The test
of our
ecumenical
vocation

The ecumenical vision of the unity of the church owes a great deal to those sent as missionaries to other lands in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

As the churches planted by the work of these missionaries came to have an independent voice in the WCC, a more critical understanding of the Western foreign mission enterprise developed.

Too often missionaries served too well the interests of the colonial powers whom they accompanied. Too seldom did they listen intently enough to those to whom they brought the gospel. Often they confused the vocation of proclaiming the message of Christianity with the imposition of their own cultural ideas and norms.

As the World Council's landmark Ecumenical Affirmation on Mission and Evangelism noted in 1982, many people have been turned away from Christianity because of what they have seen in the lives of Christians.

Yet the call to common witness to Christian faith remains, for "each person is entitled to hear the good news".

The emphasis on mission as essential to the quest for church unity was expressed by former WCC general secretary Philip Potter in an address to a synod of Catholic bishops in 1974:

Evangelism is the test of our ecumenical vocation... The challenge facing the churches is not that the modern world is unconcerned about their evangelistic message, but rather whether they are so renewed in their life and thought that they become a living witness to the integrity of the gospel.