wfn.org | WCC Launches Assembly Essay Competition

[PCUSA.NEWS@pcusa.org]

23-July-1997 
97286 
 
    WCC Launches Assembly Essay Competition 
 
    by John Newbury 
    World Council of Churches News and Information Office 
 
GENEVA--An opportunity exists for a young person to win an 
all-expenses-paid trip to Harare, Zimbabwe, to attend the Eighth Assembly 
of the World Council of Churches. 
 
    The winner will be the person who writes the best essay on the biblical 
topic of "Jubilee."  Judges will look for clarity, originality and 
ecumenical vision. 
 
    Announcing the competition, Jan Kok, director of the WCC Office of 
Communication, says, "The subject of jubilee has been chosen because the 
next WCC Assembly will take place in the organization's 50th anniversary 
year [the WCC was founded in Amsterdam in 1948], and  jubilee  will be the 
underlying motif of the forthcoming Assembly, whose theme is "Turn to God 
-- Rejoice in Hope." 
 
    In Leviticus 25, God calls for a jubilee every 50 years in which land 
is to be restored to its original owners and slaves are to be set free.  In 
the prophetic literature of Israel, these elements of liberation were taken 
up in the announcement of the year of the Lord's favor, e.g.,  in Isaiah 
61:2.  Jesus later cited this passage in his sermon in Nazareth as cited in 
Luke 4:18-19. 
 
    Kok says the competition is aimed specifically at younger people 
because the WCC is "aware of the continuing need to widen the circle of 
those who are involved in the ecumenical movement."  Entrants must have 
been born on or after January 1, 1964.  They do not have to belong to a WCC 
member church. 
 
    Details of the competition have been sent to more than 2,000 
theological colleges around the world as well as to all WCC member 
churches, national councils of churches and members of the WCC's Central 
Committee. 
 
    The deadline for entries is May 1, 1998.  The WCC Eighth Assembly will 
be held Dec. 3-14, 1998. 
 
    Full details can be obtained from WCC Publications, Assembly Essay 
Competition, P.O. Box 2100, 1211 Geneva 2, Switzerland.  Fax: 
41-22-798-1346.  E-mail address: ec@wcc-coe.org 

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