Mission and Evangelism

Ecumenical Movement ◽

World Council ◽

Evangelical Protestants ◽

The 1960S ◽

International Missionary Council ◽

World Mission ◽

Roman Catholics ◽

From its inception, the modern ecumenical movement has entailed the twin pursuits of realizing both the unity and the mission of the church. Moreover, mission and evangelism were closely related in twentieth-century ecumenical thought. The main ecumenical institutional structure that advanced the churches’ understanding of mission and evangelism for much of the century was the International Missionary Council, which in 1961 became the Commission on World Mission and Evangelism within the World Council of Churches. By the end of the 1960s, Roman Catholics and evangelical Protestants were also making major contributions to the broader ecumenical understanding of mission and evangelism. Enduring theological achievements including the concept of the missio Dei and the contextualization of theology remain a part of the overall legacy of the ecumenical movement.

Missions and the New Hope

Occasional Bulletin from the Missionary Research Library ◽

10.1177/239693936301400802 ◽

1963 ◽

Vol 14 (8) ◽

pp. 1-8

Author(s):

Joseph Haroutunian

Keyword(s):

Research Library ◽

Systematic Theology ◽

University Of Chicago ◽

World Council ◽

Divinity School ◽

The University ◽

International Missionary Council ◽

World Mission ◽

The response to the publication, or the republication, of some of the study documents preparatory to the Willingen meeting of the international Missionary Council has been most gratifying. Requests keep coming to the Missionary Research Library for those documents. Hence, we publish another highly significant paper from among the inquiries into “The Missionary Obligation of the Church”, a paper advocating powerfully a corrective to contemporary mission thinking. The paper was presented in September 1950. It is published with the permission of the Division of World Mission and Evangelism, World Council of Churches. Dr. Haroutunian currently is Professor of Systematic Theology at The Divinity School of The University of Chicago.

The Leading Ecumenical Organizations of the First Half of the 20th Century

Церковный историк ◽

10.31802/ch.2020.3.1.003 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 47-60

Author(s):

Илья Письменюк

Keyword(s):

20Th Century ◽

Church History ◽

Ecumenical Movement ◽

Stage Of Development ◽

Initial Stage ◽

The World ◽

The Future ◽

World Council ◽

International Missionary Council

Статья преподавателя кафедры церковной истории священника Ильи Николаевича Письменюка посвящена начальному этапу развития современного экуменического движения после окончания Международной миссионерской конференции в Эдинбурге в 1910 г. На этом этапе экуменизм разделился на три основных направления: богословское, социально-практическое и миссионерское. Все они постепенно нашли институциональное воплощение в первых экуменических организациях, среди которых наиболее заметными стали конференции «Вера и церковное устройство» и «Жизнь и деятельность», а также Международный миссионерский совет и Всемирный альянс для содействия международной дружбе через церкви. Развитие перечисленных организаций положило основу для будущего создания крупнейшего в истории межхристианского института - Всемирного совета церквей. An article by Priest Ilya Nikolayevich Pismenyuk, Professor at the Department of Church History, dwells on the initial stage of development of the modern ecumenical movement after the end of the International Missionary Conference in Edinburgh in 1910. At this stage, ecumenism was divided into three main directions: theological, socio-practical and missionary ones. All of them gradually found institutionalization in the ﬁrst ecumenical organizations, among which the most notable were the conferences «Faith and Church Order» and «Life and Work», along with the International Missionary Council and World Alliance for the Promotion of International Friendship through the Churches. The development of these organizations made the basis of the future creation of the largest inter-Christian institution in history - the World Council of Churches.

Porto Alegre 2006: Called to be the One Church: Ecumenism beyond its Crisis?

Exchange ◽

10.1163/157254307x159434 ◽

2007 ◽

Vol 36 (1) ◽

pp. 87-102 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Anton Houtepen

Keyword(s):

Porto Alegre ◽

Ecumenical Movement ◽

Religious Plurality ◽

Church Unity ◽

The World ◽

World Council ◽

The One ◽

Economic Injustice ◽

AbstractFrom 9-23 February 2006 the World Council of Churches held its 9th Assembly in Porto Alegre, Brasil with the theme God, in your grace, transform the world. It gathered in an atmosphere of crisis in the ecumenical movement, caused by global political and religious developments, post-modern thinking on the value of plurality and difference and by the slow reception of ecumenical agreements. The Assembly, though, became a sign of hope beyond the ecumenical crisis. Its reflections and proposals on Globalisation and economic injustice, on Christian identity and religious plurality and on Church Unity and the Mission of the Church demonstrate a matured ecumenical and ecclesiological awareness, strengthened by a new method of decision-making by consensus. The document Called to be the one Church might be seen as the constitutional basis for a reconfiguration of the ecumenical movement and as a refinement of the Toronto Declaration of 1950. It formulates a matrix of catholicity and of a legitimate diversity of church forms within an essential convergence about its structures of continuity and mission.

