Today we find ourselves at Seoul on the first day of our general council. A long period of preparation is now at an end, a period that was full of intense effort, specially within the two Korean member churches.

The choice of Korea fulfilled various needs. Firstly, it was a way of effectively showing that since our Ottawa general council in 1982 the majority of delegates come from countries outside Europe and North America. This is only the second general council to be held outside these two continents, but it is essential that it is not the second and last (the other was Nairobi 1970).

Secondly, in coming here, we were able to express our recognition of the extraordinary ministry carried out by the Korean churches. Witness to the gospel has been proclaimed for more than a century in a not always favourable environment, a political situation marked by the separation of one people into two. There have been many upsets and sufferings including an ecclesiastical situation that has been somewhat difficult with the creation of many churches calling themselves Presbyterian.

Finally, if we have come to Seoul, it is also so that we might enjoy fraternal exchanges, and experience a coming together that goes beyond our ecclesiastical or cultural limits. It is not enough to mention the need for the value of and the difficulties inherent to such cross-cultural exchanges, they must be lived through so that we may find a deeper communion because of our practical differences of lifestyle or mentality. Let us also hope that the various occasions that we shall have in the next few days will help us to go farther along the road to these welcome but difficult goals.

Today, I do not really want to present what might be called a report, even if it is the last in the long series of my 19 years in office. Perhaps all these documents have not been entirely useless, for they may be seen as so many glimpses of the state of the Alliance throughout the period. Yet they can also be looked at as successive visions, each helping us to understand what typified, or should have typified the progress of WARC. Lastly, apart from simple understanding of the things that have happened, has all this encouraged us to give the progress of the Alliance a direction that is meaningful and has been willingly chosen?

For myself, I want to profit from this occasion, which is unique for me, to tell you about this period of my life that has given me a wonderful ministry full of joy. There is also a sense of unfinished work, quite apart from all the many things that have really happened. I hope, by sharing these thoughts with you, to do something constructive; it is more a matter of bearing witness than of simple description, even if I have some critical things to say.

The way of working of this general council differs from that adopted before now. The various preparatory booklets analyse the Alliance since our last general council in Ottawa during 1982. I think that this method is well adapted to a period marked by shattering events that have left repercussions on the life of the Alliance. The preparatory documents were not compiled without effort and I should like to express my warm appreciation to the many people who gave their full cooperation to this vast and communal work - to those who are present here and to those who are in communion with us.

The preparatory documents have appeared before the assembly - Certainly, we would have liked to get them out more quickly. Some of the 5 linguistic editions caused us considerable problems.

I hope that your personal participation, and that of the delegation of your churches could be carried out in relatively good conditions.

Over the last 20 years WARC has seen profound changes. These years have seen the backdrop of a world that is also in profound transformation. It is easy to say that the changes we witness characterize the times and that we all too easily call these changes "transitional" since we find ourselves unable to understand them from within or to work out the direction of the forces shaping our future.

It is therefore an uneasy job trying to identify the significant transformations that existentially effect human beings and their institutions.

As regards the Alliance, I should like to underline three questions that have remained unanswered for me, ever present uneasiness, but also eternally renewed hopes.

The first change that the Alliance underwent is, to me, the most important of all. It is most important because it is something that must not be imposed on us from outside, but rather something that we have really to live through and to develop ourselves.

It is a change of outlook. The change is only now beginning, though it can now be seen more clearly. It is still fragile, but full of promise, so long as we know how to encourage it.

At a time when, rightly or wrongly - often rightly and wrongly at the same time - everything that is called an organization is looked at with suspicion, the belief in a link between Presbyterian, Reformed and Congregational churches is getting stronger.

WARC is seen as a need. This is not yet clear to everybody and yet it is a profound desire. One way or another, WARC must exist. And not only because it is 112 years old and because we believe in preserving antiquities. It seems to me that a new Alliance is being born.

This is partly due to the ecumenical situation, ie to the existence of the church in the world and, on the other hand, to the context of a world that, through its actions, is really asking anguished questions about the meaning of life. I am very glad that the churches are more and more aware of this questioning and that they thus have a good way of seeing the reasons that they have to live in hope.

