In this section we have to deal with almost twelve years of Alliance activities! For the important centenary consultation held in St. Andrews, Scotland, in 1977 was not in fact a real general council duly constituted in accordance with the provisions of our constitution. One of the duties of the general council of 1982, therefore, will be to review what has been done since the last general council in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1970. On the basis of this review, the delegates to the Ottawa council in August 1982 will have to perform their task, namely "to make and administer policies, plans and programmes in accordance with the purpose of the Alliance." (constitution, art. IV, 2).

The member churches of WARC

The Nairobi general council of 1970 set its seal on the union of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches with the International Congregational council to form the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (Presbyterian and Congregationalist). The churches united at that time were distributed as follows:

	WARC	ICC	Doubles	Not uniting	Totals
Africa	29	3	-2		30
Latin America	15	2	-1		16
North America	10	2	-2		10
Asia	30	1			31
Australasia	3	2			6
Europe	29	8		-3	34
Total	116	19			127

Note 1: Doubles
Churches that were members of both uniting organizations. In Africa: Church of Jesus Christ (Madagascar), United Church (Zambia); in the Caribbean: United Church of Jamaica and Grand Cayman; in North America: United Church of Canada, United Church of Christ (United States)

Note 2: Not uniting
Three member churches of the International Congregational council did not enter the new World Alliance of Reformed Churches in 1970: Mission Covenant Church of Sweden (entered in 1971); Free Church of Finland; Union of Welsh Independents (Great Britain).

From 1971 to 1981, the following churches were received into membership

1971
Church of North India
Mission Covenant Church of Sweden
Lesotho Evangelical Church
Hong Kong Council of the Church of Christ in China

1972
Reformed General Assembly (Konvent) in the GDR
Indonesian Christian Church in central Java
Indonesian Christian Church in west Java
Christian Evangelical Church in Minahasa, Indonesia
Christian Evangelical Church in Timor, Indonesia
Protestant Church in the Moluccas, Indonesia
Protestant Church of western Indonesia
Christian Churches of Java, Indonesia

1974
Evangelical Christian Church in Bolaang-Mongondow, Indonesia
Waldensian Evangelical Church of the River Plate, Uruguay
Presbyterian Church of Africa, Republic of South Africa

1975
Protestant Church of Senegal National Church of Lippe, FRG

1976
Indian Reformed Church of Africa, Republic of South
Africa Evangelical Congregational Church of Brazil

1977
Uniting Church in Australia
Presbyterian Church of Northeast India
Lithuanian Evangelical Reformed Church, United States

1979
Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Chile
Evangelical Christian Church in Halmahera, Indonesia
Evangelical Congregational Church, Argentina

1980
Presbyterian Church of the Island of Mauritius (Indian Ocean)
Evangelical Reformed Church of Angola

1981
Presbyterian Church of Australia
Evangelical Church (Helvetic Confession) of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg

In other words, 29 churches applied for membership of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches. At the same time, however, it should be noted:

The United (Presbyterian) Church of North India has become part of the Church of North India; it was a member of WARC.
The Congregationalist Union of Australia, a member of the International Congregational council has joined the Uniting Church in Australia, as did one section of the members of the Presbyterian Church of Australia - a member of WARC.
The Presbyterian Church of Australia, made up of those members that did not join the Uniting Church in Australia, has confirmed its membership of WARC.

Three unions of churches have taken place:

In 1972, the Presbyterian Church of England and of Wales (member of WARC) and the Congregational Church of England and Wales (member of the ICC) united to form the United Reformed Church of England and Wales. Some congregations of the Congregational church rejected this union and formed a Congregational union, which is not a member of WARC.

In 1977, the Uniting Church in Australia (already referred to above) was formed.

In 1979, the Protestant Church of Belgium and the Reformed Church of Belgium united to form the United Protestant Church of Belgium.

In some cases, other confessional groups (Disciples of Christ and Methodist churches in particular) gave these unions a transconfessional character.

To our regret, two resignations have been registered: that of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church of Mexico and that of the National Presbyterian Church of Mexico. The former church decided to leave WARC in 1972, notified in 1975, and the latter in 1976. No official reason was given; the ground is probably to be sought in the contacts established with the Roman Catholic church through dialogues initiated with the secretariat for promoting Christian unity. Some collaboration, however, has been maintained with these withdrawing churches, in particular through the mediation of the WARC's Caribbean and North American area. We earnestly hope that in a not too distant future these churches will be able to take their place among us once more.

In 1975, following the political separation of Singapore and Malaysia, the Presbyterian church that used to embrace the whole of these territories decided that it would be better to divide into two churches - the Presbyterian Church of Singapore and the Presbyterian Church of Malaysia. Both churches have confirmed their membership of WARC.

In the same year, the Evangelical Ethiopian Bethel Church joined the Mekane Iesu Church of Ethiopia (Lutheran) in which it has formed a Reformed synod. In this capacity it could not belong to WARC, since the existing constitution of the Lutheran World Federation still does not permit a member church to belong to two confessional groups.

The 149 churches that at present are members of WARC come from the following continents:

Asia	43 churches
Europe	36 churches
Africa	35 churches
Latin America	18 churches
North America	11 churches
Pacific	6 churches

Can it now be said, after a period of more than ten years, that the union entered into by Presbyterians and Congregationalists in 1970 has become a reality? Viewing the scene as a whole, the complete cooperation displayed throughout these years can only be a cause for rejoicing. The preparations for the union had been thorough; the Nairobi decision to unite was made with open eyes and, thanks to the complete confidence that has reigned, the union has become a reality. Two new applications for membership have been received from two Congregational churches in Brazil and in Argentina.

It is indeed regrettable that only one of the three Congregational churches that were unwilling to enter the union in 1970 has lost no time in rejoining the wider family. The fact that some churches are not as active as could be wished can also be regretted. There is another problem here, though: small churches can sometimes feel rather lost in the crowd. This is a problem we should bear in mind when we come to consider the need to strengthen the cohesion among our member churches.

The concern to establish and deepen the ties with churches of the Reformed tradition (Presbyterian and Congregationalist) that are not yet members of WARC has constantly been with us throughout the years. The sizeable list of churches recently received into membership is a token of this. But the formal application for membership is only the last - happy - stage in a lengthy process. The essential thing is not so much official membership of our organization as the collaboration that can be established. At the present moment we are in contact with or are seeking to enter into contact with more than twenty such churches. It is probable that some of these churches will respond to an invitation we have addressed to them and send a fraternal delegate to represent them at the Ottawa general council.

In Africa, those Reformed churches that are not yet members of WARC are mainly to be found in the Republic of South Africa and southwest Africa (Namibia), Zaire and west Africa; in the last case the churches concerned are mainly those deriving from the former Paris Mission. In the case of Asia, we could spend a good deal of time on the situation in China and on the proper stance for a confessional family of churches such as ours to adopt in a complex situation of this kind. Similarly in the case of a united church such as the Church of South India. It would also be good if contacts with certain churches in the Pacific were stronger, as in Latin America in the case of some churches in Mexico, Honduras, Argentina, and Brazil. In the United States, as things now stand it is hard to imagine certain churches that define themselves as being definitely conservative Presbyterian taking any interest in WARC, yet some so-called "covenant churches", Scandinavian in origin, may be willing to establish certain forms of cooperation. In Europe, mention should be made of some churches of the same Scandinavian family in Finland and Norway, the Independent Evangelical Churches of France, and the United Churches of Germany with a largely Lutheran majority, churches with which various forms of collaboration have been established but who are unable to belong to two confessional families.

Sometimes, though rarely, certain churches that want to join WARC are not accepted into membership. More often than not, this is because they do not fully meet article II of our constitution even though this defines the conditions of affiliation in very hospitable terms.

To conclude this section, the following features of the period 1970-1982 may be emphasized:

There has been a considerable increase in the number of member churches: 22 new member churches, ie a growth of 17%.

Administrative and other responsibilities have correspondingly increased, making the task of the staff more complex.

The international character of WARC is patent; after the Roman Catholic church, it is probably the most widely scattered confessional family in the world.

Its cultural diversity is immense, the result of a conscious missionary endeavour to train local leaders as quickly as possible. But much still remains to be done to diversify the cultural approaches and to extricate theological thought and ecclesiastical action from cultural patterns inherited from the past.

The historic traditions are by no means similar; churches issued from the Reformation and even the pre-Reformation have been joined by those stemming from the great missionary movement of the 19th century and then by those that first saw the light of day in the present century.

There are also various ecclesiastical forms: in contrast to the representative Presbyterian-synodical system of the majority of our churches, there is the Episcopal-presidential organization of the Reformed churches of Hungarian origin (from the 16th century) or, more radically, the Congregationalist form of church life.

Mention must also be made of the extremely different social and political conditions in which our member churches must perform their ministry, whether it be in contrasting political systems or in special social characteristics.

Finally, the size of churches has a considerable influence on their ministry. The terms in which problems present themselves differ according to whether a church is only a tiny minority, or else a minority with a certain influence, or one that, with a majority tradition, now lives in a completely changed world.

Even a brief list of this kind brings out the surprising diversity and important differences existing in our family of churches. This suggests a double conclusion to which we shall certainly have occasion to return:

Although these churches may seem to constitute only an ill-assorted motley body, they nevertheless have something in common that transcends and relativizes all their differences, something that our constitution calls "a biblical, evangelical and doctrinal ethos" (article II).
On the basis of this "ethos", we should seek a greater Reformed solidarity for service (to the member churches, to the one church of Jesus Christ, to the world).

The churches meet and consult together

In 1970, 314 delegates from 62 countries converged on Nairobi. At Ottawa in 1982 their number will probably be even greater. The twelve years between these two councils have been notable, however, for a decision without precedent in our history: the decision to replace the general council by a centennial consultation in St Andrews, Scotland, in 1977.

This decision was doubtless based on financial considerations; the worldwide crisis led us to examine ways in which an organization such as ours could accomplish its work without recourse to a general council and the heavy administrative and financial responsibilities such a council would entail. Could this challenge be met?

To celebrate the centenary of our organization without holding a general council was certainly an act of courage. It also underlined the fact that witness is more important than administration, that our commitment is more essential for the future of humanity than our participation in a conference, that the calling of our churches to be members of the one church of Jesus Christ locally, where they perform their ministry, takes priority over their membership of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches. "The Glory of God and the Future of Man" - the theme of the consultation, as I need hardly remind you - was not so much the subject discussed by the 200 participants from 43 countries but rather a deep common conviction as the basis for Christian action. This is evident from the reports of this centennial consultation. I need only quote a passage from Rector Jan M Lochman's summary of the main aspects of the consultation: "The glory of God does not make our life transparent or easy. We have to face our personal as well as our communal problems; but we may know that these personal and communal problems do not stand in a void, that they are part and parcel of the story of Christ. The glory of God means to know that I may live my life in all its precarious quality in the perspective of a reality that encompasses me. This is the glory of Christian life."

Preparations for the consultation included an invitation to the Rev Dr Marcel Pradervand, general secretary of WARC from 1948 to 1970, to undertake an analysis of this "century of service" in the form of a book that appeared in 1975 under the title, "A Century of Service". We are profoundly grateful to our former general secretary for the enormous labour that went into the preparation of this history, which is not only informative but also extremely relevant to us today, since many of the most difficult contemporary problems (search for the unity of the body of Christ, the responsibility of the churches in their historical and cultural contexts, the ethical dimension of the Christian witness, social commitment, etc.) have already been seriously grappled with in the past, even if in a different context. This is something we are tempted to forget.

Finally, the substitution of a consultation for a general council required us to exercise our ingenuity, within the framework of the constitution, in the election of a new executive committee. This election is a prerogative of the supreme court, the general council. But the executive committee has the authority to fill seats that have become vacant between two general councils. Before resigning en bloc, therefore, the members of the executive committee decided to ask the member churches - which normally delegate their authority to their representatives at the general council - to nominate candidates and to proceed to the election of replacements for all the seats on the executive committee. Then the newly elected members of the executive committee appointed their officers (president, vice-presidents, chairpersons of departments). Though unusual, this procedure is perfectly in keeping with the letter and the spirit of the constitution, and it worked well.

The arrangement of regional consultations in connection with meetings of the executive committee is nothing new, but the justification for such consultations was once more amply confirmed on two occasions. Firstly, during the executive committee meeting in Djakarta, Indonesia, in 1972, a consultation on the theme "Thy kingdom come" was held at Sukabumi, by way of preparation for the world conference held later in Melbourne by the World Council of Churches and already paving the way for our Ottawa general council. Secondly, another consultation was arranged, again in Asia but this time in the Republic of Korea, in Seoul, on the theme of "Hope: God's suffering in man's struggle" that would find its place in our general study on God's covenant with his people. The participants in this consultation came not only from the Republic of Korea but also from a number of countries of northeast Asia and even from Thailand.

Such experiences are not only valuable in themselves but also help to strengthen the bonds between the WARC member churches in a particular area and to deepen the sense of belonging to a large world family of churches. Even though they require a great deal of extra work and inevitably present the problem of staff availability, these conferences are so valuable that they should be held more frequently.

The possibility of area organizations in WARC is allowed for in the constitution and by-laws. The object is to promote fellowship and cooperation among member churches in particular areas of the world and to ensure the effectiveness of the total work of the Alliance. At present there are two such area organizations: the North American and Caribbean area and the European area. These are not organized in the same way: in the case of the former, there is an annual council of representatives from the member churches in the area, and an administrative committee that handles day-to-day affairs; in the case of the latter, which comprises a larger number of member churches, a general assembly is held once every five to seven years, in other words, once in the interval between general councils of WARC at world level. A considerable amount of theological study is carried on by these two areas, in direct relation to the themes adopted for the whole of WARC. The emphasis on "fellowship, cooperation and collective responsibility" is greater on the North American continent than in Europe. Each area submits a detailed annual report on its activities to the WARC executive committee.

Ad hoc groups can sometimes be formed that do not constitute an area organization in the strict sense. For many years, for example, the Association of Presbyterian and Reformed Churches of Latin America (AIPRAL) has done important work to promote cooperation and solidarity in this area of the world. In more recent years, this group, while still in existence, has declined in vigour but our Latin American member churches are now engaged in giving it a new lease of life.

