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1968 – that pivotal year in politics, popular culture, and geopolitical turmoil, also ushered in a new era for the worldwide ecumenical movement and the WCC.

The date: 20 February 1991. The last day of the WCC 7th Assembly. The hours were packed with remaining agenda items, the assembly had acquired a second unofficial theme. As moderator, how was Bishop Heinz Joachim Held supposed to bring this incomplete, basically unfinished assembly to a close?

A warm welcome with cheers and high expectations awaited WCC general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit when he touched down in Kingston earlier this week. The Jamaican capital was the first stop of a 10-day tour in the Caribbean.

As a Global Consultation on the Decade of the Churches in Solidarity with Women opened on 2 October, World Council of Churches (WCC) leaders offered words of encouragement and determination for the future.

Celebrating the 70th anniversary of the World Council of Churches, the board of the Anders-Frostenson Foundation led a sing-along concert at the Ecumenical Centre Chapel on 28 September, offering participants a unique experience full of emotion.

On 21 September, an event unfolded in Liberia to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the WCC. Held in conjunction with other civil society organizations observing the International Day of Peace in Monrovia, people gathered for a ceremony and a parade.

In 1984 a pastor from Uruguay became the first Latin American to be elected as general secretary of the WCC. The late Emilio Castro (1927 - 2013) left an unmatched legacy of passionate ecumenism behind him. His book “Pasion y compromise con el Reino de Dios”, first published in 2007, has now been translated into English and released in an edited version.

At WCC’s ecumenical workcamps in the late 1950s, a young Govaert Chr.Kok of the Netherlands would learn lessons for life – and encounter a very special person.

The leadership of the World Council of Churches (WCC) Central Committee met in Geneva on 16-17 September to prepare for the Executive Committee meeting and the joint day on Ecumenical Diakonia with ACT Alliance in Uppsala, Sweden, in November.

World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit offered a greeting at the General Assembly of the Community of Protestant Churches in Europe, being held this week in Basel, Switzerland.

Funeral services are scheduled for Thursday, 13 September, for Loïs Meyhoffer, longtime staff member of the World Council of Churches, who died this week at nearly 100 years. A Geneva native, Meyhoffer joined the fledgling organization’s refugee assistance efforts in 1949 and moved to Germany to oversee its efforts there, returning to Geneva in 1955 and working on staff until her retirement.

A conversation on the way home to Chile from the WCC 4th Assembly planted an ecumenical seed that grew into a wonderful experience of Christian unity – the partnership agreement between the Pentecostal Church of Chile and the United Church of Christ.

A trip to Cuba in 2005 with a WCC delegation was undoubtedly a high point of German retired Bishop Rolf Koppe’s ecumenical career.

World Council of Churches general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit expressed warm greetings to members of the Jewish community on the festival of Rosh Hashanah.

Have you ever thought of composing an oratorio about the ecumenical movement and dedicating it to the World Council of Churches?

The archbishop Dr Nathan Söderblom, an ecumenical forerunner and messenger of peace in war-torn Europe, challenged a deeply divided Christianity 100 years ago. Against all odds, the Stockholm Conference on Life and Work in 1925 gathered church leaders at a scale the world had not seen since Nicaea 1600 years earlier. And it did not end there.

Through an ecumenical Sunday service, Norwegian churches celebrated the 70th anniversary of the World Council of Churches on 26 August.

Tell me, how can you seriously engage with the theme of this assembly - “Man’s Disorder and God’s Design” - if on Monday afternoon Karl Barth, shaking a Basel Herr Professor finger prophesied that it is wrong, it should be the other way round, “God’s Design” first and only then “Man’s Disorder”?

Serving others is something many faith communities put as a priority. But being hospitable to others puts service on a whole new level. In remarks at a youth symposium on 23 August at the Protestant Theological University in Amsterdam, Rev. Najla Kassab, president of the World Communion of Reformed Churches, reflected on “Hospitality on a Pilgrim’s Way of Justice and Peace.”

By his own admission, John D. Lewis was a very “young” eighteen-year-old when he arrived at the WCC Central Committee meeting in Geneva 45 years ago this week to be a steward. What he discovered there, and serving again in Berlin the following year, he carries with him to this day.