wfn.org | WCRC - Rev. Nico Smith Ecumenical Pioneer Dies

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

> Uniting General Council 2010
> News Release

> 21 June 2010

> Ecumenical Pioneer Dies

Delegates to the World Communion of Reformed Churches (WCRC) have taken time 
from doing their ecumenical business to mourn the death of Rev. Nico Smith, an 
ecumenical pioneer from South Africa.

WCRC emerged late last week as the union of World Alliance of Reformed Churches 
(WARC) and the Reformed Ecumenical Council (REC). The new organization is 
meeting at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Early in their meeting on Monday, WCRC delegates held a moment of silence to remember 
Smith. The communion's general secretary, the Rev. Setri Nyomi, praised Smith, as, 
"one who has stood strong as a prophet in the time of apartheid."

Smith challenged South Africa's apartheid system by moving with his wife into a 
black township in the 1980s. He was 81. WARC is the organization that 
officially declared apartheid a sin and anyone who held to the view to be a 
heretic.

â??Dr. Nico Smith was one of those African Afrikaners who renounced their apartheid 
privileges and decided to suffer reproach with the black majority in South 
Africa,â?? said Prof. S.T. Kgatla, moderator United  Reformed Church in South Africa.

â??He was a minister, a prophet, friend and mentor in the Uniting Reformed Church in 
Southern Africa. We will miss his insightful advice on how white racism works and could 
be confronted.â??

Kgatla is attending the WCRC meeting that runs through this week in Grand 
Rapids.

Smith collapsed Saturday while attending a friend's birthday party in Pretoria 
and died before he could be taken to a hospital, said Marita Laubscher, the 
eldest of his three daughters.

Smith, who had been a missionary in the far north of South Africa and later a 
theology professor at the University of Stellenbosch, began preaching in 
Mamelodi, the main black township outside Pretoria, in 1982, according to news 
accounts.

He moved to live in the township a few years later, along with his wife, Ellen, 
a child psychiatrist. They were the first whites that the government officially 
permitted to live in a black township in an era where apartheid laws rigorously 
segregated residential areas, schools, hospitals and other public facilities.

Smith's funeral is scheduled for Thursday at a church in Pretoria where he and 
his colleagues helped build a multiracial congregation.

The Uniting General Council 2010 in Grand Rapids, United States (June 18-28) 
marks the merger of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and the Reformed 
Ecumenical Council to form the World Communion of Reformed  Churches.

Contact: Kristine Greenaway

UGC News Room ? Calvin College - Hoogenboom Center Room HC 204

Cell phone: 1-616-826-5540 or 1-616-826-8636: News Room: 1-616-526-7885

UGC News Room ? Calvin College - Hoogenboom Center Room HC 204

> Cell phone: 1-616-826-5540 or 1-616-826-8636
> email: kgr@warc.ch

> web: www.reformedchurches.org

>