Yet at the same time we must realize that we cannot hear the world's questions and try to answer separately. The time should be gone when the churches talk a lot about the universal church and yet practice an isolationist ecclesiology, let alone one of rupture and schism.

A new WARC is now perhaps being born since all the member churches more and more sense their own limits in their particular situations at a time when problems are increasingly global. There is a healthy suspicion of a world reformed administration, but there is a seeking for a common instrument of work and testimony.

I would like to express here what I mean, by borrowing a word from another period that was called "transitional". For me, the wish of our churches for a real form of linking belongs to the research of what, for our time, means an evangelical catholicity. Oh, I know the ambiguous nature of these two terms. Yet it seems correct to me to use them to express what has been one of the major preoccupations of my time in the Alliance. Many years ago, while studying the post- apostolic period - the end of the first century and the beginning of the second, I was struck by the emergence of an adjective found in common speech but with a deep meaning that it later, unfortunately, rather lost. The adjective "katholikos" expressed a double, even a triple reality and it showed the realization of the early Christian communities, their theological and ecclesiastical interdependence.

The adjective "catholic" might well be translated as true, faithful, orthodox - at the first instance. What is catholic is especially that which is true to the gospel. To bring together two words that were later opposed in another period called transitional, this catholicity was marked by a constantly renewed dependence on the meaning of the gospel - a going back to the sources - by a re-formation, by a permanent reformation, by an incessant confrontation of the message with the context in which it had to be delivered. This dynamic idea of tradition, of evangelical transmission has often become rigid - the desire to keep, to maintain, to defend.

The Orthodox Father George Florovsky once said a remarkable thing that we should all remember: "True catholicity is the catholicity of within, an intrinsic quality of the church." Or, to put it differently, we might quote the Apostolic Father Ignatius of Antioch who told the people of Smyrna "Wherever is Jesus Christ, there is the church catholic", a resounding statement of vast theological and ecclesiastical consequences.

For the contemporaries of Ignatius of Antioch the adjective "catholic" could also, but not only, be translated by "universal". This meant either the appearance of a solidarity between churches that was beginning to be seen all over the world, but also a solidarity that went beyond history and took in the Christians of all time. This solidarity was not only a confederation of local churches but, to use the words of Polycarp of Smyrna just before his martyrdom, "The church catholic all over the world.., at any time."

Such evangelical catholicity should take root in our churches that are, even at their best, never more than partial expressions of the church. Such an evangelical catholicity is what gave a common purpose to the Reformed churches in the 16th century and it was the same evangelical catholicity that gave such force to the missionary movement in the 19th century, and it is the catholicity that can give rebirth to the WARC of today.

Sometimes I wonder if the geographical and numerical expansion of the Alliance - 114 member churches before the Nairobi assembly in 1970, 175 today - really brings in the idea of evangelical catholicity or if we are not in danger of reducing the idea of catholicity or evangelical solidarity to a basic idea of numbers and geography while forgetting the questions of quality and substance.

All this works within us, sometimes in a confused way. It is for WARC and especially for this general council to find tangible signs of this evangelical Catholicism. Membership of WARC and the admission of new churches must go together with a determination on the part of all the churches to work in a real way, so as to show forth in a visible way and not only through declarations that there is reality in this evangelical catholicity.

The wish of our churches to work in that way seems to increase from year to year. The job of WARC is to help them turn wishes into reality. This general council gives us a unique opportunity to work towards that goal.

Such a major change of outlook would also be an essential contribution to the ecumenical movement on the part of our churches. The suspicion, widespread 20 years ago, to what were pejoratively known as confessional blocks has now gone. Before rejoicing, we might reflect that such a suspicion had good reasons to exist. There are plenty of awful examples of separatism and confessional isolationism. The consequences of such a suspicion are still to be seen, though their raison d'être is much reduced, even if there are still occasionally temptations to go back to a confessional extremism closed in upon itself.