Over a long period of time, a British churches committee operated in the United Kingdom. Constituted at the end of the second world war, this committee sought to facilitate closer cooperation between the British churches. In 1975, however, it was unanimously agreed that it would be better in future for these churches to have direct relationships with the other European churches without constituting a separate group. In 1976 the British churches agreed to the dissolution of the committee.

From 1971 onwards, a committee of member churches in South Africa was established. Following the refusal of the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa to entertain the kind of consultation recommended by the Nairobi general council in 1970, it was hoped that a committee of this kind might be able to promote certain kinds of cooperation between churches in that country. During recent years meetings of the committee have not been well supported by several of the constituent churches and this has deprived it of its potential utility.

A number of leaders of churches of northeast and southeast Asia have recently been considering the advisability of constituting an ad hoc group of member churches of WARC in these areas. From different quarters and with varying success, therefore, the question of these ad hoc groups of member churches is on the agenda. Up to now the general policy has been that, with the exception of the two areas duly organized and mentioned in the constitution and by-laws, it was inappropriate to further burden the structures to which the member churches already belong by the addition of a confessional grouping. The primary responsibility of the member churches is local and ecumenical. Has the time now come to take a fresh look at what a dynamic network of Reformed church groupings is, should be or should not be?

And now we are preparing to hold a general council in 1982. Is there any contradiction between this and the direction followed in these last years?

Immediately after its constitution in 1977, the new executive committee made it quite clear that it considered a general council to be needed. The president of WARC, Dr James I McCord, stressed this again recently in the introduction to the study guide for delegates entitled, "The universal and the particular". The general council should not be primarily concerned with administration but an occasion rather for the delegates, people who not only take responsibility for the life of their particular churches with its joys and cares but also share a vision that is common to all the churches of our family, to get to know each other and to consult together. The tension this involves cannot but be fruitful and only a general council can offer the possibility of this broad consultation and this creative process, provided it has been well prepared both by the committees appointed for this purpose and, above all, by the delegates themselves.

The general council will have to make two sets of decisions of a constitutional nature:

By letter dated the beginning of August 1981, ie within the period allowed by the constitution, the executive committee has proposed to the general council certain changes in the constitution and by-laws (terminology, increase in the number of executive committee members, and the constitution of a department of finance).

The North American and Caribbean area is submitting for ratification its new regulations and name.

Activities that continue to develop

In the segment of life covered by the last twelve years we have had to cope with a permanent tension between, on the one hand, international problems and their financial consequences that inevitably added to our administrative difficulties, and, on the other hand, the continually growing needs. During this period, the life of WARC has resembled the dangerous advance of a tightrope walker on his high wire... But the positive aspect of this uncomfortable situation also needs to be emphasized: being deprived of security, we had no alternative but to trust the assurance that the work to be done was not the work of a human organization but indeed that of God himself.

And here we can certainly count our blessings.

There have been two successive executive committees, the first from 1970 to 1977, the second from 1977 to 1982. This is not the place for an outline of their doings, but we must emphasize the essential role of the executive committee in the life of our family of churches, of which it is in a sense the embodiment and the conscience. Its task is certainly not an easy one, since an annual meeting, a small membership, and many other tasks to perform do not simplify the creation of a sense of community, the awareness of a common responsibility, or the establishment of programmes and their implementation in a relatively short space of time. Even so, two successive executive committees have managed to advance even as the pathway became harder and harder.

This is the place to express the gratitude of the whole Alliance above all to our presidents: Dr William P Thompson (1970-77) and president Dr James I McCord (1977-82). With their consistent friendship, firmness, global vision, self-sacrifice and constant openness, their leadership has been of inestimable value for us all. The leadership of our two departments has remained in the same hands throughout all these years: Prof Jan M Lochman, now rector of the University of Basle, Switzerland, has chaired the department of theology since 1970, while Mrs Jacqueline Mattonen, United States, has similarly led the department of cooperation and witness.

For the period from 1970 to 1977, a finance committee was appointed for each meeting of the executive committee. From 1977 onward, there has been a permanent finance committee under the chairmanship of Mr John E M Gilbey of England. This gradual consolidation has proved extremely helpful and finds concrete expression in the proposal that the general council in 1982 should create a department of finance.

In this process that from 1970 to the present has strengthened our sense of responsibility and mission, three factors, it seems to me, have made a vital contribution. First, from 1971 to 1974, the executive committee examined the question of our role and purpose in the contemporary world. This may seem a strange question, one that should obviously be asked prior to any action at all. Yet this question came at the proper time. On the one hand, ecumenical progress was pushing us to define ourselves more clearly, while on the other hand, the acute problems of our world were constraining us to identify more precisely what we considered essential. The committee completed its work in 1974, emphasizing first of all that it is impossible to examine the role and purpose of a family such as ours in a vacuum: it needs to be done in full collaboration with the other families of churches. Second, it was not so much a case of being preoccupied with what used to be called then an "identity crisis" but rather of translating into reality and to some extent in a new way a style of life in more direct contact with contemporary problems: "the style of the Alliance should reflect sufficient flexibility to meet needs as they emerge and a particularity that will encourage each church to emphasize its own particular gifts and confession."

On this basis, the WARC future programme was examined by a committee during the years 1975 and 1976. This was an act of real courage at a time when the financial clouds were gathering that in the view of some made any consideration of the future a somewhat questionable business. Nevertheless, at the very point when it was about to terminate its mandate, the executive committee felt it necessary to make a statement on this subject: "The Alliance has a continuing theological function to perform, and we see this function in four dimensions. It involves coordination, consultation, partnership in bilaterals, and the stimulation of research and publishing... Secondly, the Alliance is necessary for fellowship, cooperation and mutual witness among member churches... A third agreement is that the Alliance is necessary in the present ecumenical situation to bear witness of an ecclesiology that lives from the inside out... The Alliance should provide leadership in assisting its member churches in recovering from 'collective theological amnesia'... We have tried to face squarely the question of whether we should scrap the Alliance after a century of service, and the conclusion was a unanimous negative... Our recommendation is that we walk with assurance into the future and produce a programme that will be vital and enriching in the lives of the member churches and that will continue to make a major contribution to the ecumenical movement." The new executive committee appointed in 1977 continued in the same direction. Its meeting in Seoul in 1979 proved significant in this respect. Within an Asian setting but already anticipating what the general council of 1982 should be, the conviction deepened that the Alliance ought to respond increasingly effectively to the emergent needs. So it was that we began to reflect on the need for the Alliance to become more "visible". The requests for it to intervene, especially in the case of churches in difficulty, the increasingly expressed feeling of the churches that they needed to be helped in their own efforts at witness, above all by a theological contribution, are bringing the Alliance today to what could well be an important turning point in its history. While not abandoning the simple flexible organization that has been characteristic of it, should it not be made a more suitable instrument for the mission it is called to fulfil today? In the third section of this report we shall have to deal with this point in greater detail.

Not that everything has been perfect, of course. The executive committee had hoped to awaken greater interest in the Alliance's activities among young people, but it did not receive in this respect all the support it was entitled to hope for from the member churches.

The series of visits paid in all parts of the world, not only by the staff but also by members of the executive committee, were inadequately coordinated. It was not possible to follow up contacts with leaders of the member churches as they should have been. The list could be extended.

Simply for the record, and without giving a complete list, let me say that WARC has been represented on a whole series of occasions by staff or other delegates: at many assemblies, meetings, study sessions, consultations, etc. organized either by religious and other international bodies or by the member churches. Though not always easy to ensure, this presence of WARC is extremely valuable, making it possible for us usefully to represent our member churches and also to enrich our own work by the results of these activities.

A long list could also be provided of activities that should have been undertaken. But there are limits to what is humanly possible! This brings me to the staff of the Alliance.

It is not irrelevant to recall that in 1958 (over twenty years ago!) the number of fulltime staff was already seven. At that time the membership of the Alliance stood at 74 (it is now 149) and its budget was only 30% of our budget for 1982! During recent years, the number of fulltime staff has varied between 5.5 and 7. Yet in 1976 the executive committee even examined the possibility of reducing the staff to 4 because of financial difficulties.

As long ago as 1971, I pointed out how precarious the situation then was. While it is true that at that time we were fortunate to have a settled staff with many years of service to the Alliance behind them, changes were inevitably due with the passing years. At this point I must pay tribute to all those who held the different posts in succession. All of them maintained the same attitude of complete fidelity. But the changes made the situation more precarious still; some posts remained vacant for several months, for reasons beyond our control, and this inevitably added to the burden of those who come what may had to carry on the general work of the Alliance. This unfailing joint effort has been a precious support, making it possible in spite of difficulties, failures and shortcomings, to ensure the administrative functioning of the Alliance.

Some names must certainly find a mention here.

In 1977, after 27 years of faithful service, Miss Paulette Piguet ended her tireless work with us. The 1977 centennial consultation expressed to her the gratitude of the Alliance.

In 1978, the Rev Fred Kaan, information secretary of WARC and minister-secretary of the Congregationalist council in Geneva from 1968 to 1970, and then secretary of the department of cooperation and witness from 1970 onwards, accepted the invitation to become provincial moderator of the United Reformed Church of England and Wales. His many gifts are well known and we are glad that we shall be seeing him again at the Ottawa general council as delegate of his church.

It is with regret that I also have to announce here that the Rev Richmond Smith, secretary of the department of theology since 1965, has decided not to seek to renew his contract that terminates on August 31 1983. It would be premature to take leave of him here, since he still has a heavy task to complete in the months leading up to the general council and in the year following it. For some time, therefore, we shall be the beneficiaries of his complete fidelity to the Alliance, his utter devotion to the theological task and his unfailing friendship, and we are sure we shall be able to count on them even after his departure.

For a little over a year, the post of secretary to the department of cooperation and witness remained vacant. Since September 1979, the Rev Aldo Comba has occupied the post, giving us the benefit of his gifts as a communicator and his keen interest in ecumenical problems - even domestically, since Mrs Fernanda Comba is a member of the central committee of the World Council of Churches and the delegate of her church, the Waldensian Church of Italy, to the Ottawa general council - as well as his concern for the contemporary and theological dimensions of the Christian witness.

At the beginning of September 1980, Miss Jacqueline van den Akker, who had spent 17 years in the service of the World Council of Churches, became administrative assistant and secretary to the general secretary. In addition she is responsible for coordinating the administrative work of the various departments. A member of the Netherlands Reformed Church, Miss van den Akker sets great store by accurate accounting, thorough work, combining this with great cheerfulness. The delegates to the general council will be able to confirm this in Ottawa where she will have various administrative responsibilities!

I wish to mention specially here Mrs Colette Jacot, secretary to the department of theology since 1969. Having received theological training in the institute of women's ministries in the theological faculty in Geneva, she is very much at home in all the various aspects of her department's work.

The most frequent changes have been in the secretariat of the department of cooperation and witness. Since June 1981, Miss Irma Eugster has assisted Pastor Comba in this department.

With the necessary preparations for the general council in view, the executive committee sanctioned a modest reinforcement of the staff. Mrs Joanne Weil came first as a temporary aid but now works part time dealing, among other things, with filing, bills, etc. Mrs Madeleine Bost, for many years secretary to the Alliance's treasurers at the bank of Messrs Lombard, Odier et Cie has been employed part time to take charge of the secretariat of the general council and will continue to do so until December 1982. Mrs Carolyn McComish, who came to us as a temporary assistant, undertook, among other duties, the preparation of the handbook of member churches. Finally, Mrs Micheline Galland, whose husband, the late Valdo Galland, was secretary of the World Student Christian Federation, has been assisting us part time for several months.

Altogether these part-time posts add up to about one-and-a-half full-time posts.

The Alliance has always recognized the importance of publications. Take first the Reformed World, which in January 1979 marked the centenary of its foundation. From 1879 to 1883, the journal bore the significant title The Catholic Presbyterian and appeared monthly. From 1886 to 1936 it was called - not very inspiringly - The Quarterly Register! Then three different titles in succession: The Presbyterian World (from 1948-1955), The Reformed and Presbyterian World (1956-1970), and finally the present title, The Reformed World (since 1970). The more recent trend is significant: instead of emphasizing an ecclesiastical adherence and a religious structure (Presbyterian), it was decided to stress an ethos, a message - Reformed.

In order to strengthen still further the bonds between the Alliance's member churches, a good deal of space is given to news from the churches, a section that is highly appreciated. The articles published seek to bear witness to our faith and to our membership of the one church of Jesus Christ. There is a constant concern for the context of this witness in the world in which we live with all its complexity and danger, but also so rich in promise. The very first article published in 1879 and signed by the editor, Dr William Garden Blaikie bore the title "Catholic Presbyterianism". One brief quotation will suffice to show the outlook of the new journal: "Catholic Presbyterianism cannot be a very exclusive Presbyterianism. Certainly our Presbyterian Alliance repudiates any such exclusivism. For our part... we regard other evangelical communions as part of the one church Catholic." In their respective reports, my colleagues will deal with the publications more directly associated with their departments. All I need do here is to stress the following points:

To give effect to the desire expressed by the Nairobi general council in 1970, the Reformed Press Service has been enlarged since 1971 by the addition of an edition in Spanish to those already appearing in English, French and German.

From the same year 1971 and also by decision of the general council, the English edition of the Bulletin of Theology was incorporated in The Reformed World, while the German and French editions of the bulletin continued to appear separately.

During the year 1978-79, a small group set to work at my request to evaluate our various publications. Representatives of the religious press (at local and international levels) and of the secular press (at the same levels also) collaborated in this appraisal and their report was presented to the executive committee in 1979. The report concluded unanimously that no major modification was required in the general policy of our publications. Secular journalists in particular emphasized the value of these publications. Recommendations for improving the presentation, content and distribution were greatly appreciated.

For the two departments of the Alliance, I refer delegates to the reports of my colleagues and confine myself to some general remarks on the policy of the Alliance in these two areas.

