World Evangelical leaders have joined with their Pentecostal counterparts to welcome better relations with World Council of Churches (WCC) members. The drive for a greater co-operation in the future, has come at the WCC’s 9th Assembly currently taking place in Porto Alegre, Brazil.
Rev Geoff Tunnicliffe, the International Director and CEO of the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) reported that the WEA “parallel network” of 400 million Christians identified with many of the WCC’s themes, such as HIV/AIDS, violence and poverty.
In particular, Tunnicliffe said that evangelicals, of which many exist within WCC churches, were dedicated to integral mission, the proclamation and demonstration of the gospel.
He said, “If we ignore the world, we betray the word; if we ignore the word, we have nothing to bring to the world.”
He went on to explain that the WEA was not a member of the WCC, partly because of the structural differences between the two worldwide bodies, and also due to some “historical and deeply-felt issues”.
However, he stated that the way forward was “to find connections around issues” such as the northern Uganda crisis, on which both organisations agreed.
When asked about evangelism and proselytism, Rev Tunnicliffe said that the desire to see personal conversion was “at the heart of the evangelical movement.”
He added, “We need to work on best practices about how we engage in evangelism.”
The Chairman of The Church of Pentecost in Ghana, Rev Michael Ntumy, also made an emotional plea for closer connections between Pentecostal and WCC churches.
Referring to the origins of Pentecostal congregations a century ago, he said that many of them were the result of acrimonious separations from old churches. He said, “Although time does not necessarily heal all divisions, 100 years is long enough.”
He praised the strong emphasis in WCC churches on the social gospel, but said that “the Pentecostal emphasis on the proclamation of the gospel is an area WCC churches do not emphasise enough”.
Inviting a more unified future, he said that if Pentecostal, WCC churches and the Roman Catholic Church were to come together “we would become a spiritual colossus in the hands of God". He concluded, "Our doors are open; come, let's talk.”
From the Good News Evangelical Church in Argentina, Dr Norberto Saracco spoke about the ecumenical advances made in Latin America at the initiative of evangelical and Pentecostal churches.
“In Latin America, we are entering into a post-Pentecostal era, which will create better conditions for ecumenical dialogue,” he said.
He continued, “For evangelical churches, unity is not based on the recognition of an hierarchical authority, nor on dogmas, not on theological agreements, nor on alliances between institutions. We have to accept that that way of doing ecumenism has gone as far as it can.
Daniel Blake
Christian Today Correspondent