A drop-in center is filled with people drinking coffee and having a bite to eat. At an adjacent activity room, ministry workers play games with neighborhood children. Residents of nearby ministry-owned apartments sit outside and shoot the breeze.

The Rev. Dick Ter Maat sits in his basement office and sizes up the scope of this 34-year-old agency rooted in the Reformed Church in America.

"I focus on the mission in my mile," says the friendly RCA minister, executive director of The Other Way. "I'm not used to thinking in global terms."

But Ter Maat appreciates the support of the RCA and the global Reformed family. This week, delegates of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches visited The Other Way to see how it puts Reformed principles to work.

"I don't know if I have a lot to teach them," Ter Maat said before the group's visit. "All I'm reporting is what God's doing in this neighborhood."

The neighborhood is more extensive for the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, whose executive committee is meeting in West Michigan this week and next. The alliance, commonly called Warc, launches ecumenical and social initiatives on behalf of 75 million Christian members in 106 countries.

In its first visit to West Michigan, the committee is learning more about how the Reformed theology of transforming society from within is being lived out in local agencies and congregations.

Officials also are preaching at churches and telling members more about the alliance's ongoing work and immediate concerns. Those include economic injustice, the environment and equal treatment of men and women.

Finally, in meetings at Hope College and Western Theological Seminary, the alliance's executive committee will help set the agenda for the general council meeting in three years in Accra, Ghana.

While here, officials also will seek to persuade officials of the Christian Reformed Church to join the alliance - a move some CRC leaders are considering.

Alliance officials hope to make the work of the Switzerland-based agency more real to people in West Michigan.

"People think the alliance is in Geneva," said Lydia Adajawah, a committee member from Ghana. "We want to tell them it is within them."Adajawah, an elder in the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, spoke last week at Aberdeen Reformed Church. She and others later met with local ministers at Central Reformed, a host church for the event. Other alliance teams are hosted by Hudsonville Congregational United Church of Christ and First Presbyterian Church of Holland.

The executive committee meets yearly in different parts of the world, partly to strengthen ties with the alliance's 214 member denominations.

"I hope when we go away from here more people in the Reformed Church in America (and other churches) will know about us and will feel part of" the global Reformed family," said Press Secretary Paraic Reamonn.The alliance was invited here by the RCA, headquartered in New York but with a strong West Michigan presence. As one of the alliance's founding churches, the nearly 300,000-member RCA remains an influential member and important financial contributor.

Yet, in terms of numbers, the RCA and other North American denominations are a minority. About two-thirds of alliance churches are in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Southern Hemisphere.Alliance delegates from those areas may have much to teach their northern counterparts about how to thrive as a church, one local minister said.

"The Reformed tradition is a little listless, it seems to me," said the Rev. Daniel Meeter, pastor of Central Reformed church and a delegate to the alliance's Caribbean and North American Area Council. "The Reformed movement is much bigger in Asia and Africa than it is now in North America. Maybe, that's where it's got to come from -- the revitalization of the Reformed tradition."

While an abstract body to most people, the alliance helps West Michigan's Reformed faithful see themselves reflected in others of like beliefs worldwide, said the Rev. David Baak, executive director of the Grand Rapids Area Center for Ecumenism.

"Warc demonstrates the strength of the world Reformed witness, if you will, alongside the other major families," said Baak, moderator of the RCA Commission on Christian Unity. "It keeps us connected across our many boundaries."

The alliance wants to connect with the CRC, which belongs to the much smaller Reformed Ecumenical Council but not to Warc. Alliance General Secretary Setri Nyomi is expected to meet with CRC leaders about joining.

"When we look at the North American scene," said Reamonn, the alliance's press officer, "they are the most important non-member church in the (Reformed) tradition but not in the alliance."

The CRC Synod in 1988 voted not to join the alliance despite a recommendation from its Interchurch Relations Committee. The Grand Rapids-based CRC historically has kept its distance because of what some saw as less-than-strict adherence to Reformed doctrine by some alliance churches, and excessive focus on social issues over matters of faith, said the Rev. Leonard Hofman, administrative secretary of the CRC Interchurch Relations Committee.

However, CRC and alliance meetings in recent years have produced what Hofman calls "positive momentum" toward another recommendation to join.

"We believe that in the ecumenical setting of our time, we need to be not only communicating with churches of like faith, but to be adding our witness to churches of like faith," Hofman said.

In its Holland meetings, executive committee will discuss the alliance's witness in the face of global economic problems and environmental destruction. The theme for the alliance's 2004 general council meeting - "That all may have life in fullness" - shapes the groups concerns.

"We know the poor are suffering," said Adajawah, the committee member from Ghana. "If people are dying from hunger, if people are dying from HIV/AIDS, if people are dying from violence... how are we going to make the (Warc) theme meaningful for them?"

One way alliance churches should respond is to press the United States and others to relieve the debts of developing nations like hers, she added. "The debt crisis has overwhelmed us."

Economic injustice affects the churches as well, members say. Bishop Suputhrappa Vasanthakumar of the Church of South India held up a handbook on children's worship used at Central Reformed Church."If I were to attempt that in my country, that would cost me a fortune," he said. "We have to depend on somebody else... so it is available for the spiritual growth of the people."

The role of the world's richest nation on global economics and environment is not lost on the alliance's leaders. They decry President Bush's refusal to sign t