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The Atlantic School of Theology in Nova Scotia, Canada, celebrated the 70th anniversary of the WCC on 22 November at a chapel service. Also in Canada, the Canadian Council of Churches Governing Board members were pleased to hear from WCC representatives during their meeting in Ontario from 21-23 November.

As a result of a consultation on 9-10 November in Washington, D.C., Pan African Women of Faith have released a Call to Action toward a vision of sustainable communities and an end to hunger and poverty.

“Mission is not an action or activity we can choose. It is an expression of daily life. It belongs to the whole church and is not the function of just a few or of an agency,” says Father Ioan Sauca, deputy general secretary of the World Council of Churches.

“Beyond Boundaries,” the newsletter of the World Council of Churches Ecumenical Institute at Bossey, has published its November issue.

Rev. Dr Ofelia Ortega Suárez may be 82 years old, but after the students at the Ecumenical Institute in Bossey heard her speak about the World Council of Churches (WCC) at 70: Achievements and Hopes, they said she has the lively spirit and enthusiasm of a 20-year-old.

The World Council of Churches (WCC) has made several new appointments this year, welcoming programme executives, a programme director, and a new dean of the Bossey Ecumenical Institute.

More than 220 church leaders representing over 20 churches from Belgium, France, Luxemburg and Switzerland are meeting from 27-31 October in the French city of Lyon for the first Francophone Christian Forum.

A delegation from the Evangelical Church in Germany is visiting the WCC on 26-27 October for an ecumenical learning experience that includes prayers with students from the Bossey Ecumenical Institute, an introduction and overview of the work of the WCC, a meeting with the Lutheran World Federation, and a guided tour of the Ecumenical Centre.

Rev. Dr Angelique Walker-Smith has become the first female in history elected to the post of president of the Historic Black Church Family of Christian Churches Together (CCT). Walker-Smith is a member of the World Council of Churches (WCC) Central Committee and also a member of the WCC Commission on Ecumenical Education and Formation.

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.

Each year students from all over the world arrive at Bossey near Geneva for a three-month language training course to pave their way for ecumenical studies that follow on straight after. “The title captures the goal of the course,” says Father Lawrence Iwuamadi, the Nigerian priest who studied at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome and is academic dean of the Ecumenical Institute.

“Congratulations for being a student at Bossey!” Fr Prof. Dr Ioan Sauca, director of the Ecumenical Institute in Bossey and deputy general secretary, welcomed the students for the new academic year 2018-2019. Thirty-one students from diverse countries and traditions will start their classes at the ecumenical institute on Tuesday.

Marie Bassili Assaad, an ecumenical leader who was WCC deputy general secretary from 1980 to 1986, passed away on 30 August, at the age of 96. Her funeral took place in Egypt on 2 September.

Speaking in Lviv, Ukraine on 30 August, World Council of Churches (WCC) deputy general secretary Prof. Dr Isabel Apawo Phiri presented a paper on ”Women and Ecumenical Engagement for Peace in South Sudan,” reflecting on the experiences of a Pilgrim Team visit by the WCC in May 2018.

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.

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”?

An international consultation on “Education for Transformation: Challenges and Prospects for Formation and Reformation” was organised to mark the bicentenary of Serampore College, and the centenary of the Senate of Serampore.

Rev. Dr Katie Geneva Cannon, the first African-American woman ordained in the Presbyterian Church (USA), died on 8 August at age 68.

Christian, Jewish and Muslim students who attended the World Council of Churches (WCC) 2018 Interreligious Summer School at the Ecumenical Institute in Bossey said that learning to break down prejudices about the other was a lasting impression from the six-week course.

As students gathered at the WCC Ecumenical Institute at Bossey for an interreligious summer school, they reflected on what brought them to the institute, and what knowledge and insights they will take home.