Warc executive committee meeting
Geneva, Switzerland, June 26-July 3 1998
Every morning at 4 am, Chitalu Mwape leaves her two-roomed house in a Lusaka shanty-town with her baby Chaba on her back. She walks five kilometres to sit by a busy highway crushing stones with an iron bar in her hand. She sells the stones to rich people who are building houses or simply want to decorate their driveways.
By the end of the day the dust from the crushed stones has given little Chaba a bad cough, but Chitalu cannot worry about that, she has other children to feed. Besides, it looks as if Chaba will die anyway: she is sickly and is not putting on weight. If Chitalu had money to spare she would take her to hospital. As it is, she just prays and hopes for the best.
This is not a unique story. Our world is full of people like Chitalu, trapped in hopeless, no-win situations which the world has created, and could resolve, but won't.
This is why last year in Hungary the 23rd general council called on member churches of the
World Alliance of Reformed Churches to engage in a process of progressive recognition, education and confession at all levels of their life regarding economic injustice and environmental destruction.
The first meeting of the new executive committee of the Alliance took place in Geneva,
Switzerland, from June 26 to July 3 and devoted much time to designing this process of confession, which will be a major area of work for the Alliance and its member churches in the next six years.
It was agreed that the department of theology will focus on two major themes: "Renewal of
faith, theology and community life in the reforming tradition" and "Gospel and cultures and the renewal of mission". An evaluation of the Alliance's dialogues with other Christian world
communions will take place in the next three years.
Churches in the Reformed tradition believe in unity but are notoriously prone to division. Ten years ago, a "mission in unity" project was started under the aegis of the John Knox International Reformed Centre in Geneva. It was strongly supported by the Alliance at its 22nd (Seoul, 1989) and 23rd (Debrecen, 1997) general councils. The executive committee agreed to
co-sponsor with the John Knox Centre a three-year staff appointment to begin putting into practice the lessons which have been learned in the last decade.
The executive committee will send a strong team to attend the October meeting of the general synod of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa. The 23rd general council approved the lifting of the suspension of this church, imposed in 1982 because of its theological and practical support for apartheid, on condition that the synod acknowledge that apartheid is wrong and sinful "not simply in its effects and operations but also in its fundamental nature". The Alliance is committed to the unification of its member churches in South Africa on non-racial lines.
The executive committee accepted a proposal to create a joint committee with the Reformed Ecumenical Council (REC) and appointed four of its members to meet REC representatives. REC is a council of over 30 Reformed and Presbyterian churches from 20 countries around the world. Formed in 1946 on a stricter confessional basis than Warc, it has since moved closer to the Alliance; more than half of its churches belong to both organizations. A 1993 "mission in unity" consultation invited the two bodies to establish a joint committee to promote better understanding and foster areas of cooperation.
Closer relationships with the Lutherans were signalled by Dr Ishmael Noko, General Secretary of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF). "Lutherans and Reformed have been together through thick and thin," he told the executive committee. "We have overlapping membership in many places, and there are many areas where Lutherans and Reformed cooperate." Reminding the committee that, in October, he and Warc General Secretary Milan Opocensky would be in Chicago for the signing of a concord between Lutheran and Reformed churches in North America, he said that the LWF was committed to continuing dialogue with the Reformed at every level.
The executive committee agreed a team visit to member churches in Angola. It issued
a statement on the plight of the people of North Korea and criticized US attempts to
pass a bill on "religious freedom abroad".
It approved letters
- expressing concern for over one million displaced people in Colombia;
- regarding the political and economic situation in Indonesia and human rights
violations, especially in Irian Jaya and East Timor; and
- calling on the government of Mexico to protect the human rights of indigenous
peoples, especially in Chiapas.
It asked the general secretary to write letters
- to the Romanian authorities, requesting the return of church properties to the Reformed Church in Romania,
- to the president of the USA, supporting the aspirations of the people of Taiwan for
freedom and self-determination, and
- to the vongress and president of the USA, condemning the embargo against Cuba and
its consequences for the inhabitants of the island.
The newly-created department of partnership of women and men will hold regional workshops
on gender awareness in French-speaking Africa, the Caribbean, Indonesia and Latin America. It will publish two sets of guidelines, on inclusive language and on sexual harassment. A special issue of Reformed World, the Alliance's quarterly journal, will be devoted to the ordination of women.
Priorities in the next year for the communications staff of the Alliance include development of the Warc website, an expansion of publications in languages other than English in cooperation with member churches and regional councils, and the development of Warc's corporate image.
The executive committee set up a task force to develop a comprehensive fund-raising strategy. It agreed new guidelines for member church contributions and accepted new criteria for grants from the Reformed churches' partnership fund.
The executive committee set up search committees to find replacements for Dr Milan Opocensky, who will retire as general secretary in March 2000, and for Dr HS Wilson (Church of South India), who leaves after nine years' service as theology secretary to take up a teaching post in Dubuque, Iowa. It renewed the contract of the communications secretary, Rev. Páraic Réamonn (Church of Scotland) for a further three years, and put in place interim measures to continue the Alliance's youth work while funds are being raised for the vacant position of youth secretary.
Four new churches were admitted to membership by the committee: the African Inland Church (Sudan), the Congregational Church of India (Maraland), the Christian Reformed Church of Honduras and the United Evangelical Church of Ecuador. Warc now links more than 75 million Christians in 214 churches in 105 countries.
The next meeting of the executive committee will take place in Taiwan in July 1999.
