Episcopal Press and News
CWME Sponsors Conference On Mission, Evangelism
Episcopal News Service. June 8, 1989 [89108]
Charles H. Long, Director of Forward Movement Publications
SAN ANTONIO, Tex. (DPS, June 8) -- "Your Will Be Done -- Mission in Christ's Way" was the theme of a major conference sponsored by the World Council of Churches'(WCC's) Commission on World Mission and Evangelism (CWME) held in San Antonio from May 22 to June 1. Some 750 participants from more than 100 countries gathered to discuss contemporary challenges for Christians in mission. CWME conferences have a long history. There have been 12 over the years, tracing their origins to the World Missionary Conference, sponsored by the International Missionary Council, held in Edinburgh in 1910.
CWME conferences are usually held -- like Lambeth conferences -- once a decade. Previous meetings have marked milestones in the ecumenical understanding of mission. The last CWME conference was held in Melbourne, Australia, in 1980; its theme was "Thy Kingdom Come." The Melbourne conference identified the close connection between the good news of God's reign and the liberation of the world's poor and oppressed. The conference also hammered out an agreed statement on the theology of mission -- a statement that has had a continuing and growing influence on the thinking of all Churches.
The San Antonio meeting was focused on practical questions of how mission and evangelism should be done, rather than on the theory and theology of these concerns. A basic question was raised: What would it mean to submit the actual practices of the Churches -- in all their work -- to the judgment of Christ and to his way of discerning and responding to the will of God?
Voting delegates at the conference included members of the CWME (who are appointed by the Central Committee of the WCC), delegates named by member Churches, and others who represented national and regional councils of Churches from different countries. Devon Anderson of the Washington Office of the Episcopal Church was the Episcopal delegate, and Judith Gillespie, Executive for World Mission at the Episcopal Church Center, was the delegate named by the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America (NCCC, U.S.A.).
Fifteen Anglican provinces were represented among the official delegates. More than half (13) were women. There were four laypersons, five priests, and two bishops -- Samir Kafity, President-Bishop in Jerusalem and Archbishop of the Province of Jerusalem and the Middle East, and David Gitari, Bishop of Mt. Kenya East and vice-moderator of the CWME. Twenty other Anglicans were present as consultants, observers, stewards, or members of the WCC staff at the conference.
In the early days of the ecumenical movement, conferences were composed almost exclusively of white, Protestant, male bishops and other Church executives from Western countries. The San Antonio meeting was in vivid contrast to these early events. It was truly a multiracial, multilingual, global meeting. Forty-six percent of the participants were women. And the majority of those participating, men and women, spoke from their immediate experience of local programs for mission and evangelism and the struggle for justice in all parts of the world. Nearly 100 Orthodox Church leaders, both from the West and from Eastern Europe, attended, as did 40 Roman Catholics appointed by the Vatican. All participated fully in the proceedings.
For the first time in 40 years, there was an official delegation at the CWME conference from the People's Republic of China, including several graduate students studying in theological schools in the United States, the dean of Nanjing seminary, and Stephan Shen-yin Wang, the former Anglican Bishop of Shantung.
And for the first time ever, followers of other faiths -- Hindus, Jews, a Muslim, a Buddhist, a Sikh, a Jain, and a representative of a traditional Native American religion -- attended as consultants.
The diversity and unity of the people of God were apparent in the opening liturgy held at San Antonio's Trinity Baptist Church. It was said to be the first worldwide interdenominational service to be held in a Southern Baptist church. It was surely the first time that the church's sanctuary contained a large paschal candle next to a portable altar bearing an Orthodox icon, flanked by 30 officiants from as many countries, each in his or her national dress or distinctive ecclesiastical robes. The climax of the liturgy came as the Roman Catholic Archbishop of San Antonio, Patrick Flores, processed down the center aisle holding the Gospel book, preceded by Hispanic children dancing to the music of a mariachi band.
Most of the conference work was done in small Bible study groups and in four sections dealing with contemporary mission issues. The section on "Participating in Suffering and Struggle," for instance, dealt with witness in secular societies, urban-industrial mission, and interfaith relationships.
Land rights and ecological issues were major topics for the stewardship section -- called "The Earth Is the Lord." Another section, "Renewed Communities in Mission," dealt with the relationship of official Churches to renewal movements and expressions of popular religion inside and outside Church structures. This section also addressed appropriate and inappropriate styles of evangelism, including the use of electronic media or intentional proselytism.
