In a meeting held 9-11 November, the WCC Commission on World Mission and Evangelism evaluated its work and impact on mission and global Christianity. The commission, since the WCC 10th Assembly in Busan in 2013, prepared the WCC Conference on World Mission and Evangelism, which took place in Arusha, Tanzania, in 2018.
Losing his hearing and speaking ability as a young man has not deterred Kenyan Karim Okiki in his wood carving, and a symbolic sculpted cross he presented to Pope Francis on his visit to the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Geneva represents people with disabilities everywhere.
“I would like this cross to speak to Pope Francis and the churches worldwide on the need to embrace persons with disabilities especially the deaf and hard of hearing as part of the church today,” said Okiki.
The Ecumenical Disability Advocates Network of the WCC in collaboration with the Council for World Mission and International Disability Alliance hosted a two-day seminar on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
Meeting from 17 to 24 June, the newly reconstituted Commission on Faith and Order of the WCC has begun to define its principal trajectories for ecumenical study and common activity from 2015 until the next WCC Assembly in 2020.
"Churches cannot challenge injustice if they cannot recognize its entrenched presence within the church itself," reads a document by a working group of the World Council of Churches (WCC) programme on Just and Inclusive Communities.
"Diakonia is an essential ecclesial function. It must be prophetic and transformative. It cannot be opted only in convenient forms," asserted participants of a World Council of Churches (WCC) conference, reflecting on "Theology of Diakonia for the 21st Century". The event took place from 2 to 6 June in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
Since 1982 there has been only one official statement of the World Council of Churches (WCC) on mission and evangelism. Now in 2012 the WCC's Commission on World Mission and Evangelism (CWME) is preparing another statement to invoke new understanding of mission and evangelism amidst changing world and ecclesial scenarios.
