wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] WCC Assembly worship: Affirming the common faith

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Note #9072 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

06021
Jan. 18, 2006

Affirming the common faith

Worshippers at WCC Assembly will praise God, pray for Christian unity 

Editor's note: This is the sixth in a series of background articles leading
up to the 9th Assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC), which starts
on Feb. 14 in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Two PC(USA) journalists will help cover
the Assembly: Eva Stimson, editor of Presbyterians Today, will serve on the
WCC staff as co-editor of the daily Assembly newspaper, and Jerry L. Van
Marter, coordinator of the Presbyterian News Service, will serve as a
reporter for Ecumenical News International, a Geneva-based religious news
agency.

by K.M. George

KERALA, India - The large worship tent at next month's 9th Assembly of the
World Council of Churches (WCC) in Brazil will be a unique space, one of the
main features of Assembly life. About 3,700 participants from churches from
all over the world will gather twice a day under its white ceiling to
celebrate faith, hope and fellowship in Jesus Christ, and to pray for greater
unity.

	The Assembly, the largest gathering of Christian churches from around
the world, will be a praying Assembly. Its theme is itself a prayer: "God, in
your grace, transform the world." Its deliberations and discussions, its
policies and programs, all will be shaped by the spirit of prayer to the
triune God, the Creator, Sustainer and Savior of all.

	The worship tent will symbolize the declared goal of the WCC to be a
space where churches call one another to unity in one faith and one communion
to worship the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

	Yet the Christians who gather there will painfully admit that they
remain divided for reasons of history, belief, cultural practices and
institutional structures. All will be sadly aware that they cannot yet hold a
common Eucharistic celebration, any sacramental worship or even an
"ecumenical liturgy." But this won't prevent them from expressing their
prayerful hope for unity in Christ, or from affirming their common faith and
trust in the power of the Holy Spirit.

	As the participants come together in prayer and song, some questions
will be on their minds:

	* What is it that prevents Christians from perfecting and celebrating
our faith and communion in Christ, our common Lord?

	* What are the doctrinal and historical obstacles that keep our
churches divided?

	* What should we do now to witness to Christ crucified and risen as
one united body of Christ?

	In its search for answers to these questions, the Assembly will seek
insight and inspirations from these times of prayer and worship together.

					The beauty of diversity

	The great diversity of cultures and spiritual traditions represented
in the daily prayers may amaze those who are attending such a global event
for the first time.

	Diversity is God's gift to humanity, and the WCC Assembly and its
worship will bring out its beauty in many ways. Prayers and hymns, signs and
symbols, rites and rituals drawn from various streams of Christian tradition
will find their appropriate place in the worship life.

	Care will be taken not to mix them in inappropriate ways, and as far
as possible, every tradition will be represented with integrity.

	To this end, the Assembly Worship Committee has given much thought to
the recommendation of the Special Commission on Orthodox Participation that
the Assembly's prayer life be organized as inter-confessional or confessional
services.

	Whereas inter-confessional common prayer in the mornings will draw on
the liturgical resources of many traditions, evening services will mostly be
in the form of what the commission described as "confessional common prayer,"
each planned by a family or tradition for the Assembly as a whole.

	However, one confessional family can invite another to lead a service
jointly. For example, the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) has invited the
World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC) to join in the service it has
planned.

	"By inviting our Reformed brothers and sisters to lead with us this
evening prayer, prepared following a Lutheran liturgy, we wanted to give a
tangible expression to our broader ecumenical witness and to our commitment
to the ecumenical movement," said the Rev. Ishmael Noko, general secretary of
the Lutheran federation.

				Repentance and thanksgiving

	The Assembly fellowship in prayer is conceived in a wide framework of
repentance, celebration and sharing. True to the calling of the church, the
Assembly will carry in its prayer the whole world with its pain and
suffering, its hope and joy. This will be an act of spirituality, offering
the whole creation back to its creator in repentance and joyful thanksgiving,
that the world may be transformed.

	Transformation - of people, of sociopolitical structures, of our own
churches and institutions in view of the Kingdom of God - is central to the
Assembly's theme and to the ecumenical movement. The Assembly will pray with
one voice for the reign of God in the daily life of our world.

	In many ways, worship during the Assembly will anticipate our hope in
the essential unity of God's world, in spite of the present divisions and
divergences. The Christian unity to which the WCC member churches aspire is
not for the sake of the council or even the ecumenical movement, but for the
unity of all humankind.

	Together, those in attendance in Porto Alegre shall listen to the
Word of God and offer themselves to the power of the Holy Spirit that
transforms our lives.

Fr. K.M. George is a priest of the Malankara Orthodox Syrian church in India
who served as moderator of the WCC program committee from 1998 to 2006.

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