The Edinburgh conference June 4-6 commemorated the centenary of the 1910 World Missionary Conference, which is seen as marking the beginning of the modern ecumenical movement for church unity.
The organizers of the 2010 meeting include representatives of Evangelical, Orthodox, Pentecostal, Protestant and Roman Catholic traditions, as well as of the World Council of Churches.
In his June 4 keynote address, Antonios Kireopoulos, associate general secretary dealing with faith and order issues and interfaith relations for the U.S. National Council of Churches, alluded to “what I like to call good — or appropriate — evangelism, and bad — or inappropriate proselytism.
It is most harmful, he added, when rather than seeking “to make Christians from among people of other faiths, instead [it] strives to make Christians from among people that are already Christians,” and suffering under political difficulties.
A number of evangelical and Pentecostal speakers from the floor criticized Kireopoulos’ stance.
At a June 5 press conference, various world leaders made statements and answered questions.
Since Christianity began, there has never been a time when mission has not been taking place, and the same is true for ecumenism or the quest for unity, said Bishop Brian Farrell, who heads the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.
Geoff Tunnicliffe, international director of the World Evangelical Alliance, noted that the WEA brings together some 128 national evangelical alliances, and links churches of many denominations, plus 100 international organizations, along with 13 major global networks and 1,000 Bible colleges and seminaries. The WEA represents around 420 million evangelical Christians worldwide.
“We remain, like our 1910 forebears, passionate about world mission in our broken and hurting world. We recognize with sorrow that the disunity of the Church makes it harder for the world to believe in Christ. …” he said.
The changing dynamics of mission work over the past 100 years was explored by Fidon R. Mwombeki, general secretary of the Wuppertal, Germany-based United Evangelical Mission.
When he delivered a paper entitled, “Mission to the North: Opportunities and Challenges”, Mwombeki, a Tanzanian theologian, spoke about the experience of missionaries from countries such as his own. Christian missionaries from the global South find it hard to break into the “closed societies” of the North, he said.
Mwombeki contrasted the generosity of those people with the indifference shown to missionaries from the South today, when they arrive in places such as the United States or Britain.
Yet people in the north are hungry for the gospel. “I often hear the lay people (in northern churches) say that most of the sermons have nothing to say about their daily lives or their real concerns. People want to hear about Jesus,” said Mwombeki. “They want to know God is with them. They want to know about the forgiveness of sins. They want to learn how to pray. And these are things people from the South are used to doing.”
The missions conference concluded June 6 with more than 1,000 people gathered to mark the 100th anniversary of the 1910 World Missionary Conference in a colorful worship service.
