wfn.org | Lutherans in Ecumenical Mission

[ELCANEWS@ELCASCO.ELCA.ORG]

ELCA NEWS SERVICE

May 21, 1997

LUTHERANS IN ECUMENICAL MISSION
97-19-055-MR

     CHICAGO (ELCA) -- Christians gathered in San Jose, Costa Rica, to
discuss how to carry out Jesus' "preferential option for the excluded"
in a global economic system that gives "preferential option to the
wealthy"  The event was an ecumenical consultation April 26-28, with
nearly 200 delegates from North America, Latin America and the
Caribbean considering: "What does Christian mission mean as we
approach the 21st century?"
     From the beginning of his ministry "Jesus spoke to the
marginalized, disenfranchised and dispossessed.  He proclaimed sight
to the blind, hearing to the deaf, healing for the wounded and
liberation for prisoners," said the Rev. Will L. Herzfeld, Evangelical
Lutheran Church in America, Chicago.  Herzfeld is associate executive
director for the ELCA's Division for Global Mission and chairs the
National Council Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.'s (NCC) Church World
Service and Witness Unit.  Herzfeld led the Bible study at the
consultation.
     Participants in "Missiology Consultation" -- planned by a North
and South team under the auspices of the NCC -- participants agreed
that mission must address, in practical ways, the problems and needs
of the people the churches are seeking to serve.  The NCC is a
coordinating body for U.S. mainline Protestant and Orthodox missions
in the region.
     Participants considered the challenges to mission posed by the
contemporary context, and outlined a "new model for mission" that
respects cultural and religious diversity.   It would give
"preferential option" for those who have been excluded from economic,
political and social life, including indigenous peoples, peoples of
African descent, women, children, immigrants and all who are being
left out of the globalizing economy.  The model also recognizes a
reciprocity of mission between the Northern and Southern hemispheres
of the Americas.
     "Eleven years ago, the Sao Paulo Process began with the goal of
overcoming the barrier between donor church and recipient church.  I
call it accompaniment," said the Rev. Rafael Malpica-Padilla, ELCA's
program director for Latin America and the Caribbean.  He chairs the
NCC's Committee on Latin America and the Caribbean.
     The Sao Paulo Process was initiated in 1986 at a meeting between
the NCC's Committee on Latin America and the Caribbean's "Northern"
funders and directors of recipient "Southern" projects.  The process
draws its name from that meeting's venue -- Sao Paulo, Brazil.
     The "Missiology Consultation" was the first since 1929 to bring
together official delegations from North American denominational
mission boards that work in Latin America and the Caribbean.  They
will cooperate as they work to overcome an 80-year old understanding
of mission that casts churches of the north as donors and those of the
south as recipients.
Together they seek a new way of understanding and conducting mission.
     The consultation was punctuated by descriptions of how economic
globalization is wreaking havoc on communities across the Americas and
worldwide as factories are closed, jobs moved, companies downsized,
wages cut and workers exploited while a relative few persons reap
profits.
     The consultation included the participation of two historic
African American denominations (the African Methodist Episcopal and
African Methodist Episcopal Zion Churches), indigenous people, people
of African descent, women, lay theologians, Lutherans, Roman
Catholics, evangelicals, Pentecostals and representatives of civil
society.
     The challenge for the new millennium, said the Rev. Dr. Joan
Brown Campbell, NCC general secretary, "is to educate people to think
ecumenically.  The challenge for the unity of all God's people is a
radical word.  The church should work to remove the barriers of race,
gender, nation states, handicapping conditions.  The quest for unity
is not to save the church but so that the world might believe."

For information contact:
Ann Hafften, Director (773) 380-2958 or NEWS@ELCA.ORG
http://www.elca.org/co/news/current.html