Faith and Order

The Oxford Handbook of Ecumenical Studies ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199600847.013.24 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Geoffrey Wainwright

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

Moral Issues ◽

Ecumenical Movement ◽

Consensus Document ◽

Early Twentieth Century ◽

The World ◽

World Council ◽

The Church ◽

Common Vision

Generically, ‘faith and order’ designates the contents of doctrinal belief and the patterns of social and governmental structure that mark the historically varied communities that claim the name and status of ‘church’. Concern with these closely connected areas has been central to the worldwide ecumenical movement since the early twentieth century. The chapter focuses on the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches, which has the overall aim of calling the churches to the goal of visible unity in order that the world may believe. It considers the activities and organization of the Commission, and various fruits of its work across a range of issues, including the apostolic faith, anthropological and moral issues, tradition, and ecclesiology. It particularly highlights the consensus document on ‘Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry’ (1982), and the process culminating in the report: ‘The Church: Towards a Common Vision’ (2013).

Is Christ Divided?

Christianity in the Twentieth Century ◽

10.23943/princeton/9780691196848.003.0007 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 127-149

Author(s):

Brian Stanley

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

Church Of England ◽

Ecumenical Movement ◽

The World ◽

Common Strategy ◽

World Council ◽

Protestant Christians ◽

The Church ◽

India And China

This chapter examines the ecumenical movement. The twentieth century has sometimes been denominated by historians of Christianity as “the ecumenical century.” Narratives of the ecumenical movement typically begin with the World Missionary Conference, held in Edinburgh in June of 1910, which assembled some 1,215 Protestant delegates from various parts of the globe to devise a more effective common strategy for the evangelization of the world. Viewed with the benefit of hindsight, the Edinburgh conference has been widely identified as the birthplace of the formal ecumenical movement. Without it, there would be no World Council of Churches. Yet serious attempts to bridge divisions between Protestant Christians were already under way in India and China before 1910. Furthermore, the World Missionary Conference was precisely that—a gathering of mission executives and missionaries convened to consider questions of missionary policy. Delegates represented missionary agencies rather than churches, and discussion of questions of doctrine and church order was forbidden, in deference to the Church of England, whose endorsement would not have been given if the conference had been expected to discuss matters of faith and order with Nonconformists. The chapter then looks at the failure and success of the ecumenical movement.

The mystery and the unity of the Church: Considerations from an Eastern Orthodox perspective

HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies ◽

10.4102/hts.v77i4.6707 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 77 (4) ◽

Author(s):

Nicolae V. Mosoiu

Keyword(s):

Roman Catholic ◽

Eastern Orthodox ◽

Mutual Knowledge ◽

Church Unity ◽

World Council ◽

Divine Life ◽

The One ◽

World Mission ◽

This article attempts an approach to discuss the mystery and the unity of the church and firstly, it underlined that the church cannot have a formal definition as the divine life extended from Christ’s resurrected body into those who believe and receive the Holy Mysteria. At the same time, the process of becoming part of the church is a mystical one. In order for life in Christ to be possible, Christ must be formed in the human being. Becoming a Christian is described in terms specific to the process of birth (cf. Gl 4:19), its end being the formation of Christ in us. Then, the theme of unity is dealt with from an Eastern Orthodox perspective, not in isolation, but in connection with the Roman Catholic, Protestant and ecumenical concerns for unity and collaboration amongst Christians. The cosmic unifying vocation of the church was accomplished because of the five syntheses realised by her Head, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Then there are references to the Theotokological aspect of the church, Holy Baptism as the bond of church unity; Holy Eucharist as the Mysterion of ecclesial unity, the ministry of the bishop for unity and the unity of Christians in the one Church.Contribution: The author, having experience in ecumenical dialogues as a former member of the Commmission on World Mission and Evangelism and, at present, of the Commission on Faith and Order of the World Council of Churches, tried to offer a balanced perspective on the sensitive theme of the unity of the Christians in the one Church, referring to some of the main relevant sources, which facilitate dialogue, mutual knowledge and collaboration.

