The 2010 Edinburgh Centenary Conference (June 2-6) concluded with a worship celebration (see photo of the African leadership team in this closing service at right) and the issuing of a Common Call, a document which reflected the range of concerns of the participants at this historic event. The World Evangelical Alliance urged its members to read and respond to this Common Call. This is what I am also doing in posting the whole of the Common Call here.

I am a member of a mainline church that has membership in both the World Council of Churches (WCC) and the various evangelical bodies that unite Christians in common mission and witness to Christ. I have placed myself in this position intentionally because I desire to bear witness to my faith as widely as I can. I am fully aware that people on both sides of the ecumenical debate will question me but […]

I have reported in my four previous posts on the missional-ecumenical gathering called Edinburgh 2010, held in the historic city of Edinburgh, Scotland, June 2–6. I have offered personal reflections upon this event and suggested that it was extremely important for all who long to see the kingdom of God come with power in the days ahead. One obvious reason for the importance of Edinburgh 2010 is that it brought together representatives from the great branches of historic Christianity, as well as independent church leaders and Pentecostals. This is happening more and more these days and those who share my vision for missional-ecumenism will rejoice in these evidences of the Holy Spirit’s movement among God’s people.

The conveners of Edinburgh 2010 stated, before the event took place, the following intended outcomes of their meeting. Reading these inspires me a great deal.

● Churches will be provided with an opportunity to celebrate what God has done in the growth of the Church worldwide over the past century and to prayerfully commit to God the witness of the churches […]

The General Secretary of the World Council of Churches, Dr. Olav Fykse Tveit, noted at Edinburgh 2010 that the prayer of those who gathered in 1910—the prayer of Jesus in John 17 “that the church may be one”—was the same prayer for leaders that gathered in Edinburgh in June. Tveit added in his opening remarks at the Edinburgh event:

One hundred years after the Edinburgh conference in 1910 we are challenged to launch together a new beginning for common mission in the 21st century. We need to discern together what the call to carry the cross of Christ means for us today, as we witness together and find different ways to make it visible that we are called to be one.

In an earlier post I quoted from the address given by Dr. Geoff Tunnicliffe. You can read his entire address online, plus see video and read other reports from this event, thus I […]

Edinburgh 2010 was an event of the World Council of Churches (WCC). This fact alone makes many evangelicals nervous. There is good reason to be weary of the WCC if you know the events that followed its formation in 1948. The WCC has often lost its way over the last sixty years as it pursued a myriad of ideological issues that were interpreted in ways that rightly troubled evangelicals who were principally concerned about the spread of the gospel and the unity of Christian churches in that missionary effort.

The conveners of Edinburgh 2010 stated that there were important ways in which this new celebration, and the process leading towards it and what would then follow it, were very different from the Edinburgh 1910 Conference. Here are three specific ways noted, in advance of the gathering, by the leaders of Edinburgh 2010:

1. Rather than being centered in Edinburgh, a polycentric approach is being taken, both for the study process and for 2010 events which will take place in many locations around the world including Edinburgh.

[…]

It may well be asked if the ecumenical beginnings of the twentieth century, held at Edinburgh in 1910, were really all that successful in terms of the stated purposes of those founders. I have spent a good deal of time reading about Edinburgh 1910 over the past three years and I think the answer is mixed; i.e. it is yes and no. It all depends on how you understand the goals of the conveners in 1910 and the subsequent history of missions and the global church over the past one hundred years.

Edinburgh 1910 was, rightly understood, a world missions conference. Eight different commissions dealt with issues like getting the gospel to all the non-Christian world, the church in the present mission fields of that time, the missionary message in relationship to non-Christian religions, the preparation and sending of missionaries and the relationship of missions and missionaries to governments. The most remembered goal, which is often misunderstood, was to […]