Metropolitan Dr Geevarghese Coorilos, the moderator of the WCC
Commission on World Mission and Evangelism. Photo: Albin Hillert/WCC
In reports at the Conference on World
Mission and Evangelism - being held in Arusha, Tanzania from 8-13 March -
representatives from the World Council of Churches (WCC) offered their
insights on the historic occasion and reflected on how mission is
changing in today’s societies.
The moderator of the WCC Commission on World Mission and
Evangelism (CWME), Metropolitan Dr Mor Geevarghese Coorilos, spoke on
mission as “turning the world upside down.”
The early disciples of Christ were branded as
subversives that turned the world upside down, he noted. “Discipleship,
for the early disciples of Christ then, meant confronting the hegemonic
empires and announcing the arrival of a new dispensation, the reign of
Christ.”
Today, he said, discipleship is about challenging
idolatries which try to replace God’s sovereignty with human power and
money. “The ecumenical movement as a mission movement should resist
empires of our times,” he said. “However, many a time during the past
two decades of my engagement, I felt that some of our ecumenical
institutions themselves are not free from the value orientations of the
modern-day empires.”
Mission as turning the world upside down is also about
reversing existing mission paradigms, he continued. “The purpose of
mission here is not simply to move people from the margins to the centre
but also to challenge those systems and people who tend to remain at
the centre by keeping people on the margins,” he said. “This has
implications for our churches, mission bodies and ecumenical
institutions too.”
Rev. Dr Jooseop Keum, director of the Commission on
World Mission and Evangelism offered highlights of CWME work over the
past decade. He also noted we are facing a sharp challenge to define the
vision and relevance of the ecumenical movement within the changing
ecclesial and global landscapes of today. “First, mission can play a
prophetic role in bringing together unity and justice discourses in the
ecumenical movement,” he said. “Mission provides a holistic approach
that helps to affirm the integrity of the ecumenical movement because of
the way in which it connects people and contexts.”
Second, he reflected, mission can play a creative role
in the midst of the dilemma between movement and institution by bringing
new visions of movement. “However, over time the institution can lose
the vision for the movement and fall into the temptation to only serve
its self-interest,” he said. “In such a situation mission can provide
the bridge between movements and institutions through missiological
imagination and action.”
Finally, he concluded, mission has a distinctive role
between the church and development agencies within the WCC. “Our
forebears had an ambitious plan to challenge and transform churches to
become missionary congregations, recognising the role of the church as
the primary agent of mission,” he said. “In spite of this ambitious
project we must ask, ‘Where is the location of mission in the WCC
today?’ ”
Both Coorilos and Keum also offered further reflections
on the theme of the conference, “Moving in the Spirit: Called to
Transforming Discipleship.”