The department of theology was established in 1959. Important developments have taken place since then, in particular, the initiation of a whole network of bilateral dialogues and then of a number of multilateral dialogues. These have multiplied to such an extent that the work of the secretary responsible for this department has itself undergone a considerable transformation. The work of coordinating theological studies and research has continued, of course, but it has been impossible to develop it in the way required by a rapidly developing situation, both in the world and within the ecumenical movement. It will be necessary to consider later on, in section III of this report, the conclusions to be drawn for the future from this situation.

The same comment also applies to the department of cooperation and witness, which was established by the Nairobi general council in 1970. This department, the successor to the information secretariat, has given special priority to communication (press service, news from the churches, etc.) with the result that it has not been possible to develop aspects more strictly related to "cooperation" between churches and to stimulating "witness", in the way they should have been. Because of the international financial crisis and its repercussions for our member churches, it has also been impossible to carry out the Nairobi general council's recommendation that a special services fund should be built up year by year. We have, of course, been able to carry out a number of programmes of this kind but the hopes of 1970 are far from having been realized. Here, too, a thorough examination of the question of interchurch aid is needed. This is not a matter of questioning the general policy of not establishing a full-scale system of Reformed interchurch aid but simply of carrying out an essential ad hoc function that, moreover, is written into our constitution.

There never has been a time when the Geneva secretariat of the Alliance has not been asked to intervene when member churches have faced difficulties, harassment, oppression and intimidation. In the last few years this dimension has grown considerably, so much so that it has sometimes become the major preoccupation, particularly of the general secretariat. In accord with the responsibilities written into our constitution, better provision, coordination and follow up are required for interventions of this kind.

The present report would grow to inordinate length if I were to list in detail all these interventions. Yet the ways in which we can intervene in such cases are severely limited: letters, telegrams, words of encouragement or protest, messages - these interventions by correspondence do have some effect, of course, yet they carry relatively little weight. It is often essential to have recourse to interventions by third parties, by governments or other bodies, or to visits that, if they are to be of real benefit, would need to be repeated. Finally, attempts to coordinate action at these various levels, whether between member churches willing to intervene along the same lines as the WARC general secretariat or between other religious and nonreligious bodies who are ready to cooperate, are very time consuming. The truth is that we are ill-equipped to intervene really effectively in the way we have been more and more called upon to do during recent years. It must also be remembered that before making any intervention, the Alliance, in concertation with other bodies (commission of the churches on international affairs of the World Council of Churches, churches having direct contacts with the churches in difficulty, missionary departments, etc.), tries to ascertain the specific role each can best play in actions of this kind. It is frequently possible to establish fruitful cooperation and such coordination considerably increases the efficacity of the intervention. Some interventions could be described as "pin-point" actions. These are cases where the World Alliance of Reformed Churches limits its commitment to a given situation and specific events. This happens especially when other bodies "maintain a presence and a continuity that from the very start prove more efficacious, as for example in the cases of the Republic of Korea (south), Latin America or the Middle East where the WCC's commission of the churches on international affairs is better placed to intervene. In the case of Northern Ireland, the Conference of European Churches, another ecumenical body, seemed more appropriate than any other organization. This certainly does not mean that the World Alliance of Reformed Churches takes no interest in such cases; in most of the areas mentioned the Alliance has arranged a series of visits and meetings.

There are interventions of a second kind, for which the Alliance accepts a major responsibility, though here again our obviously limited resources greatly restricts the number of possible interventions or makes it impossible to follow them up. In the course of recent years, two cases in particular call for mention.

Firstly, South Africa, where there are WARC member churches belonging to various ethnic groups, and where the Alliance is the only church organization in this situation. Through the years, WARC has intervened here on an almost permanent basis, even if the extent of its intervention could never be other than modest. Following a visit in 1971 to try to arrange the consultation requested by the Nairobi general council of 1970, a regional committee of Reformed churches was created with the object of encouraging greater cooperation between the South African churches, a cooperation rendered all the more essential and urgent by the failure of the white Dutch Reformed church to consider the consultation proposed by the general council. The first regional meeting took place in 1973 but unfortunately led nowhere; repeated interventions were required in the course of events from 1974 onwards that ended in the confiscation of the Alice Theological Seminary, its transfer to various places, and its eventual establishment at Imbali in Natal. WARC observers took an active part in the 1979 consultation on the church's social responsibility that was attended by many of the different Reformed churches in this country in difficult circumstances. Another consultation was held in October 1981 in which, for the first time in history, members of black, coloured and Indian churches came together in conference.

The second example is Taiwan. Here intervention was progressive but took place especially from 1975 onwards, at the time when Bibles in a Hokko translation and hymn books in the Tayal language were confiscated; then when courageous statements were issued by the church on "Our National Fate" (1972), "Our Appeal" (1975) and "Human Rights" (1977); next when threats were held over the church's witness through plans to control churches, chapels and temples (1979); and finally, after the unhappy events following the incident in Kaoshiung on December 10 1979.

The arrest of several members of the Presbyterian Church of Taiwan, and in particular of its general secretary, the Rev Dr Chun-Ming Kao, who were brought before various tribunals and given heavy sentences, made several visits necessary as well as numerous contacts both in the church and with prisoners" families and government representatives. On May 15th 1981, I had the moving privilege of visiting Pastor Kao in prison. In respect for the promise I was then required to make, I shall not present any written report of this visit; conscious also of my responsibility and my solidarity, I miss no opportunity of speaking out loud what this visit meant, what it signifies for all our churches, and also of expressing my conviction that it ought to be possible to reduce very considerably the sentences passed. In presenting my report orally at the beginning of the Ottawa general council, I shall speak again on this matter. The official government and party (Kuomintang) representatives have been informed of this line of conduct, for which I accept full responsibility.

I should really go on here to speak also of the efforts made to strengthen our bonds with the member churches in the eastern European countries, of our anxieties when many of our churches were experiencing serious difficulties, in Lesotho, Mozambique, Angola, Equatorial Guinea, Pakistan, Japan, Chile, and so on and so on. This report could rehearse the catalogue of wars, tensions, and outbreaks of violence that have so tragically marked the history of our world during these years. Here again, what we were able to do was of very modest proportions.

In such cases as these, the executive committee of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches has often voiced its concern and its solidarity. Hardly a meeting has taken place without messages of encouragement and solidarity being sent by the executive committee to a number of our member churches.

To avoid giving this essential aspect of our work too large a space in this report, I had the idea of publishing some brief documentary dossiers describing the situation of some of our member churches who find themselves in particularly difficult circumstances. This series would need to be available during our general council in August 1982. But I will still have to find a number of collaborators... and special funds!

In this setting of world-wide tragedy, in which the tenacious, faithful and joyful witness to Christus Victor nevertheless brings a note of tremendous hope, four events in the life of our organization should be mentioned:

On December 10 1973, the statement on the 25th anniversary of the publication of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirming our profound solidarity with all efforts in this direction.

In 1976, the publication of our statement on the theological basis of human rights, which met with such a wide response.
The statement on human rights by the executive committee on August 4 1978 that should really be reported here in full and that ends as follows: "The World Alliance of Reformed Churches will continue to work for human rights in all dimensions. Every effort will be made to create a climate of mutual understanding, trust and confidence within which alone human rights on a truly global scale can be realized."

The statement by the executive committee on August 7 1981 encouraging all initiatives calculated to promote peace in the world, in an era in which dangers to peace are increasing; in particular, the nuclear arms race.

I must conclude this section of the report by mentioning the John Knox International Reformed Centre in Geneva. Originally planned by the United Presbyterian Church in the USA as a student centre, John Knox Centre was on the point of ending its activities in 1974. I then proposed to the executive committee that it should be taken over by a special association under the sponsorship of WARC and turned gradually over the years into a meeting place for activities, reflection and sharing on the part of the Reformed churches of the world. In face of the risks involved, the executive committee by a narrow majority gave its limited authorization, which was subsequently renewed. In 1978-1979, confronted with the Centre's positive financial record and the reflections it was developing on the future role of WARC, the executive committee gave its unqualified moral backing to the enterprise. A programme of activities was then developed by the officials responsible for the John Knox Centre that took concrete shape in September 1981 in the organization of a well-attended first international seminar on the theme of the Reformed confession of the faith. The committee of the John Knox Centre will present a report to the Ottawa general council - and expects then to be able to appoint its new director. The centre could play an important future role in the service of the Reformed churches of the world.

The ecumenical scene

"Discovering the Ecumenical Space" - this was the title that Prof Jean-Louis Leuba of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, gave to one of his books. In it he notes: "While the avant-garde of Christians in all the traditions has in the last twenty years or so become aware of the unity of the body of Christ, the necessary consequence of the uniqueness of its head, this awareness still remains extremely obscure. ..(We have) to explore the mysterious yet real "space" in the light of which the legitimacy of all the confessional positions together, their limits and the need of each to discover its organic connection with all the others, become visible."

During recent years, "ecumenical awareness" has undoubtedly deepened though not always being broadened or clarified. It deepened, especially after the Uppsala assembly when we learned that it is impossible to separate the vertical and horizontal dimensions of the faith or, as Philip Potter, the general secretary of the WCC likes to put it, what we have is not on one side a faith and on the other our action, even if these are said to be complementary, but there is faith in action and action in faith. It is safe to say that all these years have been affected by this experience. But the gradual deepening of the ecumenical conscience has not necessarily meant its gradual enlargement. Divergences and even divisions over the ecumenical movement have become more marked within the churches themselves. And just when the discussion has broadened and become a subject of interest and controversy, it has often been I obscured. Reactions are often emotional rather than rational and use is made of arguments based on information that is far too general and sometimes even quite unfounded. It is deplorable that more than ever today a selection is made of facts that present a distorted picture of the World Council of Churches that those who work with it and see it at close quarters find completely unrecognizable.

The result is the evasion of what should be a continuing discussion, an untiring research. The "ecumenical space" becomes fixed and threatens to turn into a place; the ecumenical movement congeals and is in danger of being transformed into an institution. This evasion, this fixation, is the main danger of a debate that is on the brink of turning into a "conflict over the ecumenical movement", to quote the title of a recent book on this subject. It is vitally important that the sixth assembly of the World Council of Churches in Vancouver, Canada, in 1983 should not be simply the reflection of these tensions but rather the rediscovery - always needed and always to be renewed - of an ecumenical "movement", a journey forward, a common experience, a deepening, an enlargement and a clarification. We may rejoice, therefore, that our own general council is scheduled for 1982, just twelve months before the major ecumenical meeting and in the same part of the world. For us Reformed Christians, Ottawa '82 is an opportunity to reflect on what our contribution to the common ecumenical effort can be and should be, and for which Vancouver '83 should mark an important staging post.

The Ecumenical Review (vol. 32, no. 4, October 1980) has published the address given by the former general secretary of the World Council of Churches, the Rev Dr Willem A Visser't Hooft, at the meeting of the WCC central committee in Geneva in August 1980 on the occasion of the celebration of his eightieth birthday. After surveying sixty years of ecumenical history, Dr Visser't Hooft looks at what he sees as its present task: "It seems to me that these three emphases: the whole church, the whole world, the whole gospel, are not only an interesting part of our heritage but abiding characteristics of the ecumenical movement." I am not sure whether it is my Reformed reflexes that move me to fully endorse this affirmation, but I propose to dwell on it now, though taking the three emphases in the reverse order: first, the whole gospel; second, the whole world; thirdly, the whole church. A more detailed defence of this sequence may be found in the next main section of this report. It is indeed Dr Visser't Hooft himself who inspires me to give priority to the whole gospel". For he concludes his address by asking the question: "What is the heart of the matter?" and answering it as follows: "Our problem is no longer whether the gospel is only concerned with the personal spiritual life and the salvation of individuals or also with the liberation of the oppressed and the poor and the struggle against injustice. Within the ecumenical movement there is a basic consensus that both are part of the gospel. Our problem is rather a problem of focus: what is the heart of the matter?"

"So the question is whether all that we do in the ecumenical movement is a true heralding of the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ. Do we in our concern with the issues of social and racial justice, of peace, take our starting point from general ethical imperatives or rather from the great indicative: in Christ the kingdom is present - therefore you can be a transforming power in the world? Are we in our work for the unity of the Church motivated by considerations of ecclesiastical prudence or by the overwhelming certainty that the Lord of the church is himself gathering his people together? In other words, the future of the ecumenical movement depends on the rediscovery by every new generation that the ecumenical movement does not belong to us but to the Lord of the Church."

It is indeed this centrality of the gospel that constitutes the essence of our specific Christian identity and the basic contribution that we can make to the world. This primacy of the gospel accords with the theological position and the confession of faith of the churches of the Reformation.

Next, "the whole world". Philip Potter, in his preface to Ulrich Duchrow's book Conflict over the Ecumenical Movement (Geneva: WCC, 1981), insists that the problem of the unity of the church is inseparable from that of the unity of humankind. This question, he says, "has for more than ten years been in the centre of debate within the World Council of Churches". This quest of unity in these two ways, in the church and in the world, is assuming enormous dimensions and opening up extremely wide horizons; it gives rise to new questions and is causing unexpected tensions both in the churches and in the world. The ecumenical documents of recent years reflect this in various ways.

In the preparatory volume for the fifth assembly of the World Council of Churches (French edition Upsal-Nairobi, 1975), Prof Roger Mehl pointed out the danger of being duped by the facile distinction between the vertical and the horizontal: "Behind these images lies the old distinction between church and world, kingdom and history, spiritual life and temporal life, ultimate and penultimate realities. We must not be taken in by such distinctions; they could end up by separating faith and obedience and that would contradict the gospel. From the biblical standpoint, the horizontal can only be the projection of the vertical. Faith always takes priority; salvation is always dependent on faith, yet faith cannot be without obedience... There is only one ecumenism, at once spiritual and temporal, at once concerned for the true faith and for boldness in action, living in expectation of the new heavens and the new earth, and therefore, precisely because of this expectation, concerned to make the earth inhabitable for all human beings." An imperative of this kind inevitably challenges many established positions; it provokes disquiet among those, both in the church and in the world, who by reason of their lack of concern, lack of understanding, or even self-interest would rather keep the church and the world in separate watertight compartments. There is a desire in many quarters to see ecumenism restrict itself to the quest for church unity viewed simply as a question of church structure, to theological studies conceived as an esoteric discourse, to an evangelism mainly concerned with the salvation of the individual soul, to the promotion of an exclusively personal piety. But once programmes are initiated that envisage the establishment of a more just society and social order, a more real justice, a more authentic quality of life, greater respect for human rights, a more genuine peace, people are disturbed and disquieted. The reason for this is the realization that faith and politics, economics and social relationships are profoundly interconnected. There is a realization that obedience to "the whole gospel" means taking "the whole world" seriously. Many well-established taboos, so ingrained that they are thought to be justified by history, are radically called in question... And a great deal remains to be done before members of the churches take more notice of this. Ottawa '82 and Vancouver '83 have no choice but to work resolutely in this direction.

