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A group of church leaders from Sweden met with the World Council of Churches (WCC) to prepare for the year 2025, with a focus on commemorating 100 years since the beginning of the Life and Work movement as well as the commemoration of the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, where bishops representing the whole of Christendom gathered together for the first time to discuss the faith and witness of the church.

Communication from the World Council of Churches (WCC) in 2023 involved prophetic storytelling and growing channels to highlight justice, reconciliation, and unity across the world. 

The World Council of Churches (WCC) Faith and Order Commission met for the first full meeting, which took place on 27 and 29 November, and 1 and 4 December online. 

A new publication, “Towards a Global Vision of the Church, Volume II,” was released during a webinar on 14 December hosted by the World Council of Churches (WCC) Commission on Faith and Order. 

Churches should promote disability studies in theological institutions and recruit persons into ordained ministry, youth with disabilities urged after attending the 12^th General Assembly of the All Africa Conference of Churches in Abuja, Nigeria.

After being postponed twice because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the 15^th General Assembly of the Christian Conference of Asia (CCA) finally got underway in late September and early October 2023 in Kottayam, India. Under the theme "God, renew us in your spirit and restore the creation,” CCA member churches across Asia gathered to stake out the direction forward and evaluate accomplishments and challenges since the last assembly in 2015 in Jakarta. 

No holidays for William Temple, Archbishop of York, early in August 1937. The ecumenical movement for the social responsibility of the churches, known as “Life and Work,” had just held its world conference in Oxford, 12-26 July, with the church struggle against emerging totalitarian states at the heart of its theme and work. Temple had drafted the final message of the conference, known for the motto “let the Church be the Church.”   

As the World Council of Churches (WCC) observes one year since the WCC 11th Assembly in Karlsruhe, Germany, many resources can help the global fellowship, friends, and partners take a reflective look back at a gathering that drew more than 4,500 people, including 659 official delegates from the WCC’s 352 member churches.

There is an old Lutheran adage that to be Lutheran is to be ecumenical, so the theme of the upcoming Assembly of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) taking place in Poland, "One Body, One Spirit, One Hope,” is seen as totally appropriate for the times.

Preceding the first session of the Permanent Forum on People of African Descent (Permanent Forum), the World Council of Churches (WCC) hosted, on 29 November, a webinar entitled “The New UN Forum on People of African descent: realising the promises of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action?”



 

The joys of reunion after years of the COVID-19 pandemic marked the recent meeting of the study groups of the World Council of Churches (WCC) Commission on Faith and Order.

By rights, it should have been Africa. The World Council of Churches’ (WCC) First Assembly had been held in Europe (Amsterdam), the second in North America (Evanston, USA), the third in Asia (New Delhi). Hopes were raised that Africa would be the next continent to host the council. But questions arose concerning acts of violence and military conflicts in Africa throughout the 1960s, from the Biafran region in Nigeria to Zanzibar and Eritrea, from Algeria to Mozambique and Rhodesia. And so the Fourth Assembly returned to the “safety” of Europe, to Uppsala in Sweden. In one of history’s ironies, Soviet tanks would roll into Prague one month after the assembly’s close.

With the World Council of Churches (WCC) 11th Assembly less than four months away, anticipation for the historic gathering of faith and fellowship is growing.

Over 23-29 October, a Global Conference of Africa and Africans in the Diaspora (AAD) revisited the historical 1945 Manchester Pan-African Conference and critically reviewed progress made since then. Speakers and participants also worked to determine and develop effective global strategies to radically change the lot of Africans and people of African descent globally—and thereby defeat the scourge of racism in the world.

As the journey continues towards the WCC 11^th Assembly in Karlsruhe in 2022, a World Council of Churches consultation is now taking place in Berlin, Germany, to reflect and strategize on the future of the churches’ health ministry.

Rev. Dr Fidon Mwombeki, general secretary of the All Africa Conference of Churches, has expressed hope that the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic will lead to new types of fellowship, where churches can build back better.