For the 30 women and men from Argentina, Aotearoa New Zealand, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, China, Eritrea, Germany, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Jamaica, Kenya, Lebanon, Malawi, the Netherlands, Poland, Republic of Korea, Rwanda, Uganda, the United Kingdom and the USA, the Warc consultation held at the Theological University, Kampen, The Netherlands from 18 to 23 October 1993 was a challenging opportunity to share experiences, many springing from the concrete struggle to be an inclusive Christian community or ecclesia in their own context. The diversity of the participants and of the issues discussed, together with the constraints of time, did not allow us to collate the group reports into a final statement; they remain the responsibility of the groups. The participants as a whole would agree, however, on the following brief description of the issues explored in the consultation:

the central place in the gospel of the poor and the marginalised, with the challenge this presents to existing structures of power in church and society;
the full participation of women in the life of Christian communities and in society at large, and the need for all churches to ordain women;
the need to liberate church traditions which domesticate the Spirit, and to encourage an awareness of the Holy Spirit as present in loving actions;
the need to re-examine the 16th century Reformation as contextual theology;
the need to celebrate the Lord's Supper as a feast of life, not a sacrament of exclusion;
the need to develop theologies based on the identification of Jesus Christ with those who suffer, and to see the authority of Scripture in terms of its power to liberate and transform both individuals and communities.

Group 1: Evangelization of the church

Witness in context leads to the evangelization of the church. Throughout the world small groups and indigenous communities face particular problems in their own contexts. Often they come together to confront specific oppressions based on race, gender, class, sexuality and the intersection of such oppression. Such experiences of Christian witness at the heart of concrete struggles challenge the church to recognize certain moments in history as a kairos, as moments in which loving action is in itself gospel. These experiences lead to the evangelization of the church. They pose various questions to the church, such as: do we meet Jesus Christ and are we met by him through the poor, neglected and oppressed? Is there a Christian captivity of God's grace?

Such questions and experiences challenge the power of the institutional church. The church may, however, respond in a way which leaves those who make the challenge frustrated and dissatisfied, pitting one oppressed group against another in competition for scarce resources.

The use of inclusive language may become a façade to hide the church's unwillingness to see the full humanity of women, and to take them and their concerns seriously. In some churches women are not ordained or given access to theological education. In others, where they are ordained, they are often given less opportunity than male colleagues to fulfil their call to ministry. Churches are also often complicit in violence against women because they take no measures to counter it.

Similarly, the church is challenged to recognize the western, white, male captivity of theology, hermeneutics and the purse-strings.

To avoid dealing with tensions on their doorstep, churches may make token gestures to distant beneficiaries, thus polarizing the powerless with further powerlessness. In this way, our churches continue to act as discriminatory gate-keepers. This refusal to reform has been justified by a use of the Bible which is not informed by the struggle for liberation. Responses to these challenges made by the church are inadequate and show that both the evangelization of the church and the response are to be seen as a process, the pace of which may be frustratingly slow. Accommodation is not re-formation.

So the gospel challenges our Reformed churches, along with other denominations, which claim to be the medium of the gospel. The message challenges the messenger to create a vision of inclusive community, critically engaged in action, questioning the inequality of access to resources, and recognizing the positive nature of diversity in a community which is united but not uniform and in which individuals learn how to receive from one another as well as to give. This challenge is also an individual challenge. Christians are personally involved in the matter of semper reformanda, both in the church and in themselves as individuals. This leads right back to the start of the process and our contact with small groups and indigenous, contextual communities and their challenge to the church. Witness in context leads to the evangelization of the church.

Group 2: The church on the move

The starting point is that we recognize the 16th century Reformation as a contextual movement and stress the movement of the church as essentially contextual. Scripture remains central, but the Bible is always to be read in context, with all the hermeneutical diversity that that requires. This is what semper reformanda means - there will always be issues that are of particular importance in particular places and there will always be diversity.