Visser ’t Hooft, 1900-1985

10.5117/9789463726832 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Jurjen A. Zeilstra

Keyword(s):

The Netherlands ◽

Early Age ◽

Ecumenical Movement ◽

The World ◽

World Council ◽

Student Christian Movement ◽

General Secretary ◽

The Church ◽

Formal Establishment

God’s diplomat, the pope of the ecumenical movement, but also an acerbic theologian and a difficult person: this is how journalists characterised Willem Adolf Visser ’t Hooft (1900-1985). He was one of the best-known Dutch theologians outside the Netherlands and he left his mark on the world church. Even at an early age, he made profound efforts in support of international ecumenical youth and student organisations (Dutch Student Christian Movement, YMCA and World Student Christian Federation). He led the World Council of Churches during its formative stages (from 1938), and after its formal establishment in 1948 became its first general secretary, serving until 1966. To Visser ’t Hooft, the unity of the church was both an article of faith and a pragmatic organisation of church influence in a disunited world.

Morals

The Oxford Handbook of Ecumenical Studies ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199600847.013.21 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Michael Root

Keyword(s):

Moral Reflection ◽

Moral Issues ◽

Ecumenical Movement ◽

The Past ◽

Ethical Teaching ◽

The World ◽

World Council ◽

Liberation Movements ◽

Ethics has rarely in the past been a cause of church-dividing dispute, but recently it has developed into a source of contention. The early ecumenical movement sought to give an agreed moral witness. Conferences at Stockholm (1925), Oxford (1937), and Geneva (1967) developed a tradition of ecumenical moral reflection within the World Council of Churches. Profound changes came to this tradition as emphasis shifted after 1967 towards a ‘contextual liberation ecumenism’, focusing on solidarity with liberation movements of the oppressed. More recently, ethics has been taken up in ecumenical dialogues. Dialogues have discussed specific moral issues (e.g. divorce, war, homosexuality) as well as more general questions of the relation of ethics to the unity of the church. While some dialogues have reported a fundamental agreement of ethical outlook, some recent dialogues have found significant differences, extending from questions related to sexuality to broader issues of the sources of ethical teaching.

San Antonio and Manila 1989: “…Like Ships in the Night”?

Missiology An International Review ◽

10.1177/009182969001800202 ◽

1990 ◽

Vol 18 (2) ◽

pp. 139-148 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Alan Neely ◽

James A. Scherer

Keyword(s):

Social Justice ◽

Common Ground ◽

San Antonio ◽

The Poor ◽

The World ◽

World Council ◽

Similarities And Differences ◽

World Mission ◽

In this article the two authors who participated in both the World Council of Churches Commission on World Mission and Evangelism conference in San Antonio, Texas, and the Lausanne II Congress in Manila report on similarities and differences in the two missiological events. They note the stronger evangelism focus at San Antonio where witness in deed and word are emphasized, and the greater concern at Manila with issues of social justice, the plight of the poor and oppressed, and women in the church. Despite differences in rhetoric and theological emphasis, there is much common ground around the themes “Your Will Be Done: Mission in Christ's Way” (San Antonio) and “Calling the Whole Church to Take the Whole Gospel to the Whole World” (Manila). The authors urge the leaders of both movements not to stumble over differences, but to plan and work together more closely in the future.

Mission Rediscovered: Transforming Discipleship; A Commentary on the Arusha Call to Discipleship

International Bulletin of Mission Research ◽

10.1177/23969393211026458 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 45 (4) ◽

pp. 427-429

Author(s):

Stephen Bevans

Keyword(s):

The World ◽

World Council ◽

History Of ◽

Local Congregations ◽

World Mission ◽

This review locates Kenneth Ross’s book Mission Rediscovered in the context of the history of World Mission Conferences of the World Council of Churches’ Commission on World Mission and Evangelism, the latest of which took place in Arusha, Tanzania, in March 2018. The book is a commentary on “The Arusha Call to Discipleship,” a twelve-point call to mission that was approved unanimously by the conference participants. This is an ideal book to be discussed by local congregations who want to know the latest thinking about the mission of the church.