wfn.org | WACC elects Randy Naylor as new General Secretary

[Worldwide Faith News <wfn@wfn.org>]

Topic: WACC elects Randy Naylor as new General Secretary

London, 27 July 2000 --
Past and present members of the Central Committee and friends of the World
Association for Christian Communication gathered in London for the 25th
anniversary of WACC around the theme "Communication and the Globalisation of
Poverty", 21-27 June 2000.

This historic event was also marked by the unanimous election of Randy
Naylor as WACC's next general secretary. Rev. Naylor, formerly a WACC
president and currently the Associate General Secretary of the communication
division of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, will
take office in July 2001.

The annual Central Committee meeting was punctuated by a unique celebration
of WACC's 25 years in existence. The two-day seminar featured speakers and
participants from worldwide, including grassroots activists from Haiti,
Rwanda, Chad, Fiji, Peru and Sudan as well as David Ransom (an editor with
the New Internationalist Collective), the award winning Indian journalist P
Sainath, Richard F Holloway (the Bishop of Edinburgh), and Randolph Nugent
(General Secretary of the General Board of Global Ministries). The seminar
was followed by a thanksgiving service and buffet dinner at the Eglise
Protestante Française.

In response to the presentations, which focused on "Communication and
Mission", "Is There Room for Poverty in the Media?", "Poverty, Conflict and
the Media", WACC's Central Committee stated:

"Globalisation is not new. Indeed, it recalls another era of economic
empire. Globalisation is the resubordination of nations and national
economies to a small number of very wealthy and very powerful persons and
corporations.

"We are called to battle not just poverty, but impoverishment: structures of
inequality that exclude whole sectors of humankind from the pursuit of
wholeness and well-being.

"Impoverishment is not just an economic matter. Those who have been seduced
by power and wealth, be they rich or poor, become instruments for the
impoverishment of the human spirit.

"The stories we have heard, the analyses we have shared, call us to renew
our commitment to building hope and promoting life in a world at war. [We
have been reminded about] humanity's exquisite capacity to inflict enormous
damage on human bodies, on the human spirit, on the social fabric that binds
us together, and on the fragile ecosystems that sustain life itself. But the
stories also testified to the resilience of the human spirit, and to all
humankind's unquenchable thirst to build relationships and seek wholeness."

In the final session representatives of some of WACC's partner agencies,
including Roel Aalbersberg (ICCO), Kristine Greenaway (WCC), Glenine Hamlyn
(EMW), Peter Malone (OCIC), Randy Naylor (NCC-USA), led a panel discussion
on how WACC should respond to the challenges posed by the globalisation of
poverty.

The seminar concluded with the presentation of a new book published in
celebration of WACC's 25th birthday, "25 years in the life of WACC, a Labour
of Love" by Philip Lee.

Full texts of the presentations are available from the WACC Secretariat.
Photographs are available via email. If you would like to receive any of
these, or are interested in ordering the new WACC history book, please
contact:

David Shanks
Press and Information Officer
World Association for Christian Communication
357 Kennington Lane, London SE11 5QY, UK
tel: 00 44 171 582 9139, fax: 171 735 0340
email: ds@wacc.org.uk web: www.wacc.org.uk