04502
November 11, 2004

Phoenix rising

NCC health is ‘robust’ after near demise four years ago, leader says

by Jerry L. Van Marter

ST. LOUIS — Four years after a financial crisis that threatened to sink the National Council  of Churches (NCC) and a painful administrative and financial separation of the NCC and Church World Service (CWS), both organizations are now “robustly healthy,” their leaders say.

      In a report to the joint NCC/CWS General Assembly here Nov. 10 NCC President-elect Michael Livingston — a Presbyterian who directs the International Council of Community Churches — praised NCC General Secretary Bob Edgar “for bringing financial stability” to the NCC. “Three years of balanced budgets and clean audits is a clear cause for celebration,” Livingston said.

      CWS has recently completed a strategic planning process, and the NCC is embarking on one at this Assembly. The CWS process “has created a new fabric for our work,” CWS Board Chair Betty Voskuil said. And the NCC process will involve “an intense period of reflection and discernment on our mission, goals and objectives,” Livingston said.

      Voskuil led the 250 Assembly delegates in a recitation of the CWS mission statement: “Church World Service is Christians working together with partners to eradicate hunger and poverty and to promote peace and justice around the world.”

      CWS is engaged in mission in 70 countries around the world in five program areas:

•    Emergency response
•    Immigration and refugee resettlement
•    Social and economic development
•    Education and advocacy
•    Mission relationships and witness

      The Presbyterian Church (USA)’s Presbyterian Disaster Assistance works closely with CWS.

      Livingston outlined steps that have been taken by the NCC in recent years to stabilize its mission, including:

• the development of a partnership document to define its working relationships with a variety of other organizations
• a Memorandum of Understanding between the NCC and CWS
• a “delegation protocol” to ensure that NCC delegations are representative of the 36-communion-member organization and that their activities are “consistent” with NCC policies
• active participation in new ecumenical developments such as the fledgling Christian Churches Together (CCT)

      Talk about the formation of CCT began at the height of the NCC’s financial crisisin 2000, leading to speculation that it was being designed to replace the NCC as a  broader-based ecumenical organization in the United States. In addition to “the usual suspects,” Livingston said, the CCT talks include the Catholics, Pentecostals and evangelicals.

      He insisted that CCT — which hopes to incorporate next year — poses no threat to the NCC. “If there are new challenges to us,” Livingston said, “there will also be new opportunities for broader ecumenical unity and participation.”

      The challenge for CWS, Voskuil said, is to maintain a comprehensive vision of its ministry while it seeks to meet immediate human need in this country and around the world. “We’re known as the ‘Kits of the Heart’ people, as the CROP walk people, as the blanket people,” she said. Our task is to continually answer the biblical question ‘What does the Lord require of us?’ and be the people who bring hope.”

      Both leaders are encouraged, they told Assembly delegates.

      “There’s growing good energy and spirit around the (NCC Executive Board) table,” Livingston said. “We’re still not all in agreement on a lot of things, but if there’s not conflict, there’s probably not enough of substance to warrant the time and expense of meeting.”

      Voskuil spoke of the hope she witnessed on a visit to CWS economic development projects in Afghanistan and seeing children flying kites in a village in that war-torn country. Floating a couple of tissue paper kites she had purchased from the children out over the crowd of delegates, she said, “It’s so nice to see the kites flying again.”