include all streams of Christianity, including those which have not been in conversation with one another. In Limuru about half of the participants will be Evangelicals and Pentecostals.

Over four days, with the theme “Our Journey with Jesus Christ, the Reconciler,” participants will discuss how best to promote dialogue and co-operation on issues of Christian unity and common witness to the world. They will debate proposals for the future of the Forum, and it is hoped that a “Letter to the Churches” will summarize the results of the meeting.
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The World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) is ready to join the World Council of Churches (WCC) and the Vatican in supporting a code of conduct to guide activities seeking converts to Christianity.
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[WCC News] The newly-elected moderator of the World Council of Churches (WCC) central committee speaks in this interview about the beauty of the ecumenical vision and the enthusiasm it engenders, the scandal of divisions between Christians, and his dream of churches which allow themselves to be renewed so as to experience the unity of the
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“Pourquoi une destruction si épouvantable?” C’est la question que les membres d’une délégation pastorale œcuménique n’ont cessé d’entendre à propos des attaques israéliennes contre le Liban.

Chargée par le Conseil œcuménique des Eglises (COE), la Conférence des Eglises européennes (KEK), la Fédération luthérienne mondiale (FLM) et l’Alliance réformée mondiale (ARM) d’exprimer la solidarité du monde œcuménique envers les Eglises et les populations touchées par le conflit au Moyen Orient, la délégation est rentrée avec pour mandat de transmettre à la famille œcuménique internationale les espoirs et les attentes des Eglises du Liban, de Palestine et d’Israël.
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“Why such awful destruction?” was the question heard over and over again by members of an ecumenical pastoral delegation in relation to Israel’s attacks on Lebanon.

Entrusted by the World Council of Churches (WCC), the Conference of European Churches (CEC), the Lutheran World Federation (LWF), and the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC) with the mission of expressing global ecumenical solidarity with churches and people affected by the conflict in the Middle East, the delegation returned with the task of transmitting the hopes and expectations of the churches in Lebanon, Palestine and Israel to the international ecumenical family.
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Church leaders and inter-church organizations around the world have been speaking out about the current crisis in the Middle East, and despite differences in perspective, are urging an immediate ceasefire.
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Now available in electronic and printed format, the WCC Annual Review 2005 is an illustrated account of WCC programmes and activities over the year. The Annual Review also contains key information on WCC member churches, governing bodies, finances, publications and other resources.
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WCC News flash What should we do after seeing Mel Gibson’s film ‘The Passion of Christ’? That is the question being asked by Rev. Dr Hans Ucko, who specializes in Christian-Jewish dialogue at the World Council of Churches. He discusses the impact of our reactions to this controversial film in an opinion piece published in
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In an Easter message to member churches, World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia expresses his hope that “Christians throughout the world will join in prayer and celebration” as they celebrate Easter on the same date this year, an occurrence he considers a “real gift and blessing”.
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Dear sisters and brothers in Christ, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy we have been born anew to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Pe 1:3). Christ is Risen! This year this joyful exclamation will be simultaneously pronounced by
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The first meeting of the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches (WCC), held in Lausanne on 3 August 1927, had very high hopes. Participants believed that the goal of visible unity of the churches was really attainable.

The preacher at the time, Bishop Charles Brent of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the US, reminded the representatives of the churches of Christ’s hope “that they might all be one”.
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[WCC News] The Special Commission on Orthodox participation in the World Council of Churches (WCC) will meet from 6 to 8 December in Morges, on Lac Léman, Switzerland. At its inaugural meeting the Commission will deal chiefly with matters of planning and procedure for the series of its Protestant-Orthodox discussions to be held over the
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When theologians from nearly all Christian traditions – Protestant, Orthodox and Roman Catholic – and more than 20 nations gather in Toronto this month, they hope to shed some light on some of the oldest and most difficult issues facing the church of Jesus Christ.

The World Council of Churches (WCC) Faith and Order Standing Commission will meet June 15-24 on the campus of Emmanuel College to explore such issues as the nature of the church, different understandings of baptism, how ethnic and national identities relate to the universal Christian faith, and who may be ordained to the ministry of the church.

The WCC’s 336 member churches confess a common faith in Jesus Christ as Son of God and Saviour, and testify together to the Holy Trinity of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They are united in their commitment to proclaim Christ’s gospel to all, and to work for God’s justice and reconciliation in the world.
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The World Council of Churches (WCC) has strongly criticised the G8 proposals for solving the debt crisis in a statement released during a press conference here on Wednesday, June 9. In the statement, WCC general secretary Konrad Raiser with Sam Kobia, director of the WCC cluster “Issues and Themes” called on G8 leaders to adopt a more radical approach at their meeting beginning in Cologne, Germany, on June 18.
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