Finally, "the whole church". To put the church last is not to devalue it. Quite the contrary. To do so is to respect its essentially instrumental character, to accord it all the honour of its calling to work so that the whole gospel may reach, penetrate, impregnate the whole world.

In a comprehensive report of this kind, we cannot take in all the many aspects of the significance of being the Reformed church for the ecumenical movement. The reports of my two colleagues will also have much to say on this theme. All I shall do, therefore, is to emphasize three main thrusts that seem to me essential. It has now become accepted to emphasize that the World Council of Churches is a privileged agency of the ecumenical movement. The churches at the local and national level and the families of churches at the international level tend sometimes to forget this a little! The first question addressed to us as leaders of WARC by the very existence of the WCC - to the creation and growth of which a substantial contribution has been made by many Reformed Christians - is, of course, where exactly are we to locate our commitment and our cooperation?

In the first place, we must respect the so-called "Lund principle" of not doing separately what can be done together, and not undertake programmes peculiar to us that would only duplicate ecumenical efforts. The classic instance here is the decision not to develop a separate Reformed interchurch aid programme but on the contrary to cooperate wholeheartedly in the interchurch aid work of the World Council of Churches. In application since 1948 this principle is still valid. It is possible, however, that we have not been sufficiently alert to cases where ecumenical church aid was unable to take the initiative or where it was a case of WARC member churches that are not members of the WCC. Such cases were obviously in the mind of the delegates at the uniting general council in Nairobi in 1970 when they envisaged the building up of a "special services fund" (for which our department of cooperation and witness was to be responsible). Unfortunately, circumstances compelled us to content ourselves with interventions that, though significant, were even more modest than the already limited ones originally envisaged. But the whole question of interchurch programmes - those upon which the member churches of the Alliance embark or in which they cooperate ecumenically or those of which our member churches are beneficiaries - remains on the agenda. It has been possible to establish or reinforce useful forms of cooperation; new problems have arisen and will continue to arise; but a more effectively coordinated programme is essential.

The activities of our department of theology obviously have an ecumenical bearing. They are directly connected with many similar activities of the World Council of Churches. This is fully reflected in the report of the secretary of the department. The theological participation of the Reformed Churches in the ecumenical movement is strictly in accord with their responsibility and their mission and could not be reduced. This Reformed contribution to the theological work of the ecumenical movement is not focused simply on the purely ecclesiastical aspects of this work. In this work and beyond it, the aim is the witness of all the churches in a world in turmoil. But the changes that have taken place in our world, the tensions that surface there, the radical doubts that shake it, the often incoherent quest for a new hope dawning there, the discontent with old certainties now felt to be in process of losing their substance, all this has not failed to have a profound effect on our churches. So much so, indeed, that instead of considering the benefits and opportunities afforded by this situation, our churches have let themselves be discouraged. It is in this context, I believe that we have to interpret the frequent assertion of our president, Prof James I McCord, that we are suffering from a dangerous "theological amnesia". Yet the present situation of the world provides a golden opportunity for theological reflection. The initial phase we must go through here, of course, is a painful one in which we must let ourselves be stripped of what was believed to be important but was only relative, in order to rediscover what is essential. In the last analysis, however, this rediscovery is rich in promise; indeed it is the only one that gives meaning to the other discoveries. Today, then, it is very certainly a question of "re-saying God" - of "resaying" him in the full and strict sense of the term: Theo-logy!

Paradoxical though it may seem, the world today is filled with an immense hope. Its turmoils are the negative aspect of this. And to "re-say God" today - to do theology - means making it possible for the elements to be identified that will allow this hope to emerge and to grow. Rubem A Alves characteristically underlines this in his book, A theology of human hope (Cleveland: Corpus Books, 1969). He entitles his last chapter "theology, language of liberty", and seeks here to define the main features of this language. What, then, is this liberating language that our churches could speak today? To offer, imperfectly perhaps yet really to offer, a place where the Reformed churches together may reflect, examine themselves and develop answers, whereas left to themselves they find it very hard to advance authentically - is this not a major responsibility of our department of theology today? Once again, it is not a matter of trying to provide a strictly "Reformed" response but rather of making a "Reformed" contribution to the "ecumenical" effort. This theological effort is absolutely indispensable. (If Christians fail to give it the importance it deserves, who else can do this work? If Christians fail to "say" God, they will rightly be condemned for failing to make their specific contribution, the one expected of them.) The Reformed churches must therefore support the theological reflection being undertaken in the ecumenical movement, above all in the faith and order sub-unit. This latter, far from being an exclusive setting for advanced theological exercises, is where fundamental theological reflection is pursued.

The second guideline for Reformed participation in the ecumenical effort is the need increasingly felt for a greater coordination of the work within the controlling organs of the World Council of Churches itself. The council is composed of member churches. But just as the leaders of the WCC deplore the frequent gap between the decisions taken by the churches at assemblies or during central and executive committees and what these same churches actually do at national or local level, so too there is a regrettable inadequacy of coordination - and therefore of shared vision and resolve - between the delegates who take part in these meetings and the confessional family to which they are attached. Admittedly, the confessional families send fraternal delegates to these meetings and some time is normally earmarked for what are called "confessional meetings". But all this seems quite inadequate if these families of churches, the Reformed family in our case, are to make a more coherent, which does not necessarily mean an obligatorily unified, contribution to the work of the World Council of Churches. In this area there is needed a long-term effort that our present resources do not allow us to undertake. What we would need to ensure is a network of communication between the Reformed members who represent their churches in the different ecumenical committees - those already mentioned, but also the unit and sub-unit committees, ad hoc groups, etc at world, regional, national and local levels. Such a communication network could develop rapidly. To establish it and use it effectively and intelligently constant attention and provision would be essential. To undertake this task in all its ramifications would be beyond the capacities of even a greatly strengthened Alliance but even a more limited development would be an improvement of great benefit to the ecumenical movement.

This brings us to the third main aspect of a less haphazard Reformed commitment. What role is to be assigned to a confessional family like ours on the ecumenical scene? The ecumenical commitment of WARC has been unmistakable since the creation of the World Council of Churches in 1948. We need only recall the unequivocal statement made by our executive committee during its meeting in Basle in 1951 at the suggestion of Prof John A Mackay of Princeton, who was then president of the Alliance: "If the great world denominations, the Reformed churches among them, pursue denominational preeminence and make their great world bodies ends in themselves, they will betray Jesus Christ. But if they desire, and succeed in their desire, to make denominational emphasis an enrichment of the common evangelical heritage, they will, by so doing, fulfil the designs of the one head of the church and be true organs of the Holy Spirit."

When the new World Alliance of Reformed Churches was constituted at Nairobi in 1970, the delegates to the general council adopted a similar message to all the member churches of WARC: "We give thanks to God for uniting us, Presbyterians and Congregationalists, in this new strengthening of the Reformed heritage. We pray that God will not let us rest at ease with our common identity but will use us, as we hope he will use other world confessional bodies, not to retard but to hasten the wider unity that he wills among all Christians."

It is not easy to summarise briefly how things have developed in this area during the past ten years or so.

One thing can be said right away. Events have conspired to bring the different families of churches closer together, particularly since the Roman Catholic church became increasingly a partner in the ecumenical dialogue. These events followed each other in rapid succession in the last few years especially. Solemn occasions involving church dignitaries provided opportunities for meetings (enthronements of Archbishops of Canterbury in 1975 and 1980, of Popes John Paul I and John Paul II in 1980; funeral services of Popes Paul VI and John Paul I and of the Orthodox Metropolitan Nikodim of the Moscow Patriarchate, all in 1978); major confessional assemblies such as the Lambeth Conference in 1978, the 450th anniversary of the Augsburg Confession for the Lutheran family, or the 1600th anniversary of the First Council of Constantinople in Istanbul and Rome in 1981; not to mention the now customary exchange of representatives of the various families of churches during their major conferences or world meetings of their executive committees.

There has thus been a considerable increase in this representative role of WARC; not, of course, to favour the display of diplomatic ostentation that would be meretricious but rather in the interests of strengthening personal contacts and, even more, increasing a deep mutual respect.

The purely defensive confessional reflexes and the isolationist will to power are increasingly at a standstill, therefore, and in this we can only rejoice. Not that this change of climate is a rapid one. History remains with its witness to too many acts of intolerance, exclusion, its anathemas and failures in understanding and makes it far from easy to change direction. Confessional chauvinism and bigotry do not yield ground easily.

It seems to me, however, that there has been some enlargement of the way of interconfessional collaboration, giving rise to new opportunities and fresh obstacles.

The enlargement has been due, above all, to the recognition that ecumenical efforts are complementary. A consensus even exists that the World Council of Churches is the "primary and special instrument" for the advance of ecumenism but also that the families of churches that were sometimes still regarded as backward institutions, the archaeological remnants of an outdated past, are now partners in that movement and increasingly recognized as such. For example, the joint consultation of secretaries of families of churches (now known as the conference of secretaries of the Christian world communions), together with the World Council of Churches in 1978, stressed that these families of churches and the World Council of Churches could be "mutually supportive" and "are called to play together constructive and complementary roles in the search for the visible unity of the Church".

The forms this complementarity should take have not yet been clearly defined and intensive efforts are still needed to identify them more clearly. It seems to me that we have hardly gotten beyond the stage of general declarations of intent. The recognition of full and complete complementarity will doubtless have implications in a variety of areas: theological studies, joint action for better living conditions in the world, pooling of resources both financial and human, especially for interchurch aid, structural changes in the ecumenical organs, to mention just a few.

Some fears are expressed. There are still many "ecumenists" who regard the confessional families as obstacles to ecumenical progress and for whom the term "confessional" has a negative ring. Those who take a strong "confessional line", on the other hand, are afraid lest the ecumenical commitment be purchased at the expense of a disengagement from a tradition conceived of in a more static manner as loyalty to an inherited treasure rather than dynamically as a living paradosis or transmission.

Fresh dangers appear. Although the creation of "joint committees" by the World Council and certain families of churches (the Roman Catholic church, the Lutheran World Federation, and soon, perhaps, others) is a welcome advance it must at the same time be regarded as no more than an encouragement to go a step further and to aim for a more inclusive and concerted effort on the part of the World Council of Churches and the families of churches taken as a whole. It is not good enough to go on making the obvious point that these families of churches are very dissimilar. Here, as in other areas, we must aim to establish a more dynamic "conciliar fellowship'.

The ecumenical effort can only be a common one. In an article written in honour of the 80th birthday of Dr W A Visser't Hooft, "Trials and promises of ecumenism", (in Voices of Unity, ed. Ans J van der Bent, Geneva: WCC, 1980), Yves Congar points out the danger of "parallel ecumenisms" - I hope he will forgive me for turning his words round here! - "The worldwide character of the Roman Catholic church (not that it is alone in being worldwide, but in being worldwide in the way it is, with such strength and with such a centre of authority) may raise the spectre of a parallel ecumenism. The difficulty is met by increasing the flow of information and communications. In reality nothing is done in the absence of others." Information, communications and the presence of others are certainly indispensable, but they do not altogether eliminate the danger of a parallel ecumenism. When we think, moreover, of all the other families of churches, we could end up with a proliferation of parallel ecumenisms and an even greater confusion due to the huge number of dialogues being conducted, reports published and increased communications. Such a situation some years ago already made it necessary to try to summarize the position reached in interchurch dialogues and to publish (from 1971 onwards!) successive editions of Confessions in Dialogue, each edition larger than the last! Since when, the situation has become still more complex (which does not necessarily mean less happy), so much so that a series of meetings made it essential to create an ad hoc organization known as the "Forum" (for further details on this, see the report of my colleague Richmond Smith).

But there is also the temptation of other parallel ecumenisms that are not the work of families of churches but of international organizations, especially those concerned with evangelism and mission. Happily, certain exchanges are taking place with the leaders of the "continuation committee" of Lausanne (1974) and Pattaya (1980). We must hope that these exchanges are a sign on both sides of a desire to contribute together to the progress of ecumenism. Close contacts with representatives of Reformed churches within such organizations as the Lausanne "continuation committee" could only be fruitful for all concerned.

The pooling of energies and efforts is essential. In a report entitled "Called to be a covenant fellowship" presented to the WCC central committee in August 1976, Philip Potter, the general secretary, spoke of the relationships of the WCC with other ecumenical bodies, such as the "world confessional families ", as they were then called. A revised version of this report was included by Dr Potter in his most recent book, "Life in all its fullness" (Geneva: WCC, 1981). It is instructive to compare the two texts, their similarities and differences. In 1976, Dr Potter noted (correctly, it seems to me) that relations between the WCC and the "Christian world communions", as they are now called, "have never really gone beyond polite cordiality, though this varies from one confession to another". This remark has disappeared from the 1981 version. Between the two dates, various efforts were made, consultations held, and complementarity affirmed and recognized. In 1981, we had advanced beyond "polite cordiality". At the same time, two affirmations remain in the 1981 version (correctly, it seems to me): "A number of critical questions need to be faced by the World Council and the world confessional families on the basis of their common calling to work for the renewal and unity of the churches for the sake of witnessing to the one undivided Lord of the world." The general secretary goes on: "We have talked about this for so long without doing much... I am more and more convinced that this matter needs to be given very serious attention in the coming years." In other words, while the climate has changed a little, we have not yet really got down to the common effort required. It is also significant that the immense theological labour that went into the making of the volume Neues Glaubensbuch - Der gemeinsame christliche Glaube (published first in German (Freiburg; Herder; Zürich : Theologischer Verlag, 1973), in French and in English in 1976) still considered it necessary to end with a chapter on the significance of the confessions today. All this underlines the great importance and urgency of this problem for the future of the ecumenical movement.

