wfn.org | WARC Calls For Renewed Efforts at Self-understanding, Unity

[PCUSA.NEWS@pcusa.org]

25-August-1997 
97322 
 
    WARC Calls For Renewed Efforts 
    at Self-understanding, Unity 
 
    by Jerry L. Van Marter 
    World Alliance of Reformed Churches Newsroom 
 
DEBRECEN, Hungary--The 23rd General Council of the World Alliance of 
Reformed Churches (WARC) called for a wide range of consultations and 
studies as its 211 member churches in 104 countries grappled with sweeping 
religious and cultural changes throughout the world. 
 
    "The present moment in the life of the Reformed churches is best 
understood not as a loss of identity, but as a struggle to discover the 
ways our identity should be expressed in the light of the many abrupt 
changes in life and culture we are confronted with today," reported the 
Council's Section 1 on "Reformed Faith and Search for Unity." 
 
    The Council then asked its theology department to work with member 
churches to "help them to: 
 
    *   discern how the gospel is embedded in each culture 
    *   identify the changing influences of the gospel or culture 
    *   study how sacraments relate to culture 
    *   scrutinize cultures ethically and spiritually." 
 
    The section's report focused heavily on "contextualization," which it 
defined as "the struggle of churches and Christians to define their 
identity in terms of their own cultural reality, by connecting the basic 
tenets of Christian faith (creation, incarnation, salvation, liberation) 
with their own historic, existential experience." 
 
    Contextualization necessarily involves enhancing one's own 
self-understanding, the report insisted.  The Council approved a 
recommendation from the section requesting the theology department to 
"prepare study texts to be used at the congregational level regarding the 
basic elements of Reformed thought and life, which would help member 
churches to think about their interaction with their social and cultural 
environment." 
 
    It also called for the preparation of workshops for church groups and 
for the exchange of resources between member churches that might increase 
self-understanding. 
 
    At the same time, the report acknowledged that relating gospel to 
culture requires that churches reach beyond themselves.  The Council 
encouraged WARC officials to continue ongoing conversations with 
Pentecostals, particularly in areas such as Latin America, where these 
churches are growing rapidly. 
 
    The Council also encouraged member churches to "initiate or improve" 
dialogue with people of other faiths and "to find words and forms to reach 
out to secularized people ... to find a new place in their changing 
pluralistic societies." 
 
    The Council also noted the fractures within the Reformed family, with 
more than 700 separate denominations around the world.  In South Korea 
alone, there are 95 separate Reformed denominations.  The Council pleaded 
for closer cooperation between Reformed churches  and for them "to be open 
to listening to what other people have heard from the Word of God in the 
same way they listen to their own interpretations and to hear diverse 
voices and communities within the Reformed family in order to avoid further 
splits." 

------------
For more information contact Presbyterian News Service
  phone 502-569-5504             fax 502-569-8073  
  E-mail PCUSA.NEWS@pcusa.org   Web page: http://www.pcusa.org 
  mailed from World Faith News <wfn-news@wfn.org>  

--