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After the conference, the commission working groups published study documents under the title “Called to Discipleship: Mission in the Pilgrimage of Justice and Peace.”
In spite of COVID-19, many of the commission’s activities were implemented fully online or in a hybrid form. COVID-19 was also an opportunity to explore and become creative in doing things in a new way. Adaptation became key. At the same time, preparations and planning for the WCC 11th Assembly in 2022 have continued.
The commission organised a Missional Formation Workshop under the theme of “Young Leadership in Mission”. Eighteen participants representing 16 WCC member churches and ecumenical mission partners from 14 countries engaged in a missional formation workshop on 15-16 April 2021 in collaboration with the WCC Bossey Ecumenical Institute as well as GETI to facilitate the contribution of young leadership, their trainers and educators, and mission practitioners in reflecting on current issues and challenges of mission in churches and mission agencies.
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WCC Commission on World Mission and Evangelism , November 2021
The commission’s Working Group on Theology for Mission continued to work on mission from the perspective of the Arusha Call to Discipleship and the WCC assembly theme, as well as to be responsible, with the staff members, for organizing one of the Ecumenical Conversations at the assembly, and to reflect on the work of the Theology for Mission working group since May 2019 to contribute to the further work of the commission in the 11th WCC Assembly in 2022 and beyond.
The commission’s Working Group on Transforming Discipleship (Evangelism) finalized its study paper in spring 2020. The study paper “Converting Discipleship: Dissidence and Metanoia,” as the outworking of this, aspires to move churches towards a much-needed transformation effected through discipleship, unpacking new and emerging elements in the future work on transforming discipleship. A WCC webinar on Converting Discipleship: Dissidence and Metanoia was organized on 24 November 2020. Preparations for an Ecumenical Conversation at the assembly continue.
For the CWME Working Group on Mission from the Margins, collaboration and adaptation have been apt descriptors for the way programmatic activities have been and continue to be implemented. Of note were the highly successful and collaborative hybrid ECO School and Transformative Masculinity and Femininity programs with the Pacific and the successful implementation of the online racial justice conference on the theme ANTI-RACIST IN CHRIST? Ecumenical Christian Repentance, Reflection and Action on Racial Discrimination and Xenophobia.
In late November the core organising planning teams of each of the four pre-assemblies (Indigenous Peoples, Ecumenical Disability Advocates Network, Youth, and Just Community for Women and Men) will meet to finalise their individual pre-assembly programs. The indigenous pre-assembly theme is Reconciliation: Restoring Wholeness in Creation. Here the notion of justice will be explored in relation to reconciliation and unity. The underlying question being: can there be reconciliation and unity without justice? Ecumenical Conversation preparations on Mission from the Margins and Migration continue in small working groups guided by the input of the Assembly Planning Committee.
“Call to Discipleship: Mission in the Pilgrimage of Justice and Peace” newly released by WCC