The second transformation that has marked these last years is the growth of responsibilities and mandates given to WARC. In many fields, through various programmes, each with its own importance, but each somehow related to the rest.

In the field of theology, the responsibilities have multiplied in the areas of interconfessional dialogues as well as in research or specific declarations, though in the last group the number carried out was only a part of what could or should have been done.

In the field of the witness of our churches, the involvement's of our churches became increasingly numerous in the hot spots of the world. The most obvious and the best known is the stand we took on apartheid at the 1982 general council. Quite correctly, the consequences of our decisions have concerned us throughout these years, sometimes even requiring all our attention.

What we heard a few minutes ago from Rev Chun Ming Kao reminds us that our solidarity must be activated every time that a part of humanity and of the church of Jesus-Christ is oppressed or suffering. I would like to share a personal testimony with you at this point.

When, in your name, I visited Rev Kao in prison, I had the extraordinary feeling that the prisoner was not the one that you might think. He, in prison, was the liberated one, the person for whom the gospel had removed the shackles. I, supposed to be the visitor from the free world, needed to be liberated from my personal, social and ecclesiastical shackles.

In fighting for liberty, the church must have as its primary concern not the maintaining of a theoretical liberty but, rather, it should be prepared to receive liberty anew. If that preoccupation were more widespread, if that desire were more generally shared, our sermons and the agendas of our numerous meetings, committees, synods and assemblies would themselves also be liberated so that the real liberation might be experienced - and lived by.

I am glad about the initiative taken by our executive committee in early 1983 to propose a worldwide ecumenical consultation for justice, peace and the integrity of creation which will be held early next year in Seoul. That is also one of the strengths of these last years. In the procedure adopted, it is indispensable that the representatives of the various parts of the Reformed family should not only undertake a conscientious and competent study of the enormous problems which that subject raises, but that this should be done in close cooperation with all those members of other confessional families and non-Christians, who are thereby demonstrating their own reasons for this concern.

The defence of human rights is of the same level. We must commit ourselves without hesitation, which does not mean without discernment, when human rights are violated. In that struggle also there is nothing to distinguish us from all those who struggle for the observance of human rights. On the other hand, if we work with others it is because we have a deeply held conviction that it is right to do so because of our belief and our witness. And we must share that conviction with those that work with us. Denunciations of violations of human rights will not only or exclusively concern others in the well-known areas that have aroused public interest, but also the many violations in which we ourselves are intimately involved.

Allow me another personal reminiscence. The Ecumenical Centre was once peaceably occupied by a group of Latin Americans who wanted to draw attention to the clear violations of human rights on their continent. I had to negotiate with them as a member of the house management committee. We were able to find camp beds and other necessities for them and obtained a promise that they would respect the life of the Centre. We thus established a modus vivendi that eliminated the need to involve the police. They accepted a copy of the WARC document "The theological basis of human rights" which they read and studied. When the occupation ended, one of the leaders, himself a Marxist. said to me. "Such documents are what we expect from you Christians. It is not sufficient that we know that you are really involved in the struggle with us, it is important that we know why you are involved." This remark has always remained a challenge for me.

Faced with the growth of the responsibilities of the Alliance, this challenge remains. The "why" of our involvement must be determinant in the choice of fields of action among the many areas where things should be done and where we are asked to help.

Here, once again, the post-apostolic period that I have already mentioned can help us. In the history of the church at that time, the "liturgy" was not simply the order of divine worship. The error has not been avoided in the subsequent history of the church, so that worship became part of a spirituality separated from ordinary life. The other consequence was that activism was stripped of its spiritual context. Religious extremism of all sorts and the pretensions and lack of substance of some so-called social programmes are based on the same thing, even if opposed.

The liturgy of the early church united worship with real achievement of a mission. These were not two different or contradictory things; they were part of the same experience. I think that we need to discover the real evangelical liturgy for our time. It spills out of the place of worship to express itself in the world; it comes from all over the world to give substance to the worship. It is essential that we refuse to accept, and that we ourselves go beyond, the tensions between religious nicety and secularism.

