Ecumenical perspectives on mission and unity

The WCC invites the churches to share reflections, insights and experiences as to how the churches can best be faithful to their mission and provide a common witness to Jesus Christ in all realms of life - personal, cultural and socio-economic.

It sees the mission challenges for the churches as finding a balance between a clear witness to the gospel, the respect for people’s dignity, and solidarity with those who suffer, e.g. from exclusion, injustice or sickness. Mission emanates from worshipping churches and includes evangelism, the search for inclusive communities, various forms of healing ministries, as well as  covenanting for justice. In WCC’s perspective, mission must be “in Christ’s way” and strive for authentic reconciliation and peace, counting on the presence and power of God’s healing Spirit, in particular in situations of religious plurality.

This project brings the WCC's specific ecumenical perspective and experience to international preparations for the centennial celebration in 2010 of the 1910 Edinburgh world mission conference and, leading up to that, to international dialogue and debate on mission and evangelism in the 21st century.

As an institutional expression at the world level of the movement started at Edinburgh that led to the integration of church and mission, the WCC will play a leading role in organizing a common mission conference in June 2010 in Edinburgh, together with many stakeholders representing the changing face of contemporary world Christianity.

The WCC has likewise been involved in the first stages of an international, interdenominational and decentralized study on mission launched in preparation for the centennial. The project pursues this involvement; steps and content are being negotiated with partners beyond the WCC fellowship, including evangelicals, Pentecostals and Roman Catholic mission bodies.

WCC’s own study work will focuse on the link between evangelism and unity (including issues of church growth, conversion, proselytism); between mission and the healing ministry; and between ecclesiology and mission. WCC will also continue the search for a relevant spirituality in mission and in the struggle for justice.

The paper “Mission and Evangelism in Unity Today” was adopted by the WCC Commission on World Mission and Evangelism in 2000 as a study document to be used during the preparations for the 2005 world mission conference in Athens.
This paper offers reflections on mission as reconciliation from an ecumenical point of view and is shared as part of the preparatory process for the 2005 Conference on World Mission and Evangelism (CWME). It is the result of a consultation attended by ten missiologists coming from five continents, rooted in their own contextual spiritualities and coming from various church traditions such as Orthodox, Protestant, Pentecostal and Roman Catholic.
The world mission conference held in Edinburgh in 1910 with its watchword of “the evangelisation of the world in this generation” is considered the symbolic starting point of the contemporary ecumenical movement.
This preparatory paper for the CWME conference in Athens 2005 focuses mainly on medical and theological-spiritual aspects of the healing ministry and their link with a recent ecumenical understanding of mission.

 
Related publications

You Are the Light of the World

Statements on Mission by the World Council of Churches 1980-2005. These statements provide a picture of the main theses and emphases of ecumenical missiology.

International Review of Mission

The missiological quarterly of the WCC. Whilst its focus is ecumenical missiology, it also gives a voice to other perspectives, such as those from Pentecostal and Evangelical theologians. Articles and academic papers on important mission events are presented along with book reviews and a detailed bibliography of current literature from the Centre for the Study of Christianity in the Non-Western World (Edinburgh).

 
Related activities
"Towards 2010"
As the centenary of Edinburgh World Missionary Conference approaches, it is time to reflect on its significance in the light of the experience of the past hundred years and the realities of Christian Mission in the 21st century.