A council of churches, of course, is not what we need. This is admitted implicitly in all the talk about “the ecumenical movement” when supporters of the World Council of Churches (WCC) congregate for a conference, or a symposium, or — once every seven years or so — a WCC assembly. What we really need is neither a council of churches nor any manner of super-church, but a movement of disciples capable of following Jesus without continually tripping over one another.
But a council of churches is what we have. The World Council was created during the first half of the twentieth century by members of an array of prior movements: the Student Christian Movement, the student volunteer movement for missions, the Faith and Order movement (concerned over theological differences), the Life and Work movement (for social action and diaconal ministries), a movement for international peace through friendship among the churches, as well as assorted educational networks descended from the Sunday School movement. The WCC regularly updates its historical “river map” showing how these streams mingled over the decades, one confluence followed by another joining of tributaries, combining into — of all things — a council of churches.
Do you find the bureaucracy cumbersome in your denomination? The paperwork? The protocols? The appeasement of conflicting egos? The clericalization? Imagine, then, the further complications when nearly 350 churches of widely diverse traditions coalesce in one council and seek a way forward on which all may agree. It is a recipe for institutional gridlock, the antithesis of motion.
And so discourse within the World Council tends to conflate the organization with the broad concept of movement toward Christian unity. The Council publishing house in Geneva does not produce a WCC Dictionary but a Dictionary of the Ecumenical Movement, along with A History of the Ecumenical Movement in three volumes (1517-2000). A document of the Second Vatican Council is quoted frequently, recognizing the WCC as “the privileged instrument of the ecumenical movement.” Rather than transfusing new energy into the Council, this confusion of institutionalism with progress results in a blurring of boundaries and a descent into doldrums. Michael Kinnamon, professor of mission at Eden Seminary, has described the syndrome in The Vision of the Ecumenical Movement and How It Has Been Impoverished by Its Friends (Chalice Press, 2003).
Intimations of grace
Sometimes, though, if you talk about a thing long enough — and think to pray about it, as well — the winds may pick up and the fog begin to lift. In recent years, the Council and its partners in dialogue have been attempting to imagine “the reconfiguration of the ecumenical movement.” Are there different ways, more promising ways, that churches and other Christian organizations might agree to interact, and to act together in the world? Will the member churches of the WCC, the Roman Catholic Church and other non-members from Pentecostal, evangelical and other confessions find a means of equal participation in a “global Christian forum”? Through the 40-year-old Joint Working Group linking the WCC and the Vatican, can common ground be established among a broad range of Christians as a starting point for dialogue with people of other faiths? Is it possible that insights discovered by a three-year special commission on the participation of Orthodox churches in the WCC may now be applied to obstacles to fellowship and cooperation among other confessions?
It was with a sense of the incompleteness of “the privileged instrument” of ecumenism that the WCC central committee determined the theme for the Ninth Assembly that met in Porto Alegre, Brazil last month. As had happened only once before at an assembly, the theme was stated in the form of a prayer: “God, in your grace, transform the world.” In part, the wording was inspired by the slogan of the World Social Forum (WSF), founded in Porto Alegre: “Another World Is Possible.”
The WCC theme added to the WSF slogan the dimension of the need for God’s grace if the world is to be changed for the better. Sub-themes recognized the foundations necessary: “transform the earth,” “transform our societies,” “transform our lives,” “transform our churches,” “transform our witness.” For WCC staff who use MicroSoft Word, a software ever anxious to complete recurring phrases, computers were continually trying to complete the wording of the main assembly theme with three familiar words: “God, in your grace, transform the World Council of Churches.”
The Ninth Assembly began with prayer for transformation, but also with the recognition that what we have to work with — for the moment — is a 58-year-old institution called the World Council of Churches. As more than 3,000 delegates, staff and visitors gathered for the opening service of prayer on February 14, 2006, it remained to be seen whether another World Council Is possible.
Theodore A. Gill Jr., former editor of Monday Morning magazine, is a Presbyterian minister serving in Geneva, Switzerland, as senior editor of the World Council of Churches. In December 1998, he reported for The Presbyterian Outlook on the Eighth Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Harare, Zimbabwe. More extensive reports and features on the Ninth Assembly of the WCC may be found on the assembly’s Web site, https://www.wcc-assembly.org