The French theologian Andre Dumas was right to write "Conservatism is a resignation (or a privilege...) disguised as wisdom. Revolution is a negation (or an irresponsibility) clothed in justice. Both are means of running away." I also loved the book by Leslie Newbiggin, The Open Secret. "The church must not only repeat the same words and phrases in different cultural situations. New methods must be found to express the basic trinitarian faith; in all new cultural situations the church must return to the original biblical sources of its faith so as to cling on in a new way and to express herself in a modern way with a contemporary vocabulary."

I have a great hope for this general council, that we shall know how to keep worship and service together, expressing our faith and our solidarity with the world, worship and life. We Reformed Christians pride ourselves in belonging to the church of the word. Can we not remember that the word in the biblical sense is not only a succession of words, a kind of verbal inflation that traps us, but that it is also real witness bearing, actions that speak with or without words.

Can I, at this point, give you an example? Taking seriously the anti-apartheid words said by the Ottawa general council, we have refused to use South African Airways for this council. It was not in our best financial interest. Nor was it the most simple solution since it imposed on some of those who were travelling an extra inconvenience and fatigue. But I am sure that they see in this decision a desire to be coherent in our words and deeds.

And this search for internal coherence between our declarations and our deeds is very important, more so than the problems it creates.

I now come to the third and last part of this address. Paradoxically, the last 20 years, despite the activity that we see all around us, show an extraordinary stability on the part of the Alliance. This is welcome if it shows attachments to enduring values. Yet it is also disturbing for it shows that our churches have been incapable of developing through the Alliance the instrument of service that they need. The change of outlook that is beginning to show itself in our churches about the Alliance has only rarely produced the changes necessary for turning WARC into an effective force to tackle the problems that come up.

At the Ottawa general council in 1985, I had once again told the member churches that they had a choice: to reinforce the administration that is embodied by the Alliance offices or else reduce its work load. Amazingly, it is one of the few subjects that has caused no verbal inflation. The facts bear witness to a refusal. For reasons that are to do with their own situation and which it is not my business to analyse here - for they differ from place to place and from situation to situation - the churches have not been able - this is the word they use when, or rather if, they provide an explanation - or have not wanted to take this challenge seriously. The same problem is before you, the delegates to this council - and it is not a problem you can avoid.

I should like to express my warm thanks to all the personnel of WARC. Many people have worked for the Alliance since 1982 with devotion, without stinting themselves and without counting their hours. Especially throughout these last months when the preparations for this council entailed a vast increase in the work to be done. They have not hung back from the task. I would like you to know that on several occasions I would have understood that they would rebel against what I can honestly call inhuman working conditions - almost, and I am serious, to the point of striking.

It is not enough to adopt an angelic attitude and say that church work does not need to have modern conditions. Too often in the church this angelic attitude has led to real oppression of employees, paid or unpaid, and, in effect, to real violations of human rights.

Nor is it acceptable to try and give our staff guilty consciences by saying that a secretariat based in Geneva costs a lot. Either we help them in a real way to carry out the work we ask of them or else we must think about working in another place or in another way.

At this time when I am leaving my job, I must in all conscience say these things to you. These working conditions, which are the result of the welcome growth of mandates and activities, are unworthy of the WARC of our dreams.

With Professor Milan Opocensky soon taking up the challenge, I would ask you not only to give him your verbal support but your fraternal intercession as well as the support of a general council and an executive committee that will let him carry out his job by giving him what he needs. Personally, and especially with the preparation of this council in the last two years, I have noticed in myself a pernicious intellectual anaemia and a spiritual impoverishment. And that is not only the result of the fatigue of nearly 20 years of this kind of ministry.

I hope that my successor will find a way that will let him exercize a ministry of leadership. For that to happen, it is necessary that the administrative details which require a constant and careful attention should not take up too great a proportion of his time.

The problem facing all of us - what organization do we need? - is rather different than in the past, but even more urgent. A big two year consultation of all the member churches led to the writing of a document, "the Alliance in the nineties". This was then sent to all churches who had therefore plenty of time to react either when the document was being prepared or after. This council must take a decision on that study. I hope you are all aware that there is no way to escape your responsibility.

