June 18, 2010

The World Council of Churches (WCC) Commission on World Mission and Evangelism has launched a process aimed at an overhaul of the ecumenical understanding of Christian mission.

Two key steps in the process will be a mission event scheduled for March 2012 and a new affirmation on mission and evangelism to be submitted to the upcoming WCC 10th Assembly, which is due to take place in Busan, Republic of Korea (South Korea) in 2013.

The WCC Commission on World Mission and Evangelism (CWME) took these decisions at its 7- 10 June meeting in Edinburgh, Scotland, which followed the Edinburgh 2010 conference commemorating the hundredth anniversary of a landmark 1910 World Mission Conference in the same city.

For the WCC, the authoritative missiological text is currently the document Mission and Evangelism – An Ecumenical Affirmation adopted by the WCC central committee in 1982. This landmark document draws on insights from Protestant, Evangelical, Orthodox and Roman Catholic mission theologies. It keeps a fruitful tension between the commitment to the proclamation of the gospel and the prophetic role of the churches.

"The 1982 Ecumenical Affirmation has been one of the most influential ecumenical mission texts of the last century," says the Rev. Dr Jooseop Keum, a Presbyterian from Korea who is the CWME secretary. "However, the context in which mission and evangelism take place has changed dramatically over the last three decades," he adds.

"The new mission statement will take this changed context into account and provide new concepts and directions for the WCC member churches and affiliated mission bodies, as well as offer a broader appeal that goes beyond the WCC fellowship," Keum says.

The statement will be given its final form at a mission event to take place in March 2012 at a venue still to be decided. Some 120 delegates from the WCC member churches and the CWME affiliated bodies plus some 30 guests and advisers will struggle with crucial questions such as what the mission of God is in the world today, how can churches participate in it, as well as the main challenges and issues that need to be addressed in this regard.

From this event, the statement will find its way to the 2013 Busan Assembly of the WCC through the meeting of the WCC central committee in autumn 2012.

Before that, the CWME will meet again next year, this time in Achimota near Accra, Ghana. It was there in 1958 that the International Missionary Council (IMC), one of the outcomes of the 1910 Edinburgh World Mission Conference, decided to unite with the World Council of Churches.

The merger of the IMC and the WCC became effective in 1961, and the CWME will commemorate its fiftieth anniversary with a public event the last day of its 2011 meeting in Ghana. "We will celebrate and revisit the goals of that merger that aimed at integrating church and mission, which had been separated thus far," says Keum.

In addition, a centennial issue of the International Review of Mission (IRM), another outcome of the 1910 World Mission Conference in Edinburgh, will be published in October 2011. While celebrating its hundredth anniversary, the missiological quarterly of the WCC will offer yet another platform for the ongoing revamping of the ecumenical understanding of mission in the 21st century.

The CWME commission is composed of some 25 members representing WCC member churches, mission bodies affiliated with the CWME and expressions of the "wider ecumenism." Roman Catholics, Evangelicals and Pentecostals are full members of the CWME commission and participate in all its activities.

The Commission is a space for sharing reflections, experiences, questions and discoveries on content and methods of Christian witness today. Its goal is to empower churches and mission bodies to be in common mission and to do it in Christ's way.

Commission on World Mission and Evangelism: http://www.oikoumene.org/index.php?id=2267&rid=f_13684&mid=2342&aC=63bab3c8&jumpurl=1.

Ecumenical perspectives on mission and unity: http://www.oikoumene.org/index.php?id=2267&rid=f_13684&mid=2342&aC=63bab3c8&jumpurl=2.

WCC Programme "Ecumencial perspectives on mission and unity": http://www.oikoumene.org/index.php?id=2267&rid=f_13684&mid=2342&aC=63bab3c8&jumpurl=2.

Website of Edinburgh 2010: http://www.oikoumene.org/index.php?id=2267&rid=f_13684&mid=2342&aC=63bab3c8&jumpurl=3.

Athens 2005: http://www.oikoumene.org/index.php?id=2267&rid=f_13684&mid=2342&aC=63bab3c8&jumpurl=4.

Competition between churches should give room to shared witness

Diakonia, mission, and faith and order are different aspects of the same ecumenical movement and not separate, the Rev. Dr Walter Altmann, moderator of the WCC central committee, said to the members of the Commission of World Mission and Evangelism (CWME) at their meeting last week after the Edinburgh 2010 conference in Scotland.

Altmann spoke out of his Brazilian context, where the number of people who do not consider themselves to be of any faith is growing faster than those who regard themselves as part of the Pentecostal and charismatic movement.

"This is a missionary challenge to us as churches," Altmann said. "Therefore competition between churches is not appropriate, and there should be shared witness to the love of God within society."

"There is a need for understanding about what mission means," Altmann added. "All churches need to give an account of the hope which is within them."

Regarding the upcoming WCC 10th Assembly in Busan, Republic of Korea, Altmann stressed that the Korean emphasis on mission makes even more relevant the CWME's contribution in order to bring mission and evangelism into the agenda of the 10th Assembly.

The 2013 Assembly will be a unique opportunity to experience the life of the church in Korea while bringing the ecumenical experience of global mission and ecumenism to the country.

World Council of Churches