Once it is recognized that the families of churches and the various ecumenical institutions among which the WCC occupies a preeminent place, it is logical also to recognize the specific contribution that each can make to ecumenical progress and to a better definition of "the ecumenical space" in constant movement. For each of the parties concerned, it is a matter of letting itself be challenged to contribute more effectively, to make a constant effort - a painful, dangerous effort but also one full of promise and joy - to redefine itself for the others and with the others. Suffice it to say here that this approach is wholly in keeping with the aims of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches as laid down in the constitution (article III, point 9).

In concluding this long but incomplete reflection on the ecumenical movement, I want to state my conviction that, together with the other Christian world communions, WARC is called to make a substantial contribution today to the progress of the ecumenical movement. Dr Visser't Hooft published in 1974 a little book entitled Has the ecumenical movement a future? (Belfast: Christian Journals Limited, 1974). In this he examined four periods of the movement's history: 1910-1934, 1934-1948, 1948-1960, and finally 1960 onwards. His question in 1975 was whether this fourth period was drawing to a close and a fifth period already beginning to emerge "of which the contours can only be dimly discerned". He offers a penetrating analysis of a number of elements that should help us to ensure that these contours take clearer shape. The ecumenical movement does have a future and the families of churches also have a part in the shaping of this future.

Finance

Budgets, accounts, and financial reports are also a recurring feature of the life of WARC. In addition to being evidence of a necessary administrative development, they also carry a message. The figures not only stand for amounts but also indicate the nature of a commitment; on the other hand, the absence of figures does not necessarily mean any lack of commitment. The finances reveal both an attitude of mind and changing situations. They are meant to serve a mission.

A post such as that of the general treasurer of WARC is extremely important, therefore. From 1948 to 1971 this post was held by Mr Georges Lombard of Geneva. He not only played an active part in executive committee meetings and in general councils (Geneva 1948, Princeton 1954, Sao Paulo 1959, Frankfurt 1964 and Nairobi 1970) but was also the Alliance's representative on various occasions, notably on the ecumenical committee of the Churches' Commission on International Affairs (CCIA). After an illness lasting several months, he died on July 30 1975. He generously placed his professional skills and his deep Christian commitment at the service of our organization.

From 1971, he was succeeded by Mr Jean-François Rochette, also of Geneva, who in 1981 was reappointed by the executive committee for a third mandate of five years. After successfully completing the consolidation of the various accounts of the Alliance, Mr Rochette has had to keep a close watch on the evolution of the financial situation through long and difficult years. He is also financial adviser to the John Knox International Reformed Centre and a member of its committee.

For WARC itself the constant interest and service of our two successive treasurers have ensured the persistence and fruitfulness of its efforts and for the general secretary and all WARC staff they have been an indispensable aid enabling them to work with confidence and friendship.

This part of my report is not meant to be a financial statement in the strict sense of the term. The essential documents will be made available to the finance committee in preparation for its meetings during the general council next August, or sent to delegates when available (the 1981 accounts, for example). My purpose here is rather to provide delegates with the basic information required for an overall picture of the financial position of WARC, having in mind especially decisions concerning budget and accounts that will have to be taken by the general council in August 1982. For the last ten years, the world has experienced a serious international economic and financial crisis. This crisis began only a few months after our general council in Nairobi. In view of the effects of this crisis on the international money market and in national economies, not to mention its effects in the churches, this decade has been one of recurring problems of increasing difficulty, of hopes followed by disappointments, of frustrations and efforts on our part. This troubling situation has inevitably affected the character of my work as general secretary, requiring me to devote a good deal of time to the administrative aspects of my work. At a time when the responsibilities of WARC were increasing, it has been necessary to pursue a policy of great prudence by strictly limiting expenses and engaging in a difficult search for funds. Just when certain measures were beginning to bear fruit, fresh tremors of the international economic situation or renewed fluctuations of the exchange market would upset our calculations once more. It would have been very tempting to let frustration degenerate into weariness or even discouragement. Yet in the difficulties of these ten years there was undoubtedly a grace concealed: it was made impossible for us to rely on financial results constantly improving without undue effort. We had constantly to ask ourselves what our work itself was for and where it was taking us. The significance of the figures was not to be measured in quantitative terms but in depth.

The development of our own financial situation becomes clearer therefore against a background of uncertainty and incoherence. We must not expect any fundamental change in this background so long as there is not enough political determination internationally to produce an economic and social system guaranteeing a little more justice, peace, equitable distribution of resources, good will. What has just been said has one first negative implication: we have found it impossible to implement the decision of the 1970 general council concerning the regular replenishment of the general council fund, namely, that the churches be invited to increase their annual contributions from 25 to 35%, the extra income to be allocated to the fund for future general councils. This gave rise to a serious situation that was reflected in the decision to replace the general council that should normally have been held in 1977 by a centennial consultation, and also means that the general council of 1982 has a very precarious financial basis.

Only if a very tight control is kept on the costs of the general council and a general effort made to show solidarity among the member churches will it be possible to avoid irremediable damage to the WARC's financial position.

Throughout all these recent years, member churches have been sent information regularly about the financial position of WARC. Every year they have received the accounts, the reports, the list of member church contributions. Special letters have explained the situation and provided a number of details. While the fruits of this constant effort have not been negligible, they have still remained modest. I sometimes get the impression that our communications do not always reach the appropriate person or committee. A whole set of contacts requires to be patiently and persistently developed here.

Trends in the budgets from 1970 to 1984

Graphs are sometimes more eloquent and effective than words and I will therefore use some here in specific cases. Since the financial operations of WARC are conducted in Swiss francs (CHF), figures are given in this currency.

title

Two conflicting factors explain the somewhat irregular line of budgetary development: firstly, the crisis that forced us constantly to revise our budgets, and secondly, inflation that makes increases inevitable. A strict control of the budget and expenditure, additional financial support from some of our member churches, and economies designed to reduce expenditure wherever possible - all these measures have helped us to cope as well as possible with the negative consequences of the international crisis on our financial position. Somehow or other, we have continued to fulfil our responsibilities that have, moreover, been steadily growing.

Financial results through the years

There has been a rapid decline in credit balances in our annual financial operations, followed by a disturbing series of deficits and, since 1977 a fluid situation, as the following graph shows.

title

The main reason for these deficits was the drastic drop in the value of the North American dollar. The figures for 1979 are misleading and too favourable, since in that year a staff post remained unfilled for some months, while those for 1980 are too negative since several large contributions arrived too late for inclusion.

Contributions from member churches

Contributions are made on a voluntary basis. It is stated in our by-laws (Art. 7, A): "The Alliance shall be financed by contributions from member churches, gifts from individuals, congregations, organizations and from other sources. The general council and the executive committee may propose to the churches and the areas proportionate contributions. Area treasurers may receive funds for the Alliance and transmit them to the general treasurer." The Caribbean and North American area is proposing to the churches a per capita contribution. It would be difficult to apply this system to all the member churches throughout the world, mainly because of the different socio-political contexts and the limited resources available locally.

The geographical distribution of contributions from member churches is shown in the following graph.

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The next graph enables us to compare the proportional distribution of members of Reformed churches belonging to the Alliance, on the one hand, with the proportional contribution of these same continents to the Alliance budget, on the other.

Region	Members	Contribution
Europe	39%	71%
North America	28%	23%
Asia	15%	1%
Africa	13%	2%
Australasia (Pacific)	4%	2%
Latin America	1%	0.5%

This comparison prompts the following comments: For a long time, the North American contribution has been the largest by far: up to 1967 it represented two-thirds of the WARC's resources, decreasing to one-third in 1978 and thereafter to barely a quarter. This decline was due solely to considerable decreases in the dollar exchange rate (in 1970 the dollar was worth CHF4.28 but in 1979 only CHF1.35!). The North American churches have nevertheless increased their contributions throughout the whole of this difficult period.

Fortunately, over the same period of time, the European churches had also regularly increased their contributions (from a third in 1970 to more than 70% in 1979).

There is another disturbing imbalance in our resources: over 70% of the total budget is furnished by only from 8 to 10 churches out of the 149 member churches of WARC. While we are extremely grateful for their generosity, the situation that this reveals cannot be described as healthy, either spiritually or financially. The financial role of the churches of Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Australasian area is extremely limited. We realise that some of them are up against enormous difficulties in sending contributions (whether because of limited resources or restrictions on the export of currency). It is likely, however, that a more general effort could be made. The suggestion has been made that there should be a fixed minimum contribution, however small, perhaps of the order of USD500.

The Ottawa general council will be called upon to make important decisions about the financing of WARC. It is essential, therefore, that delegates to the council should have discussed the financial situation and possibilities with the financial authorities in their own churches. The annual financial reports of WARC can be obtained either from their own church offices or by writing to the Geneva offices. It is vital that the general expenses should be more equitably distributed among the member churches.

Expenditure

Details of expenditure will be available to the finance committee in 1982. The main items of expenditure do not leave much room for manoeuvre; a careful eye is kept upon them throughout the whole year. They are divided up proportionately as follows (on average, of course):

Salaries	66%
Administration	21%
Meetings	8%
Travel	4%
Miscellaneous	4%

Staff salaries account for the major part of the expenditure.

Administration includes renting of offices, printing costs, correspondence, telephone, etc. all of which have risen considerably. A fresh effort needs to be made to give our publications a wider circulation. Costs of meetings seems reasonable, partly because a number of churches agree to take responsibility for travelling costs that would normally be charged to WARC - for example, meetings of the executive committee, occasional consultations and interconfessional dialogues. The travel expenses of staff are very small, but only at the expense of essential contacts for which greater financial provision should be made.

The executive committee is recommending to the general council the creation of a department of finance, which would restore the position as it existed before 1970. The reasons for this proposal, which was conveyed to the member churches in August 1981, are: the need for a considerable effort to provide more effectively the required resources, the need for a more equitable distribution of financial responsibilities, and the implementation of an improved policy of information and conscientization concerning the WARC's financial problems.

The question of the way financial problems are handled is not a neutral one, therefore. In taking its decisions in this area, the Ottawa general council will need to be fully aware of this.

So far, only an introduction...

This "retrospective" part of my report, an attempt to provide an overall analysis of the past twelve years, has no intrinsic value nor introspective purpose. It is no more than a (probably unavoidable) preamble to an indispensable perspective, with a view to identifying elements for some prospectives. Yet surely it is precisely in this order - retrospective - perspective - prospective - that a general council can find the materials that enable it to assume the responsibilities that devolve upon it and do so with a clear awareness of what this involves?

Perspective

...a Reformed "ethos"

The indispensable search for the essential

"One of the things I remember best about my experience as a political prisoner in Indonesia during World War II is how inhumane it is to attend only to a person's most immediate and acute needs but to fail to proclaim the whole scope of God's promises." This point is made by Prof Johannes Verkuyl in the epilogue to his book, Contemporary Missiology. An Introduction (Grand Rapids: W. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1978).

The contemporary world is still in just as tragic a situation as it was then. It is still as plainly our duty to meet the "most immediate and acute needs" of humanity today. Yet the primary responsibility we have is still the mission of bearing witness to that which is essential. Shortly after the WARC general council in Frankfurt in 1964 that elected him as president of the Alliance, Prof Wilhelm Niesel said in an editorial in Reformed World (Sept.-Dec. 1964), "The main task ahead of the World Alliance is not so much growth in size as growth in depth." Since then the size of the Alliance has considerably increased with the addition of many new member churches. The growth in depth has not been forgotten but remains a permanent need, indeed one that acquires new urgency in a period marked as ours is by a "dissolving of coherences", to use Prof Torrance's striking phrase.

The challenge of this search for the essential is a universal one addressed to all human groups. At the same time, it is a search for an identity menaced on all sides. In his book, The crucified God (London: SCM, 1974), Prof Jürgen Moltmann points out that a crisis of relevance always accompanies a crisis of identity. In other words, an identity crisis develops when there is a widening of the gap between ways of living and thinking that have been transformed and the meaning formerly attached to them that has failed to keep pace with change. The self-criticism that needs to be exercised constantly if identity is to remain a living thing cannot, therefore be achieved simply by repeating past formulas. "To repeat the formula of the Apostles' Creed is no guarantee of Christian identity but simply of loyalty to the fathers and to the tradition." A faith satisfied with appeals to the models of the past is a "pusillanimous faith" that "usually occurs in the form of an orthodoxy that feels threatened and is therefore more rigid than ever". "Christians, churches and theologians who passionately defend true belief, pure doctrine and distinctive Christian morality are at the present day in danger of lapsing into this pusillanimous faith." In the final analysis, "those who regard themselves as the most vigilant guardians of the faith do violence to faith and smother it."

In 1973, in the course of a working visit of Alliance staff to Rome, a cardinal, president of an important department of the Roman Curia, asked us to specify the basic aims of the churches of the Reformation. At the end of our meeting, he summed up his reaction, that we also interpreted as a challenge and a reminder, as follows: "Basically, you are seeking to be Christians of the essential." To be sure, the heritage we cherish includes what has been called "the return to the wellsprings", the determination to be faithful to the gospel, the maintenance of the Reformed position. But faith cannot live on an inheritance. Any church concerned primarily to conserve even what the New Testament calls "treasure" would become, again in Moltmann's words, "an insignificant sect on the margin of a society undergoing rapid social change".

In face of the danger of "theological amnesia", we have been reminded by Prof James I McCord, the president of WARC, in an address to members of the executive committee in 1980, of this "major concern for the Alliance: the need for a theological understanding of what it means to be Reformed". A permanent effort of this kind, a constant self-criticism to keep us constantly returning to the essential, is in complete accord with the Reformed ethos and with our constitution. article II may fittingly be quoted once again here: "the Reformed tradition is a biblical, evangelical and doctrinal ethos, rather than any narrow and exclusive definition of faith and order."

