Laurie Spurr, Torre Pellice, Italy, July 8 (ENI) - The president of the world's biggest grouping of Reformed churches has criticised the ecumenical movement for being too "institutionalised" and has challenged world church leaders to revitalise it.

In his opening address on Monday to the executive committee of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches meeting in Torre Pellice, Dr CS Song, the Warc president, said many congregations were indifferent to initiatives taken by world church bodies.

He urged the executive committee to envision a new "people's ecumenical movement" that could mobilise Christians around the world. Warc and the wider ecumenical movement "lacked the language [necessary] to communicate with its churches" on important issues, Song suggested.

At the same time, bodies such as Warc had shied away from using "essential" Christian terms, such as "evangelical", meaning gospel or good news, which was, he said, basic to all Christians, not just conservatives.

"Warc and many mainstream churches avoided the term or used it only apologetically," he contended, "giving the impression that they are not quite evangelical. This, of course, is a false perception."

"The Alliance has to be unabashedly 'evangelical' not only implicitly but explicitly, not apologetically but joyfully," he said. "Why are we not able to convince ourselves, our member churches and Christians, even our critics, that the Alliance is evangelical to the core?"

Similarly, Song said, mainstream church organizations had "grown allergic to the word 'intellectual'".

"We tend wrongly to equate 'intellectual' with 'elitist'," he said. "We as the Alliance cannot, in the face of the charismatic enthusiasm taking Christianity by storm today, abdicate our responsibility for the intellectual history of humankind."

Warc also had to keep its identity as a church body distinct from other groupings in society, he said.

"We should ask ourselves why we have been involved in pursuits of economic justice, gender equality or human rights," said Song. "We have also to ask ourselves how our involvement in these things is different from the involvement of the United Nations, NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] and other ecumenical institutions."

The difference consisted, Song said, "in our efforts to answer the question of the meaning of life".

Song criticised what he said was the timidity of the ecumenical movement and its reliance on hierarchical structure. "An ecumenical movement that does not address itself to people's spiritual need and hunger at a deeper level as well as to their physical wellbeing will be limited in influence and impact," he warned. "It will not be able to stem the tide of Christians who resort to charismatic churches."

Although Reformed churches were good at reshaping theological debates and confessions of faith, he said, when it came to reforming their own organizations they "become very 'conservative', even legal and rigid".

To help involve local congregations in a world movement, Song suggested Warc set up Alliance chapters in the more than 100 countries where it has a presence. He also advocated the establishment of a "think tank" to work closely with the local chapters and the Alliance staff.

"The world has shifted," Song said in a discussion after his address. "If we remain unchanged, we will be left behind. The WCC [World Council of Churches] has been left behind. Once you are institutionalised, it's very hard to change."

But Warc, he argued, could offer a new direction for world church bodies. "The Alliance is still small," he said. "We can do something to contribute to the wider ecumenical movement. Maybe we have a mission."

Warc is a fellowship of 75 million Christians in more than 200 Congregational, Presbyterian, Reformed and United churches. It has member churches are in more than 100 countries around the world. The Warc executive committee meeting continues until July 15. [633 words]

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