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A new publication, “Towards a Global Vision of the Church, Volume II,” will be released during a webinar on 14 December hosted by the World Council of Churches Commission on Faith and Order. 

Speakers and participants will explore the question: What does it mean to be the church within the contemporary context of world Christianity?

As the study groups of the World Council of Churches (WCC) Faith and Order Commission convened this week, the paper “Towards a Global Vision of the Church Volume I: Explorations on Global Christianity and Ecclesiology” was released.

Today the world joins in mourning the passing of a towering figure in the struggle for freedom and for human dignity and rights.

In recent times, churches face tensions with regard to ethical questions. This is of course not new. History testifies to how in the history of Christianity disputes over moral questions caused changes, leading at times to division, whereas at other times such divisions could be prevented.

A webinar scheduled for 27 May and entitled “Change in Moral Teaching – Exploring Continuity and Discontinuity,” will examine concrete historic examples where churches have modified or changed their understanding of a specific moral issue.

Who on earth decided in June 1920 in a conference held in Crans, near Geneva, that the following year at Lake Mohonk, New York, an International Missionary Council would be established and give an enormous institutional impulse to the emerging ecumenical movement?

Jürgen Moltmann looked astonished when he saw his name on the list of contributors. In a recent dinner at the Ecumenical Institute in Bossey, my colleague Stephen Brown, the editor of The Ecumenical Review, surprised him with a 50-year old brochure.

Maltese creators of the newly available materials for the upcoming Week of Prayer for Christian Unity have focused on hospitality to the stranger as their theme, evoking the shipwrecked Apostle Paul’s statement that “They showed us unusual kindness” there (Acts 28:2).

Scholars and students around the world will soon have access to a unique collection of documents that relate to the search for Christian unity online, instead of having to visit the archives in Geneva of the World Council of Churches (WCC) to seek out texts that are often difficult to obtain elsewhere.

Rev. Dr Konrad Raiser has been on an ecumenical journey for most of his adult life, which spans 80 years. The former WCC general secretary relates some of this pilgrimage in his newest publication, “The Challenge of Transformation: An Ecumenical Journey.” On 5 February, shortly after Raiser’s birthday, ecumenical experts from different generations, confessions and continents met in Geneva to discuss the newest publication by the man who led the WCC from 1993 to 2003.

A Salvadoran Cross that is a now an icon of Christian unity was dedicated and placed in the World Council of Churches’ Chapel in Geneva, Switzerland on the first day of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.

It’s 70 years since the World Council of Churches was founded in Amsterdam on 23 August. In addition to a commemoration service in Amsterdam on 23 August, the WCC, its member churches and partners are planning a variety of events to move forward on our ongoing Pilgrimage of Justice and Peace, and at the same time honour and learn from these 70 years of ecumenical endeavour. Dr Abuom, from the Anglican Church of Kenya, is the moderator of the WCC Central Committee. She is the first woman and the first African in the position in WCC’s history. In an interview, she reflects on the evolution of the WCC in the past 70 years.

After an historic meeting in South Africa in June 2017, study groups within the WCC Faith and Order Commission are using theological reflection as a tool to build unity between churches. The questions Faith and Order considers are not abstract issues but, in many contexts across the world, matters of life and death.