If we keep closely to the meaning of this definition, two general lines emerge.

Firstly, the dictionary (SOED) defines "ethos" as "the prevalent tone or sentiment of a people or community; the genius of an institution or system". In other words, it denotes a character - something characteristic of a group. This distinctive descriptive quality has the value of a sign, a particular feature, a peculiar quality, an original trait. It denotes something located deep down and substantial. A "Reformed ethos", therefore, is what is symbolic of churches derived from the Reformation, ie something that is loaded with an accepted and identifiable significance.

We have to realize that the effort to identify the specific features of the Reformed ethos has often, as in the case of other similar movements, produced a rigid system of thought, a code that has confined thought within closed boundaries, dogmatic straitjackets of documents given the force of law, a rigorous and tyrannical scholasticism. The symbol, the rule, the norm have often come to be more important that the substance they were intended to translate. The fact that the rule is nothing in itself, that it has only a relative value, relative to a meaning that is not inherent to it but conferred upon it. For example, the standard metre, found at Sevres in France, is not a standard arrogantly imposing its own truth but the product of international agreements, an average that has more than once been redefined, in every case only approximately. It is the same with every theological norm or standard whether we are dealing with a norma normans or a norma normata, a primary or a subordinate standard, to employ distinctions made familiar in Reformed history. They are all of them, in varying degrees of course, approximations only, signs that point to a reality that transcends them. To turn them into absolutes is to petrify them, to make them incapable of fulfilling the primary function that was entrusted to them.

The something that characterises the Reformed ethos comes to it from that which constitutes the heart of its vocation. This may be illustrated from the early years of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches. The first general council (Edinburgh 1875) appointed a committee to examine the possibility of a consensus of Reformed confessions of faith; thirty-one articles had even been suggested. The second general council (Philadelphia 1880) recognized that to produce a confession of faith valid for all the Reformed churches posed enormous problems, above all, because a confession of faith is something produced by a particular church in specific circumstances, a witness and an invitation to reflection. The whole enterprise, which had come within an ace of producing a dangerous crisis within the Reformed church family, was abandoned at the third general council (Belfast 1884). No text, however valuable, can be imposed on the whole of a family whose members live in very different situations. No system could be imposed, for the Alliance existed - and still exists - to help all its members to bear witness to what is essential. The idea of ethos, if not the actual term itself, was already present in 1884!

Secondly, an ethos, the characteristic of a group, implies that the "something" that is accepted by the group, is also shared, commonly received and offered on behalf of the whole group. From this standpoint, I tried to identify the fundamental concerns and problems for our churches today, as these concerns and problems are reflected in their reports and publications as well as in the many letters exchanged between us. The churches are evidently extremely conscious of the problems facing the world today: those we share with all humankind (racism, economic crises, human relationships, ethical questions, military incursions, terrorism, human rights - to name just a few) and those peculiar to the churches (how to offer in this changing world a specific contribution to central contemporary debates, problems of organization and witness, financial resources - to name a few more). The churches find themselves inadequate and impotent in face of the dilemmas and needs that emerge but in this often frustrating experience they acquire again a sharper and more dynamic sense of their mission. Through the agonizing questions posed by the world, they become still more aware of the questions put to them by God himself.

It gradually dawned on me that these major concerns of the churches were grouped around certain focal points: one of the questions posed by the ethical problems is surely that of the purpose and goal of human life itself? In a changed world in search of meaning, surely our specific contribution is to rediscover the dynamic of the belief in the truly living God who offers us all his love and grace and calls humankind to cooperate in his work? Is not the experience of the inadequacy of institutions, the fact that they are almost everywhere called in question, an opportunity, indeed a challenge to reexamine the role of the Church and this indeed as a matter of urgency? Finally, the uncertainties in all fields concerned with the fundamental sources of reference (role and value of a scientific law, of a moral standard, of a philosophical system, etc.), do they not raise afresh the question of the role and value of the biblical witness?

So, to my surprise, there emerged the five main traditional Reformation themes: grace alone, faith alone, scripture alone, God's glory alone, and the church reformed and therefore constantly needing reformation. But was this perhaps simply a Reformed "reflex", a crude oversimplification? The only way to find out was to push my reflection further, and this is what I propose to do in this second part of my report, which is really a search for a perspective. Before doing so, however, another brief preliminary comment is called for! These five traditional Reformed themes have often degenerated into mere slogans. You could hardly take part in a Reformed conference without making reference to at least one or other of them! We need to remind ourselves that, while some of these slogans are obviously biblical in origin, others only arrived at their present form later in the history of our churches. We cannot be content to repeat them with confessional pride, therefore, unless we want to expose ourselves to Karl Barth's caustic comment that these Reformed slogans are only a "dead capital", for the Reformation cannot be trifled with impunity. My purpose, therefore, will be to confront these five themes with the situation in which we find ourselves with a view to defining more precisely what our "Reformed ethos" really is. One last point: the order in which we take these five themes is not unimportant; their sequence itself is significant.

**A God who himself is committed (sola gratia - grace alone)**

Our human claim to autonomy is reaching its limits today. History furnishes many explanations and even justifications of this necessary claim. The repeated enslavement of human beings by moral, religious, political, economic, scientific, philosophical and ideological forces called for the liberation of their victims. Not that this liberation has yet been achieved in many fields, far from it! The dream of a fully autonomous humanity is actually in danger of turning into the nightmare of a humanity enslaved in ways quite as oppressive as those it has previously known. Could it be that our contemporary experience is just a new chapter of the ancient debate concerning "free will or enslaved will"? And that behind this question another more fundamental question is looming up: is God alive and at work?

In his book, The People Shapers (Boston: Little, Brown, 1977), Vance Packard analyses the techniques for controlling human behaviour, for reshaping the human being, for genetic manipulation. He reaches the conclusion that "all these potentialities call for an urgent reformulation of some basis questions". In his closing chapter he gives a prominent place to the following statement by the well-known molecular biologist and moralist Leon Kass: "We are witnessing the ruin, perhaps the final ruin, of the idea of human splendour." Unfortunately, Packard does not go very far with the necessary reformulation of the fundamental questions he desiderates. But perhaps all he wanted to do in his characteristic way was to encourage others to pursue his own reflections further.

Alvin Toffler in The Third Wave (New York: Morrow, 1980) is more optimistic: "Far from coming to its end, human history is only just beginning." There can only be a future if we are intelligent enough to use the emerging social structures and the new conscience they are producing. Yet the liberation of humanity he envisages rests on a narrow and mechanistic concept of humanity.

A dimension of depth is added if we turn from the two authors just cited to thinkers like the French Jew, Bernard-Henri Levy, who, in his Testament de Dieu (New York: Harper & Row, 1980) declares: "the horror being what it is... the hour of confusion is in a sense behind us" and that, in actual fact, "the twentieth century is not an atheistic age but a religious one, certainly more religious than any other, though the religion is a pagan one." The decisive issue is thus located at the level of the constant human pursuit of a pagan religion and at the level of the necessary divine revelation that brings with it a different dimension. And Levy echoes, if somewhat differently, the following affirmation of Karl Barth: "The difference presupposed between our own and earlier times cannot be established theologically. Was there ever a time in which theology was not likewise fundamentally faced with a comprehensive negation of the revelation believed in by the Church?"

Or consider Roger Garaudy, an independent French communist with a Protestant background, whose recent books L'Appel aux vivants (Paris: Le Seuil, 1979) and Il est encore temps de vivre (Paris: Stock, 1980) reflect the author's search for an authentic hope and are evidently updated commentaries on what he had already written in L'Alternative (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1972): "When a human being who has been a professed atheist for many years suddenly discovers the Christian he carries (and perhaps has never ceased carrying) within him - and accepts the responsibility that goes with this hope - this is a really shattering experience." Garaudy's splendid pages on the resurrection as source of a power we must constantly rediscover and as a necessary daily resurrection should be accepted as a challenge to all those who have remained members of the Church and repeatedly confess: "The third day he rose again from the dead."

Finally, another Frenchman, a Catholic this time. In his book, Le christianisme va-t-il mourir? (Paris: Hachette, 1977), Jean Delumeau says, "Christianity has been more an authoritarian system than a conscious acceptance by the masses of a revealed faith... In anticipation of an early funeral and anxious to advance its date, everyone is found talking of the death of God... But this news, published with such a furore, is not confirmed... The God of the Christians used formerly to be much less alive than was believed while today he is much less dead than he is said to be!"

This challenge to established ideas, which can even shake entire systems of philosophy and cause ideological fortresses to collapse, permits and demands the rediscovery of what some will call "transcendence" and that we prefer to call "God", the God who keeps and takes the initiative. Reporting in a daily paper on the celebrations of the 1600th anniversary of the Nicaeno-Constantinopolitan Creed, and trying to explain in simple words what it was all about, Bernard Rordorf, a young Geneva theologian, used the headline: "A God who commits himself to save humanity".

God decided to intervene and his revelation in action can be summed up in the words "sola gratia" (grace alone), God's gracious initiative. And it is this, in fact, that takes absolute priority; from this theme all the other themes flow.

Thomas F Torrance deplores as a consequence of the "disappearance of coherence" from which we are suffering and which we have already referred to, "the moral inversion" that "has so infected the churches that our evangelical convictions are persistently submerged if not replaced by consciously meritorious involvement in socio-political issues...", an involvement that reflects "a fatal loss in spiritual depth". "The astonishing volte-face that has been taking place in the churches of the Reformation (reveals) a serious lapse from the centrality of the gospel of Christ, together with a failure to understand that it is justification by grace alone that creates the ethical disturbance that turns the world upside down."

In his introduction to the study of the Christian faith, the Dutch theologian, Hendrikus Berkhof frequently emphasizes the "leap" made by God more than once and that God will make again at the end. We are living in a period marked by divine interventions (the leaps of God) during the creation and in Jesus Christ, and await his final intervention to restore all things.

In his remarkable little book, The Open Secret (Wm B Eerdmans Publishing Co. Grand Rapids, MI, 1978), Lesslie Newbigin - who in his own ministry has constantly had to face up to non-Christian religions - identifies the specifically Christian element as "the central paradox of the human situation, that God comes to meet us at the bottom of our stairways not at the top."

Let me reassure non-western friends who may gently and justly reproach me for the unduly uniform cultural character of this paragraph by quoting the opening of the creed of the "Wednesday Forum" created in the Philippines in 1973. This creed, designed to provide a theological perspective for a political commitment, begins: "We believe that over and above all things, and over and above all loyalties, is the primacy of God's sovereignty" (in Asian Christian Theology: Emerging themes, ed, Douglas J Ellwood, Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1980).

Is this not tantamount to saying that our primary mission is to affirm God's grace alone and in this way to respond to an agonizing and often latent expectation?

Are we simply to go on proudly repeating "sola gratia", or are we going to try to see the theological and practical consequences of the fact that God still keeps and still takes the initiative?

**A possible human response (sola fide - faith alone)**

In the book already mentioned, Lesslie Newbigin stresses the connection between sola gratia and sola fide: "The covenant is an act of the free grace of God; it is the unconditional promise of blessing to be received by faith."

What initiative does God in fact take if not that of his covenant with humanity? God has committed himself to humanity to the point of binding himself to us: to the point of his word's becoming flesh. There can be no separating of the initiative of grace from the possible response of faith; there can be no reality and no meaning for humanity outside our having been in the image of God and reflecting God's glory.

There is no need here to dwell long on this other typically Reformed theme, that of God's covenant with his people, a theme that has once again acquired so much relevance, particularly in Roman Catholic theology since the second Vatican council. In any case it is not so much a matter of taking it up once again but rather of understanding it in relation to the new situation now confronting us as the people of the covenant catapulted into the post-modern world. This was what the Rev Alain Blancy sought to do in the remarkable Bible studies he prepared for the European area meeting of the Alliance in Poiana Brasov, Romania, in September 1980.

The covenant is a covenant of grace in which God gives fully and freely and humanity receives abundantly; it is a covenant that remains the work of God but creates relationships of complete trust, so that humanity becomes truly human; it is a covenant in which God gives himself completely in Jesus Christ, and in which humanity in turn is able to give; a people of the covenant that has really been called into being and that enters into the history of other peoples; a covenant people that sets out and follows a way that is not a blind-alley; a life in covenant that becomes possible and leaves its imprint on those who move forward; a life in covenant that becomes an active message and can be perceived.

As Andre Bieler emphasized in his book, The Social Humanism of Calvin (Richmond, VA: John Knox Press, 1961): "The Reformation was not only a rediscovery of God but also gave a decisive answer to the question: what is humanity?"

The formula of the council of Chalcedon, "Jesus Christ, true God and true man", points to Christ as authentic humanity. To live in Christ means discovering at the same time a truly human life. In his important book, The Theology of Calvin (C. Kaiser Munich, 1957 [c1938]), Prof Wilhelm Niesel reminds us that Jesus Christ is the only possible mediator: "God must himself take the initiative and come to us; because the distance between Creator and creature, which in itself is unbridgeable by man, has become as a result of the fall an impossible gulf." But God has taken our humanity upon himself and this gives us access to him. "Faith in itself has no value, no meaning for salvation. It is nothing more than an empty vessel. It acquires a saving significance only in relation to its content: Jesus Christ." "We do not receive gifts of grace, but the only gift, Jesus Christ." "Faith is that surrender of ourselves to Christ, which is the work of the Holy Spirit... Faith is man's answer to Christ engendered by the Holy Spirit." It is not "only a human attitude, only the fruit of human insight and feeling".

Far from belittling humanity by accentuating the distance between us and God as it has often been accused of doing, Reformed thinking provides a solid basis for a possible humanism, for a liberating biblical anthropology. It does so because it is not turned towards the human heart or rather, because, through the human heart, it is turned towards Jesus Christ, the new humanity.

Does not this concept of humanity, a human response inseparably connected with the divine initiative by a sola fide that follows the salvation sola gratia, make an indispensable contribution to the contemporary quest for a new humanism, for human significance in society and the world today? Human behaviour, the object of so many studies and of so much manipulation yet which in the end is felt to be so tragically inadequate, is surely summoned to undergo renewal because it is now discovering its rightful place and its relative dimension. At a time when the fact of humanity's relational existence is emphasized, cannot its relationship with God inspire and embrace relations with the neighbour?

