Global Christian Forum Meets Next Week

"The Novotel Hotel and Convention Center in Manado, 

on the island of Sulawesi, will host the second 

global gathering of the Global Christian Forum".

It is almost a year since Methodist Ecumenical News drew attention to next week's meeting of the Global Christian Forum.  So, it is time to review the progress of the planning for the meeting.

The event (4 - 7 October 2011) will be held at the Novotel Hotel and Convention Center in Manado, the capital of the Province of North Sulawesi. Manado is situated at the far north-eastern tip of the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.

Gathering around the central theme of Life Together in Jesus Christ, Empowered by the Holy Spirit, some three hundred church leaders and representatives from every continent have been invited to attend.

The makeup of the conference comprises a 50-50 split between what could be conveniently called 'Evangelical' and 'Traditional' churches all chosen using a set of principles to ensure balance in representing the variety and diversity of world Christianity.

Two plenary sessions will work directly under the main theme, and out of it, a third plenary will, intentionally, be Listening to What the Spirit is Saying to the Churches.

As well as discussing changing trends, participants will hear first hand of the experiences of the churches from across the world and will seek discern the further vision for the Global Christian Forum.

The invitations include representation from Christian World Communions, Ecumenical organizations, Evangelical/Pentecostal/Charismatic organizations and churches, Orthodox Patriarchates, the Catholic Church, Regional Councils, Conferences, Alliances or Associations, and Churches, covering all geographic areas and all traditions, mega churches and migrant churches.

Participants will include both women and men, and will cover a range of age groups from young people to more experienced church leaders. The four national church bodies in Indonesia are supportive of the meeting in their country. The Communion of Churches – the Pentecostal Churches Fellowship – the Fellowship of Evangelical Churches and Institutions – and the Catholic Bishops’ Conference, have all warmly welcomed the Global Christian Forum to hold its second gathering in their nation and have constituted a joint national organizing committee.

For more information, it is worth looking at the Forum website, where you will find a programme and an explanation of what they hope to achieve and how.  Doubtless more material will appear after the Forum has met.  One document in particular is worth a look, Introduction to Second Global Gathering, which offers a brief recap of the history of the Forum and then goes on to explain the purpose of the gathering, who will be there and how the programme is intended to work.

The Way to the Global Christian Forum

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One of the realities many ecumenists encounter, locally through to international, is the separation of Pentecostal and Evangelical churches from the mainstream ecumenical movement.  This has been addressed internationally through the Global Christian Forum in recent years. 

I've found a blog post, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Global Christian Forum, which summarises the origins of this split and the story of how the Global Christian Forum was founded.

Here's a an excerpt from the account of how the split was formed:

One con­cern Evan­gel­i­cals and Pen­te­costals have often had is the loss of the mis­sion­ary spirit among ecumenically-minded Christians—a ter­ri­ble irony, con­sid­er­ing that ecu­menism was born at the Edin­burgh Mis­sion­ary Con­fer­ence in 1910. The Inter­na­tional Mis­sion­ary Coun­cil that was formed as a result of the Edin­burgh con­fer­ence even­tu­ally joined the World Coun­cil of Churches in 1961; many Evan­gel­i­cals left in protest. 1974 saw the for­ma­tion of the Lau­sanne Com­mit­tee for World Evan­ge­liza­tion, fol­low­ing a Con­gress in the same place and year, at the ini­tia­tive of the Amer­i­can evan­ge­list Billy Gra­ham. There 2500 Evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers from 150 coun­tries recom­mit­ted them­selves to world evan­ge­liza­tion in sign­ing the Lau­sanne Covenant. Clearly enough, they weren’t impressed by the WCC’s abil­ity to keep up the mis­sion­ary task of the church.

The post goes on to describe how the Global Christian Forum was founded and designed to compensate 'for their “under­rep­re­sen­ta­tion” else­where, as well as to demon­strate the will­ing­ness of “ecu­meni­cal vet­er­ans” to be in the minority'.

Related articles

• Global Christian Forum (ecumenicalissues.blogspot.com)
• Faith and Order Centenary (ecumenicalissues.blogspot.com)
• Evangelical Congress takes Reconciliation as Key to its Mission (ecumenicalissues.blogspot.com)

Pentecostals and WCC Need Each Other

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This article is reproduced from the September edition of CTE News.  I don't reproduce everything from this newsletter and so if you are interested, you can subscribe to it from the CTE website.

“Among the many challenges that we face in the search for Christian unity is the need to overcome divisions and prejudices that exclude one another,” Revd Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, general secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC) said Wednesday, 24 August to the 22nd Pentecostal World Conference in Stockholm, Sweden.

In his greeting – the first ever offered by a WCC general secretary to a Pentecostal World Conference – Tveit highlighted the hope that comes with being invited to the conference and spoke of his personal experience with Pentecostal churches. He also expressed how the WCC and Pentecostals have a common call in God’s mission and need each other to fulfil this call.

“It is my deep conviction that the member churches of the WCC, some of which are Pentecostal, need the closer bond to the Pentecostal churches you represent,” he said to the group. “And it is my humble conviction that you need us. To be one is to give witness together to the cross and the resurrection of Christ, to follow God's call together to work for justice and peace in God's world, to obey God's commandment to be a good neighbour to all need us as whoever they are, wherever they live, whatever skin colour they may have and whatever religion they might follow,” he said.

Referencing the first letter to the Corinthians in the New Testament where the apostle Paul says there are many members in the church, yet one body, Tveit said, “I cannot say to any brother or sister in Christ that I have no need for you. We need each other because it is only together that we can grow into the one body of Christ.”

Acknowledging his Scandinavian roots, Tveit, who is Norwegian, said the Pentecostal movement has contributed much to the spiritual life of the Nordic countries and to his own faith journey. He said part of his ecumenical journey includes “being richly blessed” by family members who belong to Pentecostal churches and participating in the processes that led the Norwegian Pentecostal churches to full membership in the Christian Council of Norway.

Reflecting on the conference theme of “Equip Yourself, Others and the Church” as “a call for growth together in unity for God’s great mission,” Tveit said that the WCC and Pentecostal churches “will find new ways of witnessing to our unity in Christ and sharing in God’s mission. That you have welcomed me here today is one such sign of hope.”

Related articles

• A Foretaste of the Banquet of the Kingdom (ecumenicalissues.blogspot.com)