A fourth section, "Turning to the Living God," dealt, in part, with what Eugene Stockwell, director of CWME, called, in his keynote address, the four main issues facing the mission of the Church today: the relation of unity and mission; Gospel and culture; relations with people of other faiths in a pluralist society; and the defense of life itself in a world threatened by multiple forms of self-destruction.
In the course of the CWME conference in San Antonio, 50 Episcopalians had a rare opportunity to take part in another WCCsponsored event, a parallel conference called Encuentro ("encounter" in Spanish) -- which met from May 21 to May 25 -- organized by the United States Office of the WCC to give Christians in the United States a chance to experience the world Church in action and to make their own contribution to its agenda. The main theme of Encuentro was "Your Will Be Done -- Mission in Christ's Way." Most of the 500 participants in Encuentro were chosen by their denominations because of their links to networks of people already engaged in mission, evangelism, social action, or ecumenical relations.
Led by Judith Gillespie and Wayne Schwab of the Episcopal Church Center, the Episcopal delegation to Encuentro included the president and vice-president of the House of Deputies, David Collins and Pam Chinnis; three elected members of the Executive Council, Marcy Walsh, Ann Fontaine, and Philip Allen; as well as college students, seminarians, clergy, and members of national commissions and networks concerned with evangelism, ecumenism, racial and ethnic ministries, and activists for peace and justice. Many of the Episcopal contingent had the experience of meeting for the first time Church leaders from other countries and also leaders from other religious denominations in the United States with similar mission interests.
Encuentro had its own program of addresses, bible study, worship, and discussion groups. However, Encuentro participants were also able to take part in the opening days of the CWME conference.
Encuentro began with an address by the Rev. Dr. Emilio Castro, general secretary of the WCC. Castro, commenting on the general decline in Church membership, said, "More members is the wrong goal. The question is not how big we are but what we are.... To be sidelined by a culture which has sidelined Jesus Christ is a familiar role for his disciples."
Castro also talked about the inherent "marginality" of Christianity: "Those put on the margin will be discovered to be at the center...There is a marginality to the cross and a subversiveness to the resurrection." The general secretary added, "Let us ask ourselves: Have we listened to God's call to us? Have we obeyed what we have heard?"
Encuentro participants also heard remarks by Eugene Stockwell, a top mission executive of the WCC, who addressed issues involving interfaith dialogue. Raymond Fung of Hong Kong, evangelism secretary of the World Council of Churches in Geneva, led a session on "Evangelism Issues Facing the Global Church," and another plenary on "Evangelism in the North American Context" was led by Lois Wilson, a WCC president from Canada.
Other highlights included Bible study led by James Forbes, senior minister of Riverside Church, New York; an account by Charles Adams of the Progressive National Baptist Convention of the role of the black churches in the United States in the struggle for racial justice, and an update on the situation in South Africa from Reformed Church leader Alan Boesak.
World Church leaders served as resource people for seminars on such topics as "Dialogue With Living Faiths," "Missionaries Then and Now," "The Wholeness of Creation," and "Declaring the Gospel in a Secular Age." Leadership for the last of these seminars symbolized the spirit of Encuentro; it included a Baptist from the Soviet Union, a professor of theology from China, and a pastor from Cuba.
At its closing service, the Encuentro conference adopted a message to the larger conference, declaring, among other things, that as Asian-Americans, Hispanics, Afro-Americans, Native Americans, and Caucasians: "
We come to believe that no Church, race, or nation has a monopoly on mission and evangelism. Mission demands unity. Never again can we be content with separateness....
A new missionary style lies ahead for our Churches, shaped by the very Good News it is committed to share.... Spiritual resources will take precedence over financial resources.
Wrestling with cultural forces as they distort and disclose the Gospel becomes an urgent mission mandate. Our society is increasingly pluralistic, multi-faith, and multi-ethnic. To foster the creative interdependency that makes community possible, we must develop authentic dialogue, taking seriously our faith as well as other faiths.
Commitment to mission in Christ's way leads us to contend with the secular structures of human life. It insists on our allowing our own lives as Christians to be shaped by the Gospel. Too often we have reduced the Gospel to words alone...too much, we have allowed our measure of faithfulness to become little more than growth in numbers. We have been too ready to deal in power relationships rather than risk the vulnerability that is the way of the Cross. Those with wisdom and courage from lands beyond our own are teaching us new vitalities of faith.
![[thumbnail: International participant...]](/ENS/photographs/thumbnails/89108_thb.jpg) |