WCC Conference
WCC Conference
The WCC brings together more than 340 churches, denominations and church fellowships in over 100 countries and territories throughout the world, representing some 400 million Christians and including most of the world's Orthodox churches, scores of denominations from such historic traditions of the Protestant Reformation as Anglican, Baptist, Lutheran, Methodist and Reformed, as well as many united and independent churches. While the bulk of the WCC's founding churches were European and North American, today most are in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America, the Middle East and the Pacific.
The
WCC and the ecumenical movement
The modern ecumenical movement began in the late 19th and early 20th century,
when denominational Christians began to pray and work together across denominational
boundaries. By the close of the 1920s, several pioneering movements had been
formed to advance the cause of church unity worldwide. In 1937, church leaders
agreed to establish a World Council of Churches, and in August 1948, representatives
of 147 churches assembled in Amsterdam to constitute the WCC.
Since then, a growing number of churches on every continent have joined this search for Christian unity. They have built new bridges over ancient chasms separating believers from one another. As their relationships with each other have changed, so too has the role of the WCC within the ecumenical movement.
The ecumenical movement encourages cooperation and sharing, and common witness and action by churches. It seeks to renew the church through activities and networks among clergy and lay people, especially women and youth. It seeks visible unity, not as an end in itself, but to give credible witness "so that the world may believe", and to serve the healing of the human community and the wholeness of God's entire creation.
While it shares in other forms of international, intercultural and interreligious cooperation and dialogue, the ecumenical movement is rooted in the life of the Christian churches. And while it has worldwide scope (oikoumene means "the whole inhabited earth"), it is particularly interested in the true being and life of the church as an inclusive community, in each place and in all places.
New councils
of churches and other ecumenical bodies in different countries and regions
have created a genuinely worldwide ecumenical network of which the WCC is
an integral part. The creation of this network has inspired its members to
share an extraordinary number of resources of all kinds - theological, liturgical,
spiritual, material and human.
The Roman Catholic Church is a full member of many national ecumenical
and several regional ecumenical organizations and has a regular working relationship
with the WCC.
To view their
FULL SITE, click here:
http://www.wcc-coe.org/wcc/english.html