Within the Christian church itself, a true understanding of faith as response to the free grace of God is indispensable in the debate that often creates tensions between the so-called "traditional" churches and the "faith movements", even the "charismatic movements" (oddly enough, we once more encounter here the two terms "faith" and "grace" - charis), in which faith often becomes the measure of all things and the emphasis is more on the response to grace than on grace itself.

To take another example from Asia: M M Thomas, in an article on "The secular meaning of Christ" included in Asian Christian Theology: Emerging themes, ed, Douglas J Ellwood, (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1980), has a section on "Theological insights for a secular anthropology". Here he emphasizes the reality of the humanity created in the image of God, the reality of the fallen human creature, and the reality of Christ crucified and risen. He concludes: "Justification by grace through faith not by works is a theological doctrine that has great relevance to the secular ideologies and political movements (of liberation) in our time and needs to be translated into secular insights for incorporation in political and social philosophies."

Does this lot mean that the theme of "faith alone" as response to "grace alone" is a basic axiom that also matches the vague and diffuse aspirations of our time?

Are we simply to go on repeating "sola fide" with a pride that contradicts the very content of the affirmation, or are we going to try to spell out what it means for the world and the church today to affirm, "For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God." (Eph 2.8).

**Our standard of reference (sola scriptura - the scriptures alone)**

The Reformer William Farel used to say, "The word of God is enough." The biblical criterion was placed in the centre of debates and controversies. Over against the preference for tradition as the standard of reference in the Roman Catholic church, with consequences familiar to all the Reformation assigned priority to the scripture principle. The debate is not yet over, not only with our Roman Catholic partners but also with many others within the Protestant or evangelical camp. Some years ago, the Re-reformed churches of Holland set up a commission to study, among other things, the authority of scripture.

In 1979, a sizeable dossier was adopted by the synod of Delft and published under the title "God with us - On the nature of the authority of scripture". This is an extremely interesting attempt to set the problem of scripture within the dynamic context of a truth that exists only as it is relational. The human aspect of the written scriptures is emphasized here but not as an independent reality. Historical criticism of the Bible is indispensable but it has often ended up by being interested only in an analysis of the texts without attending to the message itself. "It is not so that the writers of the Bible are involuntary instruments of the Holy Spirit. They were used by the Spirit just as they were, with their own character and habits, their gifts and limitations and in their concrete historical situation... Whoever would deny the human, time-relatedness of the Bible could easily detract from the real intention of the Spirit." "The 'sola scriptura' of Luther and Calvin, over against the false perspicuity of the Roman Catholics (tradition and papacy) and over the so-called perspicuity of the Baptists (inner light and free spirit) pointed a new way towards the perspicuity at the heart of the scriptures, namely, that salvation is from grace."

In our effort to escape the blind alley in which debates concerning the role of scripture have often been trapped, we welcome the publication of books such as Biblical Authority (Word Books, Waco, TX, 1977), edited by Jack Rogers, president of Fuller Theological Seminary in the USA. The subtitle of this is indicative: "Turn your Bible from a battlefield into a source of spiritual strength." This book deals objectively with the different theological views of scripture and seeks the profound underlying concern of each of them without sparing their weaknesses. It is an important contribution to the discussion. Two quotations will have to suffice here; firstly, from Jack Rogers himself: "We are called not to argue scripture's scientific accuracy but to accept its saving message. Our faith is not in human proofs but in a divine person whose word persuades us." Next, Bernard Ramm, a Baptist professor, whose contribution is concerned specifically with the sola scriptura.. "Sola scriptura... meant that, when it came to decision making in controversy, the appeal to scripture was the highest appeal possible... The 'Bible only' mentality confuses the sola scriptura of the Reformation with criteria of theological scholarship. The 'Bible only' mentality makes the record of revelation more primordial than the original revelation." The referential nature of the biblical witness should be underlined, for the Bible cannot be elevated to the status of a formal principle, of a fundamental criterion. As Karl Barth reminds us: "It is in virtue of its content that scripture imposes itself as the church's canon." But reference to the content at once requires us to affirm the uniqueness of this biblical testimony as criterion of the faith. To quote Barth again: "This is what the Reformation was trying to say and did say in its affirmation that the holy scripture alone has divine authority in the church. It was not ascribing a godlike value to the book as a book and the letter as a letter - in some sinister antithesis to spirit and power and life. But it wanted Jesus Christ to be known and acknowledged as the Lord of the church, whose revelation would not have been revelation if it had not created apostles and prophets and even in the present day church can only be revelation in this its primary sign... It is not the book and letter but the voice of the men apprehended through the book and letter, and in the voice of these men the voice of him who called them to speak, which is authority in the church." "Scripture is holy and the word of God because by the Holy Spirit it became and will become to the church a witness to divine revelation." To turn the word of God into a directly accessible reality constitutes an obvious narrowing of the whole doctrine of scripture "arbitrary because... obstinately postulated and maintained" and to be resisted and rejected as "false doctrine."

Scripture, like faith, is the work of a grace constantly in action, the grace of a living God today. It is in this light that we must set the "internal testimony of the Holy Spirit", that other doctrine cherished by John Calvin. It is not in order to speak on his own behalf that the Spirit acts but to refer to the living God; the Spirit is God in action today and he says nothing other than what Jesus Christ has said. This is the place to recall that the "word", Hebrew dabar does not only mean "word". As Prof Franz J Leenhardt reminds us, "The word dabar = word also means in Hebrew 'event' or 'circumstance'. The word is not just noise; it is action, and in it the person is committed and present." (Paroles-Ecriture-Sacrements, Neuchâtel: Delachaux & Niestlé, 1968).

Are we simply to content ourselves with repeating "sola scriptura"? Must we not heed the observation of Hans-Ruedi Weber (Experiments with Bible Study, Geneva: WCC, 1981), "The actual participation in the biblical drama together with God's people of biblical times and of our time remains low."

holy scripture is God's word. Because it is the written word, the Bible, it is testimony to the incarnate word of God, to Jesus Christ who himself bears witness of the grace of God who still creates by his word and by his Holy Spirit enables us to live a life which has been liberated by pure grace and is lived by faith.

A viable life (soli Deo gloria - to God alone the glory)

Q. "What is the chief end of human life?"
A. "To know God."

Q. "Why do you say that?"
A. "Because he created us and placed us in this world to be glorified in us. And it is indeed right that our life, of which he himself is the beginning, should be devoted to his glory."

This is how the 1545 Catechism of John Calvin begins. Almost a century later, the Westminster Shorter Catechism (1648) gave it an even. shorter and more striking form:

Q. "What is man's chief end?"
A. "To glorify God and to enjoy him forever."

This emphasis on glory may seem very strange to us today, and yet... the rediscovery of the inherent dynamic in the biblical concept of glory can give meaning - direction and significance - to human life today in all its confusion, turmoil, and anxiety. Soli Deo gloria - to God alone be the glory - is a reinvigorating principle of action. God's glory - his active illuminating presence in the world, above all in Jesus Christ - is, in the fourth gospel especially, the name for the total drama of redemption, and in the case of the apostle Paul, means the "life of the risen Lord" offered to the believer. Glory is not an independent external reality but one that comes to human beings, pervades them, energises them and makes them live by this same reality. There is an intimate connection between glory and glorification. Glory cannot "shine" without being "reflected" in glorification; the glory that is God's and that God shares is inseparable from the glorification given by humanity to God. In current jargon, humanity "participates" in the glory of God. This luminous perspective shines out in contrast to the drabness of our times. A real and glorious life is possible. To give glory to God is the very constitutive principle - the only true motive - of all our activity as human beings and as believers. Our search, none the less necessary nor any the less arduous, is yet conducted in quite a different atmosphere; it is no longer a frustrating or even impossible search but the application of our human resources and their transfiguration.

In the life of the Christian believer, the glorification of God has two dimensions, too frequently separated if not opposed. In the first place it means worshipping God. Not surprisingly, a concern for authentic Reformed worship has been in evidence at almost everyone of the WARC's international meetings. Many examples could be cited, not forgetting the 1977 centennial consultation, nor, of course, the forthcoming general council in Ottawa. I want, however, to refer here to what I consider to be the most significant renewal in this area, namely, that which is taking place in many sections of the Roman Catholic church. A genuinely evangelical note is finding expression there in a renewed liturgy, a renewed hymnology and renewed lay participation. The mainspring of this is a desire to be faithful to the gospel translated into simple and direct terms and not any quest of an artificial and sentimental verbal or musical expression following the fashion of the day or having recourse to techniques of mass manipulation.

In Signposts for the Future (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1978), Hans Küng has an important essay on "Worship today - why?" He begins by affirming clearly that there can only be an authentic worship in daily Christian life: "Genuinely Christian worship consists in being a Christian in ordinary life. This is how the Christian praises and sanctifies God." And this not just in his or her inner personal life but also in the arena of public life and practice. He goes on to point out that the historical and social conditions of worship have been changed and with them the so-called "obligation" to participate. He concludes, "I would like to invite conservatives and progressives, old and young, Catholics and Protestants, to seize once again the opportunity offered for man in our time in the religious service and - it is to be hoped - ever more frequently in a common ecumenical eucharist... A religious service - properly celebrated - can actually become that for which we all long: the feast of our liberation, the precelebration of our final redemption. Seen in this way, a religious service can provide us with a kind of leisure, a genuine free period: the necessary counterweight to working-time and the world of achievement, to our ordinary routine; an intimation, a perception, an advance in faith and hope towards a new man, a new creation... This is why for the Christian the week begins with Sunday, with Sunday worship as a promise for ordinary daily life and as a signpost to everyday life. Oratio and actio, prayer and action, Sunday and working day, attachment to the church and attachment to the world: these things go together for the Christian and his worship, today more than ever." These lines seem to echo the magnificent definition given by Karl Barth of glory: "the indwelling joy of the divine being... which overflows in its richness". Here is what can restore to a worship that is often heavy with morosity, hymnological poverty, eucharistic inadequacy, conservative moralism or weird novelty its evangelical freshness, genuine spontaneity, human dynamism, an intensity rich in hope and redolent of eternity. To make worship the indispensable festival of Christian joy becomes once more a priority for today.

But this upsurge is not only for Christian worship. In Andre Dumas's words, "Glory is not a separate beatitude but a transfiguring benediction", or as Jan Lochman says, "The Church is the 'basis' but not the 'prison' of the glory of God." (Both were speaking during our 1977 centennial consultation on "The glory of God and the future of man".)

This doxological dimension also permeates the Christian ethic. This has been strongly emphasized by Prof Jan Lochman, chairman of our department of theology, in two of his recent works now translated into English: Reconciliation and Liberation (Belfast: Christian Journals Limited, 1980) and Signposts to Freedom - The Ten Commandments and Christian Ethics (Minneapolis: Augsburg Pub. House, c1982). The life of discipleship cannot be the quest for an absolutized ethic; that could only end up by being legalistic and moralistic. "Grace - grace from God and also grace towards our fellow human beings - continues to be the distinctive feature and decisive dimension of ethics." "Both within and outside the Reformed tradition, this principle of soli Deo gloria has often been misinterpreted to mean a rigid and ultimately abstract theocentrism... It can hardly be denied that such temptations existed in the Protestant tradition... but we are helped to discover another possibility embedded in the approach and interpretation adopted in the Reformed tradition, namely its essentially emancipatory thrust and influence, liberating both ethically and politically... Only to the God of the covenant history is glory due. The dominant interest of this history is not naked sovereignty but our liberation and freedom. There are tangible traces of the ethically and politically liberating influence of this Reformed emphasis on the soli Deo gloria in history... If the glory is God's alone, then no earthly authority can claim the ultimate glory for itself. Where the sovereignty of God and the lordship of Jesus Christ are emphasized, we have an effective counterpoise to all forms of political absolutism and totalitarianism... The "glory of God" ... opens up the human sphere for adult participation and cooperation on the part of the people of God - a promise and also a task."

Christian obedience is genuine obedience - not at the level of a duty imposed but rather at the level of an unconstrained voluntary thanksgiving. In his book Calvin, prophète de l'ère industrielle. Fondement et méthode de I'éthique calvinienne de la société (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1964), André Biéler has shown that Calvin's own way of using the Bible is based on a "dialectic method for action". At a time when the old social structures were tottering and rapid changes were occurring in swift succession, Calvin based his ethical thinking on "the twofold foundation: a close attention to the biblical revelation on the one hand, and a lucid analysis of social and economic reality on the other". "Ethics", therefore, "becomes the place where the church's faith enters into tension with the world and, without becoming confused with the world, fertilizes it and gives it its true goal and authentic criterion". Prof Biéler emphasizes the relevance of this method for today. The Taiwanese theologian Shoki Coe has also pointed out in his own way how relevant this method is for his own non-western context. In various writings he has stressed the dynamic produced by this "double wrestle", as he calls it: "wrestling with the text from which all texts are derived and to which they point, in order to be faithful to it in the context; and wrestling with the context, in which the reality of the text is at work, in order to be relevant to it" (Asian Christian Theology: Emerging themes, ed, Douglas J Ellwood, Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1980).

Are we going to be content simply to go on endlessly repeating "soli Deo gloria" or are we going instead, in a world that is asking itself whether life is possible at all, to offer in our individual and corporate life a modest and joyful reflection of this glory of God, this "joy that overflows" in our worship and in our ethics?

**...and a possible church (semper reformanda - always in process of reformation)**

At last we come to speak of the church! Only here at the end? we may well be tempted to ask, so great is the anxiety the church provokes as to its place in this post-modern world, its inadequacy in a society that no longer accords it the role it used traditionally to play, its reality weakened by its divisions, but also, this too needs to be said, its eagerness for evangelical renewal, its determination to initiate new forms of ministry, its efforts to adapt to new situations, its combat in many places for the recognition of human rights.

This theme of ecclesia semper reformanda - a church aware that it still needs reformation - has become a commonplace today. It is no longer - if it ever was - confined to the churches calling themselves "Reformed". But in becoming a commonplace, it has tended to become commonplace, trivialized, to lose its dynamic force because it is often emptied of its true meaning.