The long consultation drew up a well-written, realistic plan, taking into account the limitations of our situation. The plan implies a minimum of organization. It must be debated. Yet, to my way of thinking, the plan cannot be amended in a restrictive way. That would make it inoperable. To make it workable is not only desirable but indispensable. There are four possibilities.

Firstly, the report could be refused, because to you it does not seem realistic. I cannot believe that any such proposition will be made because this would set aside the intense consultation that was undertaken offering all churches several occasions to make comments, criticisms, suggestions or propositions.

The second possibility is more subtle. In parliamentary language, the report could be received and welcomed with interest but to say "The report is a good thing in itself; it should be put into operation but the preoccupations of all our churches will not let it have the money it needs". For all that there would be a verbal assent, the real answer is negative. A "Yes, but" is really a "Sorry, no".

The clear "no" of the first option, like the "sorry, no" of the second would imply that the council expresses itself clearly on the different form for WARC and on the jobs to be done and the limited mandates to be given to it.

The third possibility offers various kinds of positive responses. Between the "yes because we couldn't do anything else", the "why not?" and the "yes, all right" and the "definite yes" and the "enthusiastic yes" there are all sorts of subtleties on which depend the future of WARC.

Unless there is a real yes, unequivocal and enthusiastic, the future will depend, as has so often been the case before now, on the involvement of a few individuals and a few churches to whom are delegated the financial responsibilities of the whole.

With the support of all, the "Alliance in the nineties" report will become more than just words printed on paper. It could become a source of hope. It could enable us to create the structure that would enable WARC to accomplish its mission.

All the discussions, decisions and the reports of this council, to which we are eagerly looking forward, imply that you give them a real follow-up which will oblige you to be very clear about the form that you want WARC and its secretariat to have.

And the fourth possibility, you might ask, what is it? Well, that would be to not only accept the report "Alliance in the nineties" but to give it power to go forward beyond the bare minimum. Without wanting to fall foul of a dream that would expand the administrative apparatus and secretariat of the Alliance, we can still dream a little without the dream immediately turning into a nightmare.

Yet there are sometimes dreams that, by the grace of God, become realities. In my ministry as general secretary I have known at least two that have been a great encouragement.

The first of these began to materialize 15 years ago when the John Knox International Reformed Centre began timidly to take the place of the John Knox Foyer in Geneva, to become an institution independent of but working in close collaboration with WARC. The large, almost crazy risk that we took was well worth taking. Little by little, programmes began to emerge and collaboration intensified. Three of the workhorses of John Knox are active at this council. The first president, who served for many years, Rev Hartmut Lucke, is occupying an interpreter's booth. The present president, Rev Charles Odier, is one of the Swiss delegates and has chaired all the preliminary meetings on worship. Lastly, what would we have done without the current Director, Rev Jean-Jacques Bauswein whose many gifts have been and still are being used in difficult working conditions? The dream of an International Reformed Centre is becoming a reality.

Another dream became reality a few years ago when a foundation independent of WARC was formed thanks to the generosity of a rich industrialist who wanted to help us. The Foundation for the Support of Reformed protestantism was created. It has limited resources but some individuals and churches already have profited. We can envisage a substantial annual cash allocation in the near future, within the framework of the reorganization of the Special Services Fund of the department of cooperation and witness.

If the enthusiasm of a few people has enabled these two dreams to become reality, think how much more our common enthusiasm at Seoul could achieve if we would do more than the indispensable minimum described in the report " Alliance in the nineties".

"That the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father and the communion of the Holy Spirit be and remain with us now, everywhere, always." And that is not only a formal concluding benediction correct for this kind of meeting, but the expression of our common belief that the prevenient grace of God in Christ Jesus exists, that His love that surpasses human understanding and the communion of the Holy Spirit are at work despite all that is happening. These are and remain not just formulas of benediction, but a real benediction that gives us life.