wfn.org | WCC NEWS: Churches must be "salt of the earth"

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World Council of Churches - News Release

Contact: +41 22 791 6153 +41 79 507 6363 media@wcc-coe.org
For immediate release - 31/08/2009 17:57:22

>CHURCHES MUST BE "SALT OF THE EARTH"

How does the church interact with a rapidly changing society? On
31 August, members of the World Council of Churches central
committee spent much of the morning discussing this question in a
pair of plenary sessions in Geneva.

The discussion marked 30 years since the landmark Church and
Society Conference on Faith, Science and the Future took place in
the United States, but Dr Mary Tanner, WCC president from Europe,
said the topic remains highly relevant for today.

“We should not just look at it as a relic from the past,” said
Tanner, who moderated the plenary, “but see how (it) remains a
living, dynamic tradition in today’s ecumenical movement.”

She said “living the fellowship” of churches today begins with
listening to one another’s stories and supporting one another. In
that spirit, she invited several speakers to share “a tapestry of
poignant stories” of struggle within their communities.

For example, Rev. Geraldine Varea of the Methodist Church in
Fiji and Rotuma talked about a military coup in her country, and
tensions that resulted between the government and the church.
Through the help of several WCC churches and other members of the
Pacific Council of Churches, some dialogue and reconciliation
were able to begin.

“They have given new light to the issue,” said Varea, who at 26
is the youngest minister in her church.

Likewise, Metropolitan Mor Eustathius Matta Roham of the Syrian
Orthodox Churches of Antioch and All the East said the churches
can assist his region by helping people “hear and understand the
voices of suffering in the region”. The Middle East, he said, has
had to deal with both the instability caused by the ongoing
Arab/Israeli conflict as well as climate change, which has
sparked both floods and sandstorms.

Two speakers shared stories from the Democratic Republic of
Congo and other parts of Africa’s Great Lakes region. Civil wars,
large numbers of refugees and internally displaced persons,
violence against women and children and other issues have caused
an ongoing crisis.

Rev. Micheline Kamba Kasongo of the Church of Christ in
Congo-Presbyterian Community of Kinshasa compared her hopes for
the situation to the book of Esther, who had to “risk to do
something for her people”.

“We want to find our Esthers, those who are prepared to stand up
against evil,” she said. “I believe the church always has the
possibility of intervening to change things.”

Delegates also watched a video message from Father Miguel
d’Escoto Brockmann of Nicaragua, a Catholic priest who served
as president of the United Nations General Assembly in 2008-2009.
A veteran statesman in his home country, d’Escoto has been active
in helping the poor.

“The world is in desperate need of prophetic voices” d’Escoto
said in the video. “Are we being the salt of the earth as we
should be?”

Many other stories from around the globe were gathered from WCC
members before the plenary and posted on the WCC website,
www.oikoumene.org/cc2009. WCC general secretary Rev. Dr Samuel
Kobia said it was the biggest response the WCC had received from
central committee members on any item in more than a decade.

“Our public witness clearly needs to be rooted in the
experiences of the churches in society,” Kobia said. “We can very
well be the pulse of society as the church.” Kobia named “mutual
learning through deep listening”, accompanying one another, and
mutual support and solidarity as “key elements” for the
fellowship of churches.

Fernando Enns of the Mennonite Church in Germany, in comments
following the stories, emphasized the importance of the topic in
the ongoing life of the organization.

The interaction of church and society, he said, looks “not just
at a ministry of the church, but what the church itself is. We’re
discussing the essence of ecclesiology here. We need to reflect
on who we are as churches, and who we are as churches together.”

Free high resolution photos are available:

http://www.oikoumene.org/en/events-sections/cc2009/photo-galleries.html

More information on the 26 August - 2 September 2009 Central
Committee meeting:
http://www.oikoumene.org/cc2009

Additional information:Juan Michel,+41 22 791 6153 +41 79 507
6363media@wcc-coe.org

The World Council of Churches promotes Christian unity in faith,
witness and service for a just and peaceful world. An ecumenical
fellowship of churches founded in 1948, today the WCC brings
together 349 Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican and other churches
representing more than 560 million Christians in over 110
countries, and works cooperatively with the Roman Catholic
Church. The WCC general secretary is Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia, from
the Methodist Church in Kenya. Headquarters: Geneva, Switzerland.