A visit from the General Secretary

Following a rather full two weeks of orientation and introductory lectures, our regular course of study began today. Delivering the first lecture was Samuel Kobia (on the left in the picture), the General Secretary of the World Council of Churches, the organization to which the Bossey Ecumenical Institute belongs.

Headquartered in Geneva, the WCC is a worldwide fellowship of over 300 churches of various denominations “which confess the Lord Jesus Christ as God and Saviour according to the scriptures and therefore seek to fulfill together their common calling to the glory of the one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,” and which strive to realize the goal of visible church unity. It’s kind of like the United Nations (and was, in fact, established the same year as the UN: 1948), except bringing together national churches rather than nation states.

Mr. Kobia delivered a sweeping lecture, tracing the ecumenical movement’s roots in the nineteenth-century missionary movement, to the seminal 1910 World Mission Conference in Edinburgh, up to the present ecumenical context almost a century later. Among the newer challenges facing the worldwide ecumenical movement is the sharp rise in the number and influence of charismatic, Pentecostal, and independent churches in the global south, as well as the increasingly urgent need for dialogue not just among Christians, but between Christians and those of other faiths altogether.

Since my last entry, our numbers have increased by five. We’ve been joined by an Indonesian Lutheran, a Methodist from the Philippines, and three “post-denominational” Christians from China. More on what “post-denominational” Christianity means—and how the faith is evolving in China—in a future entry.