wfn.org | WCC FEATURE: Michael Kinnamon on world mission conference

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World Council of Churches - Feature
Contact: + 41 22 791 6153 +41 79 507 6363 media@wcc-coe.org
For immediate release - 19/05/2005

MICHAEL KINNAMON WELCOMES, REFLECTS ON, EXPANDED PARTICIPATION IN MISSION
CONFERENCE

By Theodore Gill (*)

	Free photos available at
	www.mission2005.org

"An ecumenical movement that doesn't involve conversations between people
who disagree would not be an ecumenical movement," says Michael Kinnamon
in the following interview given at the 9-16 May 2005 Conference on World
Mission and Evangelism (CWME).

Dr Kinnamon, a minister of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), is
professor of mission, peace and ecumenical studies at Eden theological
seminary in suburban Saint Louis, USA. He has served on the staff of the
WCC's Faith and Order commission as well as on many national and international church committees and task groups.

The author of The Vision of the Ecumenical Movement - And How It Has Been
Impoverished By Its Friends (Chalice Press, 2003) is not reluctant to
disagree, even with friends and colleagues in the search for truth and
Christian unity.

Expanding participation and interreligious dialogue

Kinnamon has been pleased that the Athens mission conference is taking the
risk of including a broader range of church traditions than have past
conferences. Even so, he notes that the involvement of increased numbers
of Catholics and Pentecostals, as well as Protestants and Orthodox, comes
at a certain cost.

"With the phenomena of fragmentation and globalization, the growing
reality confronting churches in mission is a religious pluralism that has
itself become global," explains Kinnamon. "This means that the great
question for us is that of inter-religious dialogue, yet the interfaith
dimension of mission has been noticeable by its absence from the agenda of
this conference. Partly, this is simply because one conference can't deal
with everything. But expanding participation on the part of Christian
traditions may also have made some issues more difficult to deal with."

He continued, "As an ecumenist, I want to say an emphatic Yes! to
expanding participation in the movement. But we should recognize that it
does complicate things. For the moment, we continue to accept the two main
assertions on interfaith relations formulated in the San Antonio mission
conference in 1989: We know that we can place no limits on the extent of
God's grace, but at the same time we know that we are called as Christians
to proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and saviour."

Kinnamon expresses the hope that, "as the relationship matures" among
traditions represented at this conference, a new conversation may begin
examining "the place of faiths other than Christianity in God's plan for
salvation".

Mutual accountability

Kinnamon does sense new possibilities for dialogue opening up in other
areas. Recalling the ecclesiological principle of a 1950 Faith and Order
meeting in Toronto that the World Council of Churches makes no claim to be
"a church", much less "the Church", Kinnamon notes how this principle was
underlined by the recent Special Commission on Orthodox Participation in
the WCC.

"We know that the Council is not the church," he says, "but what has been
coming up again and again in this conference is another principle - that
of mutual accountability. When an instrument of the ecumenical movement
arrives at a common stand on behalf of churches it represents, like the
WCC's commitment to the Decade to Overcome Violence, we find ourselves in
a position to call one another to accountability. So the Toronto statement
is quite clear that we are not one church. But that does not relieve us of
the responsibility to be answerable to one another once we have entered
into mutual commitments." [559 words]

(*) Theodore Gill is senior editor of WCC Publications in Geneva and a
minister ordained by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

Free high resolution photos, stories, news and documents of the conference
are available at:
www.mission2005.org

Conference website: www.mission2005.org

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author.

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