We recognize that we have attempted to domesticate the Holy Spirit, e.g. the Book of Order so often tells the church when to evoke the Spirit. There is therefore a need for the church to recognize the workings of the Spirit and to accept (but to accept critically) the Spirit working through healings and prophecies. There is need to engage in dialogue with charismatic partners and to recognize the strengths of the Pentecostal movement, for example its work with young people and its recognition of gifts.

The church is being critically questioned. We have to accept our time as a new kairos, e.g. the kairos of women, the time to address women's issues. We need to hear the radical voice that is already addressing the church, the breaking in of the new. The church is not so much asking questions as being itself questioned. The voices of the marginalized, the forgotten, the poor, the women, are coming into the centre. We have to own up to our smugness - our privilege, our richness - and allow ourselves to be shaken. We have to accept the dislocation - and not run away from the questioning.

These are some signs of the true church of Jesus Christ: the church exists where people acknowledge that God's love is for all people; the church takes sides with the poor, women, the neglected, the marginalized and those discriminated against; the church preaches the liberating gospel on the basis of the Christ event; the church relates the gospel seriously to its own particular context; the church struggles with and for the suffering people.

"God has chosen what is foolish in the world' (1 Cor 2.25). There is a need for prophetic action. This may even mean a dismantling of church traditions, such as confessions and creeds, in order to return to the basic sources. This is in the very tradition of the Reformation itself. There is a price to pay and a craziness in prophetic challenge. Sometimes we may call for seemingly crazy reversals in the ministry of the church, in the same tradition of Mary's words in the Magnificat (Lk 1.52). Every church should keep minimum funds for its survival so that priority is given to more equitable sharing of economic resources. Church buildings ought to be open every day, serving everyone who is in need.

Group 3: The church as a community

A search for the marks and signs of the church today must be focused in the community where the experiences of the people are shared. The church is both a gift and a task which comes to us. It does not exist as a reality already accomplished, but is always becoming. The church is an instrument of mission and can never exist merely for its own sake. The centre of the church must be those who suffer. Recognising God's involvement in the world the church turns its sensitivity to the suffering.

In focusing the life of the church upon the suffering people in its midst, we must not separate the community into those who suffer and those who do not. On the one hand, we cannot confine ourselves to those who experience suffering. The problem of how suffering is caused, by what and by whom, must be addressed. We must recognize that sin may appear in different ways in different places. On the other hand, a glorification of suffering is false romanticism. Suffering has no virtue in itself. In the effort to overcome suffering, we need to focus on the identification of Jesus with those who suffer, understanding that Jesus gave his life for the cause of suffering humankind, for the purpose of eliminating sin and suffering, and through his resurrection gave the hope of the fullness of life for all.

Thus the church cannot but identify with those who suffer and do its utmost to eliminate their suffering. The church needs to take up the cross like Jesus and "empty itself' (Phil 2) of all institutional and personal privileges of wealth and power, leading to an equal and fair sharing of God's blessings among all God's people. The church must break away from any links with forces which cause death and destruction and it must act to promote life through justice and righteousness (Amos 5). When diversity is accepted and affirmed in the experience of the life together in community there will be no distinction between "we' and "they' in sharing in the fullness of life. Mindful of these marks and signs, the church must examine itself both as an institution and as a movement, and review its life in its different cultural contexts.

The administering of the sacraments is basic to this community, in spite of the fact that sacramental administration historically has been manipulated and abused by the oppressive structures of racism, sexism and classism. We are therefore faced with the challenge to discern where the sacraments actually are administered and shared: as a semi-annual and apparently incidental attachment to a service of worship where most of the worshippers already have left, or in a situation where a cold and hungry prisoner receives bread and a warming cloth wrapped around his shivering shoulders from another inmate.

Likewise, the authority and interpretation of scripture has to be considered from a perspective which asks the question of the capacity of scripture to bring about transformation. This raises many very concrete questions in relationship to the suffering of the people who are exposed to the structures of oppression and must be examined in the centre of the community seeking to live in the oneness offered in Christ.