The fact is that we have reached the point when every change, every adaptation, every reform, is justified for the most divergent reasons. Change and reform are needed, it is asserted, because certain forms of church life have become outmoded in a world that has moved on. Change and reform are needed, too, it is said, because modern science and its technologies provide opportunities and possibilities undreamed of only a short while ago. Change and reform are needed, it is said, because... But you yourselves can continue the list. But these are not really reformations but adaptations, often necessary adaptations. Genuine reform is not necessarily what is forced on us when we become conscious of a gap to be closed; it is what happens when, alerted by this gap, we realize the need for the renewal of the church's mission.

In church discussions and sometimes in ecumenical discussions, the reforms so keenly desired are not necessarily inspired by the indispensable reform of which the church is always in need. Certainly the inertia so often characteristic of the ecclesiastical institution justifies its being radically called in question. It is in this sense that we have to interpret affirmations like those made by the Dar-es-Salaam manifesto drawn up by a consultation of third world theologians in 1976: "A fundamental challenge is still to be taken up. The churches are still cluttered up with traditions, theologies and institutions inherited from a colonial past."

But the only justification for the reform of the church is the church's own raison d'etre. Prof Thomas F Torrance wrote in the Scottish Journal of Theology in 1951, "Although the original message of the Reformation was still proclaimed, it was no more perceived as an efficient word of judgement and grace, but as an established and systematized orthodoxy." And Jacques Courvoisier, formerly professor in the University of Geneva, has shown in De la Réforme au protestantisme (Paris: Beauchesne, 1977) how what started as an impulse petrified into a system and what had been a movement froze into ecclesiastical institutions.

In face of a church that had become congealed in certain forms, it was essential to recall that reformation is a permanent process and not a permanent acquisition. But it is also necessary to recall that this process of permanent reformation only has value as it springs from fidelity and obedience. Before calling themselves reformed, the member churches of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches must be shown to be in process of being reformed. But this is only possible if first of all they show themselves to be really members of the one church of the one Jesus Christ. Membership of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches is no guarantee of a church's participation in the movement of continued reformation nor of membership of the church of Jesus Christ! This membership of WARC must be at least an invitation to them to pose themselves this question.

We are too often interested today, perhaps, in the aggiornamento of the church, its being brought up to date. What we are insufficiently concerned with is the more fundamental need for theological reflection on the church, its role and its witness; what we need is a solid ecclesiology.

The contribution of the Reformed churches and of their World Alliance in this respect can and should be a fundamental one, not because we would consider ourselves "at the centre of the ecumenical movement and that the other confessions would one day recognize this", as Willem Visser't Hooft ironically commented during the Amsterdam assembly of the World Council of Churches in 1948 in reference to all the confessional families of churches, but in virtue of the very nature of this ecclesiology.

We shall do well here to note some features of Calvin's ecclesiology. In Book IV of his Institutes, Calvin constantly returns to two important ideas: firstly, he frequently uses the verb "to institute". For example: "God wishes to be recognized as present in that which he has instituted" (IV, 1, 5). God himself has instituted the church - at once invisible and visible, one and the same reality and not two distinct or even opposed sectors, as the Geneva reformer has often been accused of believing. "The foundation (of the church) is its eternal election." (IV, 1, 2). Calvin affirms very strongly the indispensability of the church: "We are certain that as long as we remain in the bosom of the church, the truth remains with us." (IV, 1, 3). "Outside the bosom of this church, we cannot hope for the remission of sins nor any salvation." (IV, 1, 4). "It is a pernicious and fatal thing to despise the church or to separate from it." (IV, 1, 4). "It is not lawful to separate these two things that God has joined together: that the church is the mother of all those of whom he is the father." (IV, 1, 1). "Just as it is necessary for us to believe the church which is invisible and known to God alone, so it is commanded to us to hold this visible church in honour, and to keep ourselves in its communion." (IV, 1, 7).

The second notion that frequently appears is that of "service" but the way in which it does so is itself revealing, it seems to me. Calvin does not develop a theory of service, ministry, of proclamation (kerygma), of diakonia, of leitourgia, even though all these concepts are basic to his theology. On the other hand, he makes abundant reference to concrete terms: ministers, servants, apostles-pastors, prophets-doctors, deacons, which are all of them "offices", responsibilities, "ministries" not "magistracies". And when he comes to the marks of the church, "the signs and tokens" as he calls them, Calvin does not unfold a doctrine of the four traditional attributes (unity, holiness, apostolicity, catholicity), although they are all of them present, very much so. Once again, he describes the church in a concrete way: by the proclamation and hearing of the word of God and the administration of the sacraments: "Wherever we find the word of God preached and heard purely, and the sacraments administered according to Christ's institution, there we need not doubt is the church" (IV, 1, 9). This has presented even Hans Küng with something of a problem.

These two poles - the church instituted by God, and service - represent indispensable fixed points for all ecclesiological development; they must be taken together, since only the servant church has been instituted by God and the service of the church can only be thought of as a ministry willed by God.

What is the position of WARC in this matter? To answer this question we would need to quote in extenso the following documents: (a) "Reconciliation and the Church: The Freedom of Christian Witness", section IV Report of the Nairobi general council in 1970 (God Reconciles and Makes Free); (b) "Come Creator Spirit for the Renewal of Worship and Witness", section II Report of I the Frankfurt general council 1964; perhaps even more, (c) the Report on the main theme of the Sao Paulo general council of 1959, "The Servant Lord and His Servant People. New Humanity In Jesus Christ" and (d) the Report of section II of that same general council "The Service of the Church". A few reminders will suffice here: "The Christian community has to be understood as the continuation of the covenant people of the Old Testament who were called out to be an instrument of God's purpose in the world... The church, freed by the heard word of God (kerygma) is both a fellowship (koinonia) and an instrument of love, justice, unity, discipline, peace and hope for all (human) kind (diakonia)." (Nairobi 1970, Uniting general council, section IV report). "We must submit our entire organizational structure to the Spirit for the service of God... Our first concern must be to give room to the Spirit's work" (Frankfurt 1964, 19th general council, section II report). "The Reformers saw the fundamental importance of the truth that "by grace we are saved" and on the basis of this truth they confessed the faith and reformed the structure of the church in ways that they found to be agreeable to the word of God. The Reformers acted within their own environment and in their moment of history. Under the same renewing power of the Spirit, we are responsible for acting in our own environment and in our moment of history." (Frankfurt 1964, section III report, "Come, Creator Spirit, for the calling of the churches together").

"The Reformation, with all its stress upon the glory of God alone, and the vitality derived from that concern, has become the occasion for self-justification; while the claim for continuing and continuous renewal and reformation in obedience to the word of God (ecclesia semper reformanda) has been forgotten. The Calvinistic tradition of the Reformation often seems conspicuous for its capacity to excite pride rather than humility. To rediscover the integrity of her life in Jesus Christ, the church must empty herself and take upon herself the form of a servant, and listen to God speak... If we enjoy a rich inheritance within the Reformed tradition, let us remember that it is a tradition wherein church order, confession, liturgy and practice are subordinate to the Lord Jesus Christ, the servant Lord, and subordinate to the all-important demands of the gospel of his grace. Ultimately, the church can only claim to be the church insofar as she is rendering the service of Christ to the world. The Church's essential ministry is thus not a status but a ministry, a diakonia or service of love." (Sao Paulo 1959, report on the main theme).

"The servant theme directs our attention to God's redemptive activity in the world and sets the church in that context. In the servant Lord, Jesus Christ, we have both the form of God's service to man and to the church and the form of the church's service to the world... Here the Reformed tradition of the instrumental character of the church comes to fuller light. The church cannot become an end in herself. All aspects of her life... point to Jesus Christ and are valid to the degree that they serve his purpose in the world. It is the ministry of Christ that determines the life and service of the church" (Sao Paulo 1959, report of section II).

When we repeat the statement: ecclesia, quia reformata, semper reformanda (Because reformed, a church always in process of being reformed), what are we saying, what are we doing?

Prospective

...a manner of preparing the decisions as to the future plans and programmes of WARC

It will be the heavy but uplifting task of the delegates to the general council in Ottawa to provide the World Alliance of Reformed Churches with its working programme for the years immediately ahead. In so critical a period in the history of the world, the choice of priorities becomes extraordinarily important for us. According to our constitution, all our efforts at planning must be "in accordance with the purpose of the Alliance". (Art. IV, 2).

It is not for me here to define the "policies" that should be pursued nor to "make... plans and programmes"; according to the same article IV of the constitution, these tasks are assigned specifically to the general council.

What is my duty, however, is to point out the needs that exist, the inadequacies of our organization, the challenges that we discern, the opportunities open to us. These I must now list so that they may be presented to you in a more coherent form. This is the purpose of this final section of my report.

It will be for the delegates to compare the aims listed here with "the purpose of the Alliance", to establish an order of priorities, and then, fully aware of what is at stake, to take well-considered decisions.

It is not necessary to recall here the work already done; that is reflected in the reports of my colleagues and in the first section of this present report. But we must not lose sight of the work that has been accomplished and that must be continued, as we venture now to dream a little about what could also be envisaged in addition.

In the course of the retrospective analysis in section I and the rapid consideration of the Reformed perspective in section II, at least thirteen aims emerged and these are arranged below m accordance with the organized structure of the Alliance.

First of all, general aims that concern all the official bodies of WARC:

Everything connected with the specifically Reformed approach or ethos: centrality of the gospel, primacy of grace, response of faith, the scripture witness, influence of worship, love as the ethical principle, permanent reform of the church;
the need for greater concreteness, dynamism and visibility in the organization and activities of WARC; a general advancement campaign is indispensable, particularly to interest young people, to find new young leaders and to enlist their active efforts;
a more visible, dynamic and concrete representation of the Reformed family of churches is also required in relationships with other families of churches and within the ecumenical movement;
the role of our publications must not be underrated; they need to be supported more strongly and disseminated and used more widely.

Some aims are more specifically concerned with one or other of the main departments of our organization.

To begin with the general secretariat:

improvements are called for in the administrative organization: a more effective network of communication with the member churches (contacts, correspondence, visits, etc.), and with the Reformed representatives on international, ecumenical bodies, Christian organizations, etc.;
more adequate provisions for a token representation to Reformed-type churches, Presbyterian and Congregationalist, and to churches in which one or other of these components is included; also in the many committees and conferences, both ecumenical and otherwise, dealing with themes we consider essential ;
greater availability and more adequate resources for interventions, when requested, on behalf of churches in difficulty;
additional staff in view of the considerable increase in the tasks of WARC in recent years and likely in the future;
the creation of a department of finance will only be effective if it makes possible a more even distribution of financial responsibilities among the member churches, the development and organization of a fuller exchange of financial information, an improved publicity, etc.

Aims that concern the department of theology - these, while easy to summarise, call for a considerable amount of work:

theological research needs to be expanded: various aspects of the Reformed ethos, the part played by cultural influences; the WARC department of theology as meeting point for theological reflection, exchange, and development; organization of regional theological consultations; ensuring the contribution of the Reformed ecclesiology to the current debates, etc.

Aims that concern the department of cooperation and witness - these also open up possibilities for many interesting and demanding activities:

need to strengthen the bonds between the member churches of the Reformed family: more continuous contacts with minority churches and increased exchanges between churches;
the proposed creation of two official sections (women's work, civil and religious liberties) only makes sense if it implies real commitments and activities;
fresh consideration is needed of the important question of the role of churches of the Reformed family in interchurch aid programmes (ecumenical, national, WARC's special services fund, etc.)

It is not enough simply to identify needs and to draw up a list, which it would be easy to extend. The next indispensable step is to establish the priorities to be respected in the years immediately ahead. There is today a new interest in WARC, its work and its potentialities. But it is vital that this interest should become more than a mere day-dreaming. The vision must become concrete and the interest a commitment.

Priorities must be established among these needs, therefore, and on the basis of these priorities, a mandate will begin to take shape. The Ottawa general council will not be able to evade this difficult yet potentially inspiring task.

Once this work is done and priorities and a mandate established and adopted, there will be inevitable implications for our organization and budget.

We must bear in mind, it seems to me, the need to think of the adventure of the Ottawa general council as a unified whole: there will not be, on the one hand the analysis of the theme and on the other hand administrative decisions; on the one hand enthralling theological discussions, and on the other hand practical considerations; or, again, debates on forms of cooperation and witness in the Reformed family, in isolation from financial concerns. Of course committees, ad hoc groups, and what have you, will be appointed; to the extent that these succeed in manifesting a common experience and vision, their work will be fruitful.

To conclude with a personal remark: the responsibilities defined by our constitution, the tasks that have devolved upon us, the needs that are deeply felt - all this tends to indicate the inadequacy of the present equipment of the Alliance. Its budget limits its activities, its staff cannot satisfactorily absorb further demands. In this respect, too, we have reached a turning point.

In order to advance a little better, the following measures would have to be envisaged: an additional theological secretary responsible, above all, for research; an additional secretary for the department of cooperation and witness with special responsibility for coordination and cohesion; an associate for the general secretariat to make it possible to have more time for and to deal more effectively with the various aspects that have made special demands on this sector. To adopt these measures would, of course, mean considerable increases in the budget, probably to twice its present size. This problem also comes under the heading of priorities to be set by the member churches of the World Alliance which also have to take into account their own national responsibilities, their various commitments and their own resources.

Conclusion

Needless to say, this report will not be read to the Ottawa general council! On the contrary, I would like to base my address to the assembly on the opening day on the reactions that this present report will provoke. I would therefore be most grateful if those who read it (whether official church delegates, fraternal delegates, consultants, members of WARC committees or member churches, or even interested individual Christians) would be kind enough to send me their critical comments and suggestions. This would be an act of friendship and I will be delighted to receive any such comments. In this way they will initiate a second stage in our reflection and also be available to the delegates to our coming general council. Please send your responses to me in Geneva (WARC, 150 route de Ferney, 1211 Geneva 20, Switzerland) as soon as possible and in any case before 15th May 1982. Thanking you